by Ryan Mancini –  The Hill – 12/03/25

A vomiting disorder linked to frequent marijuana use is on the rise, prompting global health officials to allow researchers to track the condition and study it.

Dubbed on social media as “scromiting,” short for screaming and vomiting, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) cases saw a jump in emergency department visits between 2016 and 2022, according to a November study by the medical journal JAMA Network Open released in November. CHS was first identified in Australia in 2004.

Specifically, researchers found that the jump in visits was isolated to 2020 and 2021, when there were 188 million reported emergency department visits among adults between 18 and 35 years old.

Symptoms of CHS include cyclical nausea and vomiting, with abdominal pain with no organic cause, according to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Library of Medicine. Those with CHS will compulsively bathe in hot water, which long-term marijuana use of more than a year can induce.

“It’s pretty universal for these patients to say they need a really, really hot shower, or a really hot bath, to improve their symptoms,” Dr. Sam Wang, pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told CNN.

Wang described patients who were “writhing, holding their stomach, complaining of really bad abdominal pain and nausea,” with painful vomiting that lasted for hours before they took “a scalding hot shower before they came to the ER but it didn’t help.”

The hot water side-effect of CHS appears to be a learned behavior, NIH noted. After a short while, the hot water bathing can become a compulsion.

How someone can develop CHS is unclear, as researchers do not yet know how much marijuana use on a daily or weekly basis can cause it. Patients could go through years of suffering from debilitating CHS symptoms and, even with several diagnostic tests, still not have a clear diagnosis or treatment plan, NIH stated.

It can take days, weeks or months for someone with CHS to recover after a “scromiting” incident. This can be fueled by general wellness and normal eating patterns, along with regained weight and a regular bathing routine, NIH stated. If someone continues to use marijuana, CHS symptoms can start all over again.

A study conducted by the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences found that 44 percent of those surveyed were hospitalized once due to CHS symptoms. The study also found that 40 percent of respondents used marijuana over five times a day before CHS symptoms developed. Using marijuana at an early age was also more likely to lead to CHS.

Researchers argue that while there are limitations in understanding CHS, including why patients bathe themselves with scalding water, there is a need for greater clinical awareness.

“Targeted screening for cannabis use and recognition of symptom patterns could improve diagnostic accuracy,” JAMA Network Open wrote, adding that more studies can help prevent a misdiagnosis for someone with CHS symptoms.

Source: drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com

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