Can Weed Make You Hallucinate?

If Marijuana is consumed in large doses, users may experience acute psychosis which includes hallucinations, delusions and losing a sense of personal identity. While these effects are distinct from permanent psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, long-term marijuana use can in fact cause schizophrenia wherein auditory and visual hallucinations are lasting symptoms.

Studies have shown that THC lowers right brain activity in a region called the caudate nucleus. The more activity was reduced in this region, the more likely subjects were to experience a sense of paranoia and auditory hallucinations. Subjects also experienced what is referred to as “heightened significance.” This is the quality that makes schizophrenics think that voices are commanding them to do important things or that Gods are speaking to them. A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry revealed that marijuana use among teenagers had serious ramifications on mental health. For every year a teenager smoked pot, it said, their symptoms of psychosis increased by 21 per cent annually. Symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations rose 133 per cent and 92 per cent respectively. What’s worse, these symptoms lasted and continued to intensify even a year after the teenagers had stopped smoking pot.

While normal cannabis generally does not lead to hallucinations during short-term use sessions, a newer synthetic form of Marijuana known as K2 is in fact causing users to see things that are not real. A mixture of herbal products, K2 is sprayed with potent psychotropic substances that cause severe hallucinations and have sent hundreds of teenagers to the emergency room with seizures and racing heartbeats. Many users report lasting hallucinations and intense paranoia even years after having stopped using the drug. Street names for K2 include “fake weed,” “Yucatan Fire,” “Skunk,” and “Moon Rocks,” just to name a few.

Drugs that make a user hallucinate, like LSD for instance, have a very specific effect that marijuana does not have. With LSD, hallucinations occur because the drug mimics serotonin, a “feel-good” chemical in the brain. The brain has fourteen different serotonin receptors which all fulfill different functions such as regulating our mood, and how we interpret what our senses tell us. LSD targets a specific serotonin receptor known as 5-HT2A. When it does this, the user’s senses get thrown into a jumble. Images they would normally never perceive become vivid and flood into the brain in such a way that they believe they are real. An article in The Guardian also reveals that LSD causes segregated regions of the brain to interact in a way that marijuana does not, leading users to feel more “at one with the universe.”