It was an even worse pain than childbirth, one TikTok mom said as she described bouts of uncontrollable vomiting after using marijuana.
“I was crying and screaming and I was like ‘I can’t take this anymore!’ I hate my life,” she said. “I’m begging God, please stop it!”
Dubbed “scromiting” by social media due to its combination of screaming and loud vomiting, the medical name for the condition is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS, which is on the rise in the United States. Habitual users of cannabis, including teenagers, are presenting to emergency rooms complaining of severe bowel problems.
“They get upset, clutch their stomachs, complain of really bad stomach pains and nausea,” says Dr. said Sam Wang, who treats adolescents.
“They vomit and then continue to vomit whatever is in their stomach, which can go on for hours,” Wang told CNN in a previous interview. “They often say they took a hot shower before coming to the ER but it didn’t help.”
Immediate treatment includes anti-nausea medications and IV fluids to combat dehydration from vomiting. But patients also undergo a battery of tests to rule out other causes: blood and urine tests, expensive CT scans, unpleasant upper GI endoscopy and gastric emptying tests, to name a few.
For some teens, those tests may be repeated over and over again.
“For some of our kids, this is their fifth ER visit in the past two months, with symptoms they can’t control,” Wang said.
And if they wait too long to arrive, the condition can be life-threatening.
“Whether it’s cannabis hyperemesis syndrome or another virus that makes you vomit a lot,” Wang said, “if you give it too long, you can have electrolyte disturbances, go into shock and organ failure. CHS is no different.”
A strange situation
Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome burst onto the medical scene in 2004, when a group of Australian researchers enrolled 19 chronic marijuana users with recurring episodes of abdominal pain and retching. Researchers followed nine patients over time and found that symptoms disappeared when cannabis use was stopped but returned when it was resumed.
Interestingly, more than half of the 19 reported self-treating their symptoms by using extremely hot baths or showers. As more and more cases of CHS began to emerge, hot baths became a recurring theme as a home remedy.
“It’s pretty universal to say these patients need a really, really hot shower, or a really hot shower, to improve their symptoms,” he said.
The medical name for “scromiting” is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. – Professional Studio Images/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Why hot? “That’s not entirely clear,” said Wang, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado, Colorado.
Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive compound in weed, has access to the body’s pain receptors, so one theory is that the disturbing sensation of extreme heat disrupts the pain cycle, thus reducing symptoms.
To compound the strangeness of the disorder, THC and other cannabinoids in the marijuana plant have been used for pain relief—alleviating nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. However, despite marijuana’s popularity as a painkiller, study results on its effectiveness are mixed.
Yet, why does the same compound provide both relief and pain? Among the myriad of possibilities: dosage level. Wang points to the increased potency of THC in today’s marijuana products.
“It’s well documented that the amount of THC in cannabis is increasing significantly,” Wang said. “In the ’90s the average was like 4% or 5%. Now in Colorado, it’s 15% to 20%.”
Another mystery: Not all heavy users of weed are affected by CHS.
“It’s not entirely clear who is likely to get it,” Wang said. “Is it a certain frequency or duration of use? Is it a specific capacity? Or is it a specific type of product? We don’t have that data.”
CHS is growing
Data shows CHS is a national problem. Between 2005 and 2014, when medical marijuana was only legal in many states, a 2020 study found that 1 in 5 people hospitalized for cyclical vomiting in the United States reported concurrent cannabis use.
After Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, Wang and his colleagues found more than 800,000 cases of marijuana-induced vomiting in Colorado between 2013 and 2018. This is a 29% increase since legalization, Wang said. A study published in September 2021 found that the rate was highest in counties without marijuana dispensaries.
A new study published in July 2025 found that between 2016 and 2023, emergency room visits for teens ages 13 to 21 increased 10-fold across the country. But another November 2025 study found that rates of CHS among adults aged 18 to 35 increased sharply and peaked in the 2020s.
However, all of these studies have been limited by the lack of medical diagnoses or insurance billing codes to enable objective tracking of CHS. To conduct the studies, researchers had to compare Vomit’s medical records with documented or self-reported cases of marijuana use — data that many people refuse to provide.
That changed. On October 1, 2025, the US Federal Committee created R11.16, the official medical diagnosis code for Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome. The World Health Organization did the same, allowing researchers worldwide to better track the condition. Experts say future studies will be more precise, allowing researchers to shed more light on this unusual condition.
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