Cannabis user warns of horrifying 'scromiting' side effect that left her hospitalised
By her own admission, 23-year-old Sydni Collins has lit up a joint on an almost daily basis since her 16th birthday.
It wasn't until she was hospitalised, however, with a marijuana-induced condition referred to by medical professionals as 'scomiting', that the college student finally considered kicking her controversial habit.
Not only did the devastating episode cut short the memory-making spring break of Collins' senior year, but it left her hooked up to a feeding tube, frightened for her life.
In the months earlier, she'd begun to experience nausea which seemed to increase in severity with every new day. Eventually, the ceaseless feeling she was going to be sick developed into prolonged vomiting.
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Speaking to the New York Post recently, Collins - who relied most heavily on a weed pen, as opposed to roll-ups - recalled: "There were some days when it lasted until noon and I would not go to school because of how bad it was.
"I would be puking all morning. I would let out yells or cries because nothing would come out. I was just dry heaving."
Eventually, Collins' unflinching sickness became too much for her to handle, and she admitted herself to hospital.
Sadly, however, doctors were unable to provide her answer to her mystery condition until several visits later.
"There would be some days where I felt better than others and I would feel fine," Collins explained. "I was like, 'I can go eat. I can go out of the house', and then, within hours, I would go back to vomiting and stomach pain."
After a while, she stopped eating altogether, fearing the agony that would follow.
"When I was finally admitted, [doctors] told me I was 87 pounds and had to get a feeding tube," Collins explained. "They said, 'This is not normal, we need to figure it out'."
Medics initially believed she was suffering from superior mesenteric artery syndrome, a rare digestive disorder, but this notion was eventually dismissed.
One day, however, a new attending doctor finally made a suggestion as to what Collins was suffering with.
Following a number of tests, they broke the news to the student that she had a debilitating ailment called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS.
Over time, the condition earned itself the nickname 'scomiting', however - a mix of 'screaming' and 'vomiting'.
The illness is defined by a blindsiding pain in the stomach region that comes completely out of the blue but can last up to several days at a time, as well as a seemingly never-ending bout of nausea, which is usually followed by extreme vomiting, sometimes as often as four to five times per hour.
According to medical reports, there's been a surge in cases of cannabis smokers in the United States admitted to the ER with 'scromiting', with many being forced to hand over several thousand dollars to be diagnosed.
Since no therapies for this particular ailment have been FDA-approved as of yet, Collins was forced to try a number of home remedies to ease the pain.
"My mom got me a bunch of nutritional supplements and I could not bear the taste of anything, even Gatorade," she continued. "I would chew on ice cubes. I would lick the salt off pretzel rods. Cold washcloths helped.
"But I would be in the foetal position on the bed for hours because that was the only way my stomach didn’t hurt as bad."
Following her diagnosis some years ago, Collins quit smoking weed for nine months.
After she was later dealt another crushing blow, however - a Crohn's disease diagnosis, which causes inflammation of the digestive tract - she resorted back to it, finding it eased these specific types of cramps.
Her pain and nausea now persist once again.
"Getting diagnosed with that made me think that’s probably what [the original symptoms] were from and it wasn’t the weed," she continued.
Taking the drug back up again, though, triggered a bout of poor mental health for the student.
This, Collins claimed, served to be the final straw.
"The only way to figure out if [my symptoms] were from weed is if I stopped," she explained. "I did, and I got better."
In the two years since she quit marijuana cold turkey, Collins has documented her journey on social media - a lot of which focuses on the importance of further funding and research being ploughed into CHS.
Rhianna Benson