My Cannabis Breakdown and Why the Psychiatrist’s Warning Matters

It was 3am and I was on the floor of my Oxford college, fully terrified. I shakily dialed the Samaritans and, between sobs, explained I thought I might have strangled my boyfriend. Being a 19-year-old woman while my boyfriend was a former rugby player didn’t make my fears any easier to handle. I was having a cannabis-induced breakdown, triggered by the stress of my first year at university, an emotionally abusive relationship, and, crucially, a lot of weed.

It’s a period of my life I’ve tried to forget, but I inevitably thought of that episode again after a top UK psychiatrist, Dr. Lade Smith, warned this weekend that young people risk damaging their brains with high-strength cannabis.According to Smith, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, teens who smoke it regularly considerably increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness by the age of 25. “anyone who smokes cannabis regularly will admit that they’ve had a ‘para,’ and what they mean by that is that they’ve had a paranoid fit,” she said. “People laugh about it.” Sadly, I know from my own experience it’s no laughing matter.

Like many middle-class London teens, I started smoking cannabis around 15. I preferred it to alcohol, which I thought tasted horrible, and weed gave me a pleasant buzz rather than the blackouts and vomiting I associated with alcopops. It also seemed comparatively safe-it was “natural” and easy to get-and I only ever smoked at parties, never at home or alone. But by the summer after my A-levels, I was smoking almost every day, and when I arrived at Oxford, there didn’t seem to be any reason to stop. In fact, almost as soon as I unloaded the car and waved goodbye to my parents, I went straight to Alex, a boy in the year above whom I’d overheard bragging about scoring some cannabis. Suddenly, the drug wasn’t just a way to relax; it had become a shortcut to making friends.