One young man’s dramatic descent from an Ivy League classroom into paranoia, psychosis, and an arrest—and what every parent and grandparent should understand about today’s marijuana.
By F. Dean Sunseri, LPC
There is a question I have heard from frightened parents more times than I wish I had.
“What happened to my child?”
Sometimes they are talking about a 19-year-old son who was intelligent, motivated and outgoing six months earlier but now rarely leaves his bedroom.
Sometimes it is a daughter who has become intensely anxious and suspicious.
Sometimes their child has stopped going to class.
Sometimes he believes people are talking about him when they aren’t.
Sometimes she becomes convinced that friends or family members are conspiring against her.
And occasionally, the situation has deteriorated into something much more frightening: paranoia, delusional thinking or a psychotic episode.
The parents sitting across from me are often bewildered.
“He was doing so well.”
“She was always such a good student.”
“This isn’t the child we know.”
I understand their confusion.
I’ve been working professionally with individuals, couples, families, addiction and recovery issues for decades. And there is one factor that deserves far more attention in conversations about sudden behavioral changes in young adults:
Today’s marijuana is not necessarily the marijuana their parents and grandparents remember.
Let me tell you about “John.”
The Son Every Parent Was Proud Of
John came from a loving family.
He was bright—exceptionally bright.
Throughout high school, he had been the kind of student parents dream about. He was disciplined, ambitious and socially successful.
Eventually, an acceptance letter arrived from Columbia University.
His family was ecstatic.
All those years of studying, encouragement and sacrifice seemed to have paid off.
John left home and headed to New York.
His freshman year confirmed everything his parents believed about him.
He thrived.
He went to class.
He studied.
He made friends.
And he finished his first year with essentially straight A’s.
There was every reason to believe John was on his way toward an extraordinary future.
Then came his sophomore year.
And something changed.
At First, It Didn’t Look Dangerous
John began smoking marijuana.
At first, it didn’t seem particularly alarming.
After all, marijuana had become increasingly normalized. Many young people around him used it.
And John didn’t think of himself as someone with a “drug problem.”
He wasn’t injecting heroin.
He wasn’t using crack cocaine.
He wasn’t stumbling home drunk every night.
He was smoking weed.
But occasional marijuana use gradually became regular marijuana use.
Regular use became daily use.
And as the marijuana became more consistent, John’s life became increasingly inconsistent.
He stopped attending some of his classes.
Assignments weren’t completed.
His motivation deteriorated.
The young man who had been capable of earning straight A’s began failing courses.
His parents initially assumed something else was happening.
Maybe Columbia was simply harder the second year.
Maybe he was depressed.
Maybe there was a relationship problem.
Maybe he was overwhelmed.
But the changes continued.
And then they became frightening.
“I Know She’s Cheating on Me.”
John had a girlfriend.
During his second year, he became increasingly suspicious of her.
He began interpreting ordinary circumstances as evidence of betrayal.
If she didn’t answer her phone immediately, John wondered where she was.
If she spent time with someone else, he became suspicious.
If something didn’t make sense to him, his mind filled in the missing pieces.
And the missing pieces increasingly pointed toward the same conclusion:
She’s cheating on me.
There was only one problem.
She wasn’t.
But when paranoia takes hold, evidence can lose its power.
John’s suspicion intensified.
He checked.
He questioned.
He confronted.
He followed.
His behavior became increasingly erratic.
Eventually, his behavior toward his girlfriend became serious enough that he was arrested for stalking.
Imagine being his parents.
One year earlier, your son is an Ivy League freshman earning straight A’s.
Now you’re receiving a telephone call telling you that your son has been arrested.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
John Was Losing Touch With Reality
His family began seeing behavior they had never seen before.
His thinking became increasingly bizarre.
His anxiety intensified.
He became suspicious of people’s motives.
Things that appeared insignificant to everyone else carried enormous meaning to John.
Ordinary interactions could be interpreted as threats.
Coincidences became evidence.
Questions became accusations.
Reassurance didn’t reassure him.
Eventually, John experienced what appeared to be a psychotic break—a significant loss of his ability to accurately interpret reality.
And by the end of his sophomore year, the student who had made straight A’s during his freshman year was no longer succeeding academically.
He failed out of school.
Think about the contrast.
Freshman year: Straight A’s. Attending class. Functioning well. A promising future.
Sophomore year: Daily marijuana. Missed classes. Academic failure. Increasing anxiety. Paranoia. Bizarre behavior. A psychotic episode. An arrest.
When John eventually returned home and came to see me for counseling, I became fascinated by that contrast.
I kept asking myself:
What changed?
There were obviously many variables to consider. Mental-health symptoms are complex, and responsible clinicians should be careful about attributing them to one cause.
But there was one enormous difference between those two years that could not responsibly be ignored:
John had begun regularly using marijuana.
The Marijuana His Parents Remembered Wasn’t Necessarily the Marijuana John Was Using
This is where I believe many parents and grandparents have a dangerous blind spot.
Perhaps you smoked marijuana in college 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
You remember laughing.
Getting hungry.
Listening to music.
Maybe doing something foolish.
Then waking up the next morning and going about your life.
So when your grandson tells you he’s smoking marijuana, you think:
“I did that. It’s not that big of a deal.”
But there is an important problem with that comparison.
Cannabis potency has changed substantially over the decades, and today’s market also includes concentrates and other high-THC products that can expose users to much larger amounts of THC.
THC—tetrahydrocannabinol—is the primary intoxicating component of marijuana.
Higher exposure matters.
And we now have substantial scientific evidence of an association between cannabis use and schizophrenia and other psychoses, with the greatest risk occurring among the most frequent users.
That does not mean marijuana causes psychosis in every person who uses it.
It does not mean every young adult who smokes marijuana will experience what John experienced.
Genetics, underlying vulnerabilities, age, frequency of use, potency, other substances and numerous environmental factors may all play roles.
But neither should we dismiss a dramatic change in a young person’s mental health while heavy marijuana use is occurring.
John’s story should make us ask questions.
When Your Child Suddenly Seems Like a Different Person
If you’re a parent or grandparent reading this because someone you love has suddenly changed, pay attention.
Perhaps you’ve noticed:
- Increasing anxiety or panic
- Unusual suspiciousness
- Believing other people are talking about them
- Extreme jealousy without evidence
- Social withdrawal
- Missing classes or work
- Dramatic loss of motivation
- Declining grades
- Reversed sleep patterns
- Increasing isolation
- Strange or disorganized thinking
- Hearing or seeing things other people don’t
- Believing things that seem clearly disconnected from reality
Don’t automatically assume marijuana is responsible.
But don’t automatically dismiss it either.
Ask specifically about cannabis use.
Ask how often they’re using it.
Ask what they’re using.
Ask whether they’re vaping THC or using concentrates.
And if someone is showing signs of psychosis—hallucinations, delusions, extreme paranoia, severe disorganization or an inability to distinguish what is real—treat that as a serious mental-health concern and seek prompt professional evaluation.
Don’t simply argue with the person.
And don’t wait for the problem to “wear off” if symptoms are severe or persistent.
But There’s Another Question I Want Parents to Ask
Stopping marijuana may be essential.
But after decades of working with people struggling with addiction and compulsive behaviors, I’ve learned that there’s another question we need to ask:
Why did the marijuana become so important in the first place?
That’s a different conversation.
When John and I began working together, I wasn’t interested only in getting marijuana out of his life.
I wanted to understand John’s inner world.
What happened inside him immediately before he wanted marijuana?
What feelings was he trying to change?
What did marijuana provide?
Relief?
Escape?
Belonging?
Confidence?
Numbness?
Peace?
Freedom from anxiety?
Freedom from painful memories?
Freedom from himself?
This distinction is critical.
Because the substance is often only part of the story.
Addiction Is Often an Attempted Solution
This is one of the central ideas HollyKem and I explore in our book, A Roadmap to the Soul.
Compulsive behavior frequently makes more sense when we stop asking only:
“What’s wrong with you?”
and begin asking:
“What is this behavior doing for you?”
That doesn’t excuse destructive behavior.
Understanding isn’t the same thing as enabling.
But if we want lasting freedom, we need to understand what’s underneath the behavior.
In the Sunseri Roadmap™, we describe something we call the Protector.
The Protector is the part of us that develops strategies to keep us from experiencing pain.
For one person, the Protector says:
Drink.
For another:
Smoke.
For another:
Work harder.
Or:
Control everybody around you.
Find somebody who approves of you.
Have sex.
Watch pornography.
Gamble.
Eat.
Don’t feel.
The behaviors are different.
The underlying mission can be remarkably similar:
Get me away from what I’m feeling inside.
And beneath the Protector we often discover unresolved emotional wounds—what we refer to as the Wounded Child.
Rejection.
Abandonment.
Shame.
Fear.
Trauma.
Loneliness.
The belief that I’m not enough.
The belief that I’m unlovable.
The belief that I’m unsafe.
The belief that I don’t belong.
Suddenly, an apparently irrational behavior begins making emotional sense.
The behavior may still be destructive.
But now we can begin understanding why it has so much power.
And what can be understood can begin to be healed.
This Is Also Why A Roadmap to the Soul Can Help Families
If your son is destroying his life with marijuana, it’s understandable to become angry.
If your daughter refuses to stop using despite obvious consequences, it’s understandable to feel helpless.
Parents sometimes cycle between rescuing, lecturing, threatening, controlling and giving up.
But there’s another path.
You can learn to understand the dynamics of addiction without enabling addiction.
You can learn to separate the person you love from the behavior that’s hurting them.
You can set boundaries while remaining compassionate.
You can begin asking:
“What pain is my child trying to manage?”
instead of only:
“Why won’t my child stop?”
That’s one reason I recommend A Roadmap to the Soul not only to people struggling with compulsive behavior, but also to the people who love them.
The Roadmap provides a framework for understanding what can be happening underneath the surface.
I’ve Seen Too Many “Johns”
John’s story stands out.
But the pattern doesn’t feel unusual to me anymore.
Over the years, I have worked with many young men and women whose families described dramatic changes involving marijuana use alongside anxiety, paranoia, loss of motivation, academic problems, relationship problems and, in some cases, severe disturbances in thinking.
Every case is different.
I would never diagnose a young person based solely upon marijuana use.
And marijuana should not become a convenient explanation for every psychiatric symptom.
But I’ve also seen enough that I don’t dismiss it.
Neither should parents.
If a high-functioning young person suddenly stops functioning…
ask what changed.
If an emotionally stable young person suddenly becomes intensely paranoid…
ask what changed.
If grades collapse…
If relationships deteriorate…
If motivation disappears…
If bizarre beliefs begin appearing…
If your child seems like a completely different person…
ask about marijuana.
And don’t settle for:
“It’s just weed.”
Ask:
How often?
How much?
What kind?
How potent?
When did it start?
And perhaps most importantly:
What happened emotionally that made marijuana become necessary?
There Is Hope
A young person’s worst season does not have to become the definition of his or her life.
Academic failure doesn’t have to be the final chapter.
An arrest doesn’t have to be the final chapter.
Addiction doesn’t have to be the final chapter.
Even a terrifying period of psychological instability does not mean we abandon hope.
But freedom usually requires more than simply removing a substance.
We have to become curious about what was underneath it.
That’s the journey HollyKem and I call Emotional Sobriety.
It is the movement from simply controlling an external behavior toward understanding and healing the internal wounds, beliefs and protective patterns that gave the behavior its power.
That’s why we wrote A Roadmap to the Soul: A Practical Guide to Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace. (Get your Copy Today!)
It offers a step-by-step framework for beginning that deeper work—for the person struggling and for the people who love them.
And if you’re a parent or grandparent watching someone you love suddenly disappear behind anxiety, paranoia, isolation or marijuana use, please remember this:
Pay attention to what you’re seeing.
Don’t panic.
Don’t shame them.
Don’t minimize it.
Get appropriate professional help when symptoms are serious.
Learn everything you can about what they’re using.
And then become curious about something even deeper:
What is happening inside this person I love?
Because ultimately, recovery isn’t simply about taking something away.
It’s about helping a person discover why they needed it…
healing what lies underneath it…
and helping them find something infinitely more valuable:
freedom.