(Business Insider) When she became so uncontrollably sick that she resorted to scalding her skin in a hot bath for the third time in a row, Mrs. X began to wonder if it had something to do with smoking marijuana.
For nearly a decade, the Australian woman had experienced sudden and severe episodes of nausea and vomiting in connection to using the drug. Before that, she’d smoked safely for years with no symptoms. In 2004, a team of emergency room physicians in the country detailed Mrs. X’s experience anonymously alongside a handful of similar cases that happened in the same region that year. In nearly all of them, patients described an illness that cropped up suddenly, often after decades of normal marijuana use. Piping hot baths were their only relief. The Australian physicians dubbed it “cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome,” or CHS.
Although the Australians’ report raised some red flags locally, most experts continued to believe that cases like Mrs. X’s were rare across the globe. Until a spate of similar reports begin to crop up elsewhere.
