Blunted: Young Men, Cannabis, and the Quiet Rise of Psychosis in Canada

Suzz Sandalwood | A closer look at how high-potency cannabis, emotional suppression, and cultural blind spots are fuelling a silent mental health crisis among young Canadian men.

Written by Suzz Sandalwood | Seeking Veritas Columnist | | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions

“I’m not here to debate cannabis. I’m here because I am witnessing more and more families whose sons are losing their mind (literally) from something we have up until this point thought was harmless”- Suzz Sandalwood

Gone Are the Days of Gin and Juice

If you think today’s weed is the same as what Snoop smoked back in the 90’s, you’re either nostalgic or dangerously misinformed. Back in the 90’s, cannabis was still taboo enough to be in the shadows but not considered harmful in the way other drugs were. Back then, smoking weed mostly meant raiding the fridge like a stealthy midnight ninja, and giggling at your own jokes and wondering why you were so pasty. There was no such thing as a cannabis store on every corner. There was no gummy aisle, no therapeutic rebrand; yet.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape has transformed dramatically. Cannabis is now legal here in Canada, widely available, and even marketed for its medicinal properties. But the public narrative of harmless use is colliding with emotional suppression and leaving young Canadian men increasingly unwell. There is a concerning rise in cannabis-induced psychosis that has left professionals in both the medical and mental health fields at odds with a society that has liberated the substance, without fully reckoning with its psychological consequences.

A Cultural Shift Without a Safety Net

“Between 2014 and 2021, Ontario alone saw 6,300 such [cannabis-induced psychosis] visits, with a marked rise during the commercialization phase of legalization.”

The legalization of cannabis in Canada was framed as a progressive move: regulate it, tax it, remove the stigma. But there was a presumption tucked beneath the policy, that normalization would automatically mean safety, and it hasn’t entirely. Legalization removed the criminality, but not the risk, especially for a new generation raised on edibles, concentrates, and ultra-high-THC strains with potencies unimaginable in the ’90s. In removing stigma, we’ve also diluted caution. We’ve made cannabis look soft, and soft things rarely get policy attention or adequate public health infrastructure. So, what happens when a drug that now sits beside bath bombs and massage oils becomes the very thing destabilizing the minds of young men?

Emergency departments have reported increased visits for cannabis-induced psychosis over the last few years. Between 2014 and 2021, Ontario alone saw 6,300 such visits, with a marked rise during the commercialization phase of legalization. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) also revealed that cannabis use disorder now accounts for nearly 18% of schizophrenia-related diagnoses in men aged 14 to 24, almost double the rate from 15 years ago.

Why Young Men?

This isn’t just a neurological fluke, it’s a pattern rooted in biology and culture. Neurologically, the brain of a male brain is typically still developing into the mid-20s and is more sensitive to dopamine fluctuations, a neurotransmitter system that cannabis disrupts.

This biological sensitivity means some young men are uniquely vulnerable to the destabilizing effects of high-THC cannabis, especially during adolescence and early adulthood. But there’s also something quieter and harder to measure. Culturally, boys are still raised in a system that socializes them into stoicism, suppression, and escapism. They’re taught to mask their fear and numb their grief. Cannabis, for many, becomes the most accessible escape hatch, socially accepted, easily obtained, and far less stigmatized than therapy. So, when we talk about the rise in psychosis, we can’t just talk about brain chemistry. We need to talk about a generation where some young men are self-medicating emotional pain they were never taught to name.

And yes, girls can struggle too, but the outcomes may differ. While young women may internalize pain through anxiety, perfectionism, or self-harm, some young men are more likely to externalize it through substance use. The risk isn’t just about emotional suppression; it’s about how that suppression interacts with a developing male brain that’s more prone to psychosis during adolescence. This is about recognizing the pattern playing out in emergency rooms.

The Role of High-Potency Cannabis

Modern cannabis strains often contain higher concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive component. A study from 2019 found that the use of high-potency cannabis increased the odds of developing a psychotic disorder by nearly five times compared to non-users. Today’s commercialized strains are stronger, more accessible, and marketed with wellness language that blurs the line between medicine and marketing.

From Self-Medication to System Failure

But numbers alone don’t tell the story. Psychosis isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a mother trying to understand why her son believes strangers are reading his thoughts. It’s a young man curled into himself in a hospital hallway, waiting for medication to dull a mind that no longer feels like his own. This isn’t just a mental health issue. It’s a systems issue. What’s often missed in the panic about psychosis is that a lot of these young men are simply trying to feel better. Many are self-medicating for anxiety, depression, or trauma; pain they were never taught to talk about. Instead of relief, they found a substance that blurred the line between calm and collapse. We didn’t prepare them for this. The messaging around cannabis has been so polarized, between “gateway drug” versus “natural healer,” that we’ve missed the murky, dangerous middle. Especially for those whose minds are still under construction.

The Question of Responsibility

So, who holds the responsibility now? Is it the clinicians, scrambling to build services for cannabis-induced psychosis in a system already drowning in underfunded mental health programs? Is it policymakers, who fast-tracked legalization without investing equally in prevention or education? Is it public health, whose campaigns remain vague at best? Or is it us, the culture that made cannabis look harmless while quietly discrediting the real stories of harm?

Toward a New Conversation

I don’t believe in scare tactics. But I do believe in truth and the truth is, we are failing a generation of young men. Not because cannabis is inherently evil, but because our approach to it has been intellectually lazy. We’ve allowed ideology, pro or anti, to override inquiry. We must bring nuance back into the conversation. Cannabis has therapeutic value; we know this. De-criminalization has now caused harm. Both of these things can be true.

If we keep pretending though that this is not an issue, the brains of young men are at risk. Prevention can’t look like pamphlets handed out in high school assemblies. It needs to look like parents having honest, awkward conversations about what their sons are feeling. It needs to be clinicians asking not just if their clients are using, but why. We need to stop asking if cannabis is good or bad. That binary question is outdated. The real questions are: who is vulnerable, under what circumstances, and what supports do they need to hold them steady? Because when the safety nets don’t exist and there are no early psychosis screenings, what we have is not freedom, but neglect disguised as liberation.

About the Author: Suzz Sandalwood is an Advanced Certified Clinical Trauma and Addiction Specialist and a Certified Grief Counsellor and is a former writer for Psych Central. She has extensive professional and lived experience in first responder, addiction, and grief communities | Connect with the author: https://suzzsandalwood.com

Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions 2025 ©️

References

Di Forti, M., Quattrone, D., Freeman, T. P., Tripoli, G., Gayer-Anderson, C., Quigley, H., ... & Murray, R. M. (2019). The contribution of cannabis use to variation in the incidence of psychotic disorder across Europe (EU-GEI): a multicentre case-control study. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(5), 427–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3

Myran, D. T., Pugliese, M., Roberts, R. L., Tanuseputro, P., Fiedorowicz, J., & Anderson, K. K. (2023). Association between non-medical cannabis legalization and emergency department visits for cannabis-induced psychosis: A retrospective cohort study. Molecular Psychiatry, 28, 4251–4260. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-023-02185-x

Volkow, N. D., Baler, R. D., Compton, W. M., & Weiss, S. R. B. (2014). Adverse health effects of marijuana use. New England Journal of Medicine, 370(23), 2219–2227. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1402309