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On 5 December 2017, the UK tabloid Metro attempted to revive discussion of an enigmatic and poorly understood disease linked to heavy long-term cannabis consumption by pushing the word scromit — a portmanteau of scream and vomit — onto an unsuspecting public: Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (called CHS for short) is, indeed, a real condition. It was first described in a 2004 case report of 19 patients in Australia. A 2016 report described the progression of the illness this way: Among the most pressing mysteries about the condition are what causes some heavy marijuana users to develop it when many other heavy users do not. A 2011 review of the literature has concluded: Similarly unknown is the reason why the excessive vomiting phase of the syndrome is alleviated by a hot bath or shower, even though this, enigmatically, appears to be the most effective short-term treatment of the condition: Another question is the degree to which increasingly legal marijuana has played a role in increased diagnosis of the disease. While diagnoses have been rising, it is hard to develop a conclusive understanding of a disease only recently defined in the medical literature. One 2015 study attempted to address this by comparing pre-legalization cases of cyclical vomiting in Colorado emergency rooms to post-legalization cases, seeing a marked increase post legalization, but their numbers were limited by a lack of specific information on each patient's drug use: The final claim made by Metro concerns the use and origin of the word scromiting, which they claim was invented by staff at emergency rooms across the United States, who are seeing more and more people turn up yelling in pain and throwing up all over the place. Outside of this unsourced statement and its reappearance in articles referencing the original Metro report, we can find no evidence of this term’s widespread and specific use as it concerns any cannabis-related ailment. Based on the term’s inclusion in the internet-slang database Urban Dictionary since at least 2008, its use likely pre-dates emergency room CHS cases. However, the condition, its symptoms, and its occurrence, as described by Metro and other outlets, is accurate. As such, we rank the claim that people are ‘scromiting’ after smoking too much cannabis as mostly true, though the condition itself is rare. Finally, this syndrome is reasonably self-limiting, as CHS is generally resolved fairly simply: through cessation of cannabis consumption.
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