Emergency room staff have seen plenty of odd trends come and go, but this one comes with a name that’s hard to forget and even harder to hear described out loud if you have a weak stomach.
In a FOX 32 Chicago segment, reporter Anthony Ponce introduced viewers to a surge of cases involving chronic marijuana users who show up in the ER with sudden, violent stomach episodes – so painful and intense that the slang term for it is now “scromiting,” a mashup of screaming and vomiting.
Ponce’s point wasn’t to be cute with a new word. It was to underline how extreme these episodes can look in real life, with patients doubled over, dehydrated, and desperate for relief, sometimes dealing with the same nightmare multiple times a year.
Dr. Mike Cirigliano, part of the FOX medical team, said the pattern is showing up more and more often: heavy, daily cannabis use followed by waves of nausea, relentless vomiting, and abdominal pain so severe people end up seeking emergency care.
What “Scromiting” Looks Like In Real Life
Ponce framed it in a way most viewers could instantly understand: for some regular users, the “munchies” are the least of their concerns, because the body can flip from “relaxed and hungry” to “writhing in pain” without much warning.
Dr. Cirigliano described the typical patient as a heavy, daily user who suddenly develops significant vomiting and stomach pain, gets dehydrated, and winds up in an emergency room because they can’t ride it out at home.
This isn’t just someone feeling queasy after a gummy or coughing too hard after a hit. The way Dr. Mike talked about it, the problem is the intractable nature of it – the kind of nausea and vomiting that doesn’t politely stop when you sip water and lie down, but keeps cycling until your body is drained.
That’s why the cases land in the ER. Not because people are being dramatic, but because the body is basically stuck in a loop, and once dehydration sets in, the situation can get serious fast.
If you’ve ever had a stomach bug that made you think, “I can’t do another round of this,” imagine that feeling mixed with intense abdominal pain and the panic of not knowing when it will stop.
That’s the ugly reality behind the goofy slang.
The Medical Name And Why It’s Not New
Even though the word “scromiting” sounds like something invented on the internet last week, Dr. Cirigliano told Ponce the medical condition has been known for a while.
He called it cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, and said it has been around since roughly 2004, even if the public is only now starting to hear about it more often.
The big idea, as he explained it, is that prolonged marijuana use can affect receptors in the brain that are connected to the gastrointestinal tract, which is why marijuana can sometimes increase appetite – but in heavy users, the same system can apparently go sideways.
Instead of hunger, the person ends up with crushing nausea and vomiting, and once that starts repeating, the abdominal pain follows right behind it.
It’s one of those medical situations that feels backwards to people, because marijuana is often talked about as something that helps nausea, especially in certain medical settings.
So when people hear “cannabis made them vomit uncontrollably,” the first reaction is often disbelief.
But Dr. Mike’s warning was clear: if someone is using heavily and these symptoms suddenly appear, it’s not something to laugh off, because the pattern can keep happening.
The One Treatment ER Doctors Keep Coming Back To
Here’s where the conversation got blunt, and honestly, it needed to.
Dr. Cirigliano told Ponce the only real treatment is to stop using marijuana.
He said doctors can give patients “some things to try to help” and they can treat dehydration with IV fluids, but there isn’t a magic fix that lets someone keep using heavily while also avoiding the episodes.
Ponce reacted the way a lot of viewers probably did – basically saying it sounds like a “pretty simple solution,” just cut back or stop.
But “simple” doesn’t always mean “easy,” and that’s the part that tends to get glossed over when people talk about cannabis like it’s automatically harmless.
If someone is using daily, heavily, and it has become part of how they cope, sleep, eat, or emotionally regulate, then “just stop” can feel like telling someone to casually step away from a routine their life revolves around.
Still, Dr. Mike didn’t sugarcoat it. He made it sound like an unavoidable reality: if this syndrome is what’s happening, stopping cannabis is what ends the cycle.
And if you look at it from the ER’s point of view, it makes sense why this becomes frustrating – because emergency medicine can stabilize people, but it can’t permanently fix a problem that’s being re-triggered by an ongoing habit.
Potency, Synthetic Products, And The “Not Grandma’s Marijuana” Problem
Ponce brought up something many people have heard in passing for years: marijuana today is often more potent than it used to be.
Dr. Cirigliano agreed quickly, even joking that it’s “not grandma’s marijuana,” and said THC levels are much higher than they were in past decades.
He also added another possibility that tends to make people uneasy—some experts suspect synthetic marijuana could be playing a role for certain cases.
The takeaway from that part of the discussion wasn’t a neat scientific conclusion, because Dr. Mike didn’t claim the cause is fully settled, but he did connect the dots in a way that feels practical: stronger products, heavier use, and bodies reacting badly is not a shocking combination.
And this is where it helps to be honest about how cannabis culture has changed.
A lot of people still picture marijuana like an old movie stereotype: low potency, occasional use, mild effects, and somebody giggling on a couch.
But today’s market – especially for concentrates and high-THC products—can be a completely different animal, and many users aren’t “occasional” anymore; they’re daily.
So when Ponce and Dr. Mike talk about “cost-benefit analysis,” they’re really talking about the idea that no high is worth a cycle of pain so bad you’re screaming and vomiting your way into an ER bed.
The Part People Don’t Like To Say Out Loud
Dr. Cirigliano said something that sounded half medical, half social commentary: he doesn’t know how someone gets through life if they’re using heavily every single day.
That’s not a moral lecture as much as it is a reality check, because daily heavy use can start to blur the line between “I like this” and “I rely on this,” and once dependence is in the picture, the health risks don’t feel hypothetical anymore.
One reason this story matters is that cannabis talk is often split into two loud extremes.
One side acts like marijuana is basically candy and any warning is fearmongering, while the other side acts like every user is headed for disaster.
What Ponce did in this segment is land somewhere more useful: he focused on a specific condition, a specific pattern of use, and specific symptoms that ERs say are increasing.
That’s the kind of conversation that actually helps people, because it gives regular users a clear red-flag checklist instead of vague doom.
If you’re a heavy user and you start getting repeating bouts of intense vomiting and stomach pain that push you toward urgent care, that’s not “bad luck,” and it’s not something you should keep testing like a dare.
A Quick Detour That Says Something Bigger About The Brain
The segment didn’t stay on scromiting the entire time.
Ponce asked Dr. Cirigliano about research suggesting adolescence may stretch into the early 30s, and Dr. Mike explained it by describing how researchers used specialized MRI diffusion scans to look at brain function across life stages.
He said the brain builds a huge network of connections in childhood, then from roughly age nine into the early 30s, it becomes more efficient and refined, before hitting a more stable stage after that.
Dr. Mike even joked about “wisdom” developing in adulthood, and then mentioned that after older ages things can decline, though he also pointed out he’s treated a 100-year-old B-17 pilot whose brain worked better than his, calling people like that “super agers.”
That little detour matters more than it seems, because it connects to the cannabis discussion in a quiet way.
If adolescence and brain development stretch further than people assumed, it raises real questions about heavy use during teen years and early adulthood, especially when you’re talking about daily habits and high-potency THC.
Ponce didn’t turn that into a sermon, but the implication is sitting right there: the brain and body are still developing and adapting for a long time, and choices made during those years can have consequences that don’t show up right away.
What This Means For Regular Users And For Everyone Else
If you never touch marijuana, it’s easy to shrug at a story like this and say, “Well, don’t use it.”
But the real world isn’t that simple anymore.
Cannabis is widely available in many places, it’s socially normal, and a lot of people don’t see it as a “drug” in the way older generations did, which means health risks can catch people off guard because they aren’t even looking for them.
This is also why the ER spike matters as a public conversation.
When emergency rooms get flooded with repeat cases of the same condition tied to a common habit, it doesn’t just affect the users – it affects staffing, wait times, and resources, because ERs don’t have the luxury of saying, “Come back later.”
They have to deal with the person in front of them, sweating, vomiting, dehydrated, and terrified.
And it’s not hard to imagine how this condition could spiral into repeat visits if someone doesn’t believe cannabis is the problem, or if they stop for a week, feel better, then restart and get slammed again.
The Most Useful Message From Ponce And Dr. Mike
The word “scromiting” is flashy, and it’s probably going to stick because it captures the horror of the symptoms in one brutal little label.
But the real value of Anthony Ponce’s segment, and Dr. Mike Cirigliano’s explanation, is the straightforward warning: heavy daily cannabis use can trigger a cycle of vomiting and abdominal pain that sends people to the emergency room, and the most reliable way to stop it is to stop using marijuana.
That’s not an anti-weed panic story, and it’s not a joke story either.
It’s a “pay attention to your body” story, and a reminder that even things people call “safe” can have serious consequences when use becomes heavy, constant, and normalized.
If nothing else, this is the kind of segment that could save someone months or years of misery, because the first step to fixing a problem is recognizing what it is – and in this case, the warning signs aren’t subtle once they start.
A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
