CANNALIFE PRESENTS, A MISFIT MANIFESTO: Are We Confusing Spiritual Awakening or Product-Related Acute Toxicity With Psychosis?
Cannabis, trauma, toxicity, spiritual crisis and the questions medicine still needs to ask
The MISFIT Manifesto | CannaLife Press
September 27, 2026
I am getting increasingly frustrated with cannabis conversations that begin and end with psychosis. Not because psychosis isn't real or because THC cannot contribute to it, but because we seem remarkably comfortable lumping fundamentally different chemical exposures and human experiences into one enormous category.
What if we're mistaking similar symptoms for identical conditions? What if we're diagnosing the behavior without adequately investigating the chemistry, biology, psychology or person experiencing it?
An individual experiencing acute intoxication, toxic delirium, a psychiatric episode, trauma-related dissociation or an overwhelming spiritual experience may exhibit superficially similar behaviors. Sometimes several of these processes may be occurring simultaneously.
And what if we're so preoccupied with identifying pathology that we're missing opportunities to understand what people are experiencing, why they're using cannabis and what they're attempting to heal?
I'm interested in the whole person, not merely the symptoms that brought them into an examination room.
First, what exactly are we calling cannabis?
Traditional cannabis flower, whole-plant extracts, solventless concentrates, high-potency distillates, isolated THC and chemically converted cannabinoids are not interchangeable. Neither are their chemical profiles, manufacturing processes, delivered doses or potential contaminants.
Yet we continue discussing cannabis-associated adverse events as though the word cannabis adequately characterizes the exposure.
It doesn't.
What did someone actually consume? How much THC did they receive? What other cannabinoids were present? Was the product independently tested? Was it manufactured using chemical conversion? Were solvents, pesticides, diluents, heavy metals or unidentified reaction byproducts present?
What was the route of administration, and were medications, alcohol or other substances involved?
These aren't incidental details. These are the exposure.
Research has documented contamination concerns involving cannabis products, including pesticides, microbes, heavy metals and residual extraction solvents. That doesn't mean every concentrate is contaminated or that traditional flower is inherently safe. It means we need to characterize the product before assuming we understand its effects. [1, 2]
A solventless concentrate may be free of hydrocarbon extraction solvents yet deliver an exceptionally high dose of THC. Traditional flower may contain a broader naturally occurring cannabinoid and terpene profile, but that doesn't establish protection against psychosis. Chemically converted products introduce additional manufacturing and impurity considerations.
This is whole-plant cannabis, not an isolated compound. These are naturally occurring phytocannabinoids, not laboratory-manufactured receptor agonists. These are chemically converted products, not direct plant extracts.
If researchers fail to distinguish these exposures, how much are we actually learning?
Synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists are NOT cannabis
Let's be absolutely clear about this distinction. Products historically marketed as K2 or Spice commonly contain entirely synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists. They are manufactured chemicals, not extracts from the cannabis plant.
Many compounds in this category were originally synthesized as laboratory research tools to investigate cannabinoid receptors and their biological functions. They were never developed or approved as consumer products. Other compounds were subsequently manufactured specifically for the illicit drug market.
These chemicals are not cannabis, not whole-plant extracts and not naturally occurring phytocannabinoids.
Some exhibit exceptionally potent activity at cannabinoid receptors and can produce severe, unpredictable toxicity. Documented adverse effects include extreme agitation, hallucinations, delirium, seizures, cardiovascular complications and acute psychotic symptoms. The CDC explicitly distinguishes K2 and Spice from cannabis and cannabinoid medicines. [3, 4]
Chemically converted cannabinoids represent another distinct category. Producing delta-8 THC through chemical conversion of CBD, for example, is not the same manufacturing process as extracting naturally occurring cannabinoids directly from cannabis. Conversion introduces questions about reaction byproducts, impurities, purification and analytical testing.
And none of these categories should be confused with traditional cannabis flower, whole-plant extracts or solventless concentrates. Those products have their own differences in composition, potency, processing and potential risks.
This is cannabis, not synthetic cannabinoids. These are phytocannabinoids, not laboratory-manufactured receptor agonists. These are chemically converted products, not direct plant extracts.
When researchers, clinicians and public-health agencies fail to distinguish these categories, they risk combining fundamentally different chemical exposures under one misleading label.
We cannot conduct meaningful toxicology while being careless about what substance we're actually studying.
Acute toxicity can look like psychiatric illness
This is where my background in toxicology and nursing make me particularly interested in the conversation.
Toxicity doesn't always announce itself through an obvious physical injury or a distinctive laboratory result. Sometimes it presents as altered behavior.
Acute exposure to certain organic solvents can cause intoxication, impaired coordination, confusion, cognitive disturbances and central nervous system depression. Some solvent and inhalant exposures can also produce hallucinations or delusions.
Synthetic cannabinoid toxicity can involve delirium, severe agitation, paranoia and perceptual disturbances. Other drugs, medication interactions and metabolic disturbances can produce overlapping presentations. [4, 5]
A person experiencing toxic delirium may appear profoundly disorganized, frightened or disconnected from reality. That presentation requires medical assessment, not an assumption that the individual has developed a primary psychiatric disorder.
This is why I want to know exactly what's in the product, whether a relevant chemical exposure is biologically plausible and whether toxicological testing can help identify the substances involved.
Residual solvents, for example, should be investigated when there is a credible exposure concern. Their presence alone doesn't establish that they caused someone's symptoms; the particular chemical, concentration, dose and route of exposure matter.
The behavior is a clinical observation. It is not, by itself, an explanation of what caused that behavior.
These distinctions become especially important when the product has never been chemically characterized and the patient's description is the only available exposure history.
Remember the vaping crisis?
The EVALI outbreak should have permanently taught us the importance of product-specific investigation.
Thousands of people developed serious lung injuries associated with vaping. Many reported using products marketed as THC-containing cartridges, particularly those obtained through informal channels.
Investigators examined product samples and biological specimens rather than stopping at the reported product category. Their investigation strongly linked vitamin E acetate, an additive found in certain THC-containing vaping products, to the outbreak.
The CDC identified vitamin E acetate in lung-fluid samples from affected patients while continuing to investigate other possible chemical contributors. [6, 7]
The lesson is straightforward: investigators had to look beyond the label to identify an important chemical exposure.
When someone experiences an unexpected adverse reaction after consuming a cannabis-labeled product, why wouldn't we approach the investigation with comparable curiosity?
Identify the exposure. Investigate the mechanism. Examine the person. Then draw conclusions.
Psychosis research needs a much bigger picture
I don't dispute that THC can produce temporary psychotic symptoms or that frequent, high-potency use is associated with increased risk of psychotic disorders.
What I dispute is the adequacy of treating every cannabis-associated psychiatric presentation as though we've already identified every relevant variable.
The EU-GEI research published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2019 identified elevated odds of psychotic disorder among daily cannabis users, particularly those reporting high-potency cannabis use. Those findings are important, but they don't eliminate the need for more granular research into actual product composition, exposure, individual susceptibility and the circumstances surrounding each episode. [8]
What happens when we add trauma history, sleep deprivation, neurodevelopmental differences, medications, other substances and environmental stressors to the investigation?
What happens when we distinguish temporary intoxication from persistent symptoms? What if someone was already experiencing significant psychological distress before consuming the product?
And what happens when researchers ask people to describe what they actually experienced rather than relying exclusively on predefined symptom categories?
These are questions about mechanisms and individual circumstances, not arguments for dismissing genuine psychiatric risk.
We need research that investigates distinct products, individual experiences and actual chemical exposures instead of perpetuating broad conclusions from poorly characterized categories.
Now let's talk about spiritual emergency
Years ago, I encountered an article that profoundly influenced how I think about mental health: What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital, written by Stephanie Marohn and featuring Malidoma Patrice Somé.
Somé described visiting an American psychiatric hospital and interpreting what he witnessed through the spiritual traditions of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. In his worldview, certain experiences understood primarily as psychiatric disturbances in Western medicine could instead be interpreted as spiritual crises requiring community support, ritual and guidance.
He also described bringing a young American man experiencing severe psychiatric difficulties to his community in Africa, where, according to Somé, the man improved while participating in traditional practices. [9]
His account raises a question that has stayed with me ever since.
How much of what we diagnose depends on our cultural understanding of an experience rather than the experience itself?
What happens when someone is undergoing a profound shift in consciousness, confronting deeply buried emotions or attempting to make sense of an experience outside their existing understanding of reality?
In one cultural framework, the response may center on psychiatric assessment and medication. In another, it may involve spiritual guidance, community involvement and practices intended to help the individual understand and integrate the experience.
Why must those approaches necessarily be adversaries?
I'm interested in the possibility that our existing understanding of certain psychiatric experiences remains incomplete. I'm equally interested in what Indigenous knowledge, spiritual traditions and lived experience might contribute to that understanding.
The people experiencing these events deserve curiosity, support and an assessment that takes their own worldview seriously.
Psychiatry already recognizes spiritual crisis
This distinction isn't foreign to psychiatric literature.
The DSM introduced a category for Religious or Spiritual Problem decades ago. Researchers have subsequently examined the importance of differentiating spiritual experiences from psychiatric disorders while considering cultural background, personal meaning and individual circumstances. [10, 11]
A 2020 study of meditation-related challenges reviewed criteria used to distinguish spiritual experiences from psychopathology, including distress, duration, insight, functional impairment, personal history and cultural context. [12]
These considerations are relevant far beyond meditation.
Someone reporting an extraordinary spiritual experience may need compassionate support, psychological integration or clinical treatment. Determining which forms of support are appropriate requires understanding what happened and how the individual is functioning.
Unusual is not synonymous with pathological. Spiritual is not synonymous with harmless. And distress doesn't automatically establish the underlying diagnosis.
These are reasons to investigate, not excuses to dismiss the experience or ignore clinical warning signs.
This is precisely why comprehensive, individualized assessment matters.
Cannabis, introspection and the experiences we aren't studying enough
Cannabis has a long history of ceremonial, spiritual and contemplative use. For some individuals, it is far more than a recreational intoxicant.
A study published in the Journal of Cannabis Research explored cannabis use in spiritual contexts. Researchers identified participants who deliberately used cannabis as an entheogen and reported experiences involving insight, connectedness, love, joy and perceived unity with transcendent forces.
Other research has examined the psychedelic-like effects of cannabis, including mystical experiences and changes in perception. [13, 14]
What interests me is how these experiences intersect with personal growth, emotional regulation, trauma and individual interpretations of consciousness.
What if cannabis helps some people access feelings or perspectives they ordinarily struggle to recognize? What if difficult experiences sometimes expose psychological material that deserves attention and support?
Those questions warrant investigation.
A difficult altered state isn't automatically a spiritual awakening, and neither is every spiritually meaningful experience evidence of psychological healing. But when individuals describe experiences they consider transformative, why aren't we examining their context and outcomes more carefully?
Study what people are actually experiencing, not merely what our existing diagnostic vocabulary allows us to recognize.
Trauma deserves more than a checkbox
Countless people report using cannabis to help manage PTSD, complex trauma, chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia and emotional dysregulation.
Their experiences matter.
Someone who has spent years living with hypervigilance, intrusive memories, disrupted sleep or persistent emotional distress may approach cannabis with entirely different motivations and expectations from someone consuming it recreationally.
Many people describe cannabis as an important part of their personal wellness routines. Some report improvements in sleep, emotional regulation, introspection or their ability to engage with difficult experiences. Others describe cannabis bringing uncomfortable emotions or memories to the surface.
What are we doing to understand these differences?
Why is the person's trauma history not always central to the conversation? Why aren't we asking what they're attempting to manage, what improvements they've noticed and what support they need when difficult psychological material emerges?
These experiences deserve serious investigation, including the circumstances in which cannabis appears helpful and the circumstances in which someone requires additional support.
Lived experience is knowledge that can generate meaningful research questions. It isn't something to discard simply because our existing studies haven't adequately explained it.
For CannaLife, this is fundamental to integrated wellness. We cannot meaningfully understand someone's health by treating their physical symptoms, psychological experiences, medications, cannabis consumption, relationships and spiritual life as unrelated compartments.
The person experiencing them isn't compartmentalized.
Why should their care be?
Neurodivergence makes individualized assessment essential
Neurodivergence introduces another set of considerations that deserve far more attention.
Sensory sensitivity, communication differences, emotional regulation and individual patterns of perception can profoundly influence how someone experiences the world. Those differences may also influence how a clinician interprets an altered mental state.
Someone experiencing sensory overload, for example, may present very differently from someone experiencing an acute psychotic episode. A communication style that is unfamiliar to a clinician may be misunderstood before anyone establishes how the person ordinarily thinks, communicates or behaves.
That brings me to one of the most important principles in this entire discussion.
Assess the person against their own baseline, not against assumptions about how everyone should think, communicate or behave.
What is normal for this individual? What has changed? What preceded that change? What does the person identify as distressing, and what do they consider an ordinary part of their experience?
This isn't about attributing every unusual behavior to neurodivergence. It's about understanding the actual individual before deciding what their behavior means.
These questions are equally important when assessing people with trauma histories, chronic health conditions, unusual spiritual practices or longstanding differences in communication and perception.
Parallel behavior does not prove parallel pathology
Hallucinations, disorganized behavior, agitation, altered perception and unusual beliefs can arise in different conditions and circumstances.
Acute intoxication, toxic delirium, psychotic disorders, trauma-related dissociation and certain neurological conditions can produce overlapping symptoms. Spiritual experiences may share some features with psychiatric symptoms while differing in other important respects.
Two people exhibiting similar behavior may be experiencing fundamentally different processes. Several processes may also be occurring simultaneously.
Similar behavior is an observation, not a diagnosis. Parallel symptoms do not establish parallel causes.
That is why toxicology, differential diagnosis, psychiatric assessment, trauma-informed interviewing, cultural understanding and individual history should inform one another.
Listening to the patient isn't simply an exercise in compassion. It is a necessary part of investigating what happened.
And the patient's account should never be reduced to a checkbox on a questionnaire designed by someone who may not understand the products, practices or experiences being investigated.
Healing requires an integrated approach
I don't believe psychological wellbeing, physical health, spiritual understanding and community can be meaningfully separated from one another.
If someone experiences a profound psychological or spiritual crisis, their care should reflect the entirety of their circumstances. Immediate medical stabilization may be necessary, but understanding what happened and helping the person integrate that experience should not end when the immediate symptoms resolve.
Psychotherapy, trauma-informed care, community involvement and appropriate spiritual guidance can complement psychiatric treatment. A person's cultural and spiritual framework belongs within the conversation about their care, not outside it.
Research on spirituality and psychosis has identified relationships between certain forms of positive spiritual coping and improved wellbeing, quality of life and treatment engagement. Other forms of spiritual coping have been associated with greater distress, demonstrating why individual circumstances and the nature of the support matter. [15]
The relevant lesson is that spirituality isn't some peripheral curiosity to be tolerated once the medical professionals have finished talking.
For many people, it is central to identity, meaning, resilience and recovery.
Treat the immediate crisis. Understand the person's history. Address their trauma. Respect their worldview. Support their physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing as interconnected dimensions of one human being.
That's integrated health. That's wholeness.
What if we asked better questions?
Imagine cannabis research that moved beyond simply asking whether someone experienced paranoia, hallucinations or psychotic symptoms.
Imagine properly characterizing the product, verifying cannabinoid composition, identifying synthetic compounds and investigating contaminants when relevant. Imagine accurately documenting dose, route, frequency, medications and concurrent substance use.
Then imagine integrating psychological and personal context: trauma history, neurodevelopmental differences, sleep disturbances, previous psychiatric symptoms, environmental stressors and the individual's ordinary baseline.
Finally, imagine asking people to describe the experience itself.
Was it frightening, meaningful, confusing or transformative? Did they experience dissociation, sensory overload or spiritual phenomena? Did they retain insight? How long did symptoms persist? What support helped, and what happened afterward?
Did they return to baseline? Did their functioning improve or deteriorate? How did they understand what happened, and did that interpretation change over time?
Not every answer will establish a clear cause, but together these questions could produce a far more meaningful understanding of cannabis-associated experiences.
These are the questions that connect toxicology with psychology, neuroscience with spirituality and clinical assessment with lived experience.
The question medicine forgot to ask
My objection isn't to investigating cannabis-associated psychosis. It's to treating cannabis as sufficient exposure characterization and psychosis as sufficient explanation.
Sometimes the answer may be a primary psychotic disorder. Sometimes it may involve acute THC intoxication, synthetic cannabinoid toxicity, another chemical exposure, trauma-related distress or spiritual crisis. Sometimes several factors may be colliding in one frightened human being.
The point is to find out which circumstances actually apply.
A difficult experience is not automatically a spiritual awakening. A spiritual experience is not automatically a psychiatric disorder. An altered mental state following consumption of a cannabis-labeled product is not proof that the cannabis plant itself was the only relevant exposure.
And meaningful healing isn't necessarily confined to the treatments, explanations or professional disciplines with which we're already familiar.
Look at the product. Look at the chemistry. Look at the dose. Look at the history. Look at the person's baseline, their environment, their trauma and their spiritual understanding. Look at what happened before, during and after.
Give enough of a shit to investigate the bigger picture before deciding what the smaller picture means.
Science should make us more curious about the human beings we're studying, not less.
Truth Is The Drug. All Warnings Ignored.
Jessica N. Humphreys, BSN Founder | CannaLife | CannaRx | CannaLife MISFITS | CannaLife Press
Sources & Further Reading
1. Bidwell, L.C. et al. (2021). Advancing the Science on Cannabis Concentrates and Behavioural Health. Drug and Alcohol Review. Product chemistry, potency, contaminants and research gaps. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9878551/
2. Dryburgh, L.M. et al. (2018). Cannabis Contaminants: Sources, Distribution, Human Toxicity and Pharmacologic Effects. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6177718/
3. CDC — Cannabis Frequently Asked Questions. Explicitly distinguishes cannabis from synthetic cannabinoids marketed as K2 and Spice. https://www.cdc.gov/cannabis/faq/
4. CDC — Understanding Synthetic Cannabinoids. Chemical distinctions and documented adverse effects. https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/nceh/hsb/envepi/outbreaks/sc/default.html
5. NIOSH — Organic Solvent Neurotoxicity. Neurological and neurobehavioral consequences of solvent exposure. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/87-104/
6. CDC — Evaluation of Lung Fluid from Patients in the EVALI Outbreak. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6845e2.htm
7. CDC — Nationwide EVALI Outbreak Update (2020). https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6903e2.htm
8. Di Forti, M. et al. (2019). The Contribution of Cannabis Use to Variation in the Incidence of Psychotic Disorder Across Europe. The Lancet Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3
9. Marohn, S. — What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital. Featuring Malidoma Patrice Somé. A cultural and spiritual perspective on psychiatric crisis. https://shamanicresources.weebly.com/uploads/9/8/1/8/9818155/______shamanicviewofmentalillness.pdf
10. Turner, R.P. et al. (1995). Religious or Spiritual Problem: A Culturally Sensitive Diagnostic Category in the DSM-IV. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7623015/
11. Prusak, J. (2016). Differential Diagnosis of Religious or Spiritual Problem. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27086337/
12. Lindahl, J.R. et al. (2020). Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention Criteria for Meditation-Related Challenges. Frontiers in Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7403193/
13. Johnstad, P.G. (2020). Cannabis as Entheogen: Survey and Interview Data on the Spiritual Use of Cannabis. Journal of Cannabis Research. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7819316/
14. The Psychedelic Effects of Cannabis: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Psychopharmacology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37947321/
15. Westhead, M. & Georgiades, A. (2025). The Role of Spirituality and Religiosity in the Maintenance and Recovery of Psychosis: A Systematic Review. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12223707/
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Truth Is The Drug. All Warnings Ignored.
Jessica Humphreys, BSN
Founder | CannaLife® | CannaLife MISFITS™ | MC Jazzi O™ | CannaLife Press™ | CannaRx™
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