Transcript:

Welcome to The Long Way Home. A five-part limited series that journeys into the heart of substance use disorders and recovery. With a focus on women, people in recovery, vulnerable communities, and those who have traveled the long way home, we explore how addiction uniquely impacts pregnant people, mothers, adolescents, and young adults. 

Through conversations with leading experts, lawmakers, and people in recovery, we examine the intersection of addiction, the criminal legal system, systemic neglect, and the enduring effects of colonization. We center the right to recovery, recognizing it as a complex, lifelong process that deserves time, attention, and resources. 

This series is a space for truth telling, learning, and imagining a more just and supportive path home.

In this second episode of The Long Way Home, we examine the impact of substance use on the mental health of adolescents, with Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman.

00:00:00 Michele Goodman:

It is such a privilege to be with you, always, Dr Patricia Jones Blessman, and in this series, as we are unpacking the long way home, mental health, and substance abuse, and specifically, speaking with you about what this means with adolescents, I just simply couldn’t be more pleased, given your outstanding credentials, and your background in this space, and also the personal stories that you’ve been telling. 

So, thank you, so much for joining us to discuss these issues. I want to start off by asking you, are there particular mental health factors that make adolescents and young adults particularly vulnerable to substance use disorders compared to other age groups?

00:00:59 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

That’s a great question, Michele. And first of all, I just want to say, thank you for having me on this platform to speak about this, and having the courage to do so. 

We know that children over the age of 12, actually, all Americans over the age of over 12, in the last study, they’ve shown that at least a 10th, or excuse me, at least a 10% of our population is using some kind of substance, every day. So there’s a serious addiction problem in the United States. When you think that 10%, 12% some estimates are as high as 14%, are using some kind of substance every day.

00:01:42 Michele Goodman:

So those substances can be a prescription, or they can also be non-prescribed?

00:01:49 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

They were looking specifically at alcohol and cannabis. So, that does not even include the other substances that could also be in play here. 

But I want to get back to your question, which is, what is it about, is there anything about adolescence, or teenage years, that make them especially vulnerable to having an addiction? Yes, there is.

Neuroscientists are beginning to understand the brain, and understand, particularly, the brain as it forms during adolescence. After the age of 12, until about 28 for boys, 12 to 25 for girls, the brain is actually doing a lot of, what I call, reorganizing, of itself, and the neurons are firing very quickly. It is a time of incredible learning opportunity. Synapses are firing very quickly. 

It is, sure we can learn after age 28, after age 30, but our best learning spot, sweet spot, happens between 12 and 28. And it’s also the most vulnerable time, in a sense, because it is also the time when young people are most vulnerable to developing an addiction. 

Anybody can develop an addiction if they’re introduced to drugs or start experimenting, experimenting heavily, with drugs between the ages of 12 and specifically, 19. The recent estimates suggest, or recent research, suggests that early onset of drug usage, or experimentation, meaning between 12 and 19, increases the possibility of addiction. If drug usage starts after 19, they think that addictions would be cut by about 50%. So we look at early adoption, or early initiation, of drug usage as a predictor of later addiction in life. And we certainly, it’s important to encourage young people not to use drugs, not to experiment with any kind of drug usage, early on.

We spend a lot of time, already, talking to young people about the puberty, about their reproductive systems, that they’re going to, you know, the changes in their body, you know, with growing facial hair, growing hair underneath your underarms, you know menstruation. You know all the things that are associated with reproduction, and puberty, but we don’t spend a whole lot of time, in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a health education course yet. There might be some out there, but I haven’t seen one, where they really talk to young people about their brain, and what’s happening with their brain, the most important organ in their body, after the age of 12, and how magnificent, but also how precious and how fragile, in some ways, that brain is during that time. 

00:04:57 Michele Goodman:

So I want to ask you about marijuana, because marijuana has been around, hemp has been around, for a very long time. On college campuses, for a very long time. There are people who are incredibly successful, who say that, presidents, that have said that they used marijuana while they were in college. It’s been used as part of some religious ceremonies, and so much more. There is now some attention, and you’ve been speaking about this, with regard to marijuana as we understand it today, cannabis, and you’ve been speaking about shining a light on cannabis-induced psychosis, CIP, calling it a silent epidemic. This has been with your work with an organization called Johnny’s Ambassadors. 

So, could you help set the record straight, or give us more insight about what exactly is cannabis-induced psychosis? Is that overstated? Is it a real thing?

00:06:05 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

It is a real thing. But let me start with, first of all, the cannabis that exists today, what’s available in 2025, is very different than the cannabis that I experienced in my youth, or that some of the presidents might have experienced in their youth, or some of the presidential candidates experienced in their youth. In 1970s – 80s, THC and cannabis was about 4%. Up until, at like 2015, maybe it was up to 20%. So the cannabis of our youth.

00:06:42 Michele Goodman:

Inside of marijuana? So you’re talking about the marijuana today, what is in it is different than the marijuana of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, early, 2000s.

So let me just level set that again, for our audience, because people probably think marijuana is marijuana. It’s the same. You know, it looks kind of like oregano, etcetera. It’s all the same. And what you’re saying is that, actually, the marijuana that is being sold today, or what’s been accessible, is different than in the past.

00:07:18 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Much more powerful. 40 times more powerful. So, the today’s marijuana, today’s cannabis, or today’s cannabis products, have been with GMO, chemically synthesized, so that now, after 2015, it went from 20% to now, you can get cannabis products that are up to 95% THC.

And so what’s on the street and what’s available today, because it’s been driven by recreational use and commercialization, is a very strong psychoactive drug, essentially, I call it crack weed. 

00:07:59 Michele Goodman:

Did you just say you call it crack weed? 

00:08:01 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

I call it crack weed, yes. Because it’s been synthesized to be way more powerful and stronger than, you know, than what we were probably accustomed to, you know. I went to college in the 70s, graduated in 78. You know, I think Barack was, like, he was in what 1980s, you know, thinking about the presidential, and the presidential candidates, who talked about smoking, yeah. We’re talking about a very, you know, a very, a less potent plant, or less potent substance, back in the day. 

I mean, in fact, if you think about basically the crash commercialization, starting with legalization in Colorado in 2014, so around 2015, when pot, THC, cannabis, began to be much more high potent, 20 to 90%, we’re talking about a very different, a very different substance. A very different substance than even what, not only in our youth, but even when we talk to go back multiple hundreds of years ago. 

I mean, yes, cannabis has been around since millennia, and it was used in religious circumstances, but it was also a different kind of context. It was used with a certain, a lot of respect for the plant itself. It was used in a guided way. It wasn’t, you know, there was certain context for which it was used. But even back in the first and second century, the Chinese pensal, their medical ma papaya, they talked about how some of the, and they certainly bred marijuana, had hybrids of marijuana, that was more potent, but they even talked about some of the negative impacts of marijuana, in terms of hallucinations, and delusions, and violence. 

So we can’t even compare. 

00:10:15 Michele Goodman: 

So we can’t compare. You’re saying, you can’t even compare. So, I want to turn to a publication recently on the Johnny Ambassadors’ website, and it’s from June 25, and it’s Laura Stack interviewing you, and you tell a story about your godson, and they note at the very beginning, as we have with the show, that you’re a retired licensed clinical psychologist. Your work has been path breaking and defining, particularly working with youth and adolescents. And you tell the story about your godson, and what his experience was. And you said that, you know, you knew your godson, before he was even born. He was a bundle of joy, who grew up to be bright, and spunky, as a toddler, who loved to play, as a child, and into adolescence, he was outgoing and gregarious. He had lots of friends. He was funny, and his smile lit up the room, and then, you began to notice other things. 

As a teen, your godson became a soccer phenom. By high school, he was already playing in international soccer leagues, etcetera. But then something happened. What happened, Dr. Jones?

00:11:39 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Well, you know, I think it took us all for surprise. I mean, we saw some behavior changes. And you know, it just seemed, at the beginning, it just seemed a bit, like, okay, teenagery kind of stuff, you know, sullenness, maybe a little bit more isolationist, a little bit more paranoia, a bit. But I think things really came to a head when his mom called me from, this was in 2019, called me from the hospital stay, a very, very well-known hospital here in Chicago, one of the best children’s hospitals here, and she said…

She described some behaviors that sounded like, to me, sounded like transient psychotic symptoms. And she said, they tested him for drugs, and the only thing that came back positive was for THC. And my immediate reaction, back then 2019, was, oh, that can’t be true. That can’t be accurate. Marijuana doesn’t do that to people. Have him tested again. They tested him again, and true enough, he only came back positive for, his results came back positive, only for THC. And it was at that point, you know, here, I have a whole PhD, but it was at that point, and years of experience, but it was at that point that I said, okay, I need to find out, is this an anomaly, or is this what’s going on here. And it was at that point, that I started to take a deeper dive into THC, and what was going on. In 2019 there were only some clinical studies, some clinical reports, of young people who were appearing in emergency rooms with symptoms of psychosis, and only testing positive for THC. So, the warning bells were kind of out there, but just, but nothing, you know, nothing as extensive as what it is today, and now.

00:13:57 Michele Goodman:

And as part of this, you’ve come out of your retirement, essentially, to address these issues, because you found them to be so stunning, and also, given the lack of appropriate attention, and care, to these types of issues. 

So I want to ask, what do we need to do now, with regard to this? So, you’ve mentioned that there wasn’t, in 2019, a sufficient medical record to really help us understand what THC and marijuana could be, and understanding that those are two separate things. The THC and the marijuana. And so, there was less. Now we are learning more, which you shared at the beginning of our time together today. 

So I’m wondering, given what you’ve described as being very harmful, what you’ve described as CIP, this psychosis that is affecting youth, that people are coming to understand, given your work with other parents who have been in crisis about this, what are the next steps? What’s the action that needs to be taken?

00:15:08 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Well, I think first of all, there has to be some willingness to get out of denial about what’s going on, denial or minimization, around substance abuse, substance use disorders, and that there has to be some movement away from denial, and minimization. 

There is, you know, and on some level, I understand why there is some denial. I mean, people, parents are faced with judgment, and scrutiny, and being made to shame and guilt if they acknowledge that their child has a substance use disorder. Teachers and school administrators principals are seeing it in their schools, but of course, they don’t want to say anything about a drug problem at their school, and so, they’re hesitant to react or respond. But if we recognize that 10% of the American population, over the age of 12, is using something daily, then that means that any school, no matter how large or small, no matter where it is, whether it’s a suburban enclave, or under-resourced community, whether it’s a private or a public school, you can pretty much guesstimate that about 10% of the population is experiencing a drug problem. 

And with that, usually, when we talk about a drug problem, there’s usually some mental health crisis that’s a part of that. So, when we think about like, you know, I think about my child’s school, Johnson College Prep, where there’s 600 students, well, okay, so that means probably about 60 of them have a drug usage problem, but we don’t, but it’s not addressed, and unfortunately, there were initiatives, government initiatives, government funding, that was supposed to provide, like mental health, behavioral health services in the school, but some of that was not…those grants were not renewed under the current administration. 

So some of that is faulty, you know, lack of funding, on on a broader scale. But I think that a public, you know…So that’s number one. Denial. We got to move away from denial, and recognize that this is a problem. We know that about 2.2 million kids have a substance use disorder, a cannabis use disorder, specifically, and about 1 million kids, according to Dr. Christian Thurston, have cannabis induced psychosis. So, we know that there’s a silent epidemic that’s out here. 

So not being in denial, a massive public education program, particularly, like we did with the Truth campaign with cigarette smoking. That was so, that was a massive public education program that was highly effective, and that resulted in a reduction in the use of cigarettes. We need to have something of that level, that happens now, that talks about cannabis, and its impact on the youth, on a young person’s brain, and the fact that young people need to treat their brain like it’s a luxury car, you know, and take care of it. 

But also, there should be warning labels on packaging. Like we know that from like from Dr. Yasmin Hurd, a neuroscientist out of New York, she’s done incredible work around substance addiction, and the impact at all ages, but particularly, for developing brains, whether it’s in the fetus, zero to six, and then in adolescence. 

So, there needs to be warning labels on packaging. Some restrictions, perhaps on dosage. You know, on what percentage of THC can be in products there. I know that there’s groups that are lobbying for no more than 10% THC, that we should not have at all, any THC products that have more than 10% THC in it.

So I think that those are some beginning…

00:19:32 Michele Goodman:

Those are very concrete, helpful examples of what can be done and the attention. And you know, to your point, there’s much to be said just about bringing appropriate attention to issues. And one can see that in other movements, whether it has been with regard to cigarettes, seat belts, any variety of efforts where we want to protect the public 

So, our Time goes so quickly on 15 Minutes of Feminism, even though we say that we count the minutes in our own feminist terms, which we do. It’s one area where we can control time, right? 

So, before we wrap up, and there’s been much to be said here, two last questions. We always ask about a silver lining, so I’m going to ask that right after the next, which is, what’s your advice to families, right now? 

Right now, there are parents, and we know that not all family structures involve parents. Sometimes it’s grandparents. Sometimes it’s aunts and uncles. But for those that are wondering about how they can be most loving, caring, and helpful to the young people in their lives, who are now experiencing this heightened level of marijuana use that has these high levels of THC, and leading to addiction, what’s your advice for families?

00:21:02 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Well, first of all, I think that I would say, that if you know that your child is using, that you need to have a frank, honest discussion with them, and really discourage them from using at all, particularly, if they’re between 12 and 28, and just talk about, you know, educate yourself as a parent, and also, you know, zero tolerance for any kind of drug use, because they’re literally destroying their brains with drug use, between the ages of 12 and 28. Not good, whatsoever. 

And I think that it’s important that parents give a clear message. I think what’s problematic, sometimes, is that parents might have been thinking, oh, it’s just weed, you know, thinking about weed in the context of their own experiences with it, decades ago. Well, the weed that their children are being exposed to is way different. And so, I think that educating themselves, having frank and honest discussions with their children about not using drugs, and also, talking to them about the beauty of their brains, particularly now. And then, thirdly, having a zero tolerance, you know, attitude about drug usage in their own home. That would go a long way to dispel, or to stop some of the drug usage that’s going on. And I understand that, you know, parents will feel, you know, what will be met with other people who will say, oh, you just being extra, you know, you know, but you got, you can’t go along…

00:22:45 Michele Goodman:

That it’s no big deal that. Why are you exaggerating? There’s no real harm here. But from your experience…

00:22:54 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

But from my experience…there’s a great book out, The Teen Brain by the neuroscientist. It’s called The Teenage Brain, and it’s by a neuroscientist. I don’t have it right in front of me. I wish I did, but it’s, but educate yourself. But she has a whole two chapters in there, in that book, that is excellent. And I think that that’s, and you go, of course, you can go to Johnny’sambassadors.org, and educate. There’s a ton of information there about the teenage brain, and the impact of marijuana. There’s also a couple of other websites. Justsayknow.org.

00:23:36 Michele Goodman:

We will make sure that we post those on our website. We will make sure that we post this information, because it’s so critically important, on our website.

I do want to close by asking you, despite the challenges, I do want to ask you, that despite the challenges that we’re facing, now, what are silver lining if? Can you name a silver lining, a space of hope, right now, for young people, and their parents, who are experiencing the challenges that you’re speaking to?

00:24:09 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Okay, so one of the things that they’re really, that I really get geeked out about, and really excited about, is when I talk to 12-year-olds. And I talk to them, I come, and I talk to them about the most magnificent thing that’s happening, is happening in places that we can’t see. And I talk to them about their brain. And so my 12-year-olds, 12–13-year-olds know me as the brain lady, because I talk to them about, you know, there’s a reason why they had that show, are you as smart as a fifth grader? And then, you know, and then, and I talked to them about what their brain is doing, right now, and they are so enchanted, and so excited about learning about their brain. 

And that’s what gives me a lot of hope. And then, you know, they’ll, you know…and it’s interesting how just having those short, brief conversations with 12- and 13-year-olds, right at the start of of that development, and how they can see their own brains changing, they start thinking about their thinking. That is what gives me hope, because what it really is saying is that kids really do want to take care of themselves, and kids really do want to make good decisions about their bodies, and about their brains. And it may sound hokey…

00:25:27 Michele Goodman:
And sometimes that’s just adults getting in the way, right?

00:25:31 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

You know, they love it. You know they love it. They love that. And when we talk about their brain being the seed of their genius, and the other things that make them uniquely them. How you can get heart transplant, you can get a kidney transplant, but you can’t get a brain transplant, and still be you. Oh, they love it. Oh, they love it. And they love it when I start getting into neuroscience of it, and start talking about the parts of the brain.

00:25:56 Michele Goodman:

I can tell that you get excited about it, too, which is so lovely, which is fabulous. Well, Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman, I want to thank you, for joining us, for this very important series as part of our MS Magazine platforms, which includes MS Studios. Thank you, so much.

00:26:17 Dr. Patricia Jones Blessman:

Thank you for having me.

Guests and listeners, thank you, for joining us for our special limited series podcast, The Long Way Home. We want to thank our guests, and to our listeners, we thank you, for tuning in to learn more about addiction and recovery.

For more information about what we discussed today, head to msmagazine.com This podcast series is available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We are ad free, and reader supported, so we encourage you to support independent feminist media. 

Look for us at msmagazine.com for new content, and special episode updates, and if you want to reach us to recommend guests for our show, or topics that you want to hear about, write to us at ontheissues@msmagazine.com.

We want to thank collaborators for this project, including Professor Regina LaBelle. She is the Director of the Center on Addiction Policy at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law. She is also a professor of addiction policy at Georgetown, where she is also the Founder and Director of the Masters of Science in Addiction Policy and Practice Program.

Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal. Oliver Haug, Allison, Whelan, Mariah Lindsay, and our intern is Emerson Panigrahi. We also thank Jennifer Weiss Wolf. The creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandi Phipps, editing by Natalie Hadland, music by Chris J Lee, and we are always grateful to you, our listeners.