Whitney Yeager - The Dangers of High-Potency Marijuana

The Addiction Podcast -: Whitney Yeager, thank you for being with us on the podcast today. ⁓ You have your own personal reason for wanting to educate others on the new marijuana. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened with Sammy?

Whitney Yeager: Yes, I will be happy to share that with you. And thank you, Joni, for having me on. I really appreciate it. ⁓ So yeah, the new marijuana is not the marijuana of our youth in the eight seventies and eighties and nineties, which was 4 % THC. Now it's 10 % and above and most of nineties, I think 93 % of the products that are sold today are all high-potency marijuana, so 50 % and above. ⁓ It's not even the same drug. So you can't even really think about it as the weed of our youth. ⁓ And there's no known safe amount of marijuana for the developing brain as our psychiatrist and medical expert states, Libby Stout, that For the developing brain, there's zero amount of marijuana today that is safe for ages 14 to 25. we, know, the attitudes are very casual about it. And we were in, let's see, it was 2012 when marijuana became legal that Sammy was in eighth grade and access to marijuana suddenly became extremely easy in Colorado. And at that age, at 14, kids are experimenting. And I think he and his friends did a lot of experimenting with, some of their parents had medical marijuana cards. so all kids had access to it at that time when it became legal. And I know I was a teacher in the high school and the amount of possession that went up in the high school was like 10 times. Like we were, you know, the deans and the counselors and all the people responsible for managing that, school resource officers were just overwhelmed as were teachers. So when we caught Sammy smoking pot for the first time, We were very iron fisted about it. We took the door off of his bedroom. We drug tested him throughout high school. We made him read whatever available research was out at that time in 2012 and 2013, which was not very much. I mean, we knew it did irreversible damage to the developing brain, but we didn't know how addictive it was. didn't know. the impacts of the high-potency marijuana and everything else that we know today. So I think he was pretty successful throughout high school. think he, for the most part, avoided it, except on occasion, perhaps, because he did well in school. He earned academic scholarships. He was a varsity athlete all four years, and he had many choices as far as where he could go to college. And so when he was 21 years old, he joined his fraternity and it was legal at that point in time. And he really started, he kind of jumped in with both feet. He developed an addiction to marijuana in his sophomore year when he joined his fraternity, as I said, and we really noticed a difference in his behavior at that time. So that was around 2018. ⁓ his life just took a note, a nose dive. Like he, he started to, his relationship started to be impacted because he became very oppositional. He became very ⁓ paranoid. had tape over the camera on his computer because he thought that the FBI and the CIA were after him. had no social media. He was, he got guns because he felt he needed to protect himself. He became very radical in his thinking. He became very conservative politically. He became very conservative religiously. It was just a marked change from who he was before. Not that anything's wrong necessarily with guns or being, you know, very conservative Christian. There's nothing wrong with that. And in fact, I think that's good in many cases to be religious for for religious people, but it was a marked change from how he was raised. I guess that's my point. And I, you know, we just, we thought maybe it was a phase that he was going through and it was just very scary for us. He came home from school in August of 2020 to, it was the first time he wanted to quit smoking pot.

The Addiction Podcast -: Right.

Whitney Yeager: And it triggered the withdrawal process really does trigger psychosis. And that was what happened with him. It was the first time that we saw like really belligerent behavior, anger, not making sense. ⁓ His obsession with conspiracy theories intensified. ⁓ He was incoherent, I guess is a good way to describe it. So. His father and I put him on a 72 hour hold, which then resulted in a nine day inpatient hospital stay at an inpatient rehab facility where they pumped him full of Halda, which is an anti-psychotic, Ativan and Prozac. Yeah, Prozac. So he was just... begging me on the eighth or ninth day to please get him out of there. He was becoming a zombie. He couldn't sleep. He hadn't slept in days. So we did everything that we had to promise to do to get him out of the facility. And we fulfilled all of those requirements. Like you have to titrate down on the drugs and you have to, he has to have supervision and he has to go to a counselor and receive therapy, you know, there's all these requirements. And so he had to withdraw from his fall semester from college because we had to he had to wean himself off those drugs. In January of 2021, he went back to college. He was very eager to to complete school. It was his final year in school. And by March, he developed, you know, he went, he, you know, he was addicted to marijuana. He started smoking again. And, um, I mean, he was doing extremely well in school, which is surprising, but, um, he, we noticed a similar behaviors and, um, we're very concerned. He, we now know from reading his cell phone that, um, you know, it was like, March 31st, he quit smoking pot a second time, cold turkey. And on April 3rd, he went on a hike with a friend who didn't know that he was in withdrawal and that he had quit smoking pot four days before. And his friend brought a joint on the hike with him. Sam unfortunately agreed to smoke it and it triggered an immediate psychotic episode. So it was... the second he was diagnosed with cannabis induced psychosis in August of 2020. And this was the second ⁓ episode of cannabis induced psychosis. And on this particular day, you know, I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail about how he died because I don't know that that's as important as the cause of it, which was definitely the cannabis use. ⁓ But an argument ensued between he and his friend and his friend left him on the side of the road. And after a 12 minute standoff with police, because his friend called 911 saying they just smoked a joint and that his friend was hallucinating and needed help. the police did ultimately shoot and kill my son after 12 minutes. If anybody wants to know the full story, did a documentary. They can watch it by Googling or going to YouTube and putting in my son's name, which is Sam Yeager Psychosis. You can watch the 30 minute documentary and it's all there. But for purposes of your audience. Okay, great.

The Addiction Podcast -: And I'll put the link in the show notes. So anybody looking at the show notes for this episode, excuse me, you will see a link for the documentary so you can look at it.

Whitney Yeager: Thank you. Yeah, it's a little bit of a convoluted story and there's a lot more to it. you know, he was in a full blown psychotic episode on the day he died and it was caused by marijuana. So, thank you.

The Addiction Podcast -: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that as a mom, you had to experience that. So what would you share with the audience about what you didn't know that now you would know what to look for? I know you have two girls and I'm assuming that your two girls are not doing marijuana, but what would you look for if they started? What were some of the things that you kind of feel that

Whitney Yeager: Thank you.

The Addiction Podcast -: Maybe you guys missed.

Whitney Yeager: Well, first of all, if your young person has any hopes and dreams for the future and has goals, don't let them smoke marijuana today because it's Russian roulette. while some people can get away with... not becoming addicted and you know, not every single person who uses marijuana becomes addicted or experienced to psychosis, but you don't know until you try and it's Russian roulette. So why would you risk that?

The Addiction Podcast -: Exactly. I've said that so many times on so many different drugs. It's Russian roulette. You don't know how you're going to react until you take it. And do you want to take that risk? mean, if for anybody that doesn't know what Russian roulette is, you put one bullet in a gun and spin the cartridge and then pull the trigger. So why would you do that?

Whitney Yeager: Right. Yeah. I mean, from ages 14 to 25, that age range becomes addicted more easily than after the age of 25 because of the receptors being so like they're still growing. They're still processing. There's the prefrontal cortex where it's the last part of the brain to develop. And that's where we do all of our self-discipline, our executive functioning, our planning, like that. The marijuana just does irreversible damage to that. ⁓ My son could not clean his room. He could not do anything that required planning. And maybe it was part of his personality, but I always noticed that he just didn't know what was the first step to take in some big project. That was one thing that I noticed. ⁓ when they withdraw, if they withdraw socially or they view your concern as a threat or an attack, they're not able to look at themselves objectively, they lose insight. So the insight is something very important to think about, and that's the ability to look at yourself and a situation objectively.

The Addiction Podcast -: Well, because when you're 14, you're never gonna die. And you're all powerful. You're not gonna become addicted. You're not gonna die. You're not gonna overdose. It's like, that's just kind of the viewpoint at that age.

Whitney Yeager: Right. So I would just, I would say to parents educate yourself and there's so much research on, there's thousands of studies now online that just with simple Google search, educate yourself on what cannabis induced psychosis looks like. And I've described a little bit of it. ⁓ Educate yourself on what cannabis use disorder is, which is basically an addiction, but there's certain. symptoms and also cannabis hyper emesis syndrome, is ⁓ uncontrolled vomiting where it's characterized by scrumming, which is screaming and vomiting at the same time. It's very, it's a very painful ⁓ thing to experience that they see a lot in emergency rooms. And, ⁓ you know, so if you think that your child, you know, Again, I was iron fisted. was a little bit, we were too punitive with Sam. I really have learned a lot of things I would do differently. And one of the things would be to understand what motivational interviewing is. Educate yourself on what motivational interviewing. These are questions where you try to teach your child not what to think, but rather how to think. So questions such as, tell me what you dislike about your current situation. You know, could you live without marijuana if you chose to give it up for a month? And then maybe if you can give it up for a month, let's give it another month. And then, because it takes 90 days for the brain to heal. If they are using, they need at least 90 days for the brain to get back to baseline.

The Addiction Podcast -: Interesting.

Whitney Yeager: ⁓ What would be the upside of making this change in your life? Like, let's talk about what your life might look like in a year from now, you know? And so these are all questions that don't require answers necessarily, but might make them wonder. You want to make them wonder.

The Addiction Podcast -: Okay. Yeah, like maybe do you feel any different than you did when you were 12 and you weren't doing marijuana? Is your outlook different?

Whitney Yeager: Right. That's another good motivational question, interviewing question. ⁓

The Addiction Podcast -: Interesting. And I think the other thing, Whitney, and I think you would agree with this is when you ask those questions, you can't be judgmental.

Whitney Yeager: Right, right. You've got to give the, you've got to respect your child and understand, know, Hey, I can't make you do anything. I'm not with you 24 seven, but let's see how your life might be better. Or do you want to make a change and, and, and letting them know that, you know, you're there with for them and that you're not going to be punishing them. you're not going to be like that you're with them. You're walking with them through this.

The Addiction Podcast -: Right, right. I think those are all great messages. Now, you have two different websites. Tell me what those are or how those could help people.

Whitney Yeager: So, ⁓ well, One Chance to Grow Up, I'm the education and outreach coordinator now for a nonprofit organization that formed in 2012 when marijuana became legal. And it's onechancetogrowup.org. And I highly recommend that parents go there because under the resource tab, there are many, many important... ⁓ additional tabs that you can look at. There's a community voices tab where there's lots of parents telling their stories so that people understand they're not alone. This is very common now. There's an education tab that has tips for parents on how to talk about, know, prom and how to empower your child to make good decisions as far as what's healthy for them. There's lots of information on the false messages that children receive. There's also a tab called No THC and also a Spanish language tab for Spanish language speaking people and parents. There's actually a psilocybin tab as well because you know a lot of that's entering our kids world is psilocybin right now. ⁓ Also, highriskthc.org is an excellent website that we created ⁓ with a lot of really helpful information from medical experts.

The Addiction Podcast -: And is it H-I-G-H, like high?

Whitney Yeager: It is yeah, high risk thc.org and I will definitely send these to you so you can put them in the show notes.

The Addiction Podcast -: Trying to write it down on my pen doesn't work. Okay, so let's highriskthc.org.

Whitney Yeager: Yeah, excellent website that we created. Also, I wish I'd known that there was, there's actually a marijuana anonymous website and groups that meet like alcoholic anonymous. ⁓ There's an Amerinon like Al-Anon. So family members who are impacted by their child's use of marijuana or a family member. can be anyone in their life who they love.

The Addiction Podcast -: Hmm A-M-A-R-I-non, right?

Whitney Yeager: Yes, yeah, and it has a dash in it. it's marijuana dash anonymous.org. I'm gonna take a sip of water.

The Addiction Podcast -: Okay. You know, I think that the key for anybody listening is to educate yourself. If you are sitting there thinking that marijuana is okay, marijuana is okay for your kids, your teens, it didn't hurt you in the seventies, so what's wrong with it? You need to educate yourself. This is high, high, high THC marijuana that these kids are. smoking, vaping, eating, et cetera.

Whitney Yeager: It comes in so many forms now too. mean, any pot there's suppositories, there's lotions, there's, ⁓ inhalers. So kids can put, you know, they can switch out their actual medicine and put it into their inhaler dispenser thing, dispensary thing. And a lot of those kids have permission to carry inhalers because of medical reasons and

The Addiction Podcast -: Asthma or what have you, yeah.

Whitney Yeager: So that's, you know, the marijuana industry is really working hard to help kids deceive parents and teachers and ⁓ putting them in skittles and putting them in ⁓ vape pens come in the shapes of crayons and highlighters now and flash drives like regular school supplies. So the school resource officers, and we do a lot of, I do a ton of public speaking now in my new. role with one chance to grow up to school resource officers, to nurses, to teachers. We do a lot of professional development and we're showing them pictures of what to look for now because there's, you know, it's, you have to be really on top of this. There's many ways that they can, you know, get away with it.

The Addiction Podcast -: Yeah. And now are there speakers in other parts of the country? Because you're obviously in Colorado. If I were a school administrator in Florida, I'm in Florida, but I'm not a school administrator. But if I wanted to have someone such as yourself come in and talk, are there speakers throughout the country? Do you have a network?

Whitney Yeager: We do have a national speaker who is in our group and her name is Julie Dreifelt. And yeah, she's our director of outreach and community engagement. And she speaks at many national conferences and conventions and might entertain coming to a school district outside of Colorado.

The Addiction Podcast -: Okay. Well, and also I'm thinking, you we have Zoom today. You can do a whole presentation via Zoom. So that's onechancetogrowup.org, correct? Okay, so that's.

Whitney Yeager: Correct. Correct. We do, we publish webinars that are free for schools to use. ⁓ We have a lot of resources that we try to make available to support parents and trusted adults.

The Addiction Podcast -: So yeah, so lots of resources for anybody listening who has some concerns or questions, go to onechancetogrowup.org. And I was thinking of another, ⁓ sorry, what did you call the type of question you ask your child?

Whitney Yeager: a motivational interviewing technique. Yeah.

The Addiction Podcast -: A motivational interview question might be, would you like to know more about the marijuana that you feel you need to smoke or vape? Would you like to learn more about it? I don't know.

Whitney Yeager: Yeah, I can't imagine any kid not wanting to know.

The Addiction Podcast -: can't either, and Whitney, can't imagine someone who really understands it and looks at different references on it wouldn't think twice about using it. don't think children or teens, I don't think they're stupid, you know?

Whitney Yeager: No, no, they're savvy today with all their access to technology and the instant gratification of getting answers to their questions on a simple Google's, Hey Siri or Alexa or.

The Addiction Podcast -: Gemini, ask Gemini what Gemini thinks about the new marijuana and that'll give you some information. And the SAMI project, what is that website about?

Whitney Yeager: Yeah. So this was a way to, I'm a photographer and I needed to throw myself into some creative outlet to, immediately after Sammy was killed, I created the Sammy Project, which was to de-stigmatize conversations around mental health challenges. Because at that time, we,

The Addiction Podcast -: Got it.

Whitney Yeager: didn't fully understand. His phone was taken away and his computer for three months while the deputies did a very long investigation. And we thought he was suffering from schizophrenia or some kind of mental break. We didn't know exactly the cause. But what I wanted and needed was for people to feel comfortable to talk about whatever mental health challenge, you it felt like so taboo. I'm, what I tried to do was to, I did create a photography exhibit of many young people. It's just port black and white portraits of young people and their stories where they taught, share about their mental health struggles. And NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, learned about this and they sponsored me and now it is a permanent installation in their community center here in Colorado Springs. And so it's there for people to come and see that, you know, when they're getting help from NAMI that they are not alone and that it actually takes strength to be vulnerable and that actually is really helpful to yourself and everyone around you to be able to talk about these things. And ask for help.

The Addiction Podcast -: and ask for help. Whether you're the person suffering from some sort of mental health issue or whether you're observing it in someone that you love. You can ask for help. There are resources available. Whitney, I appreciate you so much for taking your grief and what happened to you and turning it into something that is potentially gonna help other parents not have to go through that.

Whitney Yeager: Exactly.

The Addiction Podcast -: and other teens to learn from Sammy's experience. And he was 21, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I just, appreciate you taking more responsibility for the whole situation because I think it would be easy to just give in to the grief and not want to talk to anybody and not want to share the story and not want to go down that road. And we have others who've come on the podcast who are willing to step forward and speak out and say, you need to know this, you need to understand this, you need to be educated about this. And I really appreciate you for doing that.

Whitney Yeager: ⁓ absolutely. mean, for me, maybe it's just my personality type, but I was a teacher for many years and I just, I feel like this is way too important to not share it and to make sure that other parents don't ever have to walk in my shoes and that, know, it also, speaking about the work that I do and talking about Sammy's story, I can control the narrative and I can make sure that the facts are being shared and that I honor his life and who he was. He was very close to his sisters and he loved being with family. Family was extremely important to him and he was an intellectual. If he had any idea how his life was gonna collapse. after he joined his fraternity and became addicted to marijuana, he would never have touched it. I know he would never have touched it because he was so into health. He was so into like extreme outdoor recreational sports. And, you know, he was accepted into the officer cadet program at Quantico and he wanted to be a Marine and he was, which, took extreme physical excellence. The first time he went for it, they denied him because he couldn't do enough pull ups and push ups and all the, he trained actually with Marines and like he wanted to serve for his country. He wanted to do so much. And we'd robbed him of everything and it robbed our family and

The Addiction Podcast -: Yeah. Yep.

Whitney Yeager: I just really want to make sure that this is, everyone learns about this and that if I could scream it from the mountaintops, if I could go on national TV, I would, but you know, step by step. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today. Thank you so much, Joni.

The Addiction Podcast -: Thank you, I appreciate you being here today and that's why we do this because we have to.

Whitney Yeager: Yeah, we do. You're right.