Ep. 158 How To Know If Cannabis Is Quietly Worsening Anxiety for You or Your Kids in Midlife

Are you or you kids relying on cannabis to unwind, sleep, or deal with anxiety? 
 You’re not alone—and you’re not broken—but you might be self-medicating in a way that’s backfiring.

In this episode  you’ll discover:

1. How cannabis quietly shifts from a tool to a trap—and the signs you’re missing.
2. The difference between social and chronic use and why it matters for your anxiety.
3. Why modeling healthy coping skills is crucial if you’re parenting in the cannabis era.

✨ If you're ready to feel more present, focused, and emotionally grounded—without numbing out—this episode is your reset button.

👉 Listen now to rethink your relationship with cannabis and reclaim your calm.

Huberman Lab Podcast – Episode 92: "The Effects of Cannabis (Marijuana) on the Brain & Body" (October 3, 2022)

🔗 Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXvuJu1kt48

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how cannabis might be contributing to anxiety, whether it's your own or your child's. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today we're diving into cannabis, whether you call it cannabis, weed, or pot. As a mental health professional, I can guarantee this is one of the most confusing topics of our time. In today's episode, you'll discover how cannabis use and midlife has increased and what that means for your anxiety and emotional wellbeing. You'll also learn the difference between social and chronic use, as well as what the latest science says about long-term effects. Lastly, how to evaluate your own use as well as your child use with clarity, curiosity, and compassion. If you've been wondering whether cannabis is still helping or just another habit, this episode is for you. Before we get into it, let's check on Monday's Inner Challenge about alcohol and midlife. If you haven't listened to episode 1 56 yet, I invite you to do so. How'd it go this week? As you stepped into your power around alcohol, were you surprised at how much you were actually drinking? Or did you try refraining to see if alcohol is what's waking you up at 2:00 AM Whatever you did, you're doing the midlife update. Today, we're keeping that momentum going by turning the lens towards cannabis use yours or maybe your child's. Obviously, I'm not talking about use that has been prescribed by a doctor, but social and recreational use where you find yourself asking the question, is this really helping or has this become a habit? There's no topic in my office that creates more confusion than cannabis. Let me share a story. Back in December, 2019, Michigan, just four miles from the school where I taught my mental wellness program, inner Challenge, began selling cannabis legally. I noticed the eighth graders were buzzing about it, no pun intended. So I decided to give them a pop quiz. Why did Michigan legalize cannabis? A, because it's safe. B, for economic reasons, C for medical use only. As soon as they got the quiz, they looked up at me and asked the most obvious question. Mj, what's cannabis? Need I say more? After explaining to them it was weed or pot, they diligently took the test. Nobody got it right. They thought it was legalized because it was safe. And they weren't alone. Many adults made the same assumption and shifted from alcohol to cannabis thinking it was a healthier choice. But here's the truth, it was legalized for economic reasons, not because we had robust research or public health education in place. Fast forward to 2025 and the confusion has not gone away. There's so much uncertainty around cannabis because the research is so mixed. Some studies show it can reduce anxiety or help with sleep in the short term. Others show it can increase anxiety, impair memory, and lead to dependence over time. Then there's the other wide variety. Edibles T-H-C-C-B-D, vapes, drinks, on and on and on, each with different effects. While CBD doesn't cause a high, it still interacts with your brain and quality control across products is very inconsistent. Add legalization into the mix, and many people assume daily use is harmless. Just because it's legal does not mean it's healthy. As a therapist, I've seen a whole different side. The quiet downside that creeps in gradually without much notice. Let me share another story. A midlife mom came to therapy after a decade of using cannabis to help her sleep. She'd always had moderate anxiety and thought switching from wine to weed was a smart move. At first, it really helped, but as life got more stressful and gummies became easier to get, she noticed she wasn't just using cannabis to sleep at night, but she was also using it a number of days a week to get through stressful times. She also noticed that she had to double her dose at nighttime in order to fall asleep. As I did her assessment, she shared with me that her motivation, her zest for life, was lagging compared to where it was many years before. Her anxiety also was no longer just mental. It had physical symptoms. She thought she might be depressed, but at 37, her life on paper was actually pretty good. What stood out to me as a therapist who's done this before. First, she didn't downplay her cannabis use on her intake form something most people do. Her honesty helped us get to the root of the problem of what was really going on. I asked her to listen to the October, 2022 episode of the Huberman Lab, which I'll put in my show notes, which is on cannabis. She came back to the next session saying. Oh my God, I've done this to myself. Am I the only one? I told her, oh no, you are not alone. Cannabis use amongst people. 45 to 64 has nearly doubled in the past decade. Nearly 30% of the people in my client's age group use it regularly. That number jumps even higher for those managing chronic stress and anxiety. Even more eye popping daily or near daily use has increased by 50% since 2016. What starts as occasional use is quietly becoming habitual. And for some, that pattern has led to cannabis use disorder, a condition where stopping becomes difficult, even when cannabis is no longer helping. About three in 10 users experience this and really confront the age old myth that cannabis is not addictive. Now let's talk about our kids. Since many of you in midlife are parenting them, who has the highest use in the country when it comes to cannabis? Yep. Our 18 to 30 year olds, national surveys tell us 41% use cannabis, 11% use it daily. In my office. 80% of my clients in that age group use cannabis, and they use it more than two to three times a week. The hardest part of working with teens and young adults as a therapist is this, no matter how much I explain the risks to their developing brains, they don't believe me. The culture has been so loud to not only normalize cannabis, but to offer it as a healthy alternative and a way to manage their stress. What's the difference between healthy social use and use that might be hurting more than it's helping? Social use means cannabis once or twice a month in relaxed, in intentional settings. It doesn't impact your work, memory, mood, or relationships. Let me say that again because when I ask people what is a healthy amount that you can use cannabis, the average person says once a day, what research has told us once or twice a month. Chronic use is more than twice a week and is usually done alone as a way to numb stress, boredom, or irritation. As I often say in therapy, if you need it every night to unwind, it's not a coping skill, it's an escape. In the short term, cannabis can help sleep, relaxation and mild anxiety, especially with strains at balance THC and CBD. But over time the picture shifts. Cannabis affects your brain's endocannabinoid system. What's that? That's the part of your brain that regulates mood, memory, and motivation. Pretty important things for day-to-day living. Yes. Cannabis affects it not in a positive, but in a negative way over time. Long-term use, especially of high THC strains can increase anxiety. It also impairs executive function, which in my office has led to lots of confusing diagnoses when it comes to adult A DHD. It can blunt emotional response and decrease motivation, something we call amotivational syndrome. It disrupts rem sleep even in users who believe it helps sleep. Remember my midlife mom, one of the interesting things on her assessment is she said her sleep was poor, but she also said she used cannabis nightly to help her sleep. In younger users, it's been linked to higher risk of depression. Is this the message that you're getting from the culture about cannabis? Probably not. While cannabis may seem less risky than alcohol, it still affects your nervous system, your relationships, and your emotional presence. A few years ago, I was working with a couple where a wife was furious with her husband. He'd come home, help with dinner, get the kids to bed. And then disappear into the garage to smoke a joint. He insisted it helped him relax separate from his day, but in fact he was zoning out and she felt alone. If someone you love is telling you that your cannabis use isn't helping you anymore. Please believe them. One of the hardest things is that you remember how good it felt at the beginning and the negative effects occur really slowly and you really can't clearly see them for yourself. So what's considered healthy use? Occasional intentional, and not emotionally driven. Low THC and balanced T-H-C-C-B-D strains, especially if you're prone to anxiety. Just saying all those letters makes me feel like it's almost impossible for someone to manage their cannabis use in a healthy way without being a junior scientist. Healthy use is not using it daily or relying on it for sleep. It's also taking what we call tolerance breaks, where for two to four weeks you don't use it at all so you can reset your system and evaluate how it's impacting you. Let me briefly talk about parenting in the cannabis era. If you're a midlife parent who uses cannabis, your kids are noticing, even if you think they aren't, trust me. Many kids in my office say, well, my parents smoke, or my mom uses gummies. What's the big deal? If this episode has you questioning your own use, great. Let them in on it. We do this with food all the time. I'm skipping cake tonight'cause my pants are a little tight. You can do the same with cannabis. I'm taking a two week break to reset. I wanna go back to using it occasionally. It's kind of snuck up on me. You may have to retool your sleep, but that is doable. Check out, episode 93, my five Sleep Hacks that can point you in the right direction of having great sleep hygiene. A doctor once asked me, Hey, mj, what is going on? Why are people afraid to take Tylenol pm, but totally fine using weed at night. I said, because they know too much tylenol harms the liver and they think pot is like kale. For the sake of your kids, let's model something better. Science backed honesty, because we don't want our young people using cannabis regularly. It impacts their brain development, increases anxiety and depression, and robs them of the chance to build real life coping skills. In my opinion, a big part of the youth mental health crisis is actually an overuse of cannabis crisis that we're not talking about honestly enough. What if your kid doesn't believe you? Trust me, most of my young clients don't believe me, but I stay in the boat and I row. I encourage you to be curious and ask the million dollar parenting question. Help me understand how weed is helping you. Then listen, really listen. Say nothing until you've had time to reflect on what they've said to you. If the moment feels right, then or later, talk about other ways to find help for those struggles. You've planted the seed. Keep the door open. In today's episode, you've learned how cannabis use in midlife has increased, and what impact that has for your anxiety and emotional wellbeing. Not so good. I've also shared with you the difference between social use once or twice a month, intentionally and chronic use more than once a week. I've also shared what the latest science says about long-term effects. I've encouraged you to evaluate your own use and your child's with clarity, curiosity, and compassion. In today's world, we're constantly sold the idea that we need something, wine, weed, or a pill to survive daily life. But the truth is. You already have the inner resources to get through hard things without numbing out. That's one of the reasons I'm so committed to showing up and creating this podcast for you. So you have solid science-backed coping skills to feel better at work home in your relationships, and most of all inside your body. If this episode has helped you, I'd love it if you'd follow the podcast on your favorite app, apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks for listening. I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.