February 26, 2026, By Katie Cornwell, Executive Director, Seward Prevention Coalition

This article is Part 3 of a four-part mini-series on youth cannabis use in our community. Our goal is to cut through misinformation, explain what we know about how today’s high-potency THC products can affect teens, and highlight practical safeguards families and communities can use to help young people delay use and stay healthy.

Part 3: “It Helps” Isn’t the Whole Story

Mental health myths, the coping cycle, and why communities need shared safeguards

In conversations around the community about cannabis use in teens, a few phrases show up again and again, often spoken with certainty and repeated like common knowledge: “It helps.” It helps with anxiety. It helps with depression. It helps people sleep. It helps students focus. It’s natural. It’s safer than alcohol. It’s medicine.

These messages are not coming from one place. They travel through social media, influencers, peer groups, pop culture, advertising, casual adult conversations, and sometimes even well-meaning community members who share personal stories without realizing how they land on young ears. The result is a powerful cultural current that can make THC seem routine and low-risk, especially for adolescents.

In Part 2 of this mini-series, we focused on the developing teen brain and why today’s high-potency THC products raise the stakes, including the risk of psychosis events for some youth. Part 3 is about what our community needs to understand next: why the “it helps” narrative spreads so easily, how cannabis can become a coping loop for teens, and why those patterns can escalate quickly in ways that create long-term harm. This is exactly where community safeguards matter most, because no parent should be expected to counter an entire culture alone.

Why the mental health myths stick

The whole community needs to recognize this: when teens say cannabis “helps,” many are describing a real short-term experience. THC can temporarily blunt discomfort. It can change mood and sensation. It can create a sense of escape. For a young person who feels overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, or unable to sleep, that quick shift can feel like relief, and relief is persuasive.

That’s why simple myths spread faster than complicated truths. “It helps my anxiety” fits in a caption. “It helps me sleep” fits in a ten-second video. The nuance, the developmental risk, the long-term tradeoffs, and the differences between adult and adolescent brains do not travel as easily.

But short-term relief and long-term health are not the same thing, and that distinction matters for how a community responds. If we want to protect youth, we need a shared language that can separate “I felt relief” from “this is healthy for me.”

Short-term relief vs. long-term cost

A community can hold two truths at once: a teen may feel better briefly, and cannabis can still cause harm over time, especially when use becomes frequent. For adolescents, repeated THC exposure can interfere with healthy development and with the formation of coping skills that carry into adulthood. Over time, cannabis can shift from a “sometimes” behavior to a default strategy for managing stress, discomfort, boredom, or emotional pain.

This matters because the teen years are when young people are building lifelong patterns: how they handle anxiety, how they fall asleep, how they calm down after conflict, how they manage disappointment, how they stay motivated, and how they show up for school and responsibilities. When a substance becomes a frequent part of that pattern-building, it can quietly shape the trajectory of adulthood.

That’s one reason community prevention efforts emphasize delayed use. It’s not a moral statement. It’s a developmental safeguard.

The coping loop: how cannabis can become part of the problem

One of the most useful concepts a community can understand is the coping loop, because it explains why cannabis use can escalate quickly even when a teen insists it’s “helping.”

The pattern often looks like this:

1. A teen feels stressed, anxious, low, overwhelmed, lonely, or unable to sleep.
   
2. They use cannabis and feel temporary relief.
   
3. Over time, their brain begins to expect that relief, and they may need to use more often to get the same effect (tolerance).
   
4. When they don’t use, they may feel irritable, restless, anxious, down, or unable to sleep.
   
5. They use again to stop those uncomfortable feelings.
   

From the outside, it can look like a teen is “choosing” cannabis repeatedly. From the inside, it can feel like the only tool that works. That’s why the “it helps” narrative can be so sticky. It can become self-reinforcing.

This is where community education makes a difference. When more adults understand the coping loop, we’re less likely to shrug off early warning signs or unintentionally normalize frequent use as “just a phase.”

Withdrawal: why stopping can look like the original problem

Many community members don’t realize cannabis can have withdrawal symptoms. It can, and for teens those symptoms may include:

• irritability or anger
  
• anxiety or restlessness
  
• sleep problems
  
• low appetite
  
• low mood
  
• headaches or physical discomfort
  

Notice the problem: these symptoms overlap with the reasons young people often claim they use cannabis in the first place. If a teen uses THC for anxiety or sleep, then tries to stop and becomes anxious and can’t sleep, they may interpret that as proof they “need it.” Adults around them might interpret it that way, too, especially if they believe cannabis is a harmless mental health tool.

In reality, it may be the brain re-adjusting. The community takeaway is simple: increased distress when stopping does not automatically mean cannabis was the best solution. It can be part of the dependency cycle.

Why this matters locally: when “trying it” doesn’t stay occasional

Communities often assume most youth cannabis use is experimental and occasional. But local patterns can tell a different story. When data show a small drop-off between “tried cannabis,” “used in the past month,” and “used daily,” it suggests that use is not staying in the “once or twice” category for many young people. It suggests cannabis is becoming routine.

That pattern is consistent with what we’ve discussed: when a substance is used for coping, and when products are easy to conceal and easy to use frequently, escalation can happen quickly. It also means our community response can’t stop at “don’t do drugs.” We need early, practical safeguards that reduce access and reduce the normalization of frequent use.

CHS and “greening out”: risks many people don’t connect to cannabis

Another reason community education matters is that frequent cannabis use can lead to physical health issues that contradict the “gentle” story.

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) is a condition associated with frequent cannabis use that can involve repeated episodes of severe nausea and vomiting. A classic clue is that symptoms are temporarily relieved by very hot showers or baths. In some cases, young people take showers so hot and so often that families end up seeking emergency care for dehydration, and sometimes even burns. The only way to stop the symptoms is to abstain from cannabis use permanently.

Some people use the term “greening out” for severe THC-related illness. Regardless of the label, the point for a community is this: high-dose THC can make some youth profoundly sick, and families often don’t connect the symptoms to cannabis because they’ve been told it’s “safe” or “medicine.”

When more adults know about CHS, we reduce the chance that a teen’s repeated vomiting is dismissed, misunderstood, or treated repeatedly without addressing the root cause.

Driving: a shared community norm that saves lives

Another common myth is that driving high is safer than driving drunk, or that cannabis makes people more careful. The reality is straightforward: THC impairs reaction time, attention, coordination, perception, and decision-making. Someone who is high is not operating at their best, even if they feel confident.

This is a place where communities can take immediate action by aligning around clear norms:

• Don’t drive high.
  
• Don’t ride with someone who is high.
  
• Make it socially acceptable for teens to call for a safe ride without getting “in trouble” in the moment.
  

When a community reinforces that norm consistently, it reduces harm even when prevention isn’t perfect.

What to hold onto as a community

This part of the series is about replacing misinformation with clarity that helps us build safeguards together. Our community does not need to demonize teens or shame people who have believed the “it helps” narrative. We do need to recognize that for adolescents, cannabis can become a coping loop that drives frequent use, and frequent use increases risk, especially in a high-potency environment.

If we want delayed use, we need fewer mixed messages and fewer easy on-ramps, and we need a shared understanding that teens deserve real support for anxiety, depression, stress, and sleep, not a shortcut that can make those problems harder over time.

In Part 4, we’ll focus on what works at the family and community level: how to recognize problematic use early, how dependency patterns form, why recovery is possible, and the specific safeguards that help young people delay use and stay healthy.

_________________________________________________________________________

This article is part of a bi-monthly column by the Seward Prevention Coalition, highlighting community partnerships and prevention efforts that help Seward’s youth and families thrive.
Learn more at http://www.sewardpreventioncoalition.org or email info@spcalaska.org.