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NY Post
New York Post
11 May 2023


NextImg:From crime and homelessness to schizophrenia and suicide: Mothers share how pot stole their sons

The text from her son Randy that Heather Bacchus received at at 1:26 AM on July 17, 2021, seemed like good news.

“I’m quitting weed for good and want to surround myself with healthy and happy people,” he wrote. “This has been too much for me and for you guys.”

Less than an hour later, at 2:09 AM, a second text arrived.

“I love you and am sorry for everything. I love dad and the same to him. I wish I would have been a better person.”

It was his suicide note. That night, Randy killed himself.

His death followed a months-long struggle with psychotic episodes and paranoid delusions — something his parents, Heather and Randy Sr., say was triggered by years of heavy cannabis use.

Now research suggests they were right: a study published by the National Institutes of Health warns that cannabis use is implicated in 30% of cases of schizophrenia among men aged 18 to 30.

The study links schizophrenia to cannabis use disorder: the inability to stop using cannabis despite the negative impacts it is having on the user’s life. And separately, the Centers for Disease Control say a third of pot-smokers are plagued by the disorder. 

Randy’s mother says his upbringing with his parents and three sisters in St. Paul was very happy, healthy, and normal.

At the same time an NIH-supported study last year found young adult cannabis use is at a historic high, with 43% of 19- to 30-year-olds using within the previous year.

The findings add to a growing body of research about the link between schizophrenic symptoms and cannabis — but many parents are woefully unaware of the danger. Those numbers included Heather.

“We didn’t know that marijuana could cause that,” the St. Paul, Minnesota resident told The Post.

Texts from Randy

Randy’s parents received these harrowing texts on the night their son took his own life.

Randy’s upbringing was happy. “We were a normal, healthy family. We did family dinners. We went to church regularly,” Heather said of life for him and his three sisters.

But he began casually using marijuana aged 15. Randy was diagnosed with cannabis use disorder within a year, then struggled with compulsive use through high school.

After graduation Randy, who his mother described as “an independent soul,” moved to Denver, Colo., where he got a job as a property manager. 

Randy Bacchus as a child

Heather Bacchus says cannabis-induced psychosis turned her son Randy, pictured here as a young boy, into someone she hardly recognized.

But then, he started experiencing psychotic states: He heard music and voices, made grandiose plans for the future, believing he would be a famous rap star, and even landed in the hospital for frostbite after running barefoot in a snowstorm.

The telltale signs of cannabis-induced psychosis are severe paranoia and delusions, paired with compulsive marijuana use. 

He met all the symptoms. Paranoid, he was fired for accusing employer of being in the mob and evicted after threatening a roommate he thought was watching him.

Randy Bacchus smiling

When he turned 18, Randy moved to Colorado to start a new life, but instead he devolved into psychosis.
Randy Bacchus/Facebook

Randy’s parents tried desperately to get him help and checked into treatment, but things only continued to devolve until his final days.

Now, his parents — Heather and husband Randy Sr.— want to stop history from repeating itself.

“It’s just heartbreaking, Heather said. “People who are going through it don’t even know it. People need to wake up. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Randy and his father

Randy’s mother and father, Randy Sr. pictured with him, hope that their story can serve as a cautionary tale for other families, warning other parents, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Randy Bacchus/Facebook

Randy’s parents are far from alone. They’ve found solace in the non-profit Johnny’s Ambassadors, which provides information and support groups for parents of children struggling with cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia.

The organization was founded by Laura Stack, whose son Johnny also was derailed by schizoaffective disorder from severe THC abuse.

Over the course of high school, Johnny transformed from a loving teen with a 4.0 GPA to a verbally abusive and delusional person.

Laura Stack’s son Johnny transformed from a loving teen with a 4.0 GPA to a verbally abusive and delusional person.
Matt Pangman

Stack and his mom

Johnny Stack was a 4.0 GPA student and a loving son to his mom Laura before developing psychosis from cannabis.
Courtesy of Laura Stacks

Just before Thanksgiving 2019, 19-year-old Johnny had dinner with his parents. He turned to his mother and said, “I just want you to know you were right about the marijuana. You told me it would hurt my brain, and it has ruined my mind and my life. I’m sorry, I love you.”

Three days later, Johnny jumped off a parking garage and died.

Laura, 53, swears she will never watch the security footage that captured her son’s death, but investigators say the young man who leapt did not look like someone in the depths of despair.

Laura with her son as a small child

Laura Stack turned her life upside down to start an organization that supports parents like her in the hopes that she can prevent them from experiencing the tragedy she did with her son Johnny.
Courtesy of Laura Stacks

Instead, he was in the depths of delusion — and appears to have jumped believing he could fly.

After her son died, Laura put her successful career as a business author on hold to prevent more kids from succumbing to the same addictive spiral that claimed Johnny’s life.

Her organization’s support group currently has 605 parent members whose children are actively suffering.

Sam as a young adult

Pamela Hoadley’s son Sam experienced breaks from reality after heavy cannabis use, experiencing psychosis as a result.

Lack of public awareness means tragic ends like Randy and Johnny’s are not all that uncommon. But some parents are intervening before it’s too late, like Pamela Hoadley.

She realized her son, Sam, was experiencing cannabis-induced psychosis after learning about it from Laura’s organization.

Sam as a child

Sam and his mom were close growing up, but cannabis-induced psychosis pulled them apart.
Courtesy of Pamela Hoadley

“I read her story, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, the only difference between her son and my son is that my son is still alive.”

She says dabbling with highly potent cannabis at 16 led Sam, now 21, to “just tank.”

“He thought doctors injected him with a green dye,” she recalled. “He said the Nazis were all over Colorado and were out to get him. We’re Jewish, so that was absolutely terrifying for him.”

He broke windows in the living room, put holes in his wall, stole his mother’s car, and even pulled knives several times — leaving Pamela feeling she had no choice but to kick him out of the home at age 18.

Sam ended up homeless and psychotic on the streets of Los Angeles, passing in and out of jail for petty crimes for three years.

Sam and his mom

Pamela says Sam was an artistic and friendly child, but seeing who he became as a result of cannabis “absolutely devastated” her.
Courtesy of Pamela Hoadley

“It was absolutely devastating. Weeks or sometimes a month would go by, and I never heard anything from him. So I was literally one of those people that really doesn’t know if their kid is dead or alive,” she said.

But Pamela was better able to understand her son’s unraveling thanks to Laura’s support groups. Armed with information, she’s now supporting her son in getting sober and turning a corner.

“I just finally asked, do I need to call morgues?”

Sam homeless

Sam went off the grid for months at a time while living on the streets of Los Angeles. His mother received this photo of him while homeless from a concerned citizen who tried to help him and sent this photo so she knew he was okay.
Courtesy of Pamela Hoadley

Sam homeless

Homelessness took a toll on Sam, who was in and out of prison and still struggling with cannabis use.
Courtesy of Pamela Hoadley

Today, he’s out of custody and has been clean for a year and a half. His psychosis and paranoia has completely stopped in sobriety, and he calls his mother daily.

This week, Sam has a job interview, and in the fall he’s headed back to school at a community college in Los Angeles where he will study to become an addiction counselor.

“For the better part of three years, it was really, really bad,” Pamela said. “But right now there’s a lot of hope and progress.”

Sam and Pamela recently

Sam is getting his life back in order, and Pamela is proud to report that he is headed to a job interview this week.
Courtesy of Pamela Hoadley

The Post spoke to one mother, in Orange County, Calif., who now lives with the fear her 16-year-old son will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. She learned how bad things were last November when the school principal called to say her son believed the FBI was after him.

“He is just this everyday, regular kid, but he started to demonstrate that morning these psychotic delusional thoughts and perceptions,” said the mom, who The Post agreed not to name.

Since then he has son cycled through hospitalization, psychiatric facilities, and intensive in-patient programs.

Stuffed black sock

A California mom says this stuffed sock was found in her son’s drawer.

Weed paraphernalia that came out of the sock

She says she was sick to her stomach when she pulled out his stash of vapes inside.

Although she knew her son smoked weed, she had no idea that he had secretly been vaping heavily — then, when he was in treatment, the housekeeper opened his sock drawer and found “a dispensary” of vape pens.

“I expected if he was going to be smoking it in on a daily basis in the morning, it’s something I would smell on him or smell in his room,” she said. “And it’s so tiny, they’re so easily able to hide it.

Dr. Libby Stuyt headshot

Dr. Libby Stuyt says she’s seen an uptick of cannabis-induced psychosis in her 30 years as a psychiatrist.
National Marijuana Initiative

“My biggest fear is that my son, if he uses ever again, he’s going to develop permanent schizophrenia,” she said. “I can’t sleep at night in fear that he’s gonna get ahold of this stuff again and destroy his life.”

Her fear is familiar to Dr. Libby Stuyt, who spent three decades as an addiction psychiatrist running a 90-day residential treatment program at the state-run Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo.

Over the years, Dr. Stuyt noticed more and more schizophrenic-like symptoms among her patients.

“I was seeing people with the worst psychotic symptoms I’ve ever seen — worse than methamphetamine, worse than cocaine, worse than alcohol,” she told The Post. “I just kept telling people that I think this is a problem and they would tell me, ‘Oh, no, it’s just marijuana.’”

During her time in the profession, cannabis products became more potent.

But she feels vindicated as more and more studies like the latest linking cannabis and schizophrenia confirm her suspicions: “I wasn’t surprised with this new paper. The scientific literature is finally catching up.”

“Family history definitely can play a role, but we also cannot predict who this is going to happen to because it’s happened to many people with no previous history themselves or no family history,” Dr. Stuyt explained.

Dr. Karen Randall in the emergency room

Emergency room physician Dr. Karen Randall says she sees cannabis-induced psychosis cases on the daily, even among young children.

“Putting THC in the brain when it’s developing can totally disrupt the process,” she said. 

That’s why Dr. Stuyt, despite being a proponent of legalization, believes stricter potency regulations, warning labels, and public service announcements are necessary: “There are no warnings. People are not warned about these side effects.”

Dr. Karen Randall has seen the same progression over her 25 years working in emergency rooms. 

Around 2014, the Pueblo, Colorado-based doctor noticed an explosion of young cannabis users presenting with psychotic episodes. Today, she sees at least one case daily—and the youngest sufferer she has encountered was just 7.

“I really think the issues that we’re seeing now are being driven by high potency, the encouragement to use, and the public’s perception of lack of harm,” Dr. Randall said.

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.