In a recent interview, Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson opened up about his recent borderline personality diagnosis and his ever-evolving relationship with cannabis after a stint in rehab late last year.
During the most recent episode of the perennially popular podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Davidson disclosed to fellow comic and titular host Marc Maron his struggles with his mental health, which Davidson had assumed were due in part to his weed consumption.
It turns out that the real story was a lot less cut-and-dry and a lot, lot more complicated. Even more so, the frank conversation served as an informative dialogue in regard to the correlation between cannabis use and mental illness.
“I’ve been a pothead forever,” Davidson told Maron at the time. “Around October [or] September last year, I started having mental breakdowns where I would, like, freak out and then not remember what happened after. Blind rage. I never really did any other drugs, so I was like, ‘I’m gonna try to go to rehab. Maybe that’ll be helpful.'”
During Davidson’s time in rehab, his doctors came to the conclusion that the comic’s issues had very, very little to do with his pot use.
“They told me there, they’re like, ‘You might be bipolar,’ and I was like, ‘OK,'” he continued. “So they’re like, ‘We’re gonna try you on these meds.’ And then I got out [of rehab], and then I started smoking weed again—and I’m on meds.”
For a few months, Davidson seemed to be out of the woods, until he suffered a nervous breakdown earlier this year.
Since then, the star received a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and has since undergone treatment for his specific condition and has currently put his marijuana use on pause.
So far, it seems to be working.
Final Hit: Pete Davidson, Mental Health, and Weed
While Davidson seems to believe that there was a link between his usage and his mental health, many scientists beg to differ. Despite the fact that some doctors have connected an increase in psychosis amongst certain pot smokers and imbibers, studies have shown it only seems to occur within carriers of the AKT1 gene.
As per the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the gene “codes for an enzyme that affects dopamine signaling in the striatum,” and that carriers “are at increased risk of developing psychosis” because “the striatum is an area of the brain that becomes activated and flooded with dopamine when certain stimuli are present.”
In short: an overload can trigger side-effects like psychosis, and pot users are seven times more likely to experience it than those who do not consume.
Whether Davidson carries the gene is unknown, but it’s interesting to note that cannabis is used to treat anxiety and depression, which are both symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
Check out our own interview with Pete Davidson in the video below.
