Sharon Stone 'sick' for whole month from marijuana withdrawal as she shares impact quitting had on her
Sharon Stone said that she ditched cannabis and felt sick for a month, while her doctor told her that there were 'people dying in the emergency room' from taking it.
The Basic Instinct star had suffered a serious stroke in 2001, having said that when she went in for surgery her chances of survival were about one percent and doctors wouldn't know for a month if she'd make it.
It was when she decided to come off the medications she took for her stroke and it turned out to be a very arduous process.
She told Variety: "I got off one of my medications that I was on for my stroke last September, and they said I couldn’t go off of it.
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"They said, ‘You can’t go off of it. You can never go off of it.’ I’m like, ‘I’m going off it,’ and it was like going off of f**king heroin.
"I was sick as a frigging dog for four and a half months. I just thought, ‘I want my life back.’
"I had gotten off the majority of the drugs over the years that they had put me on. But I was like, 'I want a drug-free life.'"
That meant ditching the other drugs as well, including cannabis, but doing that also made her 'pretty sick for a month'.
"Once I got off that, I decided I’m going to quit smoking pot," the Total Recall actor explained further on her decision to not only ditch her medications but also
"And because I think they put so much stuff in it now - they really do - when I stopped smoking pot, I also got sick.
"It’s not like you’re pulling it out of the ground anymore. It’s not like when we were kids. I got pretty sick for a month. I went to my neurologist, and he said, ‘Sharon, I’ve had people dying in the emergency room from marijuana.’"
Dr Chris Tuell, clinical director of addiction services at the Lindner Center in Cincinnati, explained that cannabis products on sale today are different to the ones from the past.
The doctor explained that there is a lot more THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, than there used to be.
Dr Tuell explained to Fox News Digital that back in the 80s THC levels in cannabis were typically between three and five percent, but in more modern products they can be as high as 30 percent.
It takes about 20 minutes for THC to be fully absorbed into your bloodstream, and from there it can start to impact the way you're feeling.
Once the THC is fully settled in your system it can alter the body's neural chemistry and stimulate the part of your brain that responds to pleasure, unleashing a heap of dopamine, which is responsible for the relaxed, euphoric sensation.
However, depending on the person it could also cause anxiety or panic.
When THC gets to the olfactory bulb in your brain it can also convince you that you're hungry, which is what causes the infamous 'munchies'.
Joe Harker