Right before takeoff, my mom asked my sister to hand me the phone. I didnāt get a word in. She was already yelling, warning me not to give my sister any weed. I had packed a few edibles for my trip to Mexico City anyway, just for myself.
A few days earlier, we had a heated argument. After years of hiding my cannabis consumption, I finally told my parents I was a regular smoker.
āĀæQuieres acabar como tu primo? Como tu tĆa? Como tu tĆo? ĀæHecho una loca?ā
Schizophrenia runs in our bloodline, and sheās terrified that my consumption will set it off in me. Iām twenty-eight and schizophrenia onset occurs for women in their late twenties and early thirties. She said she might have to institutionalize me like sheād already seen it happen in a premonition.
At the airport, we were picked up by my cousin who once excommunicated himself from the entire family. I donāt blame him. Now, here he was picking us up in a Cubs hat ready to drive us across the city to our Airbnb.
I looked out the car window as the city passed by, excited to take a break and unplug. I wanted to leave my momās phone call behind and enjoy my second favorite city. But itās like I couldnāt get away. Looming at the side of the highway, a painted advertisement on the wall brought me back to the conversation: āĀæEsquizofrenia? Internamientoā Followed by the WhatsApp number to call.
My first concert was Warped Tour with my two cousins in eighth grade. I was there to see Hey Monday and Never Shout Never. Midway through the festival, I got a call from my friendās mom asking for my momās number. I gave it to her without thinking twice. It wasnāt until we were getting picked up that I found out why: sheād called to tell my mom I was smoking weed with my cousins.
I had a shared diary with my friend where weād tell each other everything, complete with drawings. I wrote an entire entry, full of dates and details, about smoking a grape blunt for the first time on the steps of Chopin Park. I conveniently left out the fact that I didnāt inhale properly and didnāt feel anything. Her mom read it. Then she told my mom.
It was a shit show. My mom made me swear on my grandmotherās grave to never smoke weed again. And I didnāt because every time I tried, Iād think of my grandma, Catholic guilt, and the fact that being a marijuano is pretty much the worst thing you can be to most Mexican parents. Weed has a huge stigmaāMexicans hate weed. Thereās this deeply rooted belief that it makes you dumb, lazy, and crazy.
āLatinos and Marijuanaā was the title of the first college class I took, taught by my literal hero, Maria Hinojosa. I was a first-year undergrad sitting in her office talking her ear off about my long-distance boyfriend, and then going to class where she broke down exactly why so many Latinos, especially Mexicans, hate weed.
We learned about the Bracero Program, and how Mexican field workers used cannabis. We delved into the prison industrial complex, mass incarceration and we even spoke to Mariaās friend Suave who at the time was serving a life sentence. We watched Reefer Madness, of course, and covered the basics too, like the difference between indica and sativa.
I think I had to intellectualize itāto learn about weed in a classroom settingābefore I could even start to believe it might not be all that bad.
I started trying it in different forms like edibles and wax. My experiences were positive. I was using it for what I thought of at the time as simple relaxation. I became a regular consumer around the time I started my first full-time job. After work and before the gym were the moments I allowed myself to indulge.
I didnāt realize it then, but cannabis was helping me manage my work stress and even helping me focus during physical movement. I was self-medicating; I just didnāt know it yet.
My mental health journey began two years ago, when I finally had medical insurance and could see a therapist. I had started experiencing anxiety and panic attacks, symptoms that only intensified under the pressure of my relationship with my parents.
Iām the eldest of four, living a bicultural experience where some of my choices feel too Western in my familyās eyes. As I teeter between my identity as a first-generation Mexican American, Iāve hid parts of myself from them, including the fact that I smoke weed.
Latinas in the U.S. experience disproportionately high rates of depression and anxiety. I am one of them. For years, I didnāt even realize that what I was dealing with was anxiety. It wasnāt until therapy that I began to understand and when my mental health began to feel unmanageable, my therapist referred me to a psychiatrist. I was prescribed hydroxyzine, a medication commonly used to treat anxiety. But it made me incredibly sleepy. What actually helped me feel grounded (without the grogginess) was a small hit from my joint.
I brought it up with both my therapist and psychiatrist. I told them cannabis wasnāt just recreational for me, it was a tool I used when I felt anxiety creeping in. They both agreed: as long as it was helping and not harming, there was no reason it couldnāt be part of my wellness journey.
When I was sixteen, we got a call from my cousin. Her brother, my older cousin, had been acting strangely: paranoid, agitated, not himself. My family made the drive from Chicago to Indiana, where they lived. As the oldest cousin who spoke fluent English, I became the translator as he was evaluated and eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He gave me the fedora he was wearing before disappearing into another room.
He had just turned thirty. The diagnosis was schizophrenia.
In the beginning, his sisters whispered about witchcraft. It felt like the only way to explain how suddenly his personality had shifted. Looking back, it was a learning experience for all of us about mental illness, about stigma, and about how little we understood what was happening.
That experience and the fear it left behind has followed my family ever since. Especially my mom.
So when she hears that I smoke weed, she doesnāt think of it as stress relief or harm reduction. She thinks of that hospital room. She thinks Iām next.
And sheās not alone. For years, thereās been ongoing debate in the medical field about the relationship between cannabis use and schizophrenia. While research doesnāt suggest a direct cause, some studies have explored whether cannabis use can increase the risk of schizophrenia in people who are already genetically predisposedālike me.
A recent Danish study looked at the connection between cannabis use disorder (the name for when people use cannabis more than they want or it has adverse impacts on their lives) and schizophrenia, focusing on people with a genetic predisposition like my family. It found the risk of developing schizophrenia significantly higher in men that consume cannabis than in women. The study found that if a causal relationship was assumed, about four percent of schizophrenia cases in women could have been prevented by eliminating cannabis use as compared to thirty percent in men.
But the research doesnāt offer a simple answer. It could not establish whether cannabis use disorder causes schizophrenia or simply correlates with it. It also couldnāt account for genetic risk, and it studied only disordered use of cannabis, and not healthy, moderate use.
I believe that cannabis can be used as medicine and there are many people using it in that way subconsciously. The plant has been used for thousands of years for its curative and medicinal components. Using it as a form of medicine is not a new concept.
Marijuana was federally legalized in Mexico in 2021. There are outdoor points of sale set up across Mexico City where you can consume and buy cannabis.
We parked up next to a new brutalist coffee shop and walked toward Estela de Luz, a monument that was erected to memorialize Mexican independence. Thereās a row filled with vendors selling rolling papers, grinders, pipes and sunglasses. Next to them are different smoke circles, people passing joints to one another. In the middle there is a makeshift stand with a tarp over a long white table filled with pre rolls and weed sorted in dime bags (what a throwback.) One person explains the strains, another the prices and quantities, and there is a third collecting money.
I stood there at the base of a monument for independence watching people pass joints between them like communion. I thought about my mom and how horrified she would be at the sight, but for me it dissipated my shame.
I used to think healing had to be private. Now, I understand it can also look like this, out in the open and shared. Iām not trying to run from my inheritance. Iām just trying to survive it.
Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican American independent journalist from Belmont Cragin who is passionate about covering communities of color through a social justice lens. She is a senior editor at the Weekly.