But a new study from Oregon State University, published in the journal Cannabis, suggests the relationship between the plant and your stress system may be more tangled than the marketing claims let on. Researchers found that people who use cannabis tend to wake up with elevated cortisol — the hormone our bodies release to mobilize us against threat — compared to those who don't. That's worth sitting with, especially if you've been using weed as a kind of evening off-ramp from overwhelm.
What the researchers actually found
The team, led by Associate Professor Anita Cservenka, focused on something called the Cortisol Awakening Response, or CAR. As Cservenka explained, CAR is the natural cortisol surge we all experience within roughly 30 minutes of waking — a kind of biological ignition that prepares us for the demands of the day.
Here's where it gets nuanced. Cannabis users didn't necessarily show a flatter or weaker spike — earlier studies had suggested that pattern. Instead, they began the morning from a higher baseline. The curve of the rise looked similar across groups; the starting point was simply elevated. Cservenka and her colleagues think this morning cortisol bump may serve as a neurobiological marker of more problematic use, though she was careful to stress that the design of the study cannot prove cannabis is the cause. "We would need to study the same groups of people over a longer period of time to understand any cause and effect relationship, but we think this provides an important starting point," she said.
The cycle worth naming
This is the part that should land for anyone who has ever treated weed as a coping tool. Cservenka floated the possibility of a feedback loop — what she described as a "cycle of more cannabis use" that could be fed, in part, by the very dysregulation a person is trying to escape. If your stress system is humming at a higher resting frequency each morning, the urge to blunt it that evening may simply feel louder.
It's a gentle, non-judgmental invitation to notice: is the substance actually lowering your stress, or just dampening the signal of it? The cultural backdrop matters here — reporting around the study noted that roughly 29 percent of US adults aged 19 to 30 had used cannabis in the past 30 days, a figure that keeps climbing. Many of those users reach for the plant specifically to settle themselves down at night, which is exactly the pattern this research asks us to look at more honestly.
A small thing to try this week
If you use cannabis — or any substance — as a way to decompress, try this experiment before you change anything else. For three mornings in a row, before you reach for your phone, the coffee, or anything else, pause for one slow inhale and one slower exhale. Notice how your body feels. You're not diagnosing yourself; you're simply gathering data on your own morning stress rhythm without the noise of interpretation. Over those three days, ask yourself one question each evening: did what I used today actually make me feel less stressed by morning, or just quieter by night? Your answer is the beginning of a more honest conversation with yourself — and a grounded place to start.