Stress relief is the reason people most often give for using cannabis. A new study from Oregon State University complicates that story: frequent cannabis users, the research found, tend to wake up with higher levels of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, than people who don’t use it regularly.
The study, led by Anita Cservenka of OSU’s College of Liberal Arts and published in the journal Cannabis, looked at 82 adults and focused specifically on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the neuroendocrine system that governs how your body regulates its stress response over the course of a day. It’s one of the few studies to look at frequent cannabis use through that particular lens rather than just self-reported mood.
The Contradiction at the Center of This
Cortisol isn’t inherently bad. It follows a natural daily rhythm, typically peaking shortly after waking to help you get moving, then gradually declining through the day. What the researchers found in frequent cannabis users was that this rhythm looked disrupted, with cortisol already elevated first thing in the morning, before the day’s stressors have even started.
That’s the tension worth sitting with: cannabis can genuinely provide short-term relief from stress in the moment. This study isn’t arguing otherwise. What it’s pointing to is a possible longer-term cost that runs in the opposite direction, that repeated use over time may interfere with the body’s own systems for regulating stress, potentially leaving frequent users with a stress-response baseline that’s harder to bring back down, not easier.
What the Researchers Are Careful Not to Claim
Cservenka was direct about the study’s limits: this data doesn’t establish that frequent cannabis use causes elevated morning cortisol, or that elevated cortisol drives people toward heavier cannabis use. Both directions are plausible, and untangling which comes first, or whether something else entirely explains both, requires following the same people over a longer stretch of time. This study is a starting point, not a verdict.
It’s still a meaningful starting point. Chronically elevated cortisol is linked in a substantial body of existing research to increased risk of anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease. If frequent cannabis use is quietly nudging that hormone in the wrong direction while people believe it’s relieving their stress, that’s a genuine blind spot worth knowing about, whether or not it changes anyone’s habits. At minimum, it’s a reason to pay attention to how you actually feel first thing in the morning, not just how you feel in the moment you’re using.
What do you think? Does a finding like this change how you’d think about regular cannabis use for stress, or does the short-term relief still outweigh a not-yet-proven long-term risk? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
