Getting High With Friends Is the Riskier Choice — If You Already Have a Problem

A new study followed 104 adults for two weeks, pinging their phones every time they smoked or vaped cannabis, and asked three questions: Who were you with? How badly did you want more? Did you keep using? The answers, published September 9 in the journal Addiction, split the group in a way that matters for anyone who has been told “just don’t smoke alone” as relapse-prevention advice.

Getting high with other people is not the safer, more controlled version of cannabis use it’s often assumed to be — not for someone who already has a problem.

Here’s the plain version of what the researchers, led by Jack Waddell at Arizona State University with coauthors from Brown University, actually did. Instead of asking people to remember their cannabis use weeks later — the standard, unreliable way most surveys work — they used ecological momentary assessment: a phone-based check-in method where participants report what’s happening in the moment. Every time someone in the study used cannabis, they got a survey asking about their surroundings and their craving right then, followed by two more check-ins, at 90 minutes and three hours later, asking if they’d used again. That structure lets researchers see the sequence — context, then craving, then continued use — instead of guessing at it after the fact.

The topline finding: craving right after someone started using cannabis predicted whether they kept using in the hours that followed (standardized β = 0.22). That part isn’t surprising — wanting more tends to lead to using more. The finding worth sitting with is what drove the craving up in the first place. Being around other people while using, instead of using alone, only increased craving for participants who’d reported more severe cannabis problems at the study’s start (β = 0.36 for the interaction between social context and problem severity). For people with below-average problem severity, it made no real difference whether anyone else was in the room. For people with above-average severity, social settings measurably raised their craving, and that spike in craving is what predicted whether they used again 90 minutes to three hours later (indirect effect β = 0.06 for high-severity users, versus β = -0.06, not statistically meaningful, for low-severity users).

Put together: the same behavior — smoking with friends — functions completely differently depending on who’s doing it. For casual users, company is close to irrelevant. For people already showing signs of cannabis use disorder, company appears to be doing some of the work that craving does on its own.

Now the limits, because a single 104-person study from one state should be reported as exactly that. The sample was recruited in Arizona, averaged 36 years old, and was 53% female — not the college-age population most cannabis-and-social-context research has focused on, and small enough that the study’s own credible interval for the key interaction effect ran wide (0.12 to 0.56). Craving was self-reported in the moment, which is the field’s best available method but still relies on people accurately naming an internal state. The design shows association, not cause: the study can’t rule out that something else about high-severity users’ social lives — who they hang out with, what those friends are also using — is doing the real work rather than the mere presence of other people. And it’s one study, not yet replicated, with public funding disclosure not available in the abstract record reviewed for this piece.

It lands, though, at a moment when the broader cannabis-use-disorder picture is trending the wrong way. A separate NIDA-funded analysis of national survey data, published in JAMA Psychiatry in August, found cannabis use disorder climbing among U.S. adults from 2021 to 2024 — moderate-to-severe cases in men rose from 3.1% to 4.1% — even as alcohol use disorder held roughly flat. More people are landing in the higher-severity bracket this new study says is most vulnerable to social-context craving spikes.

adults from 2021 to 2024 — moderate-to-severe cases in men rose from 3.1% to 4.1% — even as alcohol use disorder held roughly flat.

What that suggests for treatment isn’t subtle. Recovery culture, cannabis included, often treats “I only smoke with people” as evidence of control — the opposite of the isolated, secretive use that gets flagged as a red flag. This study says that instinct runs backwards for the population it’s supposed to protect. If someone’s cannabis use has already crossed into disorder, the group setting isn’t neutral scenery around the drug. It’s part of what’s driving the next hit.