Under Pressure: Stress, Substances and Graduate Student Reactions
- 14 hours ago
- 16 min read
How are changing substance use trends shaping student well-being and behaviours in academic life?
In this episode of The EDII Catalyst, Dr. Kim Hellemans (Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Science, Carleton University) joins us to reflect on how substance use, mental health, and academic culture intersect within student populations.
Hosted by Eden Goodwin (PhD candidate, C2MCI Micro team HQP), this episode highlights practical approaches to modeling healthy behaviours in academia, including how to recognize early signs of distress and foster open and stigma-free conversations around substance use.
Transcript begins below video.
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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Eden Goodwin: Today, we are very excited to have Dr. Kim Hellemans as our guest! She is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Science at Carleton University and an award-winning educator and neuroscientist. She's recognized for her passion for teaching and has earned numerous prestigious awards, including the OCUFA Provincial Teaching Award.
Most of Dr. Hellemans’s research focuses on the intersection between mental health, substance use, and academic outcomes, with some recent work exploring problematic cannabis use as well as problematic social media use, graduate student mental health, and the experiences of gender and sexual minority students in higher education.
She is a champion of knowledge transfer and has very widely viewed neuroscience animations on substance use and stigma. She also hosts an award-winning podcast called Minding the Brain, where she brings cutting-edge neuroscience to the public. My favourite fact about Dr. Hellemans is that she's actually gone on the Severance podcast, met Ben Stiller, and talked about some of the wondrous ideas behind the brain that factor into the show.
Dr. Hellemans, what is one misconception or many misconceptions about cannabis use that you would like to correct before we even get started with all of our other questions.
Dr. Kim Hellemans: The idea that cannabis is not addictive is a misconception that still persists, but it is one that I have sort of tried to combat since I started studying cannabis around the time of its legalization. I've been teaching about cannabis prior to its legalization—nearly 20 years—and I've often had students in my class that have pushed back on whether cannabis is addictive.
On certain social media platforms—YouTube, Reddit—people like to say, ‘it's just a harmless herb. It has medicinal properties, it can cure cancer and therefore it's not addictive.’ And I'm here to say it absolutely is addictive—not for all people, but people who have certain risk factors may inevitably develop what's called a cannabis use disorder (CUD), which is the diagnostic term for cannabis addiction.
Another misconception is that cannabis addiction looks the same in everyone. This relates back to stereotyped or stigmatized images about addiction in general, but I want to emphasize that somebody who might be struggling to maintain their use, their behaviour, and their health around cannabis use can look quite differently across different populations of people.
We’ll talk more about this later, but it's important that if you see somebody you're concerned about using cannabis more frequently or starting to skip school or not hand in things or not show up to things, these can ‘pink flags’ around their cannabis use behaviours. Cannabis addiction does not have a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Thank you, and I really like your use of the term ‘pink flag.’ Continuing on your point, what impacts does cannabis use have on student populations in particular?
The demographic in Canada that uses cannabis the most are young adults aged 18 to 29, and both undergraduate and graduate students are included in this population. When we look at nationally representative data sets, we ask people, ‘did you use cannabis in the last year?’ About 38% of young adults say yes, they've used cannabis in the last year—a pretty high proportion of folks. Of that, when we look at young adults, we can then identify students by asking, ‘are you in post-secondary education?’ Students are also more likely to use cannabis than non-students, and they’re using cannabis quite a bit.
Again, I want to emphasize that we're looking at cannabis use across what I would say is a substance use health spectrum: a spectrum ranging from people who are not using or might have used in the past and are currently not using, to people who might be using cannabis occasionally, to those that might be using more regularly and noticing some impact on their health, to people at the opposite end of the spectrum who are no longer able to maintain their health goals.
Among our student populations, we've got everybody in there: we've got people who abstain from using, that are using for recreational purposes—to relax, to get high, to get in touch with their emotions, to be creative—and that frequency range could differ as well. We would call that low frequency social or recreational use, and that doesn't necessarily map onto problems or put you at risk for cannabis use disorder.
That said, we do have a fair proportion of students who are using daily or near daily—20 to 30 days a month—who are showing higher risk behaviours around their cannabis use. What's interesting is when we ask students, ‘do you use cannabis?’, we get what's called a hockey stick shaped distribution. We get a normal distribution with alcohol; a small proportion who have ‘never used’ and who ‘use a lot.’ But with cannabis, when we look at people who use cannabis daily, we get a blip upwards. That's the hockey stick, right? So we actually have about 20% of our students that are using daily or near daily. This is something we need to keep a close eye on to figure out why they’re using so much and what the impact is on their health.
As for the impact on student populations: we know students that are using daily or near daily may be less likely to be able to keep up with their academics. They may not be showing up to class. There's a lot of research that shows they're at high risk for dropping out of university because they're using and are not able to keep up with their schoolwork, and that's invariably going to lead to lower educational attainment.
I always say that cannabis is often used as a coping tool that works until it doesn't anymore. That’s where we need to have opportunities to intervene or have conversations with young adults or students.
Reaching them is very, very hard and that is the impetus behind a lot of the research that I do. How do we reach populations of people who may be using cannabis, may not be doing so well, are not able to maintain their health goals, and are also unable to attain their educational goals. How can we have conversations with them and bridge that gap?
Thank you for that. I didn't know that it had such a sharp hockey stick-style of curve there. In the pre-interview, we discussed that many of these studies are focused on undergraduate populations because they're more accessible for collecting data and interviewing. Do you anticipate any large differences between graduate or postdoctoral populations versus our undergrad populations? What differences do you expect there to be?
I love these questions because I do think graduate students often get lost in universities’ care and support; there are a lot of systems in place to support undergraduate student well-being, and graduate students historically do not have as many support systems and resources available to them. Importantly, graduate students face very unique stressors relative to our undergraduate students.
I want to emphasize that graduate students are a unique population because they have been self-selected to some extent based on their persistence. It's not just about how smart you are or how well you do in school; graduate success is based on your grit, your resilience, and your persistence in spite of failure. We see failure a lot as graduate students and academics, and it's important to be able to go, ‘okay, that didn't work! Now what?’ and just get yourself back up on the horse over and over again.
Graduate students also face more chronic unstructured stress and isolation, which is common in graduate school. It can be a very, very lonely place. That's why I always say pick your lab and your mentor really well, because when you create community in your graduate school, it does so much to buffer against the ill effects of persistent and unpredictable stressors. You need pretty good coping skills to enter graduate school, so this demographic is in a bit of a different place—they might not have less stress, but they’re generally able to handle and manage stress better.
I also want to add the layer of accountability to your supervisor; there's different power dynamics, is what I always say. When you've got an undergraduate student in distress, there's a very clear pathway of support for them. When you have a graduate student in distress who might be struggling, it's a very different pathway because that person still has expectations within their research group. They're going to be working with you for 2 to 5 years, so it's not like you can hand it off or seek support and then continue in your course or not; it’s a very different situation with graduate students.
I would argue that we need more training of graduate supervisors. We need to continually train and engage with them on how to support a graduate student who's not doing well and how to recognize what that looks like. We're not therapists or psychologists, but there are certainly things that we can do to support a student who's not doing well.
To answer your question about anticipating a different population: I would say graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are still at risk. They're still going to be using substances as a means to cope. Alcohol is pervasive in a lot of our culture, in academia as well as conferences. Cannabis is coming into that space now; we're starting to see a little bit of a replacement of alcohol with cannabis. I'm curious to see where the research will go in terms of understanding the complexity of substance use, coping, stress, mental health and the well-being of graduate students.
We touched on this, but do you see any benefits in the shift from alcohol to cannabis from a harm reduction point of view? Alcohol, as you mentioned, is deeply embedded in academic culture; it would be interesting to know what kind of health changes we might expect to see as people move from alcohol use to cannabis use.
That is an important conversation to have from a harm reduction perspective: to acknowledge that substance use is not inherently bad, substances are not bad, and people who use substances are not bad people. We have been using substances throughout millennia for various different reasons: religious, spiritual, to enjoy a meal together. There are definitely a range of harms associated with substance use, and ‘more use means more harm’ is another thing that we tend to say in the substance use field. With that being said, I would certainly say that the harm landscape of cannabis is quite different than with alcohol.
With alcohol, there's now dialogue around the fact that it is carcinogenic and people who use a lot of alcohol very regularly, coupled with other lifestyle factors and genetics, are high risk for certain cancers. We haven't been able to study cannabis for as long because of the legal framework—I want to put that caveat out there—but certainly one example of a harm reduction piece is I hear from young women is that they're at a higher risk for their drinks being tampered with when they’re out at a bar, and therefore are at higher risk for sexual assault. There's been a conscientious choice to not consume alcoholic beverages out in public or when they're amongst people that they don't know, in favour of using an edible instead. I would say that is a beautiful example of harm reduction.
I want to emphasize that I work in populations that are already users. I'm not in the prevention space, so I'm not looking at children and trying to prevent substance use. I'm in a substance-using environment. I think about how we can communicate elements of harm reduction so that people are making educated decisions about their use that therefore puts them at less risk for harms. An example of this is how you use cannabis. Cannabis concentrates are a higher potency product and therefore pose a higher risk in smoking dried flower or using edibles. Drinking and smoking is not a good idea either—I want to make that very clear. Using cannabis and driving is not a harm reduction tactic; don't use any substances and drive.
With that being said, there are definitely benefits to cannabis use over and above other substances. It does provide short term relaxation. It can help with sleep. It can help with some symptoms of PTSD. There are lots of potentially encouraging areas with cannabis, we just need to be clear on the science and the challenges when we communicate that. If someone's going to go out and get a 90% THC concentrate because, ‘oh, this is going to help me sleep’—no friend, that is going to make you high and paranoid. It can be muddy, but I think a substitution of cannabis from alcohol can have some positives. The caveat is there are some people with higher risk profiles with cannabis; for example, individuals with higher risk to things like schizophrenia and psychosis. We need to be mindful of these factors as well.
Thank you for the insightful and helpful response. Oftentimes there is an all or nothing perspective that cannabis is one hundred percent good all of the time or absolutely terrible all the time. There seems to be so much nuance between how you're using a substance and the impact of different behaviours on your health outcomes.
This leads me into my next question: how can faculty, staff, and/or peers support students who are exhibiting those ‘pink flags’ or are struggling with substance use, whether that's cannabis, alcohol, or any kind of substance use?
For sure; as you say, the first step is educating on pink flags. For a graduate student, that might look showing up late repeatedly or calling in sick a lot, because excessive substance use can affect our sleep and can affect our ability to get out of bed in the morning. Particularly if there are early morning meetings, somebody who's repeatedly not showing up on time could be a cause for concern—again, only if their behaviour is not already explainable due to other factors that they may have disclosed (for example: ADHD). Erratic behaviours can also be a pink flag: when this person is good, they're great—and then they just fall off the map for a while. Again, that could be due to other things, but...
It’s also important to know how to have the types of conversations that are really uncomfortable for some people. I want to emphasize that if having these conversations doesn't feel comfortable for you, maybe there's somebody else in your group who is comfortable having these conversations. Maybe having an open conversation in a lab group meeting about substance use is a possibility, so that the conversation doesn't have to be a one-on-one with somebody. Instead, you could just say, ‘hey, I want to acknowledge that sometimes when we get together at conferences, we all drink a lot. How do we feel about that? How do you feel showing up hungover to your poster session?’
If you feel comfortable approaching someone, you can say, ‘I've noticed that you talk a lot about cannabis, and I noticed that when we go out, you're using a lot and you drink more than everybody else,’ or ‘I noticed you are drinking a lot, talk to me about it. How do you feel about that relationship?’ It's curiosity rather than judgement, and that shifts the conversation from fixing the behaviour to understanding its function. Ask them, ‘what role is that substance playing in your life? Are you using a lot of cannabis because it's helping you sleep? Are you using it because it's helping you with your anxiety? Are there other things or supports or resources that we could turn to? I'm not here to say stop using, but maybe we can gradually move in a different direction to help you with X, Y, Z.’
That's the trap: sometimes people turn to cannabis as an initial, ‘oh, I actually had a really good night's sleep,’ and then it becomes using every night, which becomes, ‘maybe I'll use it a little bit at 6 o'clock now because I am enjoying that relaxation.’ It becomes a slippery slope. Nobody develops an addiction overnight. It’s important to be mindful of the impact on your mood and your other behaviours. Sometimes that takes somebody on the outside looking in; it's very hard to reflect on ourselves that we're not doing so well.
I'm a big fan of honest, authentic, non-judgmental, stigma-free conversations. If you are comfortable with talking one-on-one, you can use what are called motivational interviewing techniques—these resources are freely available online through the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. We also have a campaign posted on our Instagram called a check-in checklist where we encourage people who use cannabis regularly to check in with yourself: how am I feeling? How's my relationship with substances?
The last thing I would say is: refer, refer, refer. At Carleton, we have a process: respond, refer, report. As professors, we don't have the skills, the tools, or the credentials to conduct substance use therapy. I would say it's incumbent on us to notice something, have a curiosity-based conversation and end with, ‘can I support you by connecting you with resources?’ I would encourage people to stay in the relationship, even if the behaviour doesn't change immediately, because that does take time.
I'm all about showing that you will support somebody, regardless of what's going on with their mental health. It's like putting money into a bank account: once you've built up the bank account enough, they can start to take withdrawals and feel comfortable taking withdrawals in the form of, ‘I need to take some time away. I'm not doing well.’ To be able to feel comfortable enough with somebody to say that, that says you've created that climate of comfort.
That sounds like a really useful framework: understand what is happening, approach without shame, and maintain that relationship afterwards.
Oftentimes, we have to assist our peers and our more junior members, and one of the ways that typically happens is by modeling relationships—how we deal with conference anxiety, how we go through our lab, or how we resolve conflict. Are there specific things we should be doing as more senior members to model healthier relationships with substances?
I love that question—I think it's so important. Students are always watching what we normalize, especially when we're not explicitly teaching. Organizing events that don't center around substance use is really important. If you're taking your students out or if you're out somewhere, it’s great to make sure that it isn't centered around drinking or alcohol in some way or form.
Being transparent without oversharing is what we do as mentors. We don't quite become students’ friends and we don't quite keep them at a distance, either. We have boundaries but are friendly and we share within reason. I will often reflect on my own relationship with alcohol with my students. I’ll say, ‘I feel like I've been drinking too much lately. I'm just going to go for a non-alcoholic drink tonight.’ By saying that neutrally and just acknowledging something that's going on with you, you’re saying what you're reflecting out loud so people can also hear that and mimic it and model it.
The last thing I would say is don't glorify overwork and don’t glorify the use of substances as a coping strategy. Think about how often the images we see in ads normalize alcohol consumption; memes of ‘drunk mommies’ on social media saying, ‘I just need a drink to take care of my kid, hahaha!’ We don't necessarily have that with cannabis. Imagine if they'd had that with heroin or cocaine! It's good to just be mindful of how our society normalizes these behaviours and what you can do to push against that a little bit. Normalize wellness, normalize health, normalize open conversations.
Normalize thoughtfulness, normalize reflection—that seems to be a really big takeaway from this. I do have a quick question not directly related to cannabis use, but related to you as an academic: what advice would you want to give to a younger version of yourself in graduate school?
Those moments of struggle made you the strong person you are today. They shaped that. Those moments felt really hard at the time, but someday you will feel grateful that you can look at other moments of struggle and say, ‘I got through that. Therefore, I can get through whatever this is going on today.’
Audience Member: I'm an exchange student from Germany, and while there I worked with researchers at a water treatment plant. They told me they see the concentration of beta blockers or their metabolites in the water from the university go up when exam season starts. I was wondering if you know of this trend, if that's something that's also happening here, why that might be happening, and how we can counter this.
That is shocking. Beta blockers like propranolol are actually prescribed for people who have stage fright because it blocks the beta receptors of your heart. Imagine walking out in front of a moving bus—your heart starts to race and you get kind of sweaty—people get that when they experience stage fright.
You can get prescribed propranolol because it actually doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, it stays local and it will actually reduce that autonomic signal so you feel calm. When you feel super stressed, there's a big brain-body connection that will further drive your stress. The idea behind beta blockers is that if you're not feeling the stress peripherally, then your brain will be better able to calm down and be lower on anxiety.
It’s fascinating to think that students are somehow capitalizing on this and the awareness of that and are using it to help them with exams. I thought you were going to bring up the overuse of stimulants, because we also know that there are a fair number of students on campus that are prescribed stimulants for ADHD, and that if somebody who does not have ADHD uses something like that, it actually will help them stay alert, study longer, etc. It's the same idea.
As for how we can combat this usage—because these things don't come with without risk, right—the answer is education and awareness campaigns and ensuring we’re including people. ‘Nothing about us, without us;’ don't have an education campaign targeting students when you don't have students involved in the messaging and the shape of that conversation.
I love this wastewater surveillance stuff. I think Canada is just starting wastewater surveillance within certain municipalities. You have to opt into it to look at the metabolites of particular high-risk substances that are at risk for overdose, but I would love to do it at institutions to see if the wastewater data mapped onto what students were telling us that they're using. I love science—that is very cool.
On the note of loving science, we have a tradition for all of our guests—and I did warn you about this one, so I hope that you're ready—what is your favourite atom or molecule and why?
As a neuroscientist, there's so much that keeps the cells going… so I'm going to go with potassium because potassium, as you know, is K and my name starts with a K! I actually talk about potassium when I teach about the action potential and the different ionic balance inside and outside of the cell.
At rest, the inside of the cell is much more negative relative to the outside of the cell, which is held there because of the semi-permeable membrane. And then of course we have diffusion. So we have all these negatively charged proteins inside the cell, but then we have potassium, which is positively charged. And potassium really wants out. So I always say, ‘Kim wants out!’ That's my mnemonic for teaching the students, so I have a love of potassium.
Thanks for listening in everybody. Hope we learned some things today!
Thank you very much to Dr. Kim Hellemans for joining us today, and thank you to our live audience for joining us.
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The EDII Catalyst is a podcast series hosted by the Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI) at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
In this series, we explore topics of equity, diversity, inclusion and Indigeneity in STEM featuring guest speakers from diverse backgrounds and perspectives discussing their lived experiences. We provide helpful resources and tips on how to create more inclusive and equitable environments and hope to inspire you to become a “catalyst” for change in your own communities and workplaces!
The EDII Catalyst is made possible by the support of the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (#NFRFT-2020-00573).
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