A survey conducted on stress and burnout says that a large percentage of Americans have turned to cannabis as a source of relief.

It’s barely 2021 and already we’re comparing its stress levels to 2020, which was filled with a record number of stressors. But if a recent survey is any sort of pulse check, many of us have found a source of relief: cannabis.

Compiled by cannabis company Verilife, the survey acquired data by looking into the most Googled terms related to burnout according to each state. Burnout, if you haven’t experienced it, is defined as “a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.” Researchers asked 2,000 Americans about their experiences with burnout, what was causing it, their symptoms and how they cope with the ensuing stress and exhaustion.

Photo by GRAS GRÜN via Unsplash

According to the results, 37% of respondents turned to CBD to cope with burnout and 39% of them turned to cannabis for the same purpose. For millennial cannabis users, these results were even more pronounced, with 93% of them using the drug to treat their symptoms of burnout. When talking to respondents who didn’t use cannabis, 29% of them considered giving it a shot in order to cope with stress and exhaustion.

The survey indicates that burnout search terms tended to relate to the workplace, no matter the states where the results came from. Terms specifically related to burnout and the healthcare industry were particularly common with terms like “healthcare worker burnout,” “nurses and burnout,” “nursing burnout,” and “nurse burnout prevention,” being amongst the most Googled ones.

While there were some differences in respondents’ answers depending on their age, the majority of them agreed that the main source of stress in their lives was COVID-19. The pandemic is credited as the reason why so many people are experiencing burnout in many aspects of their lives. COVID-19 was followed closely by work, finances, politics and the news.

Hopefully 2021 is a less stressful year (so far, not looking so great), one where there’s less uncertainty, political strain and thus burnout. A couple of weeks in and already things have been reliably crazy.