Marijuana Turned Me Into A Schizophrenic
In the field of psychiatry, you see it all when it comes to mental illness and the various factors that contribute to it. Marijuana affecting mental health should be no surprise, despite the media not really talking much about it. Why is that? Because there’s an agenda to legalize it. I am not against legalization but it’s important that humanity is educated on the influence of marijuana on mental health.
Many teens and young adults have experienced their mind stolen by marijuana. What does this mean? Some of the stories you’ll hear is that they started smoking weed in high school and fell in love with it; their usage escalated beyond smoking joints on social occasions to smoking bowls multiple times a day by themselves at home.
Some of these patients identified as being introverted in high school to begin with. They are not afraid to admit that once they started using marijuana, they became more introverted, spending more time by themselves in isolation, lost in the internal world that marijuana dug out for them.
At some point in time, whether under the influence or not, they slowly began to feel different in regards to the way they thought and interpreted the world. Their families would clearly notice a change in behavior, eventually calling EMS to take them to the emergency room. Not all patients can pinpoint the details of the changes brought upon by marijuana.
But some of the changes noticed by family and friends is amotivation, apathy, odd beliefs, self-isolation and even responding to internal stimuli. What once was a fairly normal kid attending science class was now a socially awkward, disheveled kid who struggled to express himself; it’s very sad!
It’s not known whether the high concentration of THC in modern strains of marijuana causes schizophrenia or just helps accelerate it in predisposed individuals with a family history and genetic loading. Even if a user doesn’t become schizophrenic, transient psychosis is quite common with modern day strains; people either consume an edible or smoke too much and cannot handle the high for those 2-3 hours, eventually losing their mind in the process.
Some return back to reality after they come back down from the high and after receiving a dose of an antipsychotic, while some have permanently become schizophrenic. For those who have become schizophrenic, their lives have now entirely changed just because they chose to consume marijuana. It’s very important to find out if you have a family history of mental illness before you try marijuana.
As a psychiatrist, I want my patients to be as physically and mentally healthy as possible and this involves no consumption of marijuana or other drugs. Even drinking is dangerous and should be done in moderation! At the end of the day, education is important and remember that just because you’re witnessing legalization of marijuana in a lot of states and around the world, does not mean that it can’t harm your mental health!
If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your family and friends!
Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)
DSM (Defeating Stigma Mindfully) 