Marijuana Actually Does Induce Psychosis In Some People
The story of how weed destroyed my friends life
Introduction
Weed, Pot, marijuana, cannabis. Once a small time recreational drug done only by the hoodlums and wastrels of society, is now the go-to reprieve for frazzled employees looking to unwind from the stressors of corporate life.
In India, its becoming increasingly hard to come across a private party where attendees aren’t smoking up or doing other hard drugs right on site. Weed and other hard drugs which were once the essence of the rave party scene, the ones that were organized in a hush-hush manner and were on an invite-only basis, are now being found even in everyday clubs and parties which don’t remotely resemble a rave party or the hippie scene. In fact, drugs have infiltrated society to such a level that they are even found in the bags of school and university students alike.
But for all the glorification and praise these drugs receive on social media and in the popular mainstream media, are they solely used to alleviate one’s stresses and take the edge off, or used to escape life altogether?
For many unfortunate people, the answer is the latter.
A general trend towards clumsiness and absentmindedness amongst pot smokers?
A general observation that I made amongst pot smokers, regardless of whether smoking up contributed negatively or positively to their lives, was that they were way more clumsy and absent-minded than the average person. They were always hurting themselves in ordinary everday situations that you and I would easily be able to avoid. One hippie I met at Auroville had a dozen burns on his legs from repeatedly rubbing against the exhaust pipe whenever he got down from his bike. He had also twisted his ankle by being clumsy while getting down the ladder of the log hut we were staying at.
A pot smoking friend of mine used to constantly bang her car up whenever she took it out to go somewhere. Once when we went to get gas, the car side-swiped the plastic bollard at the petrol bunk as it came to a stop. An easily avoidable mistake had one been more careful and observant. On another occasion, she suddenly started driving on the opposite side of the road on an inner street, narrowly avoiding an oncoming motorcyclist who gave us dirty looks as he went by. On yet another occassion, she left her car parked with the headlights on when she came to meet our bunch of friends and hang out together.
My close friend, the one whom this article’s about, constantly slips and falls wherever we go. He twisted his ankle once when were walking on a railway track because he failed to judge the space between the planks accurately. He keeps hitting his head on protrusions above, slipping on sidewalks, and falling into roadside ditches, in a blatant display of how much pot smoking has affected his balance and impaired his fine motor skills. It definitely doesn’t help that Indian footpaths are inherently dangerous and life-threatening in themselves and that one has to pay more attention than they usually would walking a well planned and developed area of the city.
Once during a road trip, he made a sudden turn and nearly collided into an oncoming cyclist after which everyone in the car was of the opinion that he should no longer be the one driving. On another occassion he ran away from a party late in the dead of night because he hallucinated that the cops were after him.
All of these were just anecdotal accounts, observations of pot smokers from my life. But what does the research say?
“The results were clear: THC caused paranoid thoughts. Half of those given THC experienced paranoia, compared with 30% of the placebo group: that is, one in five had an increase in paranoia that was directly attributable to the THC.”
Even clinical research studies confirm that pot smoking causes paranoia and affects ones motor skills. It is also for this reason why pot smokers are recommended not to drive vehicles or operate heavy machinery hours or even days after smoking up.
After more than a decade of doing weed, my friend was diagnosed with marijuana induced psychosis and schizophrenia early last year and has been on antipsychotic medication ever since. However, this hasn’t stopped him from lighting up the occassional joint and smoking cigarettes on a daily basis. In fact, his cigarette smoking gotten even worse ever since he got on the antipsychotic medication, an expected effect as per his pyschologist.
His psychologist, who happens to be classmate of ours from back in college, told me that he might suffer irreversible health conditions or organ failure later down the line due to the interactions between marijuana, cigarettes, and the antipsychotic medication that he’s on. That however, hasn’t stopped him from smoking up, and he usually smokes up on the very same day he gets his antipsychotic meds injected. A deadly combination of medicine and poison at the same time!
He keeps hallucinating about achieving englightenment and making a billion dollars. He’s been trying his luck at ‘get rich quick’ schemes for the last 12 years with absolutely no results, except that he recently lost both of his parents and never managed to carve out a niche for himself in the world.
See the contradiction in that?
He’s been trying to get rich “quick”…….for the past 12 years!! I used to believe in his ideas a lot during the initial years, but later it became pretty evident that these were all bogus deals that were never going to materialize. His confidence in attaining success from the execution of such deals was derived not from real world experience or subject matter expertise, but from his weed induced psychosis. He would constantly dole out psuedo-scientific garbage as life advice, and dream about attaining englightenment in the Himalayas or channeling an entity known as “Bashar” he found out about from binge watching Youtube videos.
He once tried to sell an iron ore mine for 1% commission, which would rougly translate to 10 million dollars. He pursued that deal for more than 5 years before finally realizing what a scam it was and only then gave up on it. Today, he runs after SBLC funding deals on the internet. He says he will receive a million dollars in a Dubai bank account, commission for a deal brokered by him, and will one day fly out to receive it and start living his dream life in Dubai from then on. Till such time, he plans to continue freeloading and living on the goodwill of his uncle whose home he is forced to take refuge in for the time being.
If only earning a million dollars was that simple.
There are enough unscrupulous people in the world ready to take advantage of those affected by such disorders. Even though has hasn’t been scammed or hasn’t lost any money over all these years, he’s lost enough of time, a lifetime that could have been spent earning money the right way, being on a steady career path, making his parents happy, and doing the things he loved doing. Our psychologist friend told me he might ultimately end up in a mental asylum if he doesn’t get off the weed right away, and stays off it for the next 3 years while diligently taking his medication. He further added that there is no cure for his schizophrenia and it can only be managed with medication “provided the patient is disciplined enough to stay away from all kinds of drugs”.
The past 10 years weren’t just about hallucinating about attaining enlightenment in the Himalayas, making a million dollars through get-rich-quick schemes, or channeling Bashar though. There were moments of realization here and there too. One such moment was when his mother had passed away. We were scrolling through images of all our classmates posing with their new families on Instagram, and he sorely wished he followed a mainstream life while his parents were still alive. The second moment of realization happened when we were out hiking. We had completed all our tasks for the day and were trying to catch some sleep in the tent while making some light evening conversation. Suddenly an instant pang of sorrow struck him like an arrow in the chest and he was overcome with excruciating grief at not being able to achieve many of the things he should have by this point in life. You know, ordinary life checkpoint things — save up money, have a real job, buy a car and a house, travel around the world, get married and start a family — those kind of things.
Under a heavy pang of regret, he openly acknowledged that the only thing weed induced him with was psychosis and a false sense of belief in million dollar deals, and how he wasted his entire youth pursuing them. He is now 32 and his uncle is desperately trying to get him married so that he can start living a normal life. But no one wants to marry someone who is unemployed at 32. Neither is he going to find anyone of similar stature to marry when he isn’t at the same earning capacity as those in our age group. Most of our college mates today take home 6-figure salaries….per month!
He knows he’ll never be able to match that after years of staying unemployed and being out of the job market pursuing bogus deals on the internet because of his weed addiction. And it all the more discourages him from joining mainstream life back again. A terribly vicious cycle, if you ask me.
Conclusion
But why am I telling you all this?
Because addiction is insidious. It creeps up on you stealthily. One moment you’re doing drugs to chill with your buddies and take away the week’s stress. The next? You’ve been uncontrollably hooked to it for past 10 years and have lost everything you had in pursuit of the things the drug made you have a false sense of confidence in.
Be aware of your surroundings and the kind of people you hang out with, because that’s exactly how my friend got hooked to the substance.
Remember how someone once said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with?
Turns out they were actually right.
