Sweet Maryjane is a Bitch

Posted on August 7, 2007 in Addictions Bipolar Disorder College Uncertainty

The news that marijuana increases the risk of psychosis does not surprise me. I believe that my first episode was ignited by the coals that burned in the bowl of a bong, coupled with a few sadists who used my altered state as an opportunity to [[brainwashing|brainwash]] me into a neat little [[paranoia]].

In those days the word in the dorm hallways was that [[marijuana]] was a harmless high, a belief that has persisted into this century. Students who avoided alcohol would smoke a joint. Psychology professors would add a disclaimer for it when they discussed illegal drugs. Word was that it was safe. I knew from my own experience that it wasn’t, that it twisted my equanimity into paranoia and forced me to live through a strange aeon of despair. But my insistance that the hype was wrong, that it had done damage to my brain and upset my state of mind were dismissed. I avoided those who even talked about it.

My war stories about the drug come from my Sophomore year in college, mostly, though I did some before that. When I filled out my form for my first roommate, I asked for a nonsmoker. My roommate filled up a hash pipe. When I challenged him, he said “Well, this isn’t tobacco.”

I fell for that line. The next year, I became so involved that I sometimes showed up to classes stoned. After the incident where a guy used my suggestibility to torment me, I entered my Stonewall Period where I did not talk to people who used drugs. Some months after the incident, I ran into one of the fellows. I just walked past. “Oh, so you’re still sulking over that,” he said.

I believe that my first serious psychoses were triggered by that little experiment. My girlfriend at the time was a psychology major: she thought that my fear of pot was excessive. And I have to say that given the context of the time, it was. Everyone said that pot couldn’t hurt you. I felt that it had. I went beyond this, however, to believe that anyone who even mentioned the words marijuana, pot, joint, or the name of any other drug was Evil, that they wanted to tempt me into drug use. There seemed to be a grand cosmic conspiracy to torment me. So I was paranoid but the basis of the paranoia wasn’t wrong: pot could really fuck up your brain.

I still remember a few incidents that came out of the highs. My most memorable was a vision I had on Thai Stick when I saw several levels of Buddhas, one on top of the other, endlessly up into space. When I read about a similar vision that a Buddhist monk had several years later, I was not surprised. Hours of meditation, I have since learned, can invoke similar effects. I had been reading a great deal of [[Buddhism]] back then and even though I had never read of this before, the threads were there to weave a tapestry like that of the monk.

To save myself, I chose a life barren of joy and fun interaction with others. This, I believe, compounded my illness. The scariest incident that arose occurred when I was working in the library between semesters. I developed the belief that the world wasn’t real, that I could predict the next thing someone would say. Now I suspect that my brain had neatly bifurcated so that one part lagged behind the other. When I sought help at the school counseling center, the therapist did not even for a moment suspect psychosis but suggested that I get more to eat.

I do not doubt now that I was misserved by the ignorance of the time. Psychological residencies took place in mental hospitals where only the most severe patients were admitted. When a functioning psychotic such as himself presented himself, the disease was ignored. So, too, were the effects of that one recreational psychotropic so popular that you could all but buy it from local drug stores. Today I would not recommend anyone who had a history of family mental illness to smoke it. I wish it were as legal as tobacco or alcohol so I could sue the dealers for the damage they caused me.

But that would do little to nothing to heal the bitterness I feel towards those who denied that smoking pot had anything to do with the miasma into which I was propelled afterwards, who rebutted on tenuous grounds the experience of my own brain.

[tags]bipolar disorder, marijuana, psychosis, psychotics, college, drug-use, drug abuse, mental illness, Thai stick, addiction, addictions[/tags]

For a different kind of altered state and space flight, check this and this.