Addiction

[mms]

i have a friend who works with teens with psychosis and almost all of them have a history of smoking strong skunk which exhacerbates issues that might have been alright and not created any deeper issues.
The other problem i've heard is the onset of schizophrenia around the age of 40 in males, when generally symptoms arise around 17-34 ish of there has been a history of smoking the weed.

 

[mms]

A complex of factors drive teenagers mad; weed probably exacerbates them in certain environments. I wonder whether the criminalization of weed exacerbates its tendency to exacerbate paranoia...

paranoia is a part of schizophrenia, its one of the symptoms of that disease, but not all schizophrenia patients are paranoid if you see what i mean.
but yes there probably is a link, i can remember hiding from the cops with a mate as we were worried the cops were trailing us, but to be honest they probably were at that point as we were not being good boys.
what weed does is kind of allow freestyle associations without the saftey mat of being the associations being voluntary, or being able to climb down from a particulary irrational state, so you can easily see why people have a tendency to draw out long strings of negative and irrational associations.

 

[nomadthethird]

From what I understand, no drug can *cause* schizophrenia, but some can draw out the latent cases.

So if skunk is causing you to freak out to the point of long-term paranoia or psychosis or hallucinations, you were probably going to develop schizophrenia anyway. It's genetic.

Amphetamines are much worse (or I guess at least as bad) for schizophrenics as weed or other hallucinogens. And now we have all kinds of pre-teens on them.

 

[josef k.]

schizophrenia is not a pathogen... it is a complex of symptoms, ticked-off according to the entry in the DSM (incidentally, my initials).

 

[nomadthethird]

schizophrenia is not a pathogen... it is a complex of symptoms, ticked-off according to the entry in the DSM (incidentally, my initials).

urite

it also has a very clear genetic basis

 

[craner]

A A Gill giving a wonderfully vivid description of scary boozing:

'I was drinking all day, every day - to the point where I got alcoholic gastritis, which is throwing up all the time, and burst all the blood vessels in my eyes. I was four stone heavier, because I drank beer as well as whisky - sick, sweaty; you sweat all the time, you sweat urea. I also had delirium tremens, where you have to take your first drink by putting a scarf round your arm and over the back of your neck [he demonstrates] so you can pull the glass up, otherwise you smash your teeth. And drinking through a straw, Benylin and vodka - that's great, let me tell you, if you want a recipe for this article. But the delirium is worse than the tremens - it's as if you're dreaming all the time and you see things that look as real as that sofa there. I had spiders the size of soup plates. So you live an incredibly complicated fantasy life - this ongoing, rather syrupy Steven Spielberg movie runs constantly in your head, with you as the wronged but ultimately triumphant hero. And I would pray - really pray - for a fatal illness. I wanted to have cancer, because cancer would make sense of it all. I had no excuse for being a junkie and a drunk. I came from a happy, supportive, endlessly liberal family who loved me. But if I had cancer I would have an excuse and, more than that, there would be an end, an end to the self-loathing, the monumental huge rucksack of self-hatred which you have to drink on. And the fear - a lot of being drunk is to do with being frightened all the time.'

At last, when he was 30 and already yellow with hepatitis, he agreed to go to a drying-out clinic. He took his last drink - Moët et Chandon - on the train to Clouds, on 1 April 1984. 'I was quite close to dying. I was on the edge of cirrhosis. I had the highest liver count of anyone there. I was on a 24-hour watch with a nurse because you can die - in fact, I watched someone die - from alcoholic withdrawal. You have fits, and they were very worried that that might happen to me.'

 

[polystyle]

Wow, vivid alright Craner, thanks for that.
Have seen a close collaborator go through some of those symptoms -conditions and it was not pretty.
Yow ...

 

[craner]

I was quite shocked by this. I've occasionaly admired A A Gill's column style*, while being fully aware that he's a quite considerable twat, a twat to the core, the marrow, to the point that it's endearing. But his decade-long boozing hell makes me feel quite differently about him. A good article about it here - if you can wade through the usual tiresome national and class gargoyle caricatures (not funny enough, Adrian!) there are some sharp observations.

* My favorite Gill moment to date occured during the 2005 Bow & Bethnal Green election campaigns. He turned up on behalf of The Times to spend some time with George Galloway. As Gill wrote: "He is, he says, the ghost of old Labour. You mean, you’re dead? “No, we’re here to haunt new Labour.”

Anyway, enough about him.

 

[massrock]

But his decade-long boozing hell makes me feel quite differently about him.

When he was talking about it on Desert Island Discs or something it was actually kind of deep.

 

[craner]

Article about Jean Rhys by another recovering alchy hack.

 

[Guilhèm de Peitieus]

back off topic but vis a vis Gill, his recent article about old people again was quite affecting:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5980973.ece

 

[nomadthethird]

I was quite shocked by this. I've occasionaly admired A A Gill's column style*, while being fully aware that he's a quite considerable twat, a twat to the core, the marrow, to the point that it's endearing. But his decade-long boozing hell makes me feel quite differently about him. A good article about it here - if you can wade through the usual tiresome national and class gargoyle caricatures (not funny enough, Adrian!) there are some sharp observations.

* My favorite Gill moment to date occured during the 2005 Bow & Bethnal Green election campaigns. He turned up on behalf of The Times to spend some time with George Galloway. As Gill wrote: "He is, he says, the ghost of old Labour. You mean, you’re dead? “No, we’re here to haunt new Labour.”

Anyway, enough about him.

I had a shrink tell me once that she could treat heroin and speed addicts, and they'd respond to treatment, but that she never got anywhere with an alcoholic, so she stopped seeing them. Pretty cynical but I can sympathize--out of all the addicts I've ever known (a whole lot), alcoholics sink the lowest as far as depression and despair go.

I do think alcoholics have it very tough in some ways recovery-wise, what with their drug of choice being socially acceptable and legally accessible. Makes it much harder for people to see their own behavior patterns as addiction instead of "what I do to blow off steam"...

 

[craner]

Tell me about it.

 

[nomadthethird]

I could start quoting AA slogans at you but I doubt it would help...

Step 1) admit you are powerless against the substance.

It works if you work it, so work it you're worth it!

I seriously get text messages every day with this kind of shit on them..

 

[craner]

Ha, I'm not that bad! I mean, I haven't woken up without a hangover for about 6 years, but I'm not hallucinating gigantic spiders. I've read everything about quitting booze, and it's all stuff I worked out for myself anyway. In the end, it's merely about self-discipline, and conquering boredom and despair. Easy!

 

[nomadthethird]

Ha, I'm not that bad! I mean, I haven't woken up without a hangover for about 6 years, but I'm not hallucinating gigantic spiders. I've read everything about quitting booze, and it's all stuff I worked out for myself anyway. In the end, it's merely about self-discipline, and conquering boredom and despair. Easy!

the boredom part is the hardest for me...i get bored really easily...:slanted:

 

[craner]

It's true, booze fuels terror and despair, you could combat it quite easily by not drinking, the big thing is...the boredom of routine, or more specifically in my case, no routine. So, what now? What will I do for hours this evening? When I studied, I had purpose. I wanted to get 100% and win and go further. Without that, it's...a void. You get wasted, devolve to bonhomie, waste another night, then another day. The worst thing is days off, when you have no way or idea how to productively fill them. So you start drinking. This gets hellish very fast.

 

[vimothy]

Ah, the weekend...

 

[craner]

After a certain amount of time, you lose grip of who you are, what you really think and feel. I have no ideas or ideals anymore, I just want to grasp normal life, live a routine that will make me healthy again, put on weight, engage with people, demolish my accumulated habits and tics and opinions, and start again. Be good for other people, rather than destructive. I mean, I'm fairly smart, I'm not ugly, I have a good background, I shouldn't be where I am at this age.

 

[vimothy]

I sometimes feel like that. I suppose I'm easily distracted. It's such an effort to go anywhere, which is why I've ended up here. But I also sometimes think that if I did feel more despair, I'd be more inclined to get up and do something more about it. I still enjoy the lost weekends. Need to train myself out of it. And still, nowhere to somewhere is only three years and a bit of schooling, tops.