Health Can psychedelics can bring about mental illness?

[moonyham]

Hey,

So i have read like a million times people say in reply to people having psychotic breakdowns/bipolar/depression etc from taking psych's that 'they can bring up latent mental issues' or something to that extent. I just cant buy into that, i really cant. If for example I showed NO signs of lets say, schizophrenia, my whole life, then why or how the fuck could you possibly say that it was 'brought up' from x drug? I mean seriously, does it not occur to people that drugs CAN CREATE mental problems? Like seriously, why is it always blamed on 'latent' or 'supressed' mental problems? Seems to me most drug users just dont want to admit that drugs can cause fucked up problems for people that ARENT already in existent.

 

[Km013]

Really it doesn't matter if they are latent or not, enough psychedelic abuse can simply cause mental illness. I agree completely. Seen it too many times.

They used to be my favorite class of drug (still might be), but I doubt I'm going to use them for a few years. People with addictive personalities + psychedelics don't mix well.

 

[*Love*Lite*]

I hear what you are saying moonyham... however, sometimes people have underlying mental issues that can be TRIGGERED by stimulating the brain in certain ways.

IMO fact that SO MANY PEOPLE USE PSYCHEDELICS without any adverse mental side effects afterward that it is clear that the FEW that it does effect negatively had some underlying mental issues that had yet to emerge. I have a feeling that the stigma attached to psychedelics (that they will make you crazy etc.) get people thinking that the drugs are the culprate rather than the functioning of their minds.

I have witnessed this happen to several friends, one from 2c-b and one from LSD, neither of them attribute the drugs to their current mental state. Both realized that they had an underlying problem that would have emerged later with or without the psychedelics.

I do agree that drugs can create problems that do not exist already but I find that that is more true with opiates/ alcohol/ tobacco/ nicotine/ benzos/ meth/ coke than it is with psychedelics. On the contrary psychedelics have truly helped me see the errors of my ways when it comes to the above mentioned drugs.

Im going to tweak your title a little more as I think this is an interesting topic and would like more people to post in this thread. Thanks for the topic

 

[a100unitSHOT]

It's my understanding that if you're well grounded and mentally stable, psychadelics won't usually create mental problems (unless you just FRY your brain, and yes, I do believe that can happen), but if you are already showing symptoms of mental illness, it can exhasperate those problems. At first, I didn't really think too much about it, and thought it was some bs propoganda, but when I was 19-20 yrs old, I tripped shrooms and LSD side by side with my friend, dosing together amost every time, probably an average of twice a week. Now, while I can say the only way it affected me in the long run was that it changed my perspective on a lot of things and about life, he went fucking nuts. He was always a bit different, though. He thought differently, said things differently, and acted differently. Now, believe this if you want, but I'm giving you a true life example. After the "run" we went on, he just went off the deep end. In fact, I don't/can't even talk to him anymore. It's just.... not the same. Anyway, as for your question... He did have an abusive father (not sexually or anything, just a fuck ass of a dad), and he did have all sorts of childhood "disorders." BUT - he was fine socially until the trips - mostly the LSD.... That seemed to worsen it the most.... Also - during the time of this run - he was working the night shift at a factory (10:30p.m. - three a.m. or later, sometimes seven a.m.) and I have heard that this can also ruin a persons social skills. So, my conclusion - I can personally see how psychadelics could bring up latent mental issues........

 

[moonyham]

You've made me look like some sort of grammatical challenged doofus lovelite, the title use to make sense and now its well, not making sense and i cant change it! Fix it up thanks

As for being a bit 'weird' beforehand i dunno.. i mean how can anyone define 'weird' etc.. i sometimes wonder about my own sanity and whether its 'normal' but at the end of the day i always come to the conclusion that everyone's a bit weird in there own way and im no different. The thing is, how can you really know if you have latent mental problems? I mean, if they are truly 'latent' then youd would never know!

Is anyone truly 'mentally stable'? I dont think so tbh.

 

[Ismene]

Seems to me most drug users just dont want to admit that drugs can cause fucked up problems for people that ARENT already in existent.

That's like the masturbation theory of insanity. They used to ask people who had psychotic episodes "Did you masturbate?" and when they said "Yes" they concluded that masturbation caused insanity. Even tho most people can masturbate without going psychotic.

There might be a vanishingly small number of people who get psychological problems from psychedelic drugs - probably far, far less than the number of people who get psychological problems from their girlfriend leaving them.

My feeling is that if you're susceptible to psychological problems you are going to get them regardless of whether you take psychedelic drugs or not.

 

[daysonatrain]

^^i agree with you in some sense that nobody is truly "mentally stable" but some are certainly on the bottom end of the mental stability spectrum. i work with autistic people and have come to the conclusion (obviously not scientific at all) that we are all on the autistic spectrum, its all about how we view the world. dont know if this makes any sense

anyway, i have a friend that after taking acid went into this few week stint of crazy grandiose thought patterns. i do believe that psychs can bring up latent psychological issues because of the intense way it acts on our thoughts.

also agree with ismeme, there are probably far more people who get psychological problems from their girlfriend leaving them (or addictive drugs, crack, meth etc) than psychs.

 

[Ismene]

Can 10 hours under the influence of a drug really cause insanity? When people can spend months on end in a war situation on the front line being shot at, frightened for their lives and still come out fine?

I don't think the human mind is so fragile that 10 hours on acid can destroy it. I'm sure it can be an unpleasant experience but as for driving sane people insane - if it did that the CIA would have been using as a war weapon and dropping it on Iraq years ago.

 

[moonyham]

wow learn to read people. Im not saying psychs do/dont cause mental problems, im saying that the theory that all these problems that pop up, not neccasarily from just psychs but drugs in general, is all from latent psychological problems that were there before the drug induced state, seems like a load of shit and i wanna know what you think about THAT.

It just seems all too convenient to blame something that only popped up after you took x drug on 'latent' or 'previously underlying' mental issues when in reality, its more than likely(imo) it was purely the drug that created that problem and it never existed beforehand. I mean how can a mental problem be latent? It either is or it isnt.. you dont have depression and not know it or get any symptoms from it, you get depressed and thus you now have depression if you know what i mean.

The fact of the matter is, anyone is vulnerable to becoming depressed/schizo/bipolar and so on, no matter who or what they are, so if those mental issues can be created through everyday drug-free life, then why cant they be created by a drug induced state that is very mentally heavy? Why is it that almost everyone seems to think all these problems are already underlying and that they couldnt POSSIBLY be created/come about from a trip?

 

[Ismene]

The trouble is it's too easy to blame the drug. Just like in the victorian era when people hated the thought of people masturbating and were willing to believe masturbation caused insanity we now live in an era where the authorities hate the idea of anyone taking drugs and are all too willing to believe drugs cause insanity.

And of course there's the statistics that prove schizophrenia levels have stayed constant for the last 100 years. If psychdelic drugs caused schizophrenia then the schizophrenia rate should have exploded over the last 50 years. If more people smoke - more people get cancer. When more people take psychedelic drugs - the schizophrenia rate stays the same. That suggests it's not the acid.

 

[killmetonyt]

i once went to a federal mental institution for a class. and i interviewed this guy who was a flower child in the 60's.

he got into prison while shooting bids hanging up on electrical wires.. apparently, he shoot people instead.. with a shotgun.. while walking around down town. LOL.

anyway, he got bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. so talked like 1000mph.. in a very high tone... not breathing in between... and he was able to tell me his whole story in less than 8 mins... he said, "do LSD its ok, just dont take random white and brown powder form the stranger".. it was a classic text book case.


BUT, mental disorders can have some genetic predisposition... it is a matter of being exposed to environmental factors...and if you can cope in an adaptive way. other people have the genes but are fine, others dont but are fucked up.

its not black and white.

 

[killmetonyt]

oh yeah, drugs can increase you risk of "developing" mental illness. if you disturb your normal nuerotransmitter emission in the brain to the point the you cant function "sanely" without some sort of a substance, then we call it "crazy".

my uncle has "schizzophrenia" and talks back to the radio, my other uncle "is depressed".. my granda - alchoholic. so i probably have the same predisposing genes.

 

[hamhurricane]

i have personally watched a very close friend have a psychotic break after ingesting 44mg of 4-AcO-DMT, he was a high functioning student at a top 10 university and had to be institutionalized shortly afterwards, more than two years have passed and he has not recovered. so short answer - yes they can.

 

[daysonatrain]

moony, there are progressive psychological disorders, ones that dont show symptoms for many years. Using a strong mind altering substance can kick start the symptoms which may have been dormant for several more years without that strong mental distrubance that psychs can bring.

It sounds like you believe there are no "latent" psychogical problems (nothing under the surface of normal brain functioning or individual genetic predispositions). Personally i dont believe this.

"The fact of the matter is, anyone is vulnerable to becoming depressed/schizo/bipolar"-- got any science to back this up? im guessing not. depressed is one thing, but i dont think anyone is vulnerable to becoming schizophrenic.

 

[B9]

I've seen people lose it & recover alright after a period of time - I recall one case of a guy I knew slightly decades ago who didn't come back. My conclusion was that he would most likely have developed schizophrenia anyway.

I'd agree that there can be many many triggers, other than psychedelic ones, that could cause a person to develop mental illness.

The way in which psychotic breaks occur isn't known to me - I do think that some things may arise during a psychedelic experience which have been subconsciously suppressed for reasons unknown but (probably) mainly because the person once lacked the wherewithal to deal with such issue(s) in an effective way. Now then > fast forward - person A drops acid & this issue comes to the fore in some form or other - the response is one of liberation - because the person has since developed the skills/mental tools to deal with the issue.

Person B drops acid & the issue(s) come to the fore - person B has not developed the necessary mental tools to deal with the issue - the result could be an unpleasant experience with no obvious solution - perhaps if the issue,or the inability to deal with the issue, is distressing enough this potentially could induce a psychotic break of inderminate duration & intensity.
Psychedelics can open doors in the mind - some people cannot deal with what lies behind those doors & sadly sometimes they cannot close them or overcome whatever lies in that particular metaphorical room.

As a rule IME these incidents aren't common & most people can & do get over distressing trips.

However just because it's uncommon - or you haven't seen/known anyone whom this has happened to does not mean that it doesn't happen.

So yes psychedelics can cause mental illness - as can myriad other things.

 

[Ismene]

anyway, he got bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.

You'd think if LSD caused schizophrenia there would be a corresponding increase in schizophrenia rates tho.

Here's the same argument for the "cannabis causes schizophrenia" claim:



Countries which had extremely high cannabis use (Jamaica in 1995] had the same schizophrenia rates per 1000 as countries with zero cannabis use (Norway in 1926-1935).

Q: Does cannabis use cause schizophrenia?

A: No. Over the past four decades most countries in the Western world have experienced rapidly increasing cannabis use. None of these countries has experienced any accompanying “Madness” plague. Countries like Australia and Jamaica which have the highest levels of cannabis use have levels of schizophrenia similar to the rest of the world.

We’ve smoked the “Reefer” for four decades, and “Madness” levels have remained steady, not just in Australia, but all over the world.

Where does that leave the “Reefer Madness” theory??

http://drjiggens.com/does_cannabis_use_cause_schizophrenia.html

 

[Solipsis]

I think the topic title, question title and opening post are not formulated well.
Took me a while to get clear if you meant latent as in previously existing issues (like in the topic title) or create a whole new illness.

Personally I think both are possible, there might be unconscious issues that are never adressed by a person that are very painful should they surface. If this person takes psychedelics unknowingly that things can surface, it could pose a big mental dilemma. It can be traumatic if this person is unable to handle what was latently there.
It is however impossible to answer the question if this issue had arisen had the person never ingested psychedelics.

On the other hand, I think everyone has issues. That means that if you take someone who is relatively issue-free and stick them in a hopeless situation and then this person were to ingest a lot of psychedelics... I consider it possible that new issues sprout from 'potential issues', which can be blown out of control and proportion given certain circumstances.

 

[B9]

^ You have a valid point - I shall amend the title & risk the OPs wrath

 

[B9]

You'd think if LSD caused schizophrenia there would be a corresponding increase in schizophrenia rates tho.

There is no way to know whether psychedelic use is at a level that would affect the statistics tho - it's probably pretty low as a percentage of the population anyway so I'd have thought it unlikely to register statistically.

Realistically how many people did you know that were into psychs before you got into them?

I live in a medium sized town & I reckon the people who use psychedelcs compared to other drugs is minimal.

 

[medical_meccanica]

you dont have depression and not know it or get any symptoms from it, you get depressed and thus you now have depression if you know what i mean.

You should read some of Freud's psychodynamic theories, they're very interesting. Actually I'm under the impression from most of the psychology work I've done so far (which admittedly is not very much ) that there is a lot more sub-consciousness than there is consciousness in a human mind.

Keep in mind that this sub-conscious thought is actively repressed from your awareness, and while no-one is exactly sure why that is, the most common theory is that we just couldn't deal with it and function normally. Basically, we just could not deal with it consciously. For this reason, while you might not be depressed most of your life and then suddenly the symptoms kick in, you might become depressed because of sub-conscious elements that have been there most of your life.

Soooooo...

person A drops acid & this issue comes to the fore in some form or other - the response is one of liberation - because the person has since developed the skills/mental tools to deal with the issue.

Person B drops acid & the issue(s) come to the fore - person B has not developed the necessary mental tools to deal with the issue - the result could be an unpleasant experience with no obvious solution - perhaps if the issue,or the inability to deal with the issue, is distressing enough this potentially could induce a psychotic break of inderminate duration & intensity.
Psychedelics can open doors in the mind - some people cannot deal with what lies behind those doors & sadly sometimes they cannot close them or overcome whatever lies in that particular metaphorical room.

^ Such a good post.

A lot of the time depression or other states can be caused in a person because of sub-conscious elements of their mind that need to be dealt with or changed. But if someone were to be exposed to parts of their consciousness that they are not ready for, or because of psychedelics a change occurs in their sub-conscious that did not need to happen...

Who knows.

So little is known about our awareness for sure, or why things function the way they do. Great thread, dude. It's all so interesting!