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psychosis

markosheehan

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 17, 2016
Messages
238
how much do drugs like cannabis,lsd and psilocybin cause psychosis (to what extent). how do they cause psychosis.?
 
Well they can trigger psychosis at least in those susceptible, I would think that the break in division between reality and fantasy would be the main culprit as this is something that may be much more difficult with people with certain mental illness.

There is also a particular genetic factor that can make a person susceptible to getting a psychosis when they are in their teens and smoke cannabis, you can get tested for those genes but you primarily should if it runs in the family. I don't know how that genetic predisposition relates to the genes causing things like schizophrenia.

There has also been a huge study showing that there is little to no correlation between psychedelics and mental illness... which makes it important to consider whether instances of psychosis with psychedelics is caused or triggered. The difference with that is sort of hidden and involves a weakness, but apart from the fact that stresses and other particular things can be triggers, such a weakness may be permanent and a lack of such a weakness, too. Although I think nobody should ever think or act as if they are immune to getting mental problems, on principle.

For the rest, you should really use the search engine including just googling outside of Bluelight. On this particular topic there are so many previous threads and webpages that I don't know if it's worth starting from scratch instead.

I don't think the general extent to which psychedelics "cause" psychosis should concern you too much if things like schizophrenia or similar conditions run in your family and there are not really signs in your life now or all the way to when you were little, that you have difficulties with knowing or feeling what is real or not for example...
But your kind of - apparently - obsessive, anxious or hypochondriac tendencies displayed are worth keeping an eye on. Not things that will always go the wrong way with things like this, but for example psychedelics make people highly suggestive, and part of hypochondriac sort of anxieties have to do with suggestibility: to blow things enormously out of proportion / meaning / context... Make sure you see things in perspective. (Of course you should take things seriously! But you should also take some answers as being reassuring enough to move on.
 
yes there are other sources for information on this topic but i find them all very bias. thats why i asked here. the reason i ask is i have gotten onto a argument with some wether cannabis causes psychosis. thanks for your reply anyway
 
Alright... an argument could come from the word "cause" being a bit charged, but i covered my opinion on that.
 
I really don't think cannabis could ever cause psychosis.

I'm of the belief that when people have these freak outs on drugs that seem permanent, they're something that would happen without the drugs, or to be quit frank, they happen to people who are scared of some natural facet of life, or are otherwise predisposed to some sort of distortion of reality or illness.
 
Well people with the AKT1 gene are at higher risk of it with cannabis, I don't know if you think that qualifies as 'cannabis causing it'.

About the freak-out: I mostly agree!! Well not that it needs to be something freak-out like, but if it is a huge paradigm shift, it can be a major problem to deal with that mentally. I think some people might not be up to the task, but it may be different things that could cause people to problematize it. I definitely think that not knowing and understanding that this may be what happened to you can be a big part of making it difficult but I may be personally biased about that since it was for me. I don't think I am scared about anything like you describe it, I did feel like I had to figure myself out again from scratch.
I can imagine various variations on that theme where people are thrown ahead in some ways but thrown back in others... it's a vague way to talk, but yeah I think that can cause major destabilizing problems.

More difficult though is that psychosis is some steps further: it is not just figuring out yourself but also parts of the world and existence that are just crucial to proper functioning and mental health. If you for example become unsure about your existence being dependent on that of others, like the opposite of solipsism, that is serious. (Ontological security - considered a fair portion of many cases of psychosis by R.D. Laing).

What you say may apply to people destabilizing entirely, but not necessarily to the point of psychosis. What guards their definitions of real and existing thus remains a bit elusive.
 
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do you know the mechanism of drug induced psychosis. when i looked it up i read that it happens by changes in dopamine levels. also i looked i googled ukt1 gene and i cant find anything on it
 
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Dopaminergic mechanisms seem to be one of several since I don't think all sorts of induced psychosis can be explained that way, and probably not purely by pharmacology anyway. D2 agonism apparently can cause it, but I would not think that this is what allows it to happen with sleep deprivation for example where one of the things is a general lack of allowing receptors to go to rest and reset sensitivity. Things like 2C-T-7 but also 2C-B can make people delirious which can probably be hard to differentiate from drug-induced psychosis and the dopaminergic mechanisms there would also fail.

I don't think you can reduce it to one cause, there are various ways of destabilizing your thinking patterns and judgement so much that delusions can take hold.

Sorry I typo'd... it's AKT1

Paying close attention to set and setting before you get yourself into something is your best call to prevent things like that from happening.
 
I really don't think cannabis could ever cause psychosis.

Cannabis absolutely can cause psychosis. Obviously it's different for different people and maybe cannabis will never cause psychosis in one person but cause it every time it's used in another person.

Weed caused me to go into full blown paranoid dillusions for a little while, even when I wasn't high. I thought everything anyone said was a secret insult to me and everyone would talk shit when I wasn't around. luckily I was able to rationalize that this likely wasn't the case and it went away eventually. I have anxiety issues but I don't have schizophrenia or any other similar mental illnesses, this wasn't a reflection of mental illness just a bad reaction to the substance.
 
One Method Drugs Might Induce Psychosis

I think psychosis is widely considered to represent a kind of split in the personality/memory/experience, to cope with a trauma or existential discontinuity.

Here is one effect of psychedelics: surfacing material from the subconscious into conscious awareness. Surfacing a difficult constellation of emotions, memories, or confusions could itself be difficult.

Here is one point about cannabis and psychosis: a person who experiences an existential trauma (for them), such as a debilitation, could possibly have psychotic reaction to cannabis because of the characteristic manner in which cannabis can surface the trauma. [For example, I would suggest the word, "disassociation" if a person in weed-induced psychosis started talking about "distractibility."]

I would be less concerned about the risk of LSD or mushrooms surfacing trauma in a manner that induces psychosis (personally). The manner in which these substances surface traumatic issues seem to 'go with the subject' more, step-by-step. It is as if the drugs say, "Think about it all the way through...Feel it...Yes...Let out that ocean of tears, baby..." or "Here is a summary of your entire life, flashing before your eyes and summed up neatly in one hour, just to give you another look..."

I suppose psychedelics could be traumatic. For example, being given a psychedelic against one's will, when it is not right for that person. It could possibly cause deep trauma (as well as surface trauma) in such a manner as to induce psychosis.

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The legal-research that is being done on psychedelics has excluded people with pre-existing / family mental health problems. This is not definitive one way or the other. Obviously, early research should be done in such a manner to demonstrate the positive healing potential of these drugs. These drugs can help people to heal in various ways--so the strategy is to prove their efficacy and safety, get them legalized for prescription purposes--and afterwards explore more uncertain problems from a contemporary medical methodology such as relieving (or possibly exacerbating) mental illness.

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As far as I understand about psychosis, there is something called 'reality testing'--is the person capable of testing their 'delusions'? Like, if a client believes that a doctor is reacting to the client's thoughts--is the client capable of putting this theory to a 'reality test'? The majority view seems to focus on reducing the effects of psychosis, as if it were a painful disease that gets worse and worse, rather than letting psychosis 'run its course,' as if it were a healing process. Terrence McKenna once described his brother's week-long(er) psychosis when they were living off of the magic mushroom fields they discovered during their deep wanderings in the jungle. Terrence insisted that the only reason his brother healed, is that they did not try to 'slap him out of it,' but that they let the psychosis proceed along its natural course until it came to a point of resolution.
 
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Not sure how much weight "it could trigger schizphrenia" has - I could say anything could trigger schizophrenia and it would be as meaningful. I suppose people think that because LSD has an effect on the mind that must mean it causes schizophrenia - that's not really logical. As far as anyone knows schizophrenia has a genetic cause.

Seeing as schizophrenia rates have remained constant or fallen in the developed world for the last 100 years, if psychedelics triggered it I would have expected to see an enormous spike in the figures since the 60s. It never happened. My guess is if you're genetically susceptible to schizophrenia you're going to get it regardless - if you're trying to avoid "triggers" what do you do? Avoid going out with girls in case the stress of a breakup "triggers" it? Avoid exams because the stress might "trigger" it? So what do you do? Stay indoors and bury yourself under a duvet? Life is inherently stressful and everything involved in being alive might "trigger" schizophrenia.
 
There are always advancements being made into research on the brain and mental health. To think that 100 years ago, fibromyalgia was assumed to be a mental ailment, when it is now widely thought to be a physical ailment, could be one such example of this.

I can't ever imagine LSD triggering fibromyalgia. I also tend to think that if someone is going to have a permanent mental illness, then they will be born with it. This may be later diagnosed, of course, but there has to be a distinction between drug induced psychosis and schizophrenia.

The difference between the two is of paramount importance when you consider the amount of people that think they are damaged for life and prescribed damaging anti-psychotics, which in turn cause seemingly permanent changes in the brain, thereby exacerbating any changes caused by experimenting with mind altering drugs to begin with.

A human brain is a beautiful thing. It changes throughout life and can be trained to repair itself. This can be done without medications.
 
Pfff maybe you can't avoid all triggers and with the genetic predisposition for schizophrenia are more or less bound to get episodes sooner or later, but that doesn't mean that it isn't wise to avoid things that really encourage delusions or experiences that can mess with your boundaries between fantasy and reality, and possible existential "warping". Ideally you'd just do the best you can to avoid the worst potential triggers even if you cannot avoid them all.

I do agree with the general sentiment that LSD and other psychedelics do not cause it, but that doesn't mean they cannot exacerbate the condition which then wouldn't show up in the statistics of prevalence. I won't say that it's impossible to actually be fine tripping when you have schizophrenia or even get significant therapeutic effect associated with the condition, but you would be playing with fire in my opinion - is that not sensible? I don't have schizophrenia but I have other mental problems and I would say that I have also played with fire in that same sense, although never in the psychotic / delusional department. Still, I'm lucky that I turned out okay despite heavy tripping when my mindset was not alright, and am now so stable and well-managed mentally that tripping doesn't show the same risks, especially since the experiences aren't so heavy anymore and not as critical / enlightening.

And no I don't personally see LSD triggering fibromyalgia, a big part of it is pain / inflammation in the iirc connective tissue esp in certain places in the body, I also don't see a connection between mental symptoms that can be a part of the syndrome and possible problems that can arise from LSD use.

I don't believe that a psychosis is necessarily a traumatic reaction. Why would people with that AKT1 gene have traumata and not people without the gene? I think you were more correct with the 'existential discontinuity', which I would say involves confusion about things like ontological security, the contingency of your being, and depersonalization / derealization issues. These things may all rather be connected to the psychedelic sort of effects from cannabis and apparently this gene is associated with a sensitivity to be unable to cope with such a reaction.

A lot of the time, we consider psychedelics to be wonderful and self-resolving. We may confide in the wisdom and guidance of the experiences and gather great confidence in them. But I think it's not right to get defensive about their potential to cause or trigger issues, just because it can be a bit specific. IME Mostly people coming to PD with issues after a trip have developed either something akin to a panic disorder or some form of existential crisis or depersonalization (sometimes also with DR), I'm not sure if people with a psychosis have certain reasons why we don't see them that much in PD, creating a thread about their problem... or if there just aren't that many.

So: generally the risks really don't seem that high, but we should have some reservations about how people with psychiatric sensitivities ought to handle themselves around psychedelics and whether it is responsible to take them for just anyone. Or maybe the best way to put that: with any mindset! There is a reason why set and setting are golden guidelines.
 
IMO you get a more brought to the surface version of whatever mental illness you have when you trip. I'd go as far as to say that the difference between "hardheads" and "light trippers" is things like having or not having anxiety, bipolar, insomnia etc.
 
I see what you're saying, personally I always considered those that are called hardheads to even need higher doses just to get an effect, so then you're not even in the territory yet of having to deal with such issues handling any trip.

But yes, tripping brings everything to the surface. Positive quirks, serious hang-ups... things that happened that you repressed. All kinds of shit. But IME that shit doesn't necessarily keep coming endlessly. Resolving things can mean you don't have to face your most basic demons all over again every trip, though perhaps some demons are too heavy to get rid of? I wouldn't know but I can see how that would work.

I imagine some mental problems can be particularly challenging to deal with during a trip, some of them may never go away if they are part of a disorder that cannot be cured. However I think a number of them can possibly be managed if you learn how. Part of it may involve choosing the right psychedelic that is not too unforgiving in the department you have troubles with.
 
Depersonalization can be fun though. I tripped in a forest once with some mates. We were laughing intensely to begin with, but we got to a point where we took off in different directions and lost each other. I sat next to a river and felt like I was a part of the river. All the fish. The ebbs and flows. The sand on the banks. It certainly wasn't the first or last time this happened. I've been at the beach and felt like I was the waves. Even trees have spoken to me when I've been on acid.

There was one evening when we were all little teenage hoodlums and had been tripping, and the police started chasing us because there were some drunk members of our party that were breaking things and lighting fires. I distinctly remember running down a steep incline with a cop car in heavy chase, and I climbed across an aqueduct so they couldn't follow me. I sat there for a while watching the chaos on the other side, listening to water trickle down through the valley along with the sirens and crackling flames of the fires.

What's interesting to me about my journey is there were several years where I had an intense opiate addiction and doctors couldn't tell the difference between whether I had a permanent mental health issue or just a drug dependency. The amount and depth of diagnoses I heard over the years were confounding. It was all speculation which the doctors would masquerade as proper objective diagnosis. I can laugh about it now, because I know that most of it on my behalf was to acquire certain medications, which I no longer feel the need to obtain. Whereas if I were to return to one of those doctors, then I'm sure they would still think, or make out, that I was ill in some way, and I wouldn't have a problem sourcing whatever I wanted from them.

This is highly common within my group of friends, anyway, and there are still mates of mine that think they are permanently ill in some way and it has really fucked up their lives. My saving grace was getting an education and attending university. It challenged me and gave me a way out of that life which I was making for myself through heading down the wrong path so early in my life.

This is why I think that the distinction between what is an actual permanent mental illness and what is just a temporary ailment needs to be made. I could get technical about it and refer to genes and philosophical viewpoints like pluralism and adaptionism, but these days I prefer to just draw from my experience and move forward with the momentum.
 
I tend to think drugs you can take every day are more likely to cause you mental health problems - for a drug to change your life in one hit takes some believing but if you're taking speed/pot etc every day for months perhaps that can cause mental health problems in some people. Not schizophrenia tho - I think drug use is independent of that. I know everyone always says "Syd or Peter Green" but they were just at the right age to develop schizophrenia so whether the drugs had anything to do with it...Obviously the drugs will get the blame because it makes for a better story - "He took acid and never came back dude!" sounds a lot more rock n roll than "He developed schizophrenia".

Hope you're ok cream gravy!
 
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