washingtonbound
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2013
- Messages
- 438
Hi all, I wanted to post this thread to try and make sense of a recent episode I had over the summer. Quick history: I'm 20, no history of mental illness in the family, no past psychotic or unusual episodes prior to this one, and overall stable upbringing. In general, no reason to believe that anything like this would have occurred beforehand.
I spent the year before it happened at school in Seattle and ramped up my cannabis consumption considerably. I went from smoking a couple times a month to every day in a relatively short period of time. However, I didn't notice any drastic changes in my mood with the exception of the fact that I was always a little bit harder on myself when I wasn't smoking. There were always a lot of "should you's" running through my mind that were often irrelevant to the big picture. Still, I didn't perceive it to be anything other than the usual growing up process. Everyone goes through periods of self doubt and self discovery during this time so I didn't see any real cause to be concerned. Weed seemed to be an effective way to delineate my thought patterns and helped me to live more spontaneously and with less rigid guidelines on myself. I just figured: It's helpful, so "why not." I maintained decent grades in school and held a job and internship for the majority of the year.
Some unfortunate circumstances led me to relocate back home to SW FL over the summer (I had a terrible roommate), and I knew almost immediately that it was a bad idea. I no longer had access to anywhere near as many resources as I did in Seattle and found myself ruminating in my own thoughts. My parents live in a small primarily retirement community in SW FL and it was a hard adjustment. Still, I did not anticipate what was to come.
One day I was sitting in my guesthouse smoking like normal with my friend and all of a sudden: BOOM. It was like all my senses were suddenly turned on overdrive. Patterns on the wall became more fascinating and I felt like I was merging into the environment. Note that I have taken a few psychedelics in the past and never experienced such a profound cognitive shift. Soon after I began talking like a computer and became very fixated on zeros and ones. "Equilibrium" and "Infinity" were common themes in my writings. Eventually my Mother became concerned and called the fire department because I wasn't sleeping and was acting erratic. Long story short, I was baker acted and spent 10 days in a mental hospital.
After that the paranoia really set in. I began to believe that the NSA could tap into your thought patterns and that psychiatric institutions were set up to lobotomize the population. It seems that anti-government sentiment is present in the majority of "manic" episodes, which I find intriguing.
Now I find myself much more interested in cosmology and using mathematics to explain the universe. I consider myself to have grown intellectually through that experience and don't consider it entirely detrimental. Although I wouldn't want to behave in such an intense manner, I think it's important not to write off an episode like that as the bantering of some nutjob. In my opinion, the entire concept of mental health needs to be reassessed.
Thanks for reading.
I spent the year before it happened at school in Seattle and ramped up my cannabis consumption considerably. I went from smoking a couple times a month to every day in a relatively short period of time. However, I didn't notice any drastic changes in my mood with the exception of the fact that I was always a little bit harder on myself when I wasn't smoking. There were always a lot of "should you's" running through my mind that were often irrelevant to the big picture. Still, I didn't perceive it to be anything other than the usual growing up process. Everyone goes through periods of self doubt and self discovery during this time so I didn't see any real cause to be concerned. Weed seemed to be an effective way to delineate my thought patterns and helped me to live more spontaneously and with less rigid guidelines on myself. I just figured: It's helpful, so "why not." I maintained decent grades in school and held a job and internship for the majority of the year.
Some unfortunate circumstances led me to relocate back home to SW FL over the summer (I had a terrible roommate), and I knew almost immediately that it was a bad idea. I no longer had access to anywhere near as many resources as I did in Seattle and found myself ruminating in my own thoughts. My parents live in a small primarily retirement community in SW FL and it was a hard adjustment. Still, I did not anticipate what was to come.
One day I was sitting in my guesthouse smoking like normal with my friend and all of a sudden: BOOM. It was like all my senses were suddenly turned on overdrive. Patterns on the wall became more fascinating and I felt like I was merging into the environment. Note that I have taken a few psychedelics in the past and never experienced such a profound cognitive shift. Soon after I began talking like a computer and became very fixated on zeros and ones. "Equilibrium" and "Infinity" were common themes in my writings. Eventually my Mother became concerned and called the fire department because I wasn't sleeping and was acting erratic. Long story short, I was baker acted and spent 10 days in a mental hospital.
After that the paranoia really set in. I began to believe that the NSA could tap into your thought patterns and that psychiatric institutions were set up to lobotomize the population. It seems that anti-government sentiment is present in the majority of "manic" episodes, which I find intriguing.
Now I find myself much more interested in cosmology and using mathematics to explain the universe. I consider myself to have grown intellectually through that experience and don't consider it entirely detrimental. Although I wouldn't want to behave in such an intense manner, I think it's important not to write off an episode like that as the bantering of some nutjob. In my opinion, the entire concept of mental health needs to be reassessed.
Thanks for reading.
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