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Mental Health Was it a one time drug related psychotic episode or had developed mental illness e.g schizophrenia, prescribed paliperidone/invega after

DislikeSobriety

DislikeSobriety

Bluelighter
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Asia
Hi guys more than a year ago, a friend was smoking an ounce of weed every 5 days with a joint lit up almost every hour everyday for a continuation of 9 whole months. Then she stopped cold turkey, after about 30 days of total abstinence she had delusions thinking everyone was looking at her and talking about her; some organisation bugged her device and is surveilling her, she guessed it was the police due to her drug use that sort of delusions, she had a hallucination of some devilish face of her sibling of a photo in a phone, continued delusions for about a week thinking an ex decided to take revenge and spent money hiring hackers to watch her and she had become a shamed Internet sensation where everyone on social media and who recognises her on the street was looking and gossiping about me, also believed that the police was watching her everything due to the huge publicity and knows that she had taken drugs before and her urine is still stained, thought that she had to feign a mental illness and had to be admitted in, to prevent the police from taking her into custody and to prevent mobs from harassing her

So she was admitted for observation continued having just occasional delusions, but she lied to the doctors that she was having visual hallucinations seeing non existent kids calling out for her play with them as they stood nearby, also lied that she couldn't differentiate the real and fake voices although they were all not true, she only had occasional delusions over the same thing being revenge of her ex that led to shamed Internet sensation where more information was digged up and police became involved and was monitoring, so she believed she needed to feign schizophrenia and behaved as such so that they would not pursue her on drug charges.

After a week inside she was prescribed paliperidone, but the occasional delusions continued, usually when watching TV she kept thinking it was trying to convey a message to her or that they were referring to her or at least she have since convinced herself over weeks of theorising why and who's after her through logical explanations like it's revenge from a particular very rich ex who got dumped terribly who decided to spend thousands of dollars as its relatively little to his lavish lifestyle on hacking and shaming me online that's why everyone was looking and talking about her and that the TV was Indeed relaying secret messages by some charitable secret organisation who was trying to help her in getting less shamed online and the legal troubles with the police, so she believed that this was actually happening till she was released a month later.

After a week of returning to the outside world her delusions stopped, she was finally convinced police wasnt watching anymore but was still bewildered if certain things did happen or was it just delusions, for the subsequent 2 weeks. Then she gave up finding the answers realising there's no way to confirm and fully stopped wondering about what actually happened during that period. She continued her every 3 months 1 jab medication of 350mg paliperidone for about 1.5 years now and would be continuing for about 8 more months till she graduates, she never had any sort of psychosis since then and doctors agreed to stop or reduced the medication only once she has graduated as a guarantee to prevent disruptions in life.

Was it simply because her body had gotten used to a big amount of weed and sudden discontinuation caused a one time brief psychotic attack consisting only of delusion for 3 weeks and one visual hallucation of 2 minutes and that she won't have psychosis again as long as she doesnt severely abuse drugs again? Or did it developed actual schizophrenia or some mental disorder in her?

She actually started drugs again after being clean and only on 350mg paliperidone for a year and while being still on paliperidone, she smoked 6 joints of weed daily for a month, did not have the slightest encounter of delusion or psychosis. Subsequent month she stopped weed and smoked 0.5g to 1g meth every 5 days with each session lasting up to 3 days without sleep but with proper daily habits over a month, no signs of psychosis as well although she didn't feel euphoric. Is these abuses that didn't result in another psychotic attack evidence that she do not actually have any psychosis related illness and that the only psychotic attack she had was due to drugs and all she needed was her body to fully clear it and that the occurrence of psychosis being 1 month after last drug use could still be a drug related psychosis.

Her doctor doesn't thinks it's drug related as she has continued having psychosis despite being clean for weeks while warded and that she had developed schizophrenia, but I heard that heavy users have thc and stuff staying in the body for many months unlike the standard 1 month max time in urine. Additionally, the doctors are on the impression that she was having visual hallucinations when warded which is what she lied about. Her doctors are required to report to the police about drug use so its not that convenient to discuss her drug use and the truth that it was due to delusion and fear of being arrested for drug use that she faked schizophrenia symptoms, although delusions did occur

Thank you so much for taking to time to read through my post, I appreciate it and hope that you could share some insights and enlighten us from experience. Merry Christmas and a happy new year. 😁
 
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I should think that a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist would be in a far better position to give you better advice than a group of random strangers on the internet. Next time you see your friend that's what I would recommend you tell her.

That being said, I would recommend her not self medicating until she has these delusions sorted out. Even if drug use is not the root cause it can exacerbate the effects and her resultant behavior.
 
psychonautwiki.org is a resource that may help her find what she's looking for. I find psychiatry takes a lazy approach to say you're schizophrenic or psychotic when it's just a matter of turning on your antenna. Invega is a go to for shrinks where cannabis has helped me a great deal. You've gotta be real comfortable with the thoughts in your head.
 
Yeah I know her psychiatrist would be the best bet for information and understanding, but we're in a country where use of illicit drugs are rare and frowned upon, her psychiatrist actually said she wants to report my friend's case to the police when my friend tried to shrieked responsibility for drug use by saying how she was tricked into taking drugs over a few occasions prior to the psychotic episode as she thought the panel of doctors had a least one detective recording everything she says as evidence,

main point is she greatly downplayed her actual drug use of which the doctors will not consider during diagnosis, she also mentioned soon after that she was not in the right frame of mind during her "confession" hoping it would mean unreliability and counted as nonsense blabbered due to psychosis, not sure if the doctors did report her case to the police though nothing related to the police happened to her for a long time,

I doubt there's patient doctor confidentiality in my country when a crime like drug consumption could happen, therefore she's kinda stuck and can't really discuss her matters with a professional, so here we are seeking help from people who may have had similar series of events and personal experiences as her and could shed some light..


I saw there's paliperidone threads v4 with thousands of replies and 3 previous threads so I was thinking there are many people who are on it like her in this forum, worth a try posting her situation and hope for answers, my friend is just 26 young when it happened 😔
 
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Just remember we’re fighting a war on drugs. Until that’s over then we have big pharma.
 
I’m not a psychiatrist but my understanding is that the treatment for both acute and chronic drug induced psychosis and organic psychosis as in schizophrenia is basically the same. You run the patient through a series of atypical anti-psychotics until you find the one that best relieves the psychosis and has the most tolerable side effects.

So whether your friend admits to drug use or not it may not matter as far as receiving medication that will relieve the psychosis is concerned.

The most important thing though is not to take anymore weed or other drugs known to induce psychosis. After the first episode of drug induced psychosis a person often becomes more susceptible to additional episodes at smaller doses of the drug.

Also if she’s got off on the wrong foot with the current doctor and raised suspicions of illegal behaviour which he might report, why not start fresh with a different doctor and just don’t mention drugs?
 
Because she feels that sharing her drug usage habits and last use will faciltate a more accurate diagnosis being that it could merely be the presence of drugs in the body that caused psychosis as opposed to the development of schizophrenia.. But if its like you said, that treatment of drug related psychosis and onset of schizophrenia is the same then I guess it matters less, although I wonder if the duration of paliperidone is also the same for both types of psychosis as I would think at drug related psychosis is temporary few months max whereas schizophrenia is a life long illness, thus medication should be administered for a shorter period of say 2 years instead of forever.. Idk man we are just really worried if she developed a life long illness and hoping to find evidence that suggests it was a one time occurence, as she's just embarking on a professional's career and having schizophrenia would ruin it all, troublesome and costly. And we are too eager and won't wait till at least 8 months later where mediation tapering or abstinence would occur and we would have to see through trial and error if still psychotic and confirmed schizophrenia.. Need some confidence boosts

Can't change doctors as she went to the national hospital where records are shared with hers stained with a new history of drug use, unless she sees a private doctor which she can't afford or is unwilling to pay the exorbitant medical fees 😩
Changing doctors isn't a priority, all will be the same unless she can find one that openly discusses drug use without fearing a report which I think would be rather difficult to find considering the culture in my country.






She's really stubborn on the drug use and believes her body is resilient and would not fail her again with another psychotic episode by simply not abusing at the extreme levels she got psychotic at. What should she do if she does have another psychotic episode while using drugs? Just sleep/eat and wait it out for a week before seeking professional help? Or immediately go to mental hospital and say she having a psychosis relapse without mentioning drug use because mentioning really isn't advisable for legality?
 
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ions said:
Psychiatry won’t address the root of the problem which could be abuse.
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But there's no problem unsolved, she only had one psychotic episode so far and it has been more than a year since it happened. She's very determined to never binge use to such a large extent like before and she's has been sticking to using rather safely with no repercussions since a year ago as compared to hourly use of a substantiate amount for close to a year
 
It sounds pretty similiar to schizophrenia. You can 'trigger' it through drug use/abuse, particularly if it's prolonged and heavy use. With weed losing your grip on a mental health happens to everyone at some point in their life, in some way or another anyway. It's one of those drugs/medicines/call it what you will that will creep up on you and if you don't respect it will gradually suck your soul from you. I used to know people who for a number of years weed didn't affect them at all, in fact it enhanced their personal lives. They were confident, had plenty of friends, had really good relationships, were always active and doing stuff etc. You'd never look at them and assume they were essentially abusing different drugs and often reguarly. After a while they kinda fell off the edge and started experiencing heightened anxiety, paranoia, low mood etc. These were people who had lots of experience with lots of different drugs, namely weed, psychedelics, MDMA etc. They were the last people you'd expect to hit them hard. I guess it can just happen to the best of us, even if we never expected it to. It happened to me too. Weed used to massively enhance my personal life and I'd use it for all sorts of things. After a while it became more like a curse and I'd feel really anxious, lose a lot of confidence, get really paranoid and detach from reality in ways that were really odd and sometimes disturbing. Sometimes I'd walk home high and even though I knew deep down it wasn't like I imagined in my mind, I'd believe people were looking at me, people 'knew' things about me and that I was a problem to people. I was constantly in a state of paranoia. I'd walk home sober and I'd have no experiences like this at all. I'd have all sorts of bizarre thoughts and racing of the mind which was anything but comfortable. I'd feel sick and like I was losing my mind. I'd stop smoking weed and it was like none of it ever happened. I now don't smoke it at all. I tried smoking it again a few years back and at first it was novel, enjoyable, complimenting. And then the ambition to smoke more and more happens and before long I was smoking what took me a week to smoke (probably a few grams) in therapeutic doses on my pipe to smoking that in one day, sometimes a few hours. The originality was lost as was the therapeutic benefits and it then became a chore. Then comes hating smoking the stuff with the excitement of scoring some weed and then the inevitable disappointment when it all feels the same and you can't enjoy it anymore. That's when sh*t hits the fan, imo. That's when you need to call it a day. Those that don't are doomed to fall into the trap of repeating the things that are slowly eating away at them. The risks here thereafter are usually pronounced.

The tipping point I would say depends on heredity. I'm fortunate in that through all my drug use/abuse I never developed psychosis. I did at one point have a psychotic episode with amphetamine but this was completely isolated and happened only once and never again. I had basically taken so much, enough for at least 2-3 people to have more than a good night on the stuff all by myself, that I naturally disintegrated. My younger brother though? Not so fortunate. He did develop psychosis that formed the basis for his schizophrenia and weed was the one thing he used to do a lot of. And what triggered it was almost definetly the drug abuse.

Bottom line? You have to help yourself. This is the dark world that DOES exist in the world of drug use/abuse. And it will become your reality if you get sucked into the vicious circle of doing things that will harm you, if not now but sometime in the future. There is a fine line. And understanding and accepting this is critical, especially when it seems like there is more involved than simply using drugs ie symptoms of mental health issues, deterioriation of quality of life, reduced health and wellbeing etc. Some people it affects them more, some it affects less. Either way the response to dealing with issues if they arise is the same.
 
Your state may have more mental health laws than others. Ny will institutionalize you if you are a threat to yourself and others. The stay is indefinite. If you’re living by yourself you may get by especially if u have family. But public housing will require you medicate. @DislikeSobriety
 
finitelifeform said:
It sounds pretty similiar to schizophrenia. You can 'trigger' it through drug use/abuse, particularly if it's prolonged and heavy use. With weed losing your grip on a mental health happens to everyone at some point in their life, in some way or another anyway. It's one of those drugs/medicines/call it what you will that will creep up on you and if you don't respect it will gradually suck your soul from you. I used to know people who for a number of years weed didn't affect them at all, in fact it enhanced their personal lives. They were confident, had plenty of friends, had really good relationships, were always active and doing stuff etc. You'd never look at them and assume they were essentially abusing different drugs and often reguarly. After a while they kinda fell off the edge and started experiencing heightened anxiety, paranoia, low mood etc. These were people who had lots of experience with lots of different drugs, namely weed, psychedelics, MDMA etc. They were the last people you'd expect to hit them hard. I guess it can just happen to the best of us, even if we never expected it to. It happened to me too. Weed used to massively enhance my personal life and I'd use it for all sorts of things. After a while it became more like a curse and I'd feel really anxious, lose a lot of confidence, get really paranoid and detach from reality in ways that were really odd and sometimes disturbing. Sometimes I'd walk home high and even though I knew deep down it wasn't like I imagined in my mind, I'd believe people were looking at me, people 'knew' things about me and that I was a problem to people. I was constantly in a state of paranoia. I'd walk home sober and I'd have no experiences like this at all. I'd have all sorts of bizarre thoughts and racing of the mind which was anything but comfortable. I'd feel sick and like I was losing my mind. I'd stop smoking weed and it was like none of it ever happened. I now don't smoke it at all. I tried smoking it again a few years back and at first it was novel, enjoyable, complimenting. And then the ambition to smoke more and more happens and before long I was smoking what took me a week to smoke (probably a few grams) in therapeutic doses on my pipe to smoking that in one day, sometimes a few hours. The originality was lost as was the therapeutic benefits and it then became a chore. Then comes hating smoking the stuff with the excitement of scoring some weed and then the inevitable disappointment when it all feels the same and you can't enjoy it anymore. That's when sh*t hits the fan, imo. That's when you need to call it a day. Those that don't are doomed to fall into the trap of repeating the things that are slowly eating away at them. The risks here thereafter are usually pronounced.

The tipping point I would say depends on heredity. I'm fortunate in that through all my drug use/abuse I never developed psychosis. I did at one point have a psychotic episode with amphetamine but this was completely isolated and happened only once and never again. I had basically taken so much, enough for at least 2-3 people to have more than a good night on the stuff all by myself, that I naturally disintegrated. My younger brother though? Not so fortunate. He did develop psychosis that formed the basis for his schizophrenia and weed was the one thing he used to do a lot of. And what triggered it was almost definetly the drug abuse.

Bottom line? You have to help yourself. This is the dark world that DOES exist in the world of drug use/abuse. And it will become your reality if you get sucked into the vicious circle of doing things that will harm you, if not now but sometime in the future. There is a fine line. And understanding and accepting this is critical, especially when it seems like there is more involved than simply using drugs ie symptoms of mental health issues, deterioriation of quality of life, reduced health and wellbeing etc. Some people it affects them more, some it affects less. Either way the response to dealing with issues if they arise is the same.
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Thank you for the informative post! noo!! Damn it.. why don't you think that it could possibly be just one time drug related psychosis without any development of illness? What Is considered as schizophrenia? Multiple psychosis over the years? Or it could happened once, be placed on antipsychotics and it never happens again as long as one is taking regular medication?

Surely she can't be diagnosed with schizophrenia after one episode of psychotic episode being just mild delusions as it didn't break her and make her behave any way irrationally or crazily, she was very calm in handling them, worst she did was to tell a neighbour that today's newspaper is fake and simply walked away when the neighbour looked at the newspaper and said no, it seems authentic, she also questioned two different strangers asking what's going on regarding her, said nevermind it's okay and walked away when they stood dumbfounded at her question.

Even when she saw the devil's hallucination on a phone she merely believed it was her sibling hinting to her to put on a show for the police and start projecting fear as the show. These symptoms must have been really mild as proven by her calm reactions and being just curious to make sense of the weird occurences which she was aware of being weird. Come on, don't these factors tilt towards it being a one time drug related psychosis?

How did you conclude when your brother definitely have schizophrenia?? We've never heard of such horrifying stories of weed always thought it's a safe Haven, especially when most of our university mates are daily users for months as well, and withdrawals was merely being able to sleep for only 3 hours each night for weeks and bad appetite unlike the uncontrollable cravings and anhedonia meth addiction would have presented. All until my friend had her psychotic break we then googled and know of more weed horror stories, though the rest now knows to cut down is it really too late

for her to prevent development of schizophrenia? Is this mindset destined for doom by trusting that it was a one time drug related psychosis and thus she can continue using drugs albeit at a smaller extent which she has been experimenting with no relapse so far and only if there's another psychotic attack should she be worried that she is genuinely much more prone to psychosis and schizophrenia is real or would it really be really too late then upon a second psychosis?
 
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ions said:
Your state may have more mental health laws than others. Ny will institutionalize you if you are a threat to yourself and others. The stay is indefinite. If you’re living by yourself you may get by especially if u have family. But public housing will require you medicate. @DislikeSobriety
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She wasn't a threat to anyone or herself, she voluntarily went up to the mental hospital and asked to be warded as she knew something wrong was going on with her.. We trust that the medical service provider know what's best for a patient, and would accept it with the idea of it being temporary, if she was ever deemed too insane for release. She also doesn't mind getting medicated if she was still experiencing psychotic symptom and of course wants to stop medication now that symptoms have subsided
 
Defamation. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. These problems are bigger than any one person.
 
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