washingtonbound
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2013
- Messages
- 449
My descent into mental illness
Hi all, I wanted to share my experience because I've been doing a lot self reflection over the past few months and I thought you could benefit from hearing it.
First of all, I can't stand it when people have a negative experience with a substance and because of that try to preach to others that it won't work for them either. Everyone's brain chemistry is different and some people can certainly benefit from moderate marijuana use among other things. But unfortunately in my experience, the increase in my marijuana use kickstarted my pitfall.
When I was in high school I smoked off and on but it was never more than very casual use. I saw it as similar to drinking in the sense that it would give people something to do in social situations besides just sitting around. But when I got to college, I ramped my use up to daily and this unfortunately was one of the worst decisions I could have made.
The concerning thing is that I don't have any family history of mental illness. No bipolar/schizophrenia or anything of that nature. However, I have dealt with a fair bit of self esteem issues and a lot of intrusive thoughts. Often times I would feel a lot of negative feelings about myself which the weed initially alleviated. I would be able to enter a completely non judgemental and tranquil state of mind when I smoked.
But as I continued to smoke daily I would feel worse and worse afterward. The intrusive thoughts got bad to the point of me hitting myself and I appeared very strange to people at my college. My mental health got worse and worse as I over indulged in weed and strong wax to the point of a psychotic break. Ever since then I have not been the same.
Just wanted to share this with you all because in my experience weed will only be a temporary band aid for more complex psychological issues and there isn't a way out of dealing with them. I would encourage those of you who use weed to avoid dealing with certain aspects of yourself to examine it. If I had been more cognizant of my use earlier I wouldn't have ended up in this situation.
Hi all, I wanted to share my experience because I've been doing a lot self reflection over the past few months and I thought you could benefit from hearing it.
First of all, I can't stand it when people have a negative experience with a substance and because of that try to preach to others that it won't work for them either. Everyone's brain chemistry is different and some people can certainly benefit from moderate marijuana use among other things. But unfortunately in my experience, the increase in my marijuana use kickstarted my pitfall.
When I was in high school I smoked off and on but it was never more than very casual use. I saw it as similar to drinking in the sense that it would give people something to do in social situations besides just sitting around. But when I got to college, I ramped my use up to daily and this unfortunately was one of the worst decisions I could have made.
The concerning thing is that I don't have any family history of mental illness. No bipolar/schizophrenia or anything of that nature. However, I have dealt with a fair bit of self esteem issues and a lot of intrusive thoughts. Often times I would feel a lot of negative feelings about myself which the weed initially alleviated. I would be able to enter a completely non judgemental and tranquil state of mind when I smoked.
But as I continued to smoke daily I would feel worse and worse afterward. The intrusive thoughts got bad to the point of me hitting myself and I appeared very strange to people at my college. My mental health got worse and worse as I over indulged in weed and strong wax to the point of a psychotic break. Ever since then I have not been the same.
Just wanted to share this with you all because in my experience weed will only be a temporary band aid for more complex psychological issues and there isn't a way out of dealing with them. I would encourage those of you who use weed to avoid dealing with certain aspects of yourself to examine it. If I had been more cognizant of my use earlier I wouldn't have ended up in this situation.
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