Marijuana and Mental Health – Part 3

If you haven’t read it already, Part 2 is available here  

“They said I was acting mad in the street with no shoes on  … Someone called the police. I don’t know where I am … I told the rickshaw driver to take me anywhere.

The next time I was at home with my parents. They were so worried. I hadn’t slept for two days.

I was so gone I was drinking the milk from our dog’s bowl.” – Y

“I gave my soul away to the lady who sold furniture. Now I have a hole in my head. You have one, too, right. You understand? … Half my body is paralysed.

To fall asleep, I have to switch off from my belly button.

If I sleep with the fan on high on my face then sometimes I can’t hear the voices.

I read the newspapers. I find the code. Do you know the Fibonacci sequence? The code is there.” – Z

3. Patient Y

I first met Y at the ashram. A shy, softly spoken young lady in her early twenties. I had followed her posts of exquisite poetry on os.me when it was open for members to write.  To look at Y you never could have imagined her mental torment.

Y grew up in a small town in Maharashtra, India, and headed to the city for University. At 17 she had decided she wanted try weed. She found plenty of opportunity at Uni. Y says, when she smoked marijuana she would see things that other people could not see, such as shapes and colours. She said it felt as if she had opened up another dimension of her mind. She enjoyed the feeling.

The enjoyment was, however, short lived. One day, Y fell into a state of psychosis for the first time. She kicked off her footwear, glasses and jewellry, because, as she says, she felt that she didn’t want these things to define her, and she got into an auto-rickshaw telling the startled driver to take her “anywhere.”  Y was insistent and in a frightful state so he did as told and drove. To date she doesn’t know exactly where she ended up. The state she was in was so alarming, wailing in the streets, that a stranger called the police. The police took her to University where they identified Y and called her parents.

I was deeply unnerved when I listened to Y recount this. By Divine Grace, she made it home unharmed that day. Anything could have happened to her; anyone could have taken advantage of her. If you know the late Jyoti Singh’s horrific story, you know what people are capable of out there. I shudder to think.

Y says the worst memory she has of psychosis frightens her even today when she thinks about it. Y had not slept for two days and nights. In her mind, she had found the essence of Life. She was seeing and experiencing things that she felt the whole world should know about. In this highly manic state, however, Y was not coherent. On the inside, she was experiencing  what she thought was the unveiling of the mystery of the Universe, but on the outside she was speaking gibberish. Nobody could understand what Y was saying and when she drank the milk from her dog’s bowl, her parents threw their hands up in  agonising distress and reached out to Y’s boyfriend for help.

Y’s boyfriend arrived and helped to calm her down. All night, he held her like a mother holds a frightened child. Y says, that night, while trying to fall asleep, she saw a huge snake puppet emerge from her boyfriend’s body and fill the space in front of her. Y screamed her lungs out. There was no way she could be made to believe it wasn’t real.

Y spent some time at the ashram and received Swami ji’s blessing. She recounts a night there where she felt an episode of psychosis coming on in her accomodation room. At first she felt fear, but then had a very beautiful experience. Y felt Swami ji’s presence very strongly coming from the photo she had of Swami ji in her room. She said it was loving, protective and reassuring. Since then, Y has not had another major episode and she is now on a very minimal dose of medication.

I met Y’s boyfriend at the ashram too. He is one of the most humble, sweetest, young chaps I have met. He and Y have been through hell and back and yet he is still by her side. No doubt, Swami ji gives him the strength and patience to be the rock that he is for Y.

Y, I pray for you. May you continue to grace this world with your kind, innocent ways, with your poetry and music. May Swami ji’s healing continue to flow to you both, keeping you both strong and at peace. Thank you for allowing me to share a part of your story.

4. Patient Z

The first time I met Z, he had just gotten home after being held in a jail cell overnight. He was covered in wounds and dried blood.

Z’s case was very complicated. He had been on a high dose of antipsychotics for a decade. As a child, Z was sensitive, quiet and studious. His academic ability was far beyond his peers’. He travelled to Australia for higher studies and was well into his actuarial science degree when something changed.

Z grew marijuana plants in his back garden. That’s what changed. Soon enough Z began to experience paranoia.

And then, Z lost everything.

He could no longer complete his degree. And his highschool sweetheart, whom he had travelled to Australia with, left him. Z’s intentions were to be close to her, because he loved her, but this was misread. His behaviour was so erratic that the police authorities were called in to keep him away from her.

Z returned to his home country and was shuffle-boarded from one psychiatrist to another, one facility to another, in his home country and other  countries. He was heavily medicated and had completely withdrawn from society.

Z is now in his late thirties. He lives with his father, a single parent. Z’s ageing father does his best to take care of his son. He has put his life on hold for Z. Not long before I met Z for the first time, he had pulled in a favour from a friend to give Z some employment in the friend’s  office. Z’s father understood it was important to give Z something to do, to help to keep his mind occupied. He had settled well into his filing job at the insurance firm when, one day, Z beat up a man, smashing an entire office window. He was arrested and held in a cell.

When I met Z for the first time and sat with him at his home on the morning of his release, with his counsellor present, Z was cut from the broken glass. We tried to understand what had happened.

You see, Z is a very gentle giant. Portly, with a very cute, childlike face and a cheeky smile. His glasses only add to his innocence. How could someone like this attack a co-worker and break a window, I thought. I couldn’t understand it. Over the course of the months I was there and the opportunities I was given to sit down with Z and listen to him, little bits of information came out. His thoughts seemed scattered though, as when he spoke, one sentence to the next seemed completely unrelated, illogical.

It turned out, the story was that Z had stepped out of the office to have a cigarette break. While outside, some street hawkers had aggressively tried to sell him some belts. Z had been caught off guard by them and it made him feel quite stressed. When he re-entered his office, Z was a little worked up. When a co-worker approached Z about some work, Z couldn’t control how he was feeling and he erupted. In his college days, Z had earned a black belt in martial arts and instinct took over.

The moment the ashram re-opened after the Covid lockdowns, Z’s father booked two flights to India and requested to meet Swami ji for a blessing. In 2022, after an entire decade Z stopped all medicine of his own accord. He went from high doses of antipsychotics and antidepressants to nothing, overnight. It’s not recommended at all. It could even be dangerous, but one meeting with Swami ji changed everything for Z.

Z is much more stable than before. He is still free of all medicine. He is at present at an ayurvedic health centre in South India with his father, where he is responding well to meditation, therapies and counselling. Z’s journey continues.

…

After my first two posts in this series a number of you reached out to me either with questions or to share your experiences and concerns for your loved ones. My heart goes out to all the addicts, mental health patients and their families. I hope my responses and my posts are of some use. I will continue to share my life truthfully, no holds barred, in the hope that it can be helpful.

X and I shed happy tears reading the comments where some of you said you’ve got the message and will stay well away from drugs. Thank you, thank you. It’s this that makes all our pain worthwhile, knowing you won’t have to go through the same things we did.

…

As Swami ji says, every mental health case is different.

Some people have a genetic disposition, some don’t. Some have drug induced disorders and some stem from abuse. Many have all three.

A large part of the problem of why young people start getting into drug abuse is their family life and the people around them growing up. Almost every child who turns to drugs later on suffered some kind of abuse or bullying as a child, usually from their parents or a someone close.

From my observation, mental health disorders such as schizophrenia are the most difficult thing in the world to deal with. Harder than any physical ailment you can think of. And it’s not only the patient’s life that is ruined but the lives of the families and loved ones who end up trying to take care of the patient. It’s excruciating to watch their suffering.

The road to recovery, if the patient ever does recover, can be very slow, long and soul shattering.

Some need medicine and therapy etc, some can recover without (call it Divine Grace). But each person needs a LOT of love and understanding, especially from their families and loved ones (This jogged my memory, I forgot to mention in part 2, X’s brother is getting help for his addiction and anger management. He has finally accepted treatment).

So, if you’re ever offered a drug, please remember W,X,Y,Z and think of your parents, your siblings, your friends, your loved ones. If you lost your mind, how would they feel, what would they have to deal with? I think then you’ll know exactly what to do.

And remember, there are better, completely safe ways to get high! I’ve written about them here and here.

I hope this mini-series has been and eye opener. I hope it is helpful. Please take care of your little ones. And please take good care of yourselves.

Y and her boyfriend and Z’s father read my posts, so if you would like to leave a message for any of them, please do below. Your loving words of support hold much healing for everyone, including me.

Thank you all. God bless you always!

With His Grace,

Sushree Diya

🧡