Marijuana and Mental Health – Part 1

“There’s always a gun to my head. You don’t understand … The pressure … If I say or do the wrong thing, they will come at me. I can’t say any more, they will come after me.” – W

“The whole world can see through my eyes and hear my thoughts … I know you’re all in on it, but you can’t tell me … The voices are loud and constant. They hurl abuse at me all the time, they say things like ‘We’re gonna f*** you up’ and ‘Africa hates you’, ‘The whole world hates you’. They never shut up. I see angry faces in the sky. They tell me awful things. Who did this to me? Is it God or a microchip? I know you know. ” – X

The thing with any drug, you only need to do it once to become addicted. One time, that’s it and you’re already an addict and you don’t even know it.

And no drug is tame or safe, let me tell you. Hard drugs, lower grade, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana/cannabis/weed, it makes no difference. They all have the same potential to bind you for life and ruin it completely to the point where it is unsalvageable.

It is a myth that you can’t get addicted if you try it only once. I know from first-hand experience. Once is all it takes.

And it terrifies the crap out of me that around the world, countries are legalising marijuana. In my eyes, it’s the most dangerous one. The number of people I’ve met in recent years who suffer from serious mental illness, the worst kind possible, is heartbreaking, and the common denominator among them is that they all smoked weed. Yes, every single one of them. 100% of them.

Some of these people smoked a little, some a lot, and one young lady  tried it only once, but every single one of them ended up with psychosis and schizophrenia-type illnesses. One young man in particular, his symptoms are so complicated that doctors cannot give a complete diagnosis; it’s beyond schizophrenia. It’s impossible to have a coherent conversation with him. He grew his own marijuana at his home in Australia, so the argument that if you smoke organic weed that isn’t tainted or mixed with anything else, you will be safe, is completely invalid, in my opinion.

Marijuana might make a terminal patient feel relaxed but in truth, nobody profiting cares about that (and controlled drugs like lorazopam and morphine do a great job already). It is being legalised purely for financial reasons: governments collect tax on it, and pharma companies will make trillions treating marijuana-induced schizophrenia and psychosis.

Yes, I’m not a scientist or a medical professional, but I am a former addict. And one who has spent the last few years, after my own rehab and recovery, helping current addicts and serious mental health patients and their families. I have stayed in their homes; I have spent hundreds of hours with the patients and the families, listening to them, trying to understand what they need and how best to help them.

To give you an idea of the travesty of what the patients and their families suffer through, the following are some snippets of my first-hand observations and experiences with them.

1. Patient W:

“There’s always a gun to my head. You don’t understand … The pressure … If I say or do the wrong thing, they will come at me. I can’t say any more, they will come after me  … If I say certain words, I have to turn them around to something positive. Otherwise, they will punish me. I haven’t done anything wrong, why are they punishing me?!”

Patient W, now in his forties, is remembered as one of the most handsome boys in his high school. Like many other psychosis and schizophrenia patients, W was a gentle and sensitive child who suffered and witnessed abuse at a very early age. At school, W was disciplined, sporty and popular; he had everything going for him.

W started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol in his teens/20’s. In his early 20’s he moved from the UK to Mumbai for a few months for work where he befriended a young man who lived in a neighbouring flat. The man was a regular weed smoker, and most evenings after work, W would smoke up with him. That was when the paranoia started.

When W returned to the UK to live with his parents, they noticed a change in him but didn’t understand what was going on. Aside from the paranoia, W began gambling. At first, small amounts, usually at slot machines, moving online to sports betting websites, eventually squandering huge amounts, stealing from his family, almost sending them into financial ruin. He lost his friends and his girlfriend and couldn’t maintain a good relationship with his family.

A couple of years later, two days after a trip to Amsterdam where marijuana was legal and freely available, W crashed headfirst into deep psychosis. He was attending a family wedding at the time where his strange and alarming behaviour prompted the family to get him professional help.

At his lowest points, W couldn’t recognise his own family members. He thought they were other people and that they were against him. Sometimes he heard the voices of people he knew who were far away. He thought they were controlling him, forcing him to stand up and spin around, for example. Often, he thought there were cameras watching his every move. Everything was a conspiracy. He didn’t trust anyone. Sometimes W would run out of the house, leaving the front door wide open, even in the middle of the night. The family would be at their wits’ end searching for him.

To get him under control and to the hospital, at times W’s family had to call the police. W had been admitted into a psychiatric facility so many times that his medical insurance would no longer cover it. He refused counselling and wouldn’t take his medication properly. Each time he stopped taking his medicine, he ended up in hospital.

In recent years, with Swami ji’s Grace, W is much more stable. Although he complains about taking his medication, he does take it. Deep down I feel he has understood that if he doesn’t take it, he will end up in hospital again.

Amazingly, W found his soul mate who completely understands him and married her just over a decade ago. They had attended the same high school and she’d loved him ever since then. His wife is an angel who says that W must have taken care of her in a past life and she was born to take care of him in this life. They have a very pure and loving relationship, like supportive siblings. She is his source of joy and peace. W has no idea how blessed he is.

W’s wife lives with him and his parents and works fulltime. W manages a couple of rental properties but hasn’t had a fulltime job for a few years. He spends most of his time eating junk food then lying down in his room alone looking at the ceiling waiting for his wife to come home from work. When he knows she is coming home, W is motivated and happy to shower and go out for the evening or spend time with her at home. They enjoy their weekends and holidays together.

When W is alone in his room, however, he may be listening to the voices. The longer he spends in his room alone, the more depressed he becomes. He usually emerges from his room, stressed, depressed, hungry or angry, unless his wife is coming home/at home. W is generally a negative person. He has not forgiven his past and he holds on to grudges. At times when he is angry, he screams and shouts around the house at his parents about his past and blames them and everyone for everything.

In social situations, I have observed, it seems like W is distracted by something. I would assume it’s the voices (this is because of what other patients have told me about their experiences) and at times, I see W responds to things we can’t see. His expression changes and he mutters things. When he realises he’s done this in front of other people, or if he thinks the voices are telling him off for something he has said, I see that he tries to cover it up. All of a sudden, he may apologise to someone, even when he has no reason to. He doesn’t want to let on to others that he hears the voices because he is afraid he’ll be sent to hospital again. W repeatedly denies he is unwell and does his best to behave ‘normal’ in public.

When W is in full blown psychosis, he doesn’t have an awareness of the same reality that we do at all.  He believes that even his loved ones, including his sister (his only sibling), are his enemies.

This thought train stays with him even when he feels more balanced, and although, day-to-day, apart from the depression, he is generally alright, there are a couple of family friends, a neighbour and his own sister, who, he genuinely believes are evil and are trying to control him, or are the reason behind the voices.

These people, of course care about him, but they cannot spend time with him or go to the house to visit his parents or his wife when W is at home.

W’s psychosis triggers are: those people, a lack of sleep, stress (even something such as a difficult customer service call can trigger him) and missing a dose of his medicine. W doesn’t drink any more, but in the past, if  had even just one beer, he would become paranoid within a week or two.

Because W is so afraid of going into hospital again, he is very good at covering up the severity of his illness, duping even his own family and the doctors. When they talk to him, they feel he is doing relatively alright and therefore do not think there is an urgency to guide him toward therapy or review his medication. In any case, because W denies his illness, getting him to a doctor to review his medicine is nearly impossible. He simply doesn’t attend the appointments. He is not unwell enough to be involuntarily sectioned, so the NHS can’t do anything to help him without his cooperation. It’s a difficult situation. I see W every few years and I see his mental degradation. Each time it is notably worse.

Years after W left Mumbai, he and his wife went on holiday to Goa. There, they bumped into the friend whom W used to smoke weed with in Mumbai. The friend was completely gone, as W’s wife described. I don’t like to use the term ‘mad’, but that’s what had happened. He’d gone completely mad. W and his wife were shocked to see him like that.

I pray, with Swami ji’s Grace and Protection, W will not end up like that.

Can any more be done for W? I hope so. W has been on the same dose of the same medication for years. There have been advancements in medicine for his condition since he was first diagnosed, but the better medicines are very expensive, $200-500 a month, and are not offered on the NHS.

Every case is different. W’s is quite complicated and his symptoms began over twenty years ago. We are working towards finding out more about newer available medicines for W in the UK. With the right medicine, the right dosage, regular therapy, and with something to do that will get W out of his bedroom every day, I know there is hope for him. We will keep working with W’s family to get the best help for him.

2. Patient X

“The whole world can see through my eyes and hear my thoughts … I know you’re all in on it, but you can’t tell me … The voices are loud and constant. They hurl abuse at me all the time, they say things like ‘We’re gonna f*** you up’ and ‘Africa hates you, the whole world hates you’. They never shut up. I see angry faces in the sky. They tell me awful things.”

X is a beautiful, young lady in her late thirties from an affluent traditional Indian family in Kenya. A gentle person, kind and helpful. Up until her 20’s, X didn’t take any drugs.

After studying abroad and returning to Kenya, X started work in the family business and began smoking weed with some friends.

The happy-go-lucky, sweet, helpful girl then fell into a dark pit of all kinds of people, drugs and parties.

It was the day after my hysterectomy in October 2021 that I received the call for help from her parents. I was in hospital and I wish I could have flown out there on the same day.

They called because X had hit rock bottom. Worse than rock bottom. She had been buried alive beneath a mountain. Her family called me because X had been found screaming and crying at the gates of the residential compound where she lived with her family. She was trying to get out, and the gate security, for her own safety, didn’t open the gates. In her state of absolute desperation and confusion, X stripped off all her clothes right there in the car park.

When I was given the all-clear to travel a few weeks later, I was shocked to see the state that X was in.

When I arrived, X had been indoors for a year and a half, constantly muttering to herself. She barely showered. She hadn’t washed her hair for months. X had thrown out all most of her belongings, clothes and devices. She had only a couple of nightdresses. In her room, she had no phone, no laptop, books, tv, nothing. She would only emerge from her room to eat. When she did, she was in her own world, constantly muttering to herself, talking with the voices and saying negative things about everything and everyone around her with a disgust and contempt in her voice and face. She was paranoid all the time. If certain family members or house helpers crossed her path, she would react in a volatile way.

The last time I had seen X, just a couple of years earlier, she was around 40 kilos lighter, and although she was on medicine for anxiety, she was happy, alert, going to work and living a normal life.

I didn’t recognise this person. My heart broke for her and her family. I had no idea how to help her. I had only faith that Swami ji would do something.

Please go here to continue to Part 2