Are Schizophrenics more likely to use drugs?

DX'd - Sz/SzA
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So there’s the claim that as many as 70% of Schizophrenics have a history of substance abuse or addiction. According to drug rehab.com the number is 50% One problem! Cannabis is included and 52% of ALL Americans have tried Cannabis. Whoopsie! Some of these studies include caffeine!? and tobacco!?.
This huge bias leads me to conclude we have LESS drug abuse.

No hate for those struggling. But if use of marijuana triggered your psychosis-stop blaming yourself, you are in the majority there, you were just unlucky.

But please if you do have substance abuse problems, seek help if you aren’t getting it.

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Yes some SZs get easily hooked on drugs because of brain chemistry and structure. I was hooked to drinking, weed, cigars, shisha and cigarettes. I replaced those bad habits with vaping nicotine, a much safer habit. Its been 1 year that I am clean. I will try quitting vaping in the future when my negative and cognitive symptoms improve with new meds.

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My old friends smoked weed and didn’t have any serious mental issues. Its just that SZs have predisposition genetically which is worsened or triggered by drugs like weed, cocaine, LSD, etc.

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Yes.151515

It’s good you are making better choices.

I hope you make even better future progress.

Sometimes all one can do is move forward from where they are.

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I started smoking marijuana at twelve to quiet the voices and obsessive thoughts I was having.

Most the other drugs I’ve tried was just out of curiosity.

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Yeah I smoked weed constantly just before my initial onset.

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I smoked Marijuana in college. But I hate it now. I thought it caused my schizophrenia. I only use tobacco and caffeine now. Nothing else. Looking back, something bad happened to me at college. A horror scene.

I think women were involved or sororities under supervision of the cia/military/nsa. Not sure where the aliens got involved lol.

I used to drink booze in college. I hate it now. Don’t drink. I was a depressed social drunk. I was trying to fit in.

I am sure I posted i was a time traveler back then. Not sure why but it was a bad trip. People must have thought I was high and reported me.

Not sure what program I was in. I think mk ultra. It caused so much hell for me. So I don’t think drugs cause mental illness alone. Its genetics, stress, and environment. The drugs are just a factor in an equation.

I was extremely stressed out at the time.

I cant remember what happened because I came back alive and they are masters of deception and reality control. Same with the aliens…

I figured they drugged me with a lot of things. Pretty much all of them if you include my other lives.

I’m trying to get help, attention, and to show I am not supposed to be schizophrenic. Perhaps money too…

I had schizophrenia in high school in a parallel universe a long ass time ago from drugs like shrooms and lsd. I still remember. Its like I got an alien memory lol. I wish I didn’t remember this ■■■■ but it turns me into a genius in a way lol.

In a past life I volunteered for something. I was high and psychotic at the time and they took advantage of me. Was it this life too? Don’t know.

I remember several girls that were potentially involved. Not sure who exactly or the main culprit. I feel like i need to know…i need to know what happened to me. I have blocks.

My story is a lot like Stuart Swedlows in that I was traumatized like him and other montauk boys. I was also in monarch.

I believe I was in the illuminati in a past life, and most of my deaths were from Satan. I wish I could get help here. I even changed or switched planet Earths…

I cant and won’t go into detail on how I was traumatized not in just this life but my other lives. A lot worse in my other lives.

Not sure why I was targeted except I was told it was my genetics… I think they figured out I was the only real john titor. There are fakes, but I’m the only one who was tortured. I was killed in my other lives as well as my family. Thousands of times. It still upsets me and scares me. Grey aliens were possibly involved.

Perhaps, I wish someone would help me or believe me.

The scariest of them all is a con man named John titor 2. Maybe he is the leader of the 177th division, but he looks and acts like a complete psychopath who stole my story. Personally, I think they intentionally created a lot of fakes on purpose. Part of me believes him though.

I honestly wish the cops could help me and sort it out. But they can’t. And I won’t go get help because no one will believe me and they would put me in the hospital for being delusional. I asked my mom to go with me and she refused. Its almost like she is brainwashed or chipped. Im not going alone…thats stupid.

I’m scared though too.

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If you have mental illness you are more at risk for substance abuse yes. Self medication. Likewise people who abuse substances are more likely to develop mental illness. Substance abuse and mental illness go hand in hand and have a high comorbidity.

Somehow I managed to avoid addiction…I have definitely self medicated w alcohol before but I don’t drink frequently at all…

My little brother was not so lucky and got sucked into the world of drugs and alcohol pretty hard.

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The mentally ill are prone to using drugs including nicotine and alcohol.

With that said the only drug I was addicted to was nicotine years ago.

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Caffeine is also a drug :face_with_monocle:

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Good point. 155

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I never used any illegal drugs, not even cannabis. I never smoked, drank alcohol or even coffee before schizophrenia arrived, so that can’t be the reason (unless the reason I got it was because I didn’t use any drugs). Ibuprofen for toothache and dental anesthesia were probably the only drugs I ever used or received.

I had social anxiety before schizophrenia.

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I have never done any illegal drug.I started meds and was diagnosed in 2009.I started smoking at 2018.Now I am vaping and see if I can quit

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1 in 6 adults in the US reported binge drinking in 2015.

Caffeine addiction isn’t in the Dsm-V.

In schizophrenics different criteria is used and things are exaggerated.

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i wonder if there is any legal slack for us schizophrenics who have used in the past or are using as to if we are targeted or allowed some slack for our conditions?

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Weed makes me instantly crazy and scared to death. Alcohol makes me sad… But that said, i’m having relapses into opiates to fight the depression devil.

I have read there are pharmaceutical drugs in the pipeline that mimic the way opiates can relieve negative symptoms, depression, anhedonia without the risk of addiction.

But they said the same about SSRI and SNRI and the withdrawal symptoms from those drugs are horrid in my opinion.

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Schizophrenic need to take their medicine everyday.Is it wrong to say the medicine turn down our dopamine level,or regulate it?

Normie don’t take them everyday,so why would they need to turn to drug to make them feel happy?

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I also tried LSD, shrooms, cocaine, synthetic hallucigen, hash, binge drinked. Most of them were pririor psychosis outbreak because I have poor decision making

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I’ve used drugs a lot in my life and I’ve struggled with addictions my whole life. I’ve used meth, cocaine, lsd, weed, shrooms, and norcos and I’ve been addicted to meth and norcos and I’ve struggled with alcohol use, not saying I’m an alcoholic, just saying I’ve not made the best choices when it’s come to alcohol and it could be a problem if I kept going down that road. For me using was a coping mechanism. Mostly coping with my mood disorder, but also voices too.

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Feel you, I coped with drugs for my university stress. Also the mentality students have really affected me, because in a accommodation I lived half of 16 people smoked weed, 10 of them drank alcohol heavily, and couple of them did cocaine.

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