First, let me say I’m not for recreational drug AT ALL. However, when I was 20 years old, I attended a party with friends where everyone there was on Ecstasy. I was slipped this drug in a mixed drink and tripped for several hours seeing colors and became very fearful. I’ve read that a lot “MDMA ecstasy” was likely a form of LSD which has been linked to schizophrenia. I feel it is likely that that caused my illness of schizoaffective disorder but I’m not sure because I also have a very strong genetic component and this illness runs on both sides of my family. I have 3 cousins on my mother’s side diagnosed as schizophrenic and my father and his brother both have it.
I actually believe I was never the same after that night so many years ago. Possilbly it just triggered the illness?
Maybe ask your doctor
I was in the hospital with a guy who said his psychosis was triggered by someone who had put LSD in his coffee. People do a lot of harm when they pull these kinds of stunts.
You have to be careful what you believe from people inside hospital when they have psychosis.
Why would he lie about it?
I was so young when that happened (15 years ago) and it was just a crazy bunch of circumstances. There were a lot of people there that willingly took it but a few of the girls like myself were not willing participants.
I’ve had anxiety and this “twitching and cracking my back” since that night. I haven’t wanted to bring this story to my pdoc because I didn’t want him too think I was a drug addict and it was so many years ago that I’m not sure it matters either way now.
I used pretty much every drug from the age of 12 I was smoking weed, and by 16 I had smoked crack, done cocaine, ecstasy, Mushrooms and lots of LSD. It put me in hospital by time I was 17, but the doctors thought it was drug-induced psychosis. The last time I went to hospital I hadn’t taken anything, so they diagnosed me with SZ.
As for LSD, when I am sick I am pretty much feeling like I have taken it. The hallucinations and everything happens. I think that taking things like that makes you think differently than you would normally, and because of the nature of the drug and it’s effects, you get all these ideas in your head about the meaning of existence, and you start participating in alternative realities as LSD breaks down the reality most people cling too.
Someone else who’s done it may think differently, but that’s what I have observed in my experiences.
Hi @daisydoll29 - Welcome aboard.
People are born with the faulty SZ genes - they have a predisposition to the illness already.
Stress, Trauma, Abuse or certain Drugs can trigger them into having a full blown psychotic episode.
Drugs are not the cause but can be a trigger - I was triggered by Mescaline during my first or second year of college.
One cannot entirely blame the drug - there are genetic, environmental factors at play - triggers play an important role
Thank you!That’s good to know!
Yes, it can. There is also alcohol related psychosis,stuff that can cause you to see or hear things differently, or perceive things differently. LSD can cause some SZ like symptoms, though I never had a problem with that except slightly one time which was the last time i took that in the 80s. For the most part it was mellow and enjoyable.
I know people who aren’t expecting it and someone put psychedelics in their drink can flip out. I was there when a friend of mine spiked his girlfriends wine with mescaline or microdot and she was flipping out, screaming and trying to pull her hair out, throwing wine on the walls and other stuff. If we hadn’t stayed with her and seen her through it for 8 hours she might have easily ended up in a mental ward. I had told him it was not a cool idea because she had never wanted to try it and he insisted she would like it and they should trip together, so he slipped it in her drink…his plan backfired of course.
Strangely we also had also taken it and we were tripping and having to be a care giver to someone who was having a psychotic episode…she came out of it ok after several hours, then broke up with my friend for a couple weeks…don’t blame her for that!
We all have different circumstance that get us to this point. I’m sort of in the same boat as @Wave
There were a lot of things happening with me long before I reached for drugs. There is mental illness in my family and I very much believe I had the genetic wiring for it.
For me… back then… Ecstasy was great. I still miss it to this day. I suffered from what I know now to be… some deep negative symptoms and the XTC would kick me back into reconnecting in a matter of an hour.
But of course… with the highs comes the crash. That would be much worse.
For me… I’m beginning to believe it was the heavy pot use and very heavy drinking that flipped the Sz light to go. That was more constant then the XTC.
@daisydoll29 I’m sorry your friends did this… it’s not cool doing stuff like that to people. I could imagine how scary that could be if you have no warning and no help or guidance through your first trip.
I have a feeling you were born with the channel available… and the E might have kicked the channel on.
what ever happened back then… I hope your feeling better and healing now.
Good luck.
In my case I started smoking weed when I was 15, there is no history of SZ in my family, I keep reading that early drug use can in fact accelerate the onset of symptoms, but you have to be abusing the drug. I don’t think having taken E once would deteriorate your brain cells to the point that you’d get an incurable illness…
I used to listen to a lot of rap. French and English (still do), but they glorify smoking hash and weed in their songs, I fell victim to to it thinking it was cool. I really regret it, sometimes I think I would just be a normal man with a stable job and family if I hadn’t smoked pot for so many years. I have to find a catalyst for what happened to me and I think weed is it.
I took too much LSD when I was 19 and I never felt the same afterward. 4 months later I was seeing my first therapist. 5 months later I was in my first psyche ward. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Schizophrenia does not run in my family. Violence and alcoholism does though. I am not violent or an alcoholic. I have always believed pot smoking and LSD triggered my schizophrenia in 1980 when I was 19. There’s two types of schizophrenia; gradual onset and sudden onset. Gradual onset can start years before you have a psychotic break, which happened to me. Sudden onset is just as it sounds.A person can be perfectly fine and then in the matter of a few weeks can become psychotic and diagnosed with schizophrenia. With sudden onset the person has a better prognosis. They can be hospitalized and put on medication but then recover in a matter of months and not have to take medication anymore.
You don’t sound like an addict. If you want to discuss it with your doc then stick to the basic truth about your drug use and he won’t think you’re an addict. In order for you to be an addict, you have to be addicted to something. It doesn’t sound like you are addicted to anything. I can understand why you would want to sort out your past and find a reason for your schizophrenia, I did the same thing and I know many more people with schizophrenia do it too. In fact so do so-called “normal” people too. Being “dosed” without your knowledge does not make you an addict, neither does a little experimentation.