I was hanging out with two friends who were smoking and I said no, and then afterwards I hung out with two other friends who smoked and I said no. Just wanted to share this achievement. It’s been six months since I’ve smoked any marijuana.
Well done, you!
Pixel.
good for you. takes more to say no when with others than by yourself. keep it up!
Nice work, @hulgil!
Well I am proud of you! I hope I can say the same for my son once he is ready to start going out with friends again. I want him to so NO too and stop being a follower. I feel sorry for him because it seems like no matter where he goes everyone smokes pot, drinks or does some other form of drug. He needs to find good positive friends once he starts going out again. He has been isolating himself for a few months now. Good luck to you. If you smoke marijuana does it trigger episodes for you?
Great!
151515151515
Yes, it absolutely does trigger bad things. And I feel for your son because it can be challenging to say no when all your friends do it.
good on you
take care
Well my son has been paranoid for almost 2years(that I know of) so why would he smoke pot if it makes things worse? I am trying to learn and understand why make things worse.
Good for you for helping yourself. Other people can lend a hand and try to help you kick drugs but ultimately it’s up to you to help yourself. I don’t want to dampen the good mood of this post but it’s always a danger to hang around people who do drugs if you are trying to stop yourself. The constant temptation. To be around drugs often when you are working on sobriety can chip away at the resolve of anyone in recovery whether the person has 6 months clean or twenty years clean.
AA specifically recommends staying away from any people places or things that has to do with drugs when you are trying to quit. I got lucky when I got clean. When I first started getting serious about quitting drugs, I had just moved away from all my drug using friends and i made a new start. I just celebrated 26 years clean and sober and I will not hang around anyone who does drugs. If someone in my family or someone who I live with has an occasional drink or beer, that’s not bad. But if anyone I have contact with abuses drugs we will not hang out.
That’s a complex question. Maybe he simply enjoys the weed even though it’s bad for him. It was easy for me to quit because I never enjoyed it, but that is not the same for others. He could also like to indulge in his symptoms, meaning he could consciously know that the weed is bad for him but choose to do it anyway. Similar to why a schizophrenic would go off meds (of which there are also a multitude of reasons). I know that for me psychosis, despite its devastating effects on my functioning, is a mystical experience or religious ecstasy. I would talk to God and become the universe, and in my mind I indulged in my suffering like an addiction.
Hi talktome. Maybe this will help you to understand a little about your sons use of marijuana. In 10th grade I smoked pot for the first time because my friends were doing it and they urged me to do it too. Over time I slowly started smoking more and more and then my usage escalated and in my last two years of high school I was a daily smoker.
95% of the time it was fun. It was fun to get high with friends and go to a party or get high and go to the beach or the mountains or the park. After high school, my pot smoking slowed down but I was still smoking it frequently. Than when I was 19 I had my first psychotic break and I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
I temporarily stopped smoking but when I went from the psyche ward to my first group home, I was living with friendly people my age and we used to have little parties upstairs in my room and smoke pot and drink beer. I found that marijuana did not give me that good, fun, feeling anymore. It made my psychosis worse, it made my paranoia from the schizophrenia worse.
But I still smoked it for a few months more until one day a stranger gave me a very potent strain of pot for free and when I smoked it my psychosis and paranoia level went through the roof and I was so scared I stopped smoking it for quite awhile. I didn’t pick it up again for three years until a neighbor offered me some. I was trying to impress him with how cool I was, so I smoked it. Nothing had changed since three years earlier. It was not fun at all, I did not make me feel good at all so I quit again for three years.
By this time I was working and one day a co-worker offered me some more. I have to say here that I am not a stupid person, in fact I’m rather intelligent. But I smoked more…with the same results. And than about that time I got addicted to crack, which is another whole story. By the way, I came from a good middle class upbringing and I lived in an affluent city and I went to church reguarlly during a lot of my growing up. So addiction doesn’t discriminate against anyone, it can take hold of anybody irregardless of age, social status, location, or profession. We’ve all heard the stories of soccer moms or doctors or even psychiatrists who become addicts or alcoholics.
Well, to make a long story short I smoked crack for four years with the occasional one or two joints. But I got clean from all drugs and alcohol in 1990 by joining AA, CA, and NA.
Here’s what I learned from smoking pot while being schizophrenic and observing and talking to other people with my disease. I think (and maybe this doesn’t apply to your son. But maybe it might) that smoking pot while you are schizophrenic when you know it is going to harm you and worsen your symptoms, is because of what a girl told me long ago. The concept she told me about is called “chasing that first high”. In another words, when most people smoke pot for or do a certain drug or drink, the first time is often just a great experience, maybe their best experience with the drug. It is a new exciting feeling that people want to duplicate.
For many people, that initial feeling is almost the best feeling they’ve had with that drug. And for many people they always remember this first time and they try their best to repeat it. But for most people that never happens. So that is part of the reason that us schizophrenics keep smoking pot even though it harms us. We are always trying to recapture the fun feeling we had with pot before we got sick. We smoke it knowing it will harm us, thinking that next time will be different. We are remembering the fun times and trying to duplicate but I know from my own experience and knowing other schizophrenics that it is virtually impossible except maybe for a small fraction of people.
And there’s the obvious reasons why we keep smoking. It may make us feel a little better or ease our symptoms a little even though making us psychotic. We fool ourselves and think this is a good trade-off. We will smoke even though the suffering outweighs the little tiny bit of relief we get.
Maybe none of this applies to your son. Maybe it does. Than the other reasons we smoke. Peer pressure. Yes, peer pressure is with us throughout our lives. And if our friends smoke it, most likely we will too. Another big reason. We think it’s cool to smoke pot. This is a bigger factor than you might guess. It’s the downfall of many ordinary people in life. So I hope you get a little insight from all this. If I helped a little I will be happy. Good luck.
I smoked a lot of pot when folks told me it would make me worse and when I didn’t much like it. It’s a phenomenon.
I did get clean eventually.
Jayster
Yee! Good job, mate!
Well done! Really good for you!
good stuff…keep it up…cannabis is bad for schizophrenia. It makes it a lot worse.
Good for you - Now the real trick is to say NO to drugs all of the time - you can do this.
Thank you 77nick77 and yes it does hearing lots of stories. My son was also 19 when diagnosed actually it was just in Dec 2015. How bad was your paranoia? and how long does it last? I know my son was paranoid for almost 2 years and it did get worse along with depression and suicide attempts. He was in his first semester in college. He actually started coming home every weekend and isolating himself. My family and I were the only ones who noticed these changes. I have suggested many times for my son to go a doctor but he refused. Then finally in Oct 2015 I finally convinced him to go but didn’t allow me to go in with him and he ended up telling the doctor he was just there for a flu shot! I was so upset then come Dec everything got worse. Why did you have to go to a group home? Was your family supportive? Do you take meds? Do you hear voices?
I’ve been paranoid since I first got diagnosed. I know I don’t always realize I’m paranoid all the time because it’s part of me and it’s second nature to me. I don’t think anyone is plotting to do me any harm but I feel sometimes that everybody is against me and that it’s me against the world. But paradoxily, I like talking to strangers, and people at work and my family. When I feel comfortable with you, I will talk your ear off.
I went to a group home because I was very, very symptomatic and I couldn’t function in everyday life very well and I was too sick to live at home or on my own. My symptoms were very, very bad and I couldn’t work or go to school or do any of the things a 19 or 20 year old should be doing. In the eighties, the term “functioning” was very popular. Us ill people were measured by how well we functioned in society.
My family has always been 100% supportive of me. They have always included me in everything they could in their lives and visited me steadily in most of my hospitalizations. It is proven that people who have family support have a better prognosis than people who don’t have family support.
So I have traveled with my late father, gone to movies, comedy clubs, concerts, and hundreds of restaurants with my family. I was my dads best man at his wedding to my step-mom. In fact at the reception afterward at the hotel I was required as best man to give a toast in front of 25 people and I did fine.
I went water-skiing for the first time in my life while I was ill when I was in my thirties. I had never been on a plane before I ever got sick but I flew with my dad across the country several times in my illness. I was at every birthday party of my families.
I have taken meds steadily since 1982. I’ve never heard voices.
I don’t hate weed. I’ve had my phases with it. I know it works for some. I always think that if it was customary to take a little hit and put it down until it began to wear off I’d be a total pothead. But then, it’s not, I’m very sensitive to it and have an adverse reaction to the usual doses people take.
But it’s allure, especially that which it had over me growing up, still has an effect on me and I still go back. Do I, when alone, take my little hit and put it down? no. It’s usually what puts me over the top and the last thing my often half bottle of whiskey in me or couple bottles of wine needs.
Reefer, man…it can make a man craaaaaaazy lol.
Good for you.