Why I feel induced schizophrenia is different

Hi schizo ppl,

You know some people were born with SZ right, then you have those who attained SZ from street drug induced illness. I always felt like I wasn’t SZ growing up. Until the street drugs that I was taking caused schizo like symptoms. Now I’m labeled SZA, or schizoaffective disorder. What is the difference between born SZ, and SZ street drug induced illness? I mean either way you got SZ. I think the damage from the street drugs my brain has healed quite a bit. However I’m still SZA. But what if I were born SZ. Would there be any healing at all? I don’t see if you were born with it, how you could ever recover, because you always had it. I will always have SZA. But the street drugs didn’t do permanent damage or did they? I feel like I am getting better as I follow a recovery type lifestyle. But I feel sorry for those born with SZ. It’s like they have nothing to recover from. Since they had it since birth. Every case of SZ is different. But we do have our share of voices, delusions, hallucinations. It’s sooo real. I witnessed myself come out of a 10 year anti social shell. It was lonely as hell. Fishing all by myself, doing outdoor stuff by myself because, I was viewing myself negatively around people. And by the grace of medicine and sound nutrition. I was able to reach out to people more and socialize. I am no longer paranoid to hang around people. I hope everybody in their certain stage of SZ, SZA, find their way past the symptoms and live a good life. Thanks for letting me post. As always take care.

3 Likes

I like your avatar. Can’t/don’t read most of your posts. They’re too involved for me - whatever that means.

1 Like

There is no such thing as a drug causing schizophrenia in someone. People are born with schizophrenia, but many times the full blown symptoms show up in their late teens, early adulthood. Drugs can be a trigger but not a cause.
You were born with the illness, the drugs triggered your symptoms fully. Same thing happened to me, but I showed signs of mental illness during my childhood

2 Likes

I agree with wave, I’ve done a lot of research on schizophrenia and such disorders, you’re born with the genetic predisposition and can go through life quite happily until environmental cause trigger it off such as drugs, stress or trauma and then you find yourself in the midst of it all… That what the general consensus in bio psychology is anyway!

Take care!

4 Likes

I have always had it. I do agree with Wave… the little genes are in there just waiting to be turned on… I was having problems long before my drug use.

If one is in onset when they are little, the brain will change as they grow older and puberty and all that happens.

Just because a person like me has the genes activate early doesn’t mean there is no healing.
My drug use was an attempt to self medicate. I had this head circus long before I had a drug problem.

2 Likes

so if I would have never taking Street drugs my schizophrenia would still be in a dormant state? Like it would have never been triggered?

Thanks pob. Sorry I will try to make my posts less complicated next time.

Maybe… maybe not. You could have avoided street drugs… became a producer for some high pressured company, gotten into a high stress position and gotten the switches hit that way.

For me… I am what I am and that’s all that I am. Long ago I had to quit pondering… “Why me?” and “What if?”

Why me? Because. It was just how the cosmos dealt my had.
What if?.. well… What if I never had this? That doesn’t do anything but make me resent others.

The only “what if” I have any control over is… What if I work harder to beat this? What if I try a new idea or talk to a new therapist? What if I break this down in to small components and treat stuff individually. (like my anger management or my high anxiety levels.)

4 Likes

I maybe stubborn to believe that I don’t think nothing would of triggered my SZ had I not used street drugs. The illness may of been there, but it would have been an illness of a different nature. Maybe a real mild case. But the street drugs made it a severe case.

1 Like

I don’t think that is stubborn… you know your life. You know your own head circus. You know what your over coming and why. You have a point where it all began and you have something of yourself to reference before all this happened.

I don’t. I have NO idea who I was or would have been SZ or non-Sz. I was 5, severally hyperactive, and manic. Everyday was fun day… until it wasn’t. I couldn’t control myself. My Mom used to wrap her arms around me and hold me rather snugly for a long time until I could calm down and stop jumping or touching people. Large crowds were over stimulating and I would run amok.

Have you ever seen a small kid just completely pinged out of their head on a massive sugar high and they can’t even talk straight, or sit still or stop wiggling or doing odd stuff? That was me All The Time. I have no idea how my parents ever found the energy or time to have my younger brothers.

My first drug was alcohol. I really did like it. It slowed me down so I could sit still. It made my imaginary friends fade and I couldn’t really hear what they were saying when I was drunk. So that was my first.

Alcohol was my “gateway” drug.

1 Like

When you were 5 you weren’t having delusions or hallucinations. You were just hyperactive. But when did you experience at what age your first sz symptoms?

Well, I guess I can get one step down from my high horse then. I didn’t know drugs didn’t cause sz.
I still feel like they are disrespectful though (not to people who self medicate of course. That is a whole different thing) but people who do stuff like acid to hallucinate. I just want to say to them:
“What? So you think this is fun? You have to look at every leaf, every building, every person and be a skeptic is fun? You think not knowing when or how an episode is going to hit and you will freak out in the middle of class, work, or a party and feel like you can never go back because everyone now sees you as ‘that freak with sz’ is just swell? It’s because of people like you we have some of the problems we do. People see or do drugs like that and think that because the X or whatever only lasted two hours and you snapped out of it that we are able to too. That we are just weak because we can’t make it go away? Or do you think we have fun being chased by demon pixies and laugh about it with each other like you do. You were given a great blessing by genetics: a healthy mind and you are throwing away something that I and many like me would give anything, do anything to have. Go fsjlk yourself.”

(Note: I’m not talking about alcohol, weed, or other harmless stuff. I’m mainly talking about stuff that causes sz like symptoms like acid. The kind of stuff where you wander around not knowing who or where you are. The bad stuff).
Also, I have never done any drugs, so if I got what each drug does wrong, I’m sorry. I know what acid does because I heard some girls at school laughing about their trips.

My son’s psychosis is in direct relation to marijuana use. Alcohol lessens his insight…

Regardless of how or why… well in the end I don’t see it being any easier or harder or different. I never understood why AA’s didn’t want NA’s at their meetings. Addiction is addiction. Whether it’s environmental or biological or a combination. Psychosis is psychosis. At least that is my point of view.

I was thinking more along the lines of things that are harmless to most healthy people.

I do remember when I was about 8 or 9 and I had a very physical fight with my imaginary friend. He went ghost on me when I swung a punch and I hit a tree and broke my hand. I snuck home and left him in the park.

I was told I felt bad about leaving him in the park on a rainy night so I snuck out went to the park, got him and brought him back home. But then he wanted me to cut my arm open and give him blood to make him real. But I was too afraid to give him arm blood so I sliced open my finger to give him finger blood. But he didn’t like it.

I needed 8 stitches in my finger. I still see that scar and shake my head and am so glad I got better.

I really started scaring my parents when I was 10-11. That was when they said they just knew my poor head was scrambled. I was 10 when God spoke to me and I started hearing the future predicted in the wind and a host of other issues was coming up.

So it eventually came to a point in your life where your illness was recognized by your parents. How did they help, did it last, were u able to become stable for a while or no?

I remember the last street drug I took. My entrance into SZA was based on one distinct moment. I mean slowly gradually before that time, I felt something strange in my emotion. I knew I was getting sick. Then that one day I went from being able to control my mind, to psychosis all in one moment.

I thought it was drugs for awhile, they showed me different.

They can do that though, make people think it’s drugs and other stuff.

Hard to tell the difference sometimes between my problem and other things.

I vaguely remember lots of therapy appointments very young. I also remember a lot of pills being shoved down me. I don’t think I stabilized as much as my spiral slowed down. Plus my sis was born around that time and puberty hit so there was a lot of changes happening around that time. I was happy and life was fun again for a while, but my little head was still scrambled.

I think if I was in your shoes and I had a “now I’m fine, now I’m not” switch get hit, I wouldn’t have come out so well. But I really can never guess how I would navigate other peoples circumstances. I can only marvel at the strength they had within themselves to get through it.

I consider you a very strong person.

1 Like

I am soooo sorry to do this @onceapoet, do like your post and I do read your post and I do understand where your coming from most of the time…

but I have a compulsion to post… and this one I can resist no longer… I am sorry, I do not mean any disrespect… but I really have to say… Alcohol will make you wander around not knowing where you are very easily. So will pot. The THC levels in pot has gotten higher as more people cultivate for that… pot can really mess people up… even non-sz people.

The people who have tripped out and flipped out on pot in our life is a vast number. Just one joint… what can it hurt? Well, with higher THC levels… a lot more then one thinks. The calls my kid sis gets when drunk friends need a sober ride is amazing.

One person was lost on the corner of “walk and don’t walk in front of the Starbucks”… that narrows it down in Seattle.

I’ve lost a lot of family to alcohol. It’s highly addicting. That’s why so many resources exist to combat it. It’s a top 5 addiction in a large part of the world.

I had two cousins and an aunt commit suicide due to their alcohol addiction. It was alcohol that was in their system when they committed suicide, not acid. Alcohol slowly killed other family too.

I get your frustration about acid. I agree and it makes me shake my head too. But please believe alcohol and pot aren’t harmless. They ARE the wolfs in sheep clothing… lots and lots of non-sz people have lost everything to that spirit in that harmless looking pretty bottle.

Thank you for understanding.

1 Like

Me and my brother injected meth daily when he had his first episode I know it didn’t cause his schizophrenia but I definitely believe it greatly effected the acute and chronic prognosis. I hate myself for not doing something before his first all out episode.