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Psychedelics and mental illness

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Citta

Citta

Skepdick
Hi there!

So, as the topic suggests I would like to discuss psychedelics and mental illness. We have all heard of the reoccurrring stories about people going insane or mentally ill following psychedelic experimentation. These are claims usually made most clearly by opponents of psychedelics, and in more general opponents of drugs. Now, I very much like to think that many of these claims are almost like urban myths - they are very far from the truth. But then again, why do these stories occur? Is it because it is easy to just say that an individual tripped out of his mind to offer an uncomplicated explanation for his illness, or is it some truth to these claims?

If you ask around at any psychiatric ward you are likely to be told that many of their patients have a history with drugs, or that they came in after doing some psychedelics or smoking some weed or doing som ecstasy or whatever it is. I can buy the fact that drugs can catalyze for example shizophrenia and latent psychosis. But apart from that, how true are these statements? And if they have some truth to them, the most interesting question for me is why and how psychedelics faciliate mental illness? And what other factors are playing in? I want an open and objective discussion around the various explanations for these claims.

Thanks in advance for any contribution =)
 
I've seen it happen to a friend from college who wound up with schizophrenia. He was gradually getting more paranoid, crazy, and confused all the time though it was unavoidable. He did mushrooms (he had done them in the past) and got much worse much quicker.

Beyond that I do know of some people who were institutionalized after lsd experiences. The acid wore off but the beliefs they acquired during their trip didn't for many years and the person needed to go to hospital.
 
clouds: This didn't really give me anything. I wasn't asking for some highway to mental health, I was asking about how and why psychedelics can lead to mental illness, and what factors are playing in to make this happen. Would these individuals for example have developed some illness sooner or later, or could they have been spared if they did not ingest psychedelics? What kind of people are exposed? Questions such as these. None of us (to my knowledge) are a psychiatrist/shrink/therapist here and can have a professional take on these matters, but I consider your opinions valuable nevertheless.

burnt: Can you give some more details?
 
A friend from school had a psychotic break after taking huge doses of marinol for several weeks straight. He appears to have fully recovered, and is now beyond the high-risk age group for developing schizophrenia. He tried smoking pot one more time after the break and had a mini-episode. Since he doesn't have an chronic mental illness, would this refer to your question?
 
ragabr: Anything relating to mental illness in the course of psychedelic experimentation is relevant to my question and the discussion I would like to start. I still miss some views as to why and how these things happen. Any ideas people?
 
Citta said:
None of us (to my knowledge) are a psychiatrist/shrink/therapist here and can have a professional take on these matters, but I consider your opinions valuable nevertheless.
Click to expand...

I am a psychologist and a therapist, but I did not share the link to promote LSD psychotherapy. I was just trying to show that LSD does more good than harm.
But I see what you mean, though.

A lot of things can cause mental problems... it depends entirely on the subject.

"There are cases of people who have taken LSD or other psychedelics and precipitated a long lasting disorder of schizophrenia. The consensus in the literature seems to be that that does not happen in people who are not predisposed to the illness. That is someone who would have developed schizophrenia or the illness in any case" - (David E. Nichols, 2009)
 
I had two friends in high school, both of whom suffered apparent psychotic breaks on LSD - one who attacked a police car and spent some time in a rubber room afterwards, and one who was hospitalized after a bad one (having had hundreds of good ones previously). The question, I suppose, is whether or not they had the gene to begin with. My own belief (based on nothing whatsoever but conjecture and intuition) is that they did; that psychedelics can act as a catalyst to bringing these issues to the surface, but aren't likely to be the root cause of psychosis or schizophrenia. Of course, these were kids with mushy, half-formed, weed soaked teenage brains, and neither of them were the sharpest tools in the shed before their episodes. It should also be noted that too much of anything can potentially cause an imbalance. These experiences can certainly be difficult to integrate for even the healthiest among us, but there are so many variables (individual brain chemistry, genetic pre-dispostion, set and setting, etc.) that it's difficult to point to any one factor when the occasional soldier goes bonkers.

I guess I look at this in the same way I do the debate over a possible correlation between violent video games and real world violence. I don't think a healthy mind is capable of making that jump, myself (again, based on nothing but conjecture). I do think, however, that an unhealthy one can be influenced by sensory input of all shapes and sizes - and in the same way I'd advise anyone with a history of mental illness to steer clear of Grand Theft Auto, I would also say they are well advised to avoid psychedelics completely.
 
Thanks for starting this thread. I have been wondering a bit about this stuff. There is an active thread now in the nursery that is relevant. There was one in March, and I remember one from late 2009, but I couldn't find it when I searched.

My gut feeling is just what Art said about it being an underlying condition that is brought to the surface after (or during) a psychedelic experience. I sure would like more data supporting this feeling though. It seems like people would be less likely to post about this sort of experience as they woould probably be busy coping with their new situation.
I remember thinking about that when I read the thread in late 2009. I was really happy that the poster took the time to tell his story in the midst of something so difficult.

Pokey
 
Traumatizing events can send most people into psychosis. For instance a sudden death of a loved one.
I read in a magazine a couple of weeks ago about a man who's identical twin brother
committed suicide which sent him into a severe psychosis.

Weren't there a thread about this lately? I think someone at the nexus had psychosis from
some kind of psychedelic + a traumatic episode involving his parents finding out about his drug use?.

Here is a study from 2009 at the Bergen university here in Norway about cannabis and schizophrenia

Cannabis Use and Cognition in Schizophrenia
 
I agree with the statement that psychedelics (including cannabis) are very unlikely to precipitate severe mental illnesses in people that are not already susceptible to them, but I would want to see more references from the literature before I believed that psychedelics would only provoke episodes of mental illness in someone who was already inevitably going to get sick sooner or later. My understanding of schizophrenia is that full-blown schizophrenia is preventable and an individual at high or even very high risk, e.g. someone with schizophrenia in the family and some prodromal pre-schizophrenia symptoms, is not inevitably going to develop the full blown disorder. Some types of cognitive behavioral therapy (and perhaps other therapies) are effective in preventing that predisposition from coming to fruition, as is low-dose maintenance therapy with antipsychotic medication at times when prodromal symptoms are active. Also, avoidance of psychedelics (especially cannabis) is very helpful in this situation.

That's just for schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, though. It's easier to see how an intense emotional experience such as losing a loved one, getting married, or having a powerful psychedelic trip could trigger an episode for someone with bipolar disorder or cyclothymia. I would imagine that someone susceptible to unipolar depression would be much more likely to be helped rather than hurt by psychedelic use, at least, responsible psychedelic use. This may apply to any mental illness -- though I would imagine that no psychedelic use is particularly responsible for someone at high or very high risk of developing schizophrenic/schizoaffective disorder, or someone who has had the disorder but is currently in remission.
 
When I was a teenager, I was into LSD and tripped a few dozen times. One of those trips turned into a weeklong psychosis where I lost all touch with reality and was in some weird schizophrenic state. Luckily my parents didn't put me into a mental ward but instead stayed with me and talked to me and eventually helped to coax me out of it. I don't have any history of mental illness in the family and no psychological problems either before or after that hellish experience. The night that I tripped there were some (sort of) traumatic events that probably snapped the trip into the psychosis. I didn't touch any drugs for around 13 years after that.

Sometimes if I trip too much on pharmahuasca, my thoughts get strange. Actually this Saturday I had a very intense pharm trip and all day Sunday I had racing thoughts that were making odd connections. Sunday nights dreams were incredibly intense and I even felt like was in a full DMT trip a few times in the night. Now on Monday, I am pretty much back to normal, but I can see how I need to monitor myself and make sure that my psychedelic experiences don't impede my ability to interact with people in consensus reality. I guess the real problem will arise when I can't tell the difference between oddball DMT inspired concepts and logical, rational thought.
 
I think there are 2 kinds or serious mental problems that can come from psychedelic drug use.

1-is precipitating a mental illness. For example my friend who developed schizophrenia. It really was happening already though but it was odd that only a few weeks after doing mushrooms he took half his stuff threw it in a truck and ran off forever. Also he was getting really way more insane before that. Paranoid confused just way weirder then usual.

2-is inducing a temporary delusional state that can last weeks to years. This isn't what happens to people who are destined to become schizophrenic necessarily. Its also not that they are still tripping the trip is over. I think this can happen to anyone who takes their trips too seriously. For example my partners friend from highschool thought he was the messiah. This went on for months until they had to lock him up because he was starting to do things that were really dangerous for himself. He recovered though.
 
When I was a teenager me and two of my friends experimented with some MDMA. Then one day one of us was tempted to take LSD. ‘Double Druid’ blotter acid, what a funny name. Well, he wasn’t expecting a psychedelic experience. He was expecting something similar to MDMA, and perhaps he would see some pixies. He really had no idea. So he freaked out big time. Halfway through he died (we were there when it happened), then met and became an alien (like in the movie), didn’t sleep for a few days and ended up in psychosis. He changed during that period. Then contact was broken, he got into therapy and I haven’t seen him since.

Besides the fact that my friend was totally surprised and completely overwhelmed by this full on psychedelic experience, I do have to say that in hindsight he was perhaps mentally unstable already before. I was 15 but he was 21 at that time. He was our older friend we had known since very early childhood. We were all born and living in the same street. We became friends when I was about 14, playing computer games. He didn’t have much other friends besides one other guy his age. Anyways, the difference in age sticks out, he was acting like us and hanging out with us, which was childish for people his age.

He had been in a difficult situation in his early childhood. His parents divorced, his dad ran off with some chick and then his mother went insane in a fanatical religious kind of way. She was taken into a mental institution. I don’t know more details about that since I was really young when that happened. My mother has told me about all that. But from my memories when I was a teenager his mother was always heavily sedated by the pills she took.

Maybe typical case where it runs in the family. In case of his mother she ‘slipped’ because of the divorce, and my friend, already derailed by this situation, then took LSD and ‘slipped’ also. He got some nasty alien pixies all right.

It is a black day in history. I feel sorry for him.
 
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