smoked my first joint recently

I hate to admit this...but here goes...

I have always had mood swings from a teenager, but I didn't realsie that til later in years. My father has mood swings daily (soemtimes hourly) but growing up with him I thought this behaviour was normal.

Just befor eI truned 25 I staretd self medicating with ecstacy. I started having problems losing gruips on reality for short periods of time. It wasn't until December 2000 that I then started to use speed.

I went on a long trip with my then fiance, and didn't sleep fro a couple of days. We ended up back in Melbourne for a new years eve party with even more drugs. By the morning I had titally lost the plot. By January 5th I still hadn't come down and was experiencing what I nopw know as a "drug induced psychosis". I had never had one before that lasted so long.

I was admitted into hospital Jan 6th 2001, where I was hospitalised for almost 3 motnhs.

I attempted suicide after I gto out of hospital cos I was so confused and thought I had lost the life that I had known (which in fact turned out true).

Since that first episode I have relapsed many times since and need to be medicated so I don't have another psychotic episode. I am not on any mood stabilsrs , cos like I said in a previous post, now that I am aware of it and have no current stress in my life I can handle the swings no matter how sever they get.

But I can't help to think what would have happened if I didn't hit it so hard that new years eve. Would my mind have eventually snapped under normal life situations? MY own mothers did naturally from being seperated by my Dad for a year. But she cam eright on their own.

I guess I will never know if I was destined to become psychotic or not. But its the psychosis or the prevention of psychosis that stops me from being able to do alot of things today and I can't help won der if I didn't break in the first place that it would have re-occurred.

I guess I will never know, but I do know I have always struggled and never got help for it, which led to me self medicating and going over the top.

This is very personal for me, and I don't admit it often due to people thinking it was just the drugs that did this to me. I don't blame them cos I wonder that myself sometimes.

In hindsite, I wish I let nature do its own thing with me, I didn't know I had a pre-dispostion to mental illness. Hell I didn't even think it existed.

Anyway, a part of me thinks I fucked up, and I have to live with my decision that I made at 24 to turn to drugs, anothe rpart of me knows it was symptamatic of my condition at the time.

I just wish there were inetrvention before it got so serious.

Sorry about the ramble.

It's not a ramble, it a brutally honest telling of what has happened. There is the chicken and egg thing, ie did you start using to self medicate existing genetically based mental illness or did your drug use bring on the psychosis. For me, I had Eearly Onset Mental Illness (I know now) and I was also a genetically predisposed alcoholic. So when I picked up the booze at 14 and began blackout drinking, I was drinking both because my genes meant when that booze first hit the blood brain barrier, my body said YES!!! And thus I was a blackout drinker - I would literally drink until I dropped for 18 years.

But at the same time, that first drink brought me immediate self-medicating relief from my genetically predisposed mental illness and the damaged girl I was from the horrendous upbringing I had.

But the overriding thing now is that both of us are doing constructive and consitent things to treat our conditions and that we continue to do so.

I have been told that most of us self medicate to try to make ourselves feel better. It winds up being worse for our condition though.

At the time Wendy I was ignorant to all mental illness. I was brought up to think it was mind over matter.

I have been educated since.

I was hooked on meth for about five years. Haven't done any in about six years though.

Yeah thats what I'm saying Westy.

If I hadn't kept going with drugs until breaking point I don't think I would be as prone to psychosis as what I am today.

But then again, I'm not to sure. Back then something had to give, I'm just glad I have been educated about it now and and very well aware of mental illness, not just from personal experience but from others to.

I lost a childhood mates friendship cos we were obviously been brought up the same, but when he saw me unwell, he broke off the friendship alltogther. He had no understanding about it no matter how much I told him what could happen.

When it happened and he witnessed it first hand (me being psychotic) he dumped me like a cold fish

I try to stick to herb but they originally diagnosed me with reactive schizophrenia because of ganja I like to smoke and sometimes it helps and sometimes it makes me wanna jump off a bridge Some strain's seem to work better then others.

Hey boxrep, me too. And people who are alcoholics or addicts are in the dark about their condition, or in denial. And then people who have mental illness can be ignorant or in denial. And when you're Dual Diagnosis like me and some of us, Whoooaaaa - denial is a self preservation method that turns back on us like a shark.

I did my first line of meth when I was 11. The signs of BP were already there tho I am sure the next 24 years of heavy meth use have not helped my brain. 12 years clean . I smoked weed occassionally as a kid but until Agnes was found and the neuro suggessted it when the pain meds no longer worked as they should I didnt smoke it regularly

I have and have some more. I haven't had raw uncut opium, not out of any choice of my own though. I have had hash and Buddha Tai riddled with opium just no uncut opium.

When I was 15 on Christmas night I was arrested for having MDA. It was so new the police couldn't figure out what it was. Later with some changes it became MMDA or MDDA? That is today's Ecstasy. I never caved into the police so they had nothing and I was eventually released from court.

I hope alot of the younger kids here read this.

Back in high school I tried acid, mushrooms, rush...right in the classroom, and smoked pot.

They aren't very receptive, younger kids, they are still at that I KNOW IT ALL age like I am not hahahaha. We can only help them when they hit bottom and hit it hard.

Acid today is about 30 grams. When we did it in high school it was 100 to 130 grams. They just have no clue. When Tim Leary and Baba Ram Das (Richard Alpert) ate prescription White Lightening from Sandoze Industries it was about 400 grams. No wonder they talked to God.

What are J's?