[Throwaway42754]

I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I naively took too much.

For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by on a low dose olanzapine, but for many people they simply don't work at all.

Even though I'm doing well enough to function normally and hold down a good, well paying job, it's impossible to find a partner. If I were to have kids, I would have to go through one of the embryo prescreening services. I am strongly in support of these screening services - the disease is truly horrible.

There has been little progress on treatments for schizophrenia, the mechanism of action of these drugs has remained the same for decades. The side effects are almost as bad as the disease, which is why so many schizophrenic stop taking them. The only novel medication recently released is Cobenfy, which I have not tried yet.

Personally I am holding out hope that schizophrenia has some basis as an autoimmune disease. There was a cancer patient who had a bone marrow transplant and ended up being cured: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophre...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I have family with that.

The most striking thing, is the absolute certainty of the thinking. They feel as if their thinking is crystal-clear, and that they are the only one that "sees the patterns."

Currently, they're doing well. I know of others, that are not so fortunate.

It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use. They are better off chewing tabs of acid. I've not used it in about 45 years, and I've heard that today's pot is a heck of a lot stronger than what I remember.

[bryanrasmussen]

>It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use. They are better off chewing tabs of acid.

from the guys I knew who chewed the tabs of acid and had evident schizophrenic problems, I don't think so.

[accidentallfact]

Exactly. This well matches my hypothesis about how the brain works.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44347211

[mandmandam]

> It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use.

This isn't entirely true, and it's a dangerous misconception. High THC, low CBD cannabis wouldn't be recommended, but that's exactly what making cannabis illegal selects for.

High CBD, low/zero THC cannabis, on the other hand, will probably be one of the paths to treatment if we ever get over our Reefer Madness and pharmaceutical obsession.

[pfannkuchen]

Can I ask how you are sure they haven’t had some novel insight that you just don’t currently understand? Like maybe they are bad at explaining but whatever pattern they noticed is valid?

I’m not defending them as I don’t know any details, I’m just curious how you came to be certain about your assessment.

[robocat]

> I am holding out hope that schizophrenia has some basis as an autoimmune disease

From article:

  Increasingly, researchers consider schizophrenia to be a “meta-syndrome,” encompassing multiple symptom dimensions/clusters and arising from intersections of diverse underlying mechanisms

So while autoimmune might be the cause for some people, other people have other causes?

As humans we look for a simple A therefore B story. Even then most people in my experience are either (a) poor at spotting cause and effect or (b) go into denial e.g. many political arguments

> kids, I would have to go through one of the embryo prescreening services

Have to? Do you mean you would want to? Or is there some compulsory force where you are?

[FollowingTheDao]

I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type as well. And man when I have anything with THC in it I’m a basket case. Worst psychosis in my life.

He might be interested in looking up THC, glutamate and schizoaffective disorder. Here’s a good start.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-019-0374-8

[ashoeafoot]

It also makes you near unemployable as stress triggers the paranoia/psychosis.

[sandspar]

Not for everyone. Many schizophrenics find their work calming and grounding.

[_xtrimsky]

This post convinced me to never try marijuana again.

I've tried 3 times, last time was a bad trip, I went into a very cold state (was shaking) and I was seeing random visual images every second. It felt like my brain was telling chat gpt to generate a random image on the fly none stop.

Anyways I was fine the next day, but I'm not trying it ever again if there is some risks associated with it. I took a low dose (half gummy).

[thenaturalist]

Cannabis is not to be trifled with.

While other stimulant substances when used might also lead to psychosis, it is cannabis which stands out with the highest risk of a psychosis becoming chronic and developing on into schizophrenia.

Sources:

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis

[1]: https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/substance-induced-psychoses...

[andoando]

Interesting, I had some really bad experiences with weed and the pattern matching thing strikes out to me as on these trips I experienced a ton of visual geomteric shapes and came to believe our intelligence is based on pattern recognition and spent 5 years, not to much avail, thinking about them.

[petra]

Interesting link, thank you!.

One other possible immune system link is the relationahip between the parasite toximoplasis gondii to schizophrenia.

If I'm not mistaken that's the paper about that:

https://dbc.wroc.pl/Content/39095/PDF/1031.pdf

[robocat]

Interesting article:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/some-unintuitive-properties...

[wycy]

Why do you need to do embryo pre-screening for something that’s not genetic? Or do you think it still is genetic despite also thinking you know the specific trigger in your case?

Edit: are you thinking it’s genetic, but exacerbated by weed?

[jjallen]

Everything is at least partially genetic.

We have a friend whose sister has it and she went to genetics counselors before having kids.

They told her that because her sister has it that her kids had a 20% likelihood of developing it. Obviously 20% is way higher than normal.

[Throwaway42754]

From my understanding of the science, weed can trigger schizophrenia in the genetically predisposed. Schizophrenia can be triggered by other environmental factors, so the embryo screening makes sense to lower the risk of the child getting it as well.