Marijuana-induced Psychosis - what is it?
/Psychosis is a break from reality – it can be mild to severe
A person can have a single psychotic symptom without having full-fledged psychosis
Full-fledged psychosis is also called a psychotic break and is defined when two or more psychotic symptoms occur at once
Marijuana use results in psychosis at rates higher than any other recreational drug. Amphetamines rank second with heroine at the bottom.
As high as 40% of marijuana users may experience a psychotic symptom
About 35% of those will experience a full psychotic break if they continue using heavily
50% of marijuana users that experience this psychotic break will return to their pre-break normal.
The other 50% are never quite the same - again this can be mild or severe developing into chronic, unremitting psychosis like permanent schizophrenia
Symptoms of Psychosis defined:
The primary psychotic symptom from marijuana is paranoia followed by:
Racing thoughts/disordered thinking - most similar to loss of logic, saying things that don't make sense, while still using correct words and sentence structure
Outright hallucinations (visual and/or auditory)
Fixed delusions - about the world around the person that have no bearing on reality, i.e. that President Obama is going to visit their home tomorrow
Delusions of grandeur - where the delusion has to do with great self-importance, i.e they will be elected President tomorrow or that they are the reincarnation of Jesus Christ
Ideas of reference - thinking that events in the world that have nothing to do with the person actually pertain to them, i.e. if a train crashes in Japan that it was somehow caused by the person forgetting to lock his/her car
Perseveration - repetitive actions and thoughts that the person cannot be deterred from; e.g. perseverating on stepping over cracks in the sidewalk instead of on the cracks
Word salad - when thinking is so disordered that sentence structure is gone
Psychosis is a spectrum of permanence:
