More (Former) Cannabis Users Tell How this Drug Damaged Them - plus a debate and an interview

A final reminder here of my debate in London this evening (Wednesday 14th November 2012) about cannabis, details of which can be found here:

http://surelysomemistake.blogspot.co.uk/

I believe a few tickets are still available.

Also here is a link to an interview I recently gave to the ‘American Spectator’ on the drugs issue:

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/13/the-straight-dope-a-telephone

 

As background to both, two more readers have written to me about their experiences of cannabis. In the first place the source is known to me:

 

‘I can tell you from direct experience and am under absolutely no doubt that cannabis causes mental health problems.

During a period of unemployment in my late teens and early twenties and prior to a return to full time education I smoked cannabis for around five years.  At the time I was living in the South Wales valleys, an area of high unemployment and high drug use. During those years an individual who didn't take drugs was seen as some sort of pariah. The valleys in those years during the early 1990's had a very strong drug/cannabis culture. 

I first tried cannabis in the late 1980's but began smoking it full time in 1991 when I was 19 years old. Over the five years I smoked cannabis on a daily basis I became withdrawn and reclusive. I experienced symptoms of agoraphobia, memory loss and paranoia. Although these symptoms were acutely felt I belonged to a group (a large group) of people who felt the same. This sadly 'normalised' the symptoms and lessened their apparent severity.

 

If an individual happened to be among friends when particular symptoms were being acutely experienced the sufferer would be described as 'having a wobbler'.

 

When I look back it seems incredible. We all accepted that we were not mentally well but it didn't seem to matter.

After around four years of cannabis use I was clearly aware that I would get nowhere in life smoking it. I also knew that without a return to education my chances of getting a job were zero. But unless I kicked the cannabis habit there was no way that I was going to be able to study. my memory was non-existent. as was my powers of concentration.It took me two years to properly kick the habit and smoked my last joint in 1997.

 

I moved from the valleys,  which helped me break away from the group of users I belonged to but eventually moved back to Wales and embarked upon full time education. Over those year of full time study I worked  on a number of Psychiatric wards  and regularly came into contact with sufferers of long term psychiatric problems who freely admitted that their use of cannabis significantly contributed to their ill health.

 

I then completed a first and second degree. My studies included working with a clinical team consisting of a number of Psychiatrists and Psychologists who specialised in treating patients with Personality Disorders. Again nearly all the patients I researched and who formed part of my clinical analysis in my thesis admitted that cannabis had a part to play in their deteriorated mental health.

 

I look upon those who think that Cannabis is harmless as woefully naive.  As to whether cannabis has done me any lasting damage, the answer is both yes and no,  if that makes sense. My memory, powers of concentration etc. have returned to a healthy level and I no longer experience agoraphobia or paranoia -  but I believe that I was lucky to have kicked the habit when I was still relatively young; 26 years of age at the time. I am 41 this month.

 

The lasting damage lies in the fact that my life was virtually on-hold during the cannabis years. When smoking cannabis on a daily basis I feel that an individual cannot grow and mature. So the lasting damage is that the person is set back, or behind in life.

The longer an individual takes cannabis to the extent it prevents them looking for work then the longer they are cognitively, emotionally and socially set back.

 

I think a point is reached however where an individual's position is irrecoverable. I believe that if an individual smokes cannabis long enough their personality changes to the extent where temporary states of paranoia, poor memory and agoraphobia (plus other symptoms) become more permanent trait type features. I see old friends I knew over 20 years ago who have literally done nothing since those days except collect their unemployment or disability benefit every two weeks and spend every day smoking cannabis.

 

It is as if they have never grown up and moved on in life. They have physically aged but their lives are the same as they were when they started smoking cannabis. Their personalities seem to also be on-hold, as does their cognitive development. 

I can't see any of the people I know who still smoke cannabis and have done so since I first started,  ever recovering and making something of themselves.They have become entrenched in their ways.

 

But more often than not cannabis leads to the use of other drugs. The reason that happen is because the cannabis dealer can't make enough money from selling only cannabis so he often also deals in other drugs depending on their availability. So if an individual visits their dealer intent on buying cannabis they can't help but be exposed to other drugs purely because they are present at the dealer's house.

 

Within the culture I experienced there would be those who would use cannabis plus those who would use cannabis and something else. Often 'something else' would be either amphetamines, or LSD. The latter was always very uncommon,  as was Cocaine.

 

During the mid 1990s Heroin use exploded in the South Wales Valleys as well,  so I saw many (and I do mean many) people start taking heroin, swearing that they would never inject. Most went on to do just that. Those who went down the heroin road formed their own subculture within our subculture. Many eventually died and some committed suicide.

 

To use some sort of analogy the drug culture that grew in the South Wales Valleys in the early 1990s is like a hole with steps that lead deeper and deeper. Cannabis is the top step into the hole whilst Amphetamine, LSD and Magic Mushrooms can be seen as the second step that takes you a bit deeper. The third step is heroin. Everybody took the first step. Many took the second step. Some took the third. Those who took the third step usually didn't come back out of the hole. Anybody who ventured onto step 2 often didn't come back out even though quite a few did. Anybody on step one had a chance of recovery if they didn't linger.

 

I could tell you a very great deal about what I have experienced. I am a firm believer that we should be very, very firm with our approach to drug use. We need much tougher penalties for possession and we need to be very severe for the offence of drug dealing. Those who deal drugs usually do so for the money. All the dealers I knew did it for no other reason.

They would work out how much drugs they needed to sell to make a certain amount of money before being 'busted' and going to jail. Often their rationale was that they could afford the risk because they would make enough money in the period they dealt the drugs to merit a spell in prison, safe in the knowledge that they had a large amount of money stashed upon their release.

 

I was around 15 when I first tried it but I was 19 when I started using it daily. But it was literally an overnight phenomenon. I went from hardly using it at all to smoking it daily. I did that until I was 24 and then spent about a year or so trying to stop. I finally stopped completely when I was 25. Just short of my 26th birthday.

 

I must admit that I feel lucky too. Lucky that I found a way out. But it’s about choice I believe. An individual must want more than 'their perceived lot'. The most frightening thing of all was the thought that I could be stuck jobless without any prospects in my home town and never get out. That fear drove me forwards and a few lucky breaks and will power got me out of the mess I was in.'

 

And this

The second account (in which the emphases are the author’s not mine) comes from an anonymous correspondent, who wrote : ‘The reason I am writing to you is to add the story of my disastrous contact with marijuana to the many I’m sure you’ve already heard.

 

‘I started taking the drug in my gap year, before going up to university. Certain aspects of my life were already troubling me at that point, but the marijuana quickly sent me into a kind of free-fall that ended in a horrible psychosis that took about two years out of my life; badly incapacitated me mentally so that to this day I cannot process information quickly (an aspect of schizophrenia called thought-blocking) and experience thought-poverty and emotional flatness; left me needing anti-psychotic medication, without which I cannot sleep , and which makes me depressingly overweight; and generally made me unrecognisable from the person I was before I started taking it.

 

‘Looking back, I find myself gasping at how dangerous I was, to myself and to others, while on the drug, taking one selfish decision after another while almost unconscious of what I was doing. In the ensuing decade  I have crawled slowly towards recovery, with the help of professionals and friends, though I will always wonder what I could have achieved if I had steered clear of the drug.

 

‘In particular I wanted to say two things, both relating to the actual nature of psychosis. First, when I was taking marijuana I would have bad trips, but I also had this creeping feeling that something terrible was going to happen. But what? Surely this was just my imagination?. Not knowing what psychosis was, or that marijuana could cause it, and not caring, I dismissed this feeling as paranoia. Though many people taking the drug will have heard about this ‘psychosis’, I believe that if they really knew just what ‘it’ was and seriously considered that they might experience it, I’m sure they wouldn’t be so blasé.

 

‘Which brings me to my second point. It is incredibly hard to describe psychosis. I remember lying down on a bed, I don’t know for how log –it could have been seconds or hours. It was *literally* like having my mind torn apart, like being made to believe two and two were five. It was just unbelievably horrible.

 

Afterwards, it just seemed like my life was over. I really feel there should be more attempts made in discussion of this subject, to educate people about psychosis. But also there is no doubt in my mind that my psychosis was prompted by marijuana, for the simple reason that the experience of it and leading up to it was *almost exactly the same as a marijuana trip*.

 

I had actually gone without the substance for around three months, and then took it about a week before my breakdown, and had the most disturbing trip I had ever experienced; there is no doubt in my mind that when, a week later, the psychosis hit me, it grew out of the same twisted emotions/imagery/ perceptions.

 

So when people say there is no way of proving the link between the drug and the mental illness, I just laugh. Sadly, I don’t need a proof; I simply know that there is one’.