My story starts when I was 16 and first started smoking weed as I have cannabis induced psychosis. I started smoking daily as my boss at a dodgy bitcoin for cash trading company introduced me to weed. I began acting erratically, having outbursts at my friends and making irrational decisions like choosing to skip school and smoke weed. I was smoking 7-14g a day and was high from the moment I woke up till I fell asleep, to put it succinctly I was addicted to weed. I ended up getting kicked out of school for having weed on me and just fell deeper into the cycle of doing immoral things to make money and spending copious amounts on weed all day everyday.
Then another pivotal event happened. I tried LSD. This left me with HPPD as visual snow and I believe marks the point where I really began developing psychosis. I started to withdraw socially and the onset of negative symptoms began with my motivation dwindling and my cognitive function declining. I was working as tech support but I got fired and started sixth form at 17 (one year late). Around this time is when I first started hearing voices. There were a few different elements to the voices: at home I would believe it was the neighbors talking about me and out and about I would think it was people around me talking about me.
I will talk about the effects of being out and about first; it led me to further socially withdraw as the voices were critical of me and chastised me about my insecurities. For instance when walking past the canteen outside I thought I could overhear two girls talking about how I walked like a nerd. I was very insecure about how I walked as I thought I had a slouch and was also mystified by girls as I had gone to an all boys school from 11-16 and really didn't know how to talk to them and only a few of them seemed to like me namely this one girl Priya.
That brings me onto the voices at home, there were two female ones and a male one which coincided with the neighbors (two girls around my age and an older brother). These voices were with me just at night time to begin with and then 24/7 whilst I was at home. They would primarily talk about me and what they thought of me. A big theme was if I was “real” or not pertaining to being a gangster. Something which I considered myself to be as I did gangster things and hung out with real gangsters who sold drugs and stabbed people I had also done county lines which I was proud of (and still am somewhat to this day) the elephant in the room being I am a nerd and definitely not a gangster. One of the girls and “her brother” were somewhat critical of me and would question if I was real or even a good guy and the other girl (I never gave names to any of the voices I assumed I would find out their names when I finally met up with my neighbours) would always defend me and stick up for me.
Now this brings me onto the biggest embarrassment in my life. I began to fall in love with the good voice. My friends were all platonic (I had ended my first real relationship) and close ones were just manipulating me for free weed; I had pushed away all the real friends in favour of the manipulators because I was naive and psychotic (so I couldn't judge character correctly), nasty combination. Back to this voice I didn't just outwardly say I love her straight away it took 8 months of her defending me and always having my back over the other voices for me to actually admit it.
Now i'll focus more on how that came about. A delusion I had was that my neighbors were watching me through a camera hence the voices I could hear commenting on my actions who I believed to be my neighbours watching me for some sort of secret societies program. I also made the inference that I could get their boss to watch and then their bosses boss and then their bosses bosses boss e.x.t. by rhyming every word with three different meanings. To give some context these thoughts came about after smoking 2 grams of really good weed (gorilla glue). But I did just that, spoke to the “camera” whilst rhyming and believing that the upper echelons of this secret society were watching me live. I also thought they were going to make me prime minister. So what did I do? I put on my suit and went over to my neighbours house thinking I was about to meet this girl who was crazy for me and also become the prime minister. They didn't open the door.
My parents had been watching this unfold and eventually took me to the hospital to get checked out. When I realised what was going on I ran out of the hospital and walked 6.5 miles on the way home (I know the city quite well and didn't have my phone so I couldn't use google maps) but as I was one street away from home the police and my dad both came at the same time (in different cars). The police searched me and put me in cuffs then took me back to the hospital.
I ended up getting sectioned and taken to the hospital. It became clear to me after being there that I was mentally unwell and I stopped believing all the delusions things and realised I was hearing voices. I even made and edited a video with a collection of clips I had filmed of the antics inside the hospital. Unfortunately this clarity only lasted 2 weeks as then I became delusional again. When coming in from the outside area I one of the patients turned round and looked at me simultaneously I heard a voice saying “this is how it works”, the same sounding voice as his. I then believed I was in the telepathic illuminati training camp and that my long monolog in my room had in fact been recorded by a camera and had led to a revolution within this secret society that ran the world.
I fell down this rabbit hole and started believing the ads on TV were all about my tirade in this testing facility to become the new leader of this organisation. I also believed that all the other patients were actors who were testing me to see if I had what it takes. Some characters included: a man who had killed 6000+ people, the new transport minister, a worker in a human slaughtering warehouse, a MI5 spy.
As I believed the voices were me telepathically hearing thoughts I thought all the staff were in love with me and wanted to sleep with me. Fuck. This led to many awkward encounters that I would really rather not relive. My delusions just got worse and worse until I was eventually let out of hospital after 3.5 months. I was then psychotic for another 5 months but eventually I stopped smoking weed and the medication was able to do its job. And believe it or not i'm fully recovered now and doing an access to HE course and will be studying business at uni. Funny how things work out in the end aint it?
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