or 30 years, Dr. Libby Stuyt, a recently retired addiction psychiatrist in Pueblo, Colorado, treated patients with severe drug dependency. Typically, that meant alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamines. But about five years ago, she began to see something new.
“I started seeing people with the worst psychosis symptoms that I have ever seen,” she told me. “And the worst delusions I have ever seen.”
These cases were even more acute than what she’d seen from psychotic patients on meth. Some of the delusions were accompanied by “severe violence.” But these patients were coming up positive only for cannabis.
Stuyt wasn’t alone: Health care professionals throughout Colorado and all over the country were seeing similar episodes.
Ben Cort, who runs an addiction recovery center in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, watched a young man jump up on the table in the emergency department and strip naked, claiming he was the God of thunder and threatening to kill everyone in the room, including two police officers. A collegiate athlete Cort worked with also had a psychotic episode and was shot five times by the police with a beanbag gun before he was subdued. In Los Angeles County, Blue Stohr, a psychiatric social worker, had a patient who climbed a 700-foot crane and considered jumping off of it, not because he was suicidal but because he thought he was in a computer simulation, like The Matrix.
Those patients, too, were high only on cannabis.
Weed has lots of benefits honestly. Obviously anything in excess is probably not good for you, but I've been smoking pot for almost 9 years now semi regularly, and I've NEVER had any of these side effects. Not even once. The only paranoia I get is because it's federally illegal and I really don't wanna go to the slammer for something as miniscule as a few g's of pot. I've had everything from hash to concentrates and everything in between. As long as I know my limits I'm perfectly fine and like you said, it makes me think more deeply on many occasions and gets my creative juices flowing in overdrive on other occasions. And honestly, I feel more in tune with the Holy spirit when I put my mind into that mode. I can more clearly see the hand of God at work around me when my mind is quieted down and more relaxed. This may be an unpopular practice, but I've been to church high before. It was one of the most moving experiences ive had truly. God created everything in the heavens and the earth, including pot. It was made for our benefit in numerous ways and I thank God that I'm able to enjoy and partake in His creation that He made for us
I have, but this was in the early 70's smoking black afghani hashish, courtesy of Howard Marks. It was just about all there was to smoke in the UK then, the only herb was piss poor stuff the Jamaicans in Brixton got posted to them.
This hashish made me very agitated, I trembled and shook violently, could not sleep or relax and the music I liked to play was an awful din.
Thanks a bunch you Welsh git!