I thought drugs were making me psychotic, but it was just stigma and misunderstanding | Akshay’s Story
When you’re beginning your journey of drug use, it is easy to get a bit overenthusiastic and end up lost, especially when you don’t have any elders around to help guide you. Akshay spent a lot of time worrying that cannabis and LSD had given him drug-induced anxiety, depersonalisation and psychosis, but he eventually realised that the people who were trying to help him held some negative attitudes towards drugs, and he needed a more supportive — and experienced — community around him.
A young man on psychedelics wanders through a dark forest (Image source: NightCafe).
My journey with illicit drugs began with smoking cannabis at a party. After an initial period of panic upon finding my consciousness being changed in a way I’d never experienced before, I began to see how interesting this new state was, and started getting curious about exploring more.
At the time, I didn’t have many friends I could smoke with, nor many places to go to, so, while my parents were out, I had to make do with doing it at home with a friend who lived nearby. He’d come over to my place after school. The sessions were fun for me at first, involving ‘tripping out’, forgetting what I was doing, and feeling like I was getting loads of personal insights. After some time, however, I started to experience ‘depersonalisation/derealisation’. During highs, feelings of disconnection with my mind and body were expected and part of the ‘trippiness’, but these feelings of disconnection would often remain after sobering up. I would feel like I was going crazy, like I was an observer of myself rather than just myself, but there was never anything I could point to as proof I was ‘going crazy’ — from the outside, I seemed to function just fine, but this feeling of not having any agency over myself made me stressed.
I was lucky enough to feel comfortable telling my friends —and even my parents — but they didn’t understand what I was experiencing, so the internet became my sole source of help. I looked for advice on dealing with ‘depersonalisation’, which helped me quite a lot. Despite this ordeal, however, I was still curious about exploring more ‘mind-altering’ drugs and decided to do LSD next.
In my internet research I had learnt about the importance of good ‘set and setting’ when doing psychedelics, so I chose to do LSD at a safe place with the same trusted friend, and I went in with an open mindset. The experience was eye-opening and beautiful. I felt my sense of self dissolving, hilarious thought loops, trippy visuals, and insightful introspection. This was amazing, and I wanted more of it, so I paid less attention to the online advice around ensuring proper integration and intentional use, and I began to use LSD quite frequently, at low to medium doses. Additionally, because none of my friends were interested in psychedelics the way I was at the time, I would spend my time high alone in my room, wandering the city, or in parks.
Like cannabis, the LSD started having its downsides. I started to experience a strange kind of social anxiety and increased paranoia, and on higher doses would often feel my consciousness be so unimaginably strange that I thought I might have been developing psychosis of some kind. During sober periods, I’d sometimes get terrifying moments where my entire perception would become hell, with extreme dysphoria (feeling bad) and strong demonic undertones, and this often made me feel that I had completely ruined my brain. Help from friends and family were out of the question, and even the internet was not enough, because I was starting to have experiences so complex, strange and intense that a google search wasn’t enough to help me understand them. I felt like I was left in the middle of hyperspace with no real guide. With no validation of or supporting framework around these experiences, I had little to ground me. I began to see both a psychiatrist and psychologist for ‘drug-induced anxiety’, and while having support of some kind was helpful, it was nowhere near enough to help me navigate the complexity of my experiences.
Fortunately, I came across a new group of friends who were more familiar with these kinds of experiences, and in combination with my psychologist and psychiatrist, over time I was able to ground myself a little better. Throughout this period of being terrified of ‘losing my mind’ I did some internet research on various drugs and decided to completely stay away from many drugs and treat all other drug use with caution. Despite spending a lot of time in drug-using spaces, I was almost always sober, partially because the drugs I wanted — weed, stimulants, and dissociatives — were the drugs I believed to also carry the most risk of getting psychosis.
However, on reflection, I don’t believe I ever experienced ‘real’ psychosis, nor was particularly at risk for getting it. I never hallucinated or held strong beliefs despite contradictory evidence. The ‘confused thoughts’ I had were merely unstructured, unguided, and unvalidated explorations of my own psyche and experience, and the sober moments of terror were mild traumas involving scary thought patterns and powerful emotions, rather than actual ‘psychosis’. When I tried to explain my experiences to those around me, I was often met with unwarranted concern, misunderstanding and stigma. Rather than curious attempts to explore, understand and integrate my experience, it was seen largely as ‘drug-induced anxiety’ or even ‘drug-induced insanity’, especially by my family, old friends and the medical system. Now I have realised that everything I had experienced was within the range of non-psychotic consciousness, and all it would have taken to prevent much of the anxiety I went through was a knowledgeable guide to help me navigate my experiences and reassure me I was okay.
Such kind of guidance, however, does not easily come from mainstream medical systems nor folk knowledge, which have yet to adapt to the complexities of some drug experiences. Largely, it is left up to users themselves, as well as some of their friends and possibly family, to navigate this space. Drug use may provide many benefits & insights, and this was my primary motivation for engaging with them in the first place, but maintaining a fine balance between these benefits and the harms of drug use is difficult, so many people could do with better support. Many healthcare professionals have lived experience and may be good at helping their clients navigate some of their drug-related experiences, but this is coincidental rather than an integrated part of the system.
Now, I still use drugs. I occasionally smoke weed and do stimulants or dissociatives, and sometimes even mix them with psychedelics, which I now use on a somewhat regular basis to challenge myself and grow in new ways. I’m no longer fearful that I’ll lose my mind and go nuts. The possibility of me developing psychosis is still there, however, so I’m still careful with my drug use and maintaining good mental health, but I’ve accepted that worrying that a single bump of ketamine will send me to the psych ward is doing me no favours. I think I’ve been lucky overall, but I do think my experience is symptomatic of society and its institutions’ stigmatisation and failure to adequately understand and respond to certain kinds of drug use.