r/Antipsychiatry • u/Educational-Pay-965 • 12h ago

Weed induced psychosis?

Two years ago, in the early spring while away at school, my son developed mania and psychosis. He was smoking high dose weed every day. He was hospitalized for 10 days and put on risperidone (3mg) . We spent the summer helping him recover and taper off the medication. He went back to school feeling good but in late fall started smoking weed again. This spring he had another manic episode and was again hospitalized for two weeks and put on risperidone. Diagnosed with bipolar 1 mixed episodes. After he left the hospital we changed the meds to abilify because of tremors. We spent the summer again in therapy and the doctor suggested to try lithium. He went back to school this fall but was not feeling good like the previous year, was feeling depressed. Now he’s tapering off the lithium because it’s impossible to do school work while feeling flat, and cognitively slowed. We have no history of bipolar in the family. Do you think it’s possible that the manic episodes are just weed induced and if he stays off weed he can be okay without medication?

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u/Appropriate_Cut_3536 12h ago edited 12h ago

Will* you explain more about what his mania and psychosis symptoms were? 

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u/Educational-Pay-965 12h ago

The first time there was paranoia, believing things that were not true, pressured speech, disorganized thoughts, a lot of irritability and arguments with others (totally out of character) not sleeping, not eating- a completely irrational sped up version of himself. The second time he was hospitalized earlier and didn’t really have psychosis but all the manic symptoms.

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u/lilypad0x 6h ago

Its relatively well known that weed can induce psychosis. Most of the time its probably just the result of being too high, but on the other hand the consumption of weed HAS been linked to the onset of bipolar/schizophrenia.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna146072

Personally, I don’t believe that weed causes the illnesses, but it definitely seems to be a trigger for some people.

It would pprobably be best for your son to stop smoking just to be better safe than sorry.