Posted on August 11, 2025 View all news
Before THC vaping came into my life, I was a happily married father with a couple of great kids. I was in a career that I wasn’t super happy with, but I wasn’t unique in that situation. I provided for my family, had a house, and a couple of vehicles, so things weren’t bad. I drank too much due to my unhappiness with my work and my father’s ever-increasing demands on me to take care of things for him. My relationship with my father has been problematic, if not toxic, most of the time over the years, but I’ve tried to be a good son and keep him in my life. So, to alleviate my stress, I would drink, which would cause me anxiety. Anxiety, which I would take anti-anxiety meds to mitigate.
Then came COVID and a move to a state that legalized THC sales. The propaganda was good! Really good! Here is an all-natural medicinal herb that serves as an alternative to pharmaceuticals, offering no side effects and known for its positive health benefits. A product that was just too good to be true! I had to try it. I seem to have forgotten: caveat emptor!
So I began using different products and eventually settled on vapes with 95% THC—the perfect product for my needs. I quit drinking, got off my anxiety meds, and was losing weight. I was getting physically healthy and mentally healthier. No more alcohol clouding my mind!
Well, it went swimmingly for about a year. My tolerance for THC continued to grow, and the amount I was using continued to grow along with it, but what did it matter? It was completely harmless and had health benefits. My wife was concerned about it, so she went to the dispensary with me and asked if there were any side effects. The answer was, of course, no. I had my answer, and my wife heard it for herself. Although, to her credit, she never believed it. It got to the point where I was going through a gram in about 5 days. I was vaping morning, noon, and night, but I was getting healthy…
Then things started to change, but the changes were gradual enough for me not to notice and for my wife to justify them as not a problem. Well, it was becoming a problem and would become a big one.
After using my “new medicine” for about a year, my sleep pattern changed. I didn’t need to sleep as much. I thought it was because I didn’t have alcohol use keeping me in bed. My thoughts started to speed up. I had clarity! Well, that was what I thought. I had no idea I was heading into psychosis.
I started to have strange or unrealistic ideas of what the world should be like, but not completely “crazy”. Well, at least not yet. I would spend a lot of time alone at night vaping and pacing. Thinking all kinds of things. Everything started to make sense. I was beginning to become in tune with nature, too.
As my journey down the Rabbit Hole proceeded, I became increasingly irritable and occasionally rude to people I shouldn’t have been. I was pretty lucky, though. Most of my bad times only happened in the hospital or around loved ones. Real lucky…
On the last night of my freedom, I made a bit of an ass of myself at a sporting event for my kids. At this point, I was in psychosis! The manic type! Great! Not so much. It was an embarrassing event. I made a fool of myself; people probably thought I was drunk or something. That was the beginning of the end for me. That night I scarred my wife half to death, and so she called the police, which took a bad situation and made it worse.
I went from psychosis at home to psychosis in a cell for assault and battery. I had moved my wife out of my way to get into the house, and the cops took it as assault. My wife wanted me to get help at a hospital, not to be thrown in jail for being sick. Well, that isn’t how things worked out.
The officer took it upon himself to arrest me. He never read me my Miranda rights and couldn’t take my fingerprints. I did them myself to help out! What an idiot I was helping this cop who couldn’t even do his job. Anyway, instead of getting the help I needed, I spiraled further out of control. A common theme in the judicial system when it comes to mental health crises!
Many people in jail/prison are sick and need help, but instead are fed through the meat grinder. When I was in jail, I ranted and raved most of the night in my cell—riffing about different thoughts and trying to understand why I was in jail in the first place. Eventually, I did pass out, or so I thought.
In the morning, I was just as psychotic as the night before, but I was on my way to court. Irritable, paranoid, delusional, and in need of help. I was put in a new cell to await my fate. Pacing while locked in a cell, awaiting a judge’s decision on what to do with me. All the while, I refused court-appointed counsel and a psychiatrist. I was angry as hell. I couldn’t believe it when I read the police report on why I was there. I hadn’t assaulted my wife. I didn’t do anything to hurt her, and she was unharmed, but I had scared her half to death with my wild behavior. I was so out of my normal self the previous night that she was distraught, which is such a great thing to have to live with. Once I got my moment in court, it went as well as could be expected. I was sent to a “hospital” for the criminally insane. I was released 20 days later, but my journey with psychosis wasn’t over.
Things went from worst to a little better to really terrible again, leading me to finally getting help in a hospital ward. And the details of the rest of the story and my other experiences might help others if I get around to telling them. Until then, for the sake of brevity, I’ll keep this a synopsis.
So, after getting helped and misdiagnosed (Shocker! Someone with cannabis-induced psychosis (CIP) gets misdiagnosed!) I was put on medication for a while until I got stable, and then I figured out what had caused the issue. Me! Not the medical establishment, courts, or the mental health professionals, it was me! Unbelievable!
Since then, I’m back to myself as much as possible. No more mess, working more than ever, kicked Mary Jane to the curb years ago, and was able to keep my family thanks to a great and very supportive wife who fought for me when I viewed her as the enemy!
To say I’m fortunate is an understatement; just read some of the stories where people develop a permanent disorder or lose their lives, so I’m very fortunate!
I am grateful to the mental health professionals who helped me and fought to get me better. I hold no animosity towards them, even though they got my diagnosis wrong. CIP manifests with symptomatology similar to bipolar and schizophrenia, which makes it even more atrocious that there are no clear warning labels on the products or PSA’s running on TV, radio, and online warning the public of THC’s potential harms. Cannabis isn’t the same drug of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, or 90’s, which had relatively low THC and more balanced levels of CBD. It is much different, and the effects are so much more powerful.
Recovery from THC psychosis is possible, but you need to know first what the cause is (and accept it!) and then stop using it before the psychosis becomes permanent. Schizophrenia is not something anyone should want to get, and according to multiple studies, THC can lead you to it. So, abstain from THC and work with your mental health providers to get you healthy, and then stay healthy.
THC isn’t medicine and should be treated like what it is, an illegal drug! If the plant has medicinal properties, I’m in favor of them undergoing the process to obtain FDA approval. Otherwise, it is just foolishness to claim that THC is medicinal.
I hope that the country will wake up sooner rather than later and push back against the drug pushers who claim that their products are completely safe, effective, and medicinal.
If people want to chance getting a permanent mental health disorder by using these products, that is their decision. Still, there needs to be awareness about the reality that THC can be dangerous and can cause both physical and mental health issues.
The new “weed”, “Weedenstein”, is a Frankenstein monster that is doing great damage to our society, and people don’t even know it! That needs to change!
JD
