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Comment by clydethefrog | Hacker News Reader

Because of a history of psychosis in my family I decided to never take drugs in my life, not even cannabis while I life in a country where it's legal. I still got a heavy psychotic episode last year. Turns out the (heavy) drinking I participated in my student life was to blame. Research has shown that alcohol abuse causes an 8-fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in men and a 3 fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in women. [0] Not telling this to undermine the danger of cannabis for psychosis, but I wish I knew alcohol is unresponsible too I you have a high risk for psychosis. Sleeping enough, excercise, healthy diet and not numbing my stress with any substance has greatly helped as well.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis

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>I decided to never take drugs in my life

>the (heavy) drinking I participated in

You can clearly see how damaging the anti drug propaganda is when people don't even consider alcohol the hard drug that it is.

Yes, I learned it the hard way. My reasoning was that alcohol doesn't "free" your mind like cannabis or LSD does, so I will not trigger psychosis. But it still has effect on your brain chemistry.

But alcohol can cause psychosis - Delirium Tremens : https://paihdelinkki.fi/en/info-bank/articles/alcohol/deliri...

It requires you to be physically dependent on it, and then delirium tremens may occur following abrupt cessation, as a withdrawal symptom.

The two cases at hand are different.

doesn't "free" your mind

Not usually, no, but at least for me it can induce a similar effect. Though most of the time that is only after I have used something else in the week before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xhdPmu2dEA

"and not numbing my stress with any substance has greatly helped as well."

What do you do instead now? I don't love my current amount of consumption but It's one of the few ways I can quiet my head at the end of a long day.

Do you exercise? I used to use ridiculous amounts of cannabis just so I could sleep at night. When I was quitting, tiring myself out to the point of exhaustion at the gym was about the only thing that worked. Another big thing that has contributed to my overall sleep was weaning myself off caffeine.

Also, possibly consider talking to a therapist about anxiety disorders. The self medication and your description of going to bed really resonated with me. Doing drugs just turned all that "off". I'm not a mental health professional, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But anxiety was definitely a reason why I personally was self medicating so much. Either way, good luck on your journey.

Yup. I exercise an hour a day during lunch most days of the week. Wrestled in high school and college and worked out much more and while that is helpful sometimes I'm often physically tired but my brain is charged. In fact, I feel like working out helps recharge my brain.

Got off caffeine fully a year ago and that has helped some.

I've got a few diagnosed anxiety disorders. Those certainly contribute. I'm hesitant to try any actual medication though as I've seen it change friends significantly in the past.

As the other person says, exercise in the form of lifting weights has helped me. I always thought it was not for me, but lifting something heavy several times until you're tired makes me feel good.

I also focus on finding the source of my stress symptoms and resolving them. That's of course easier said than done. I decided to not pursue an advanced degree and currently work not a high amount of hours.

I notice I am becoming less anxious without alcohol as well after being sober for a year.

>Turns out the (heavy) drinking I participated in my student life was to blame.

Did it happen during a night of heavy drinking? Because if not (and even then) I'm really not sure how you can pin it specifically on the alcohol.

It happened a few days after a heavy weekend of drinking, but before that weekend it was months of getting drunk at least two times a week.

The medical professionals explained that heavy use of alcohol screws with your neurotransmitters. Especially dopamine might play a big role in causing psychosis.

The kindling effect is likely to blame.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindling_(sedative–hypnotic_...

> decided to never take drugs in my life, not even cannabis

And then:

> (heavy) drinking I participated in

As far as drugs go, alcohol is one of the worse ones. Arguably a lot worse than cannabis.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_harmfulness

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