2024-03-12 Releasing My Psychosis

The speaker has suspected for a long time that using cannabis induces psychosis for him, but he's also enjoyed the altered state it creates. However, he has come to realise that the psychosis doesn't actually help and often leads to uncertainty and inconsistency. He has decided to stop using cannabis. They acknowledge that cannabis can have benefits for others. He values solitude and the need to know himself without the influence of substances. Overall, he has decided to let go of the psychosis-inducing experience of cannabis and focus on being his true self. I've long suspected, although I've just ignored it in many ways, that using cannabis, for me, creates a kind of psychosis. And my argument has been: I quite like the psychosis. I like the altered state, and in that state there's a feeling of creativity, sometimes a manic experience that certain bipolar, manic-depressive people have also talked about, where they're in an incredibly creative state. I'm inducing that state through the cannabis. Now, if you've never experienced psychosis, it isn't what you imagine. It isn't imagining that you're experiencing something that isn't true. And you know it isn't true. You're experiencing something that is absolutely true, and you're in no doubt of the reality of it. It's only after the cannabis leaves my system, I realise it's not as true as I thought it was. That the psychosis, interesting as it felt, actually didn't help me. If I've created something, if I've talked about something, if I've looked at something, and I feel like I've really touched on and reached something crucial sometimes, the following day when I listen to it, it isn't quite like that at all. And where I was certain that I would be sharing this and it would be valuable, often I don't share it at all. So I stopped. The last time I used, a month ago or something like that, I had an experience that made me question again my decision to do so. And so again, because I've done this many times before, I became, I have become a non-user. I quite like it, not being a drinker, I don't take alcohol, haven't done that for a long time, but not a drug user. I don't seek out, need, look for that experience like I used to. Now that's not to say I'll never have that experience again. I don't come across people who are users that I want to be around and that I might share that moment with them in their altered state. I only experience the altered state alone or at least hidden from others that I am. I avoid others because I don't want to reveal the psychosis to others because they don't need to see it. It's just for me. It's my experience. But actually I'm not sure it's good for me. And it's not that this is news, I've figured this out a long time ago and have stopped many, many times. And like any addictive substance or any substance, anything that one is addicted to, every so often I justify that it's okay for me to use it and then I do so, irregularly for sure, once a week at most. But even that seems to be too much. Unlike an alcoholic, for example, who has to abstain and if they have one drink then they have a hundred. They can't stop. It's not like that for me. But the fact that I have any experience of psychosis is not healthy. Because if I can't allow and accept and recognise the usefulness of experiencing it, then I mustn't experience it at all, ever, under any circumstances. I must stay in my natural state which may or may not contain issues and even madness. But at least if it does, then that's how it is. I'm not doing anything intentionally to create it. I'm not taking any substances. Were I to have the opportunity to use mushrooms again, to have a psychedelic experience in the right set and setting, I'm sure I would want to. But that's not on the table. I don't know anybody who uses it. I'm not going out to try to find the mushrooms at the appropriate time. I don't have that urge. I think it might be of use but if life doesn't bring it to me, I don't need it. So letting go of the psychosis by not taking the cannabis, which is right there, just literally a few feet from me, as enough time goes by, I forget what it's like to do so. I have no idea what it means to do so because the experience of being in that state can't be remembered, it can't be thought about because I can write about it, I can talk about it at the time, but afterwards, in the non-psychotic state, it's not really important. It doesn't make any sense. In fact, I might find that it has nothing of the quality that I felt it had when I was in that state. So I can't take the chance. Certainly, in that state, I often feel like I want to share it there and then. And I used to do just that. And it used to cause me all kinds of trouble, especially if I no longer felt it afterwards, then what do I do? Because it makes me seem even crazier if I'm very certain about something one moment and then very certain about something entirely different the next. How can anyone trust my word? If I'm going back on it all the time, if I'm constantly changing it, and while I've always been okay with doing that in many ways, I don't hold rigid to any belief structure that I might decide is relevant in this moment because it might not be in the next. I don't feel that I'm benefiting from having those experiences anymore. So each time I've come to realise that again and stopped, I go through quite a long period before I start to think about should I now experience it again just to see if there's any difference until I let go of it once again. So rather than go around the same circle all the time, if I simply don't start doing it again, and in a sense it's not that it's tempting me and it's not that I have to dispose of it because I can't control myself, but the fact that I have it, of course, makes it more likely that I might take it than if I didn't. But I also need to know that I'm in control of it, not it's in control of me. So I'm not struggling. Maybe it has its purpose. Maybe it has its time. And I can't imagine what that might be at this time, so it must remain separate. I then become used to being who I am without it. I am a non-user. I am not an ex-user. I become a non-user as if I have never used. I shift into a state where the concept of doing so simply doesn't exist, as if it never did. I don't imagine what it was like. When I might, if I choose to read back over things I have written or spoken about over the last 30 years, many of those things will have been written or spoken about under the influence. When I'm reading them, they sound perfectly reasonable, of course, because I don't think I was experiencing the same kind or level of psychosis then. But I think on some level it was always around me and slowly as time has gone on and my mental health has deteriorated, the issues, the experiences I've had and so on, I know that I'm not the same bloke I was. It doesn't have the same effect on me that it did. So if I'm not trying to escape the situation, which in some ways that's what it can do, and I am to some degree still doing that in some ways, just without chemical assistance. I'm filling in time, I'm watching things that are entertaining and that is in essence a kind of escape. I'm just not avoiding what I need to do, I'm just avoiding what I don't want to do, what I don't have to do. And I'm not coming up with ideas that I am not putting into practice, which creates a kind of strange duality paradox where I feel something but don't act on it, which I don't think is good for me either. If I have a feeling, an intuition, something that I am in no doubt of, I want to be able to move towards it without having to stop to think if it's right. So if I'm taking something that might induce that, then it's not helping me, is it? Now I'm not suggesting that all cannabis use by everybody is not good because that isn't the case. Many people do benefit from using it, they aren't susceptible to psychosis. They receive medical benefits physically and psychologically. But it is certainly a well-known fact that it can induce psychosis, especially if one is susceptible to it. And there are many instances of people becoming psychotic while under its influence. I understand. I think I've experienced the psychosis many times. I'm just not afraid of it. And by avoiding most of the world and other people, I am able to work my way through it. And I find the experience quite interesting. But that doesn't mean that it's good for me to do it. Maybe I've taken it for the last time. Maybe it's better for me to be in a more even state rather than experiencing the high and then have to experience the opposite and then struggling to return to who I am. And if the whole point is to discover who I am, if I'm creating a psychosis, that can't be helping because that feels like me but it isn't me. It only lasts as long as the chemical is in my brain. Alcohol is easy to avoid. I don't like it. I don't like the way it affects me. I don't like the taste for the most part. I don't mind a beer or a cider but I don't like it very much very quickly and never really feel drawn to it because I don't ever consume it and I'm not spending time with people who do. And I'm not tempted by them even if I was. Food, sugar, that's still an issue for me and it brings its own problems and I'm still having to find a way to be less tempted. But I can only do, I can't do everything at once and I'll get there. I think I'll get there. Maybe I'll get there. If I last long enough, I don't know. I am alone, I live alone. I experience solitude. I must know myself. I must know myself as myself and I must not believe I'm something I'm not. And when I'm in the psychotic state it is very easy for me to believe something I'm not. I have to battle, I have to struggle. It doesn't overtake me but it seems very easy for me to just step towards it. And I used to step towards it. I used to make it, I used to let it come into me and it used to make me seem to be something I wanted to be, seen as. But that wasn't real. He wasn't me. I wasn't him and that created its own issues. I've been using cannabis over 40 years and for a lot of that time constantly, all day, every day morning to night. And I was around people who were doing the same and so it seemed to mostly work. But there was an element of anxiety of having enough, of not running out and I don't like that, I never did. I know that there are some ex-smokers and ex-drinkers who keep a packet of cigarettes or a bottle of... and they might look at it from time to time but they never touch it, they never use it. But they get something from having it. It gives them a sense of comfort. And maybe I get something from having what I have. But I've always been tempted in taking it. I always felt like I was responsible, controlled enough, aware enough to do so and I'm not sure that's true. And so I must at least for now because I don't want to create taboo which only makes it harder to continue. I must for now not use it.