Health - Need some proffesional help, on possibly induced psychosis, what to do etc.

[pinokio]

Hi again .


I wanted to write this question some time ago, but was too confortable to do so. Now it is getting serious (for a friend at least). I will write this for him, since he doesn't speak English. All questions here, are his questions.

I need to describe the problem from the very beginning. He was a person, who kind of hadn't collected much of an information about E, he was unaware of any risks (or maybe didin't want to admit them), but that is not important at the moment. He is 22 now, used to be a fairly regular user for 1 month and a half. The amount was 1 to 5 pieces, not daily, but let's say, very often - _multiple_ times a week, in some periods even daily.

Once he poped 4 Es (not at once, but short period of time - few hours), smoked some herb (also some poppers and alcohol was involved - not sure if it matters), he got some terrible roll, with great hallucinations. He described them, to be very intense and heavy, sky wasn't sky, trees were not trees etc. He was out of reality so to say, very unpleasant (he said weed had started them). This had induced a permanent visual hallucinations - he sees a person having some strange "dead" eyes when looking to someone. I believe this is a sign of a toxic psychosis, which had been very intesne at the beggining but after 0.5 year, it very slowly passed away. He was not seeing any doctor, he was affraid to do so, so he lived 7 months with this(!).

As he thought the psychosis was over, (he said it was for a 1 week - the visual hallucinations) he poped another pill on March - very stupid idea i know, but don't tell me; which has induced the psychosis again. He has been living with it till today, has not visited a doctor (even though i told him many times to do so). So this is it, now I'd like to ask few questions.

- Would visiting a psychiatrist (or any other specialist?) help to treat the state effectively and cca. how long would it take to cure the psychosis?

- (I think he would probably treat it with some anti-psychotic meds, but i may be wrong), approx. how long would he had to take the meds?

- Can he drink alcohol (slightly - he said 2 times a week cca.) while taking these (or can alcohol worsten the psychosis) ?

- If he wouldn't go to a specialist, can the psychosis be there forever, or would it pass with time?

- What do you suggest he should do ?


At the end, for a matter of better answering, i have to say, the pills avail. here are very good quality, so there is a very little chance (i'd say 0) of any other substances being in them.


That would be all, any (skilled) answer is welcome.

[Atna]

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, tell your friend to go see a doctor, he will answer any questions he might have. Better safe that sorry...

[pinokio]

Yup, i try to do it all the time, and what specialist would that be, i guess, psychiatrist?

[Sparrowspay]

Hi,

Swim had a similar situation after smoking too much weed for a prolonged amount of time as well as other fairly heavy drug use like E coke and mushrooms and he got some psychosis. he didnt go and see a doctor the whole time and rode it out by himself and it took a few years to get back to somewhere near even again, but in retrospect swim said it would have been best to find a doctor he could trust then he would have had a better idea of what was going on and how to help it whether it be improving the amount of vitamins and doing serious excercise to get rid of the toxins in his head or start taking anti psychotics. anyway swimm hopes this helped.

[Atna]

Just his regular doctor, he will refer him to the correct specialist...

[Sparrowspay]

swim doesnt know what doctor one should see except that the doctor should be one that can be trusted.

[drug-bot]

see your regular doctor, be honest, he'll most likely refer you to a specialist. dont be afraid of getting in trouble, be afraid of permanant brain damage, all a doctor will do is help, he wont call the police, or your parents (your an adult). do it NOW. if you dont have a primary care doctor go to an emergency room (they'll help you as much as they can and at discharge set up appropriate referals w/ specialists).
get help NOW, dont let some stupid fears prevent you from getting MUCH needed medical treatment.

[pinokio]

Wow guys, thats exactly what i've been telling him from the beggining (its not me, gladly) fine, i'll try to insist on it, and thats also why i've made this forum, so he can see advices of other people. I was hoping that you would reccomend such.

Thank you all for your feedback!

pinokio added 1 Minutes and 13 Seconds later...

Hence, he is very paranoid of doctors (even hes 22 buuh), but i think thats the only way.

Sparrowspay -> thank you, this will help a lot for sure!

[Richard_smoker]

Hey,

I just read your friend's story...sounds like a very intense experience.

Did you happen to notice any other strange or unusual activities while this "dead eyes" hallucination was going on??

In particular, I'm curious about signs & symptoms of schitzophrenia or psychosis, as you mentioned yourself as a possibility.

Read carefully over the following list...

POSITIVE SYMPTOMS:
-Delusions
-Hallucinations--yes, this one is already checked off...
-Bizarre Behavior
-Thought Disorder--basically trouble organizing his thoughts into recognizable/normal ideas. also, can he maintain context in conversation.
-Poor Attention.

NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS.
-Flat Affect--basically, no facial expressions, or actually, just a decreased relevance of facial expressions to conversation or context.
-Alogia--no speech, or lack of speech
-Avolition--apathy, or lack of emotions
-Anhedonia--basically, this is lack of ability to experience pleasure.

Let me know if he also suffered from any of those symptoms...

Some facts, FYI...
--typical age of onset for schizophrenia is 15-25 for men, and 25-35 for women.
--roughly 1% of people in all cultures have schitzophrenia.
--In the U.S., more schitzophrenics are born in the winter (reason unknown).
--Treatment is with anti-psychotic meds and psychosocial therapy and support.
--Meds are used first, but the best treatment (usually) is medication plus therapy.
--The diagnostic criteria are: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms (flat affect, alogia/refusal to talk, avolution/apathy).

The difference between brief/acute psychotic disorder, schizophreniform disorder and schizophrenia is ONLY the duration of symptoms.
<1 month=brief psychotic disorder.
1-6 months=schizophreniform disorder.
>6 months=schizophrenia.

For all you psychologists out there, I know this is probably a crude &/or rudimentary list of positive/negative symptoms... but this is a good basic list for this purpose.

Pinokio, what I'm trying to do here is establish a likely diagnosis with a prognosis, based on your friend's symptoms. Obvioiusly, he doesn't want to see a doctor, so you can help him out more by offering him some detailed info about his condition. Just let me know your answers to my questions and we'll go from there.

-DICK

Reputation Comments on this post:

good information

[pinokio]

Richard_smoker: I give thanks for your attention, I will ask him and put the answers here.

Now i'm going to sleep, thanks to you all, it is much of a help for me, he's a good friend of mine and finally we can make some progress, since I can support my opinions by this forum thread.

gn8

[pinokio]

Richard_smoker: I'm back with updates. The guys has finally agreed on seeing a doctor, hopefuly next week.

AFAIK and from my current research in the area of Pharmacy/Substances and such, I would say it is a toxic psychosis not a schizophrenia.

From what you have described above, he is not suffering from any symptoms, except the hallucinations, in a form of seeing "strange dead" eyes in other people. His thinking, motor functions, "normal living" has not been impaired a bit. However he has a bit more depressive mood, but this is caused due to the case as such.

So, he has never suffered from "NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS." nor "POSITIVE SYMPTOMS" described above, except the eye thingy.


I hope i've answered your questions fully, if not feel free to ask more. Also, I'm very thankful for your help.

pinokio added 1 Minutes and 53 Seconds later...

*guys = guy

again, same question, is Editing post disabled in these forums?

[Sparrowspay]

from reading this thread swim always wondered what happened to him whether it was schitzophrenia etc etc and now swim is glad to realise he also suffered from toxic psychosis which makes sense because of the way swim said it felt and something a kind of new age healer said(swim was to paranoid to see a normal doctor) when she was doing some healing she claimed to be psychic and its just interesting that what she said was she felt like swims brain had turned toxic??take that however u want to. so cheers for that opening up the topic and all pinokio.

also 2 years or so after things got really heavy for swim in that respect things have gotten alot better and swim didnt take any meds for it just a length of time without drugs some spiritual activities and good food and some excersise. it took along time though and swim did wonder whether swim would ever be able to socialy interact again and not have such a screwed head but things have got alot better and swim does very occassionally take mdma and gets on fine with it. ganja however brings it all right back swim says. so u could tell your freind that aswell.

[Alfa]

The symptoms are induced by physical conditions (whether or not psychological conditions are at play), so the first thing to do is evaluate physical conditions and up them where possible. FUBAR experienced pretty intense and lasting side effects after a long period of ecstasy(etc...) use. One thing that helped was Solgar's VM-2000 in combination with high dose royal Jelly. For some reason FUBAR's whole world changed back to normal when that kicked in.

Off course things like enough sleep, food and exercise made things go the right direction as well. FUBAR knew drug (over-)use caused it, so the side effects would dissappear at some time. There was no reason to think any real damage was done.

With only 1.5 months of use, this does sound odd to me. It is not normal to have such intense after effects from just 1.5 months of use. Even if it was regular use. Is there anything else going on? Does your friend have any kind of physical condition or psychological troubles?

[Richard_smoker]

From the sounds of it, I think he might have gotten into some nasty something-or-other...probably NOT the effect of pure/real/actual MDMA or any other legitimate street-drugs (OXYMORON!!!).

Although if he got into a toxic byproduct, it is admitedly weird that his delusion returned after returning to drugs in general (unless he hit some of the exact same stash).

Note that I'm using the word delusion. Some people think that all hallucinations are a form of delusion, but I don't. There's a difference that maybe I can explain really simply...
A Delusion involves a more complex 'higher' thought processes. For example, a delusion of grandeur vs a state of paranoia...both of these are delusions. They involve THOUGHT and CONTEXT (basically)...

Now, compare that to a hallucination. Hallucinations are usually nothing more than minor alterations in the perception of optical stimuli. Theoretically, a hallucination can be formed by a miniscule alteration in the electrical impulse conduction along the optic nerve-pathway. For the sake of simplicity, something like this could take place anywhere beginning at the retina, where the impulse originates, along the optic nerve, etc. to the optic cortex of the brain, and (proably more importantly), when the nerve impulses are re-directed into other portions of the brain, from those responsible for determining basic attributes of vision--colors, "brightness" vs "darkness", shapes, color-patterns, to those that are HIGHLY COMPLEX and situated outside of the basic optic cortex, like the face-recognition zone (I want to say that this extends out into the temporal lobes...cant recall for certain).

My point is, a visual hallucination can be something very minor like "seeing twinkling stars when I stare at the white shower wall" to something extremely severe (and more DELUSIONAL) like "I see green men riding little chihuahua's with a horn like tiny unicorns."

It is my opinion that your friend's hallucinations are somewhere in-between the two.

Although it is remotely possible that he simply suffers from a temporarily messed-up signal (running from retina to cortex), it just sounds too much like his hallucinations are SITUATION-SPECIFIC. i.e. he only sees these 'funny things' when he's gazing into another person's eyes.

But, there's yet another much simpler explanation that might be even more plausible...what if the portion of his brain that has taken a 'hit' (i.e. toxic damage from xyz drug contaminant), just happens to BE in (or near, or somehow connected to-) his FACE-RECOGNITION-ZONE!??

If this were the case, then it would CERTAINLY explain why he ONLY 'sees' these things when looking at a person's face...it's a very real, physical, biochemical possibility...our brains have evolved to recognize a myriad of human faces, using only the tiniest differences to EASILY distinguish literally thousands of people from each other...and this REGION of the brain is in a very specific area...possibly where your friend has a BULLSEYE positioned, inviting toxic damage...

PROGNOSIS: Good. My bet is that since this strange delusion/hallucination went away before, it will go away again.

But the doc will probably run him thru a PET scanner and possibly a CT as well (if you live in a big city, they'll get a PET-CT-MRI). The Dr will likely place him on a mild antipsychotic...and my guess is that the drug will work! (several reasons, main reason being that your friend seems to have all good prognostic indications; i.e. no negative symptoms, lack of other symptoms, etc)

Sadly, my advice to the friend is to refrain from all future activities that might aggravate his condition; and to stay away from anything that might make the 'evil eyes' come back even after they're gone away.

Once they're gone again, I imagine that he will get off the anti-psych's soon enough. But, he will need to stay focused on more important things in life than drugs and partying. The sad truth is that this guy already has a much higher risk of becoming an "all-out" schizophrenic than most people you know.

Hope this helps. Let us know what happens.
-DICK