Using a throwaway account for this. It is hard to write this because of the bad memories it brings back but I hope my experience can help you without you having actually experience it. About 1 in 200 people have experienced schizophrenia at least once in their life so plausibly 1 in 200 comments you read on HN is by someone who has experienced it. My comments is one of those comments. I was in gifted classes in high-school, got a bachelors degree in college, earn a middle-class salary, and saved up enough to buy a home. Stimulant medication helped turn my ADHD from a handicap to an asset. It helped me stay focused and achieve that.

I’ve found that every single time I smoke marijuana there is a synergistic effect with the ADHD stimulant medication that is left in my system and I get the effects of Schizophrenia. It might just be serotonin syndrome but that’s just as bad. I don’t have any family history of schizophrenia whatsoever but people with ADHD are 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia. However, if it is non-reoccurring, according to the DSM-IV, it doesn’t yet count as schizophrenia.

I think my episode was triggered by all of the following things combined: “marijuana, stimulant medication synergy, fear of Covid-19 anarchy in the streets (hey! It was a valid fear for a little while!), drinking alcohol too frequently reduced the logic and judgement side of my brain, seeing the scary side of Instagram Reels shows when it knows you’re behind a VPN, not getting enough sleep due to heavy work deadlines, the scare mail I was received about various deaths, the news reports of all of the deaths in news, and a darn drone that hovered over my house for too long at the wrong time.

Fortunately there is good medication that knocks the schizophrenia out. Highly effective stuff. Both Olanzapine and Quetiapine Fumarate work excellent at stopping the schizophrenia in it’s tracks and getting your sleep back on track. However I was resistant at first to take medication or trust advice. I had experienced a total breakdown of trust in the world. The fear side of my brain had totally hijacked and overrode the logic side of my brain. My amygdala overrode my frontal cortex and I was focused on survival. I didn’t know what paranoia was legitimate and what was overblown. For one, which I mention with a heavy sigh, I didn’t know if my loved ones were agents that just looked like my friends..

I philosophize that paranoid schizophrenia is caused by fear while catatonic schizophrenia is caused by both fear and a lack of trust.

When I questioned my two loved ones independently and their stories matched up, I thought that the odds I was the crazy person was high. I was then willing to talk to a general practitioner and a psychiatrist and they gave me those prescriptions I mentioned above. Just tell them you that you’ve been paranoid, want to be lightly tranquilized, and want to catch up on your sleep.

I’m happy to say I have not had any relapses into schizophrenia since then! But I had to distanced myself away from my friends that smoked marijuana to do that because it influenced me to smoke too. I couldn’t do that though until I had made new friends in person first which hasn’t been easy… and still isn’t easy. My primary goal for 2021 is to make more close friends.