The northlondonhippy

I’m not the only one with first hand expe­ri­ence with cannabis. There are oth­ers out there, who are happy to share their sto­ries with us.

One such per­son is Rufus May, a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, who works with Bradford’s Assertive Out­reach team. He wrote a piece that was pub­lished in the Inde­pen­dent, that I think is worth shar­ing with you.

I’ll pro­vide a link to the orig­i­nal, as well as the full text.

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http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2814693.ece

“Rufus May: I smoked cannabis. I went mad. But life’s not that simple

Pub­lished: 29 July 2007

As the review pub­lished in The Lancet last week con­firmed, stud­ies have been find­ing an asso­ci­a­tion between cannabis and psy­chotic expe­ri­ences for the past 30 years. The review­ers looked at 35 stud­ies and sug­gested that cannabis users have a 40 per cent increased chance of hav­ing psy­chotic expe­ri­ences. They also say that 14 per cent of psy­chotic prob­lems in the United King­dom could be linked to cannabis use. But not all the evi­dence sup­ports a sim­plis­tic causal link. For exam­ple, while the use of cannabis has gone up steadily over the past 30 years, the inci­dence of psy­chotic diag­noses has not. Yet the research com­ing out of the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try and this lat­est review from Bris­tol and Cardiff uni­ver­si­ties is putting grow­ing pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment to recon­sider its clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis as a class C drug.

Cause and effect are dif­fi­cult to unravel. Are peo­ple with a ten­dency to hear voices or suf­fer from para­noia attracted to using cannabis to calm them­selves or is the drug increas­ing the risk of these expe­ri­ences? Per­haps both processes are hap­pen­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, both as a user and as a psy­chol­o­gist, cannabis can be both a tonic and a poi­son. Ulti­mately, like all drugs, it brings prob­lems, but demon­is­ing it will not help.

At the age of 15 and 16 I smoked cannabis pretty heav­ily. It helped me escape the bore­dom of school life and frac­tious rela­tions with my par­ents. It also helped me bury deeper anx­i­eties about impend­ing adult­hood and my iden­tity. I fell in love with the idea that this illicit weed could bring me seren­ity on a daily basis. Its for­bid­den sta­tus made me feel rebel­lious and cool. I became addicted to the cer­e­mo­ni­ous rit­ual of stick­ing the papers together and build­ing the spliff that I hoped would trans­port my mind to a more peace­ful place. But life has taught me that if you sup­press things sooner or later they come back to haunt you. By the age of 18, I was drug free, try­ing to get over my first girl­friend leav­ing me and strug­gling to find a decent job. Instead of get­ting depressed, I slowly drifted into a dream­like real­ity where I was spied upon and felt I had spe­cial spir­i­tual pow­ers. It cul­mi­nated in being treated psy­chi­atri­cally for a year and being given the rather unhelp­ful tag of schiz­o­phrenic. My recov­ery has involved largely steer­ing clear of cannabis and find­ing more healthy ways to relax and stay calm and centred.

In my work, I help oth­ers who have devel­oped psy­chotic expe­ri­ences. Many of us choose to avoid using cannabis, but some feel it is help­ful in deal­ing with anx­i­ety and the side effects of the med­ica­tion they are pre­scribed. My impres­sion is that some peo­ple – and I would include myself in this cat­e­gory – do have a par­tic­u­lar sen­si­tiv­ity to cannabis and need to be cau­tious with it. But I also feel there is a polit­i­cal agenda behind the cur­rent “blame the weed for men­tal ill­ness” cam­paign. Psy­chi­a­trists such as Robin Mur­ray and oth­ers spent many years in the 1990s – described as “the decade of the brain” – try­ing to find a bio­log­i­cal and genetic cause for psy­chosis, but with lit­tle suc­cess. The lat­est focus on cannabis can be viewed as the dying gasp of the “blame the brain” brigade who seek to jus­tify a bio­log­i­cal approach to madness.

Such an empha­sis on chem­i­cal causes suits the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try and obscures the big­ger truth that men­tal dis­tress is caused by emo­tional trau­mas and trou­bles. Peo­ple who react badly to cannabis but con­tinue to use it are try­ing to sup­press feel­ings such as anger, guilt and lone­li­ness. It is the social sit­u­a­tions that lie behind these emo­tions that we really need to under­stand and address.”
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If this man’s views aren’t wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion, then we don’t have a chance. His first hand expe­ri­ence, com­bined with his pro­fes­sional qual­i­fi­ca­tions, make him uniquely capa­ble of putting forth a ratio­nal view on the subject.

Don’t let the truth go unheard! The truth deserves to be shared more than the lies!

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