Our oldest son began using marijuana at 15, he is now 23 and it has been a constant 8 year battle. He has spent his 17th, 19th, 20th, and 22nd birthdays in rehabs. Although he has used other drugs, his main drug of choice is marijuana. “Medical marijuana dabs” caused him to have his first psychotic break over a year ago which ended up in a wreckless driving incident that nearly lost the lives of several people including his own. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with Bipolar 1 with Paranoia. A diagnosis he still has today. He has been prescribed Wellbutrin and Olanzapine. When he takes the medications consistently as directed, he maintains a job, works out, and is pleasant. However, he is paranoid about the medications. And he often goes back to marijuana over and over. The marijuana further feeds his paranoia. Just today, we learned that he stopped taking his meds earlier this week and used marijuana (in some form) yesterday. He called and asked me to bring him to our house (he has no car). He began by talking conspiracy theories for a few hours around current events. He fell a sleep for 30 minutes. When he woke up he was in a full-blown, suicidal rage. We managed to get him calm and agree to resuming his medications by the end of the night. We had the help of his cousin who used marijuana for 16 years and now is on the other side of it and so he gets it and is a calming influence on our son. Thankfully our younger son and my father who lives with us were both away for the day and so they did not witness our oldest son’s F-bomb rage attack.
Saving Our Youth from the Harms of THC