Can drugs trigger Schizophrenia when it should be AS?

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Drug induced psychosis isn't the same as schizophrenia. It goes away. Certain stimulants are more likely to result in persistent psychosis than others. I know this because at some point in my life I was trying to induce stimulant psychosis in myself.

Cocaine induced psychosis almost always goes away after the drug wears off and the withdrawal stage is finished.

From my own experience caffeine isn't likely to give you stimulant psychosis no matter how much you consume. If you already have psychotic symptoms it can aggravate them but it hasn't worked for me even after consuming the caffeine equivalent of 20 cups of coffee. It made me nauseated and disorientated. I felt like I was drunk but that was it.

Amphetamines are more likely to result in persistent psychotic symptoms than cocaine. When my mind was clouded by OCD I went onto a college campus and started asking people at random for a prescription drug that was an amphetamine. People either didn't know what I was talking about or didn't trust me.

I know, but psychosis is a spectrum.
And if you have the genes to schizophrenia in addition, drugs can trigger schizophrenia.
That what happened to a friend of mine and it took years that the psychotic symptoms got better.

Using marihuana in the ages 15-18 give you a four times higher risk for schizophrenia than smoking it later or not at all

I have schizophrenia and I'm an Aspie
My sister had Schizophrenia (the worst kind) and walked out in front of a car in 2001

Both of us smoked weed and took acid etc
We both had fully developed schizophrenia a year into the drugging

I don't like that I may have caused myself schizophrenia
I would rather think about the fact that I heard voices age 9

I was Aspie before I ever had severely long term serious episodes of psychosis from age 16

When you heard voices at age 9 it wasn't a problem yet right? You didn't have serious problems until you were 16. At age 9 was it manageable because you had insight the whole time or was it manageable because it was an infrequent occurrence? Were you constantly hearing voices at age 9 while knowing it wasn't real or did it come and go?

Yes. Autism, its description etc, originally referred to behaviours seen in schizophrenia.

Hi
It was infrequent and not really a problem yet
But I didn't have insight
I just prefer to think that drugs didn't cause my schizophrenia
Partly because both my sister and I both had it
Although of course both of us could have had drug influenced onset

i was Aspie and was definitely self medicating
Maybe that is enough to think about it like that
For a little while it helped me to socialise

Well so far I know, for schizophrenia you always also need the genes for it and usually even had some subsymptoms befor onset.

y




Yes
It is difficult to know with aspie and para schiz which symptom is which

There are levels of social withdrawal that may not even be explained by aspergers
Unless puberty made me paranoid and selective mutism gave me NO ONE LEFT to talk to
That could easily be some sort of prodrome
But prodrome is supposed to last 3-6 months not 2 - 3 years

I'm really no expert in schizophrenia, but so far I've heard those symptoms can even start upto 5 years befor onset of schizophrenia in some cases.

I also have symptoms out of the schizo-spectrum, even since childhood and developed some more later on. But I never developed schizophrenia. I think I'm having schizotypal symptoms in addition to some ASD symptoms. I wanted to mention this, because it's a spectrum and in the end every combination of onset is possible and the human brain doesn't really care for diagnostic categories.
So I think it's very possible that you developed those symptoms 2 - 3 years befor the onset of schizophrenia.

Thanks for your post!
i really do feel a lot better thinking that it always would have happened no matter if i made the huge mistake of taking drugs or not
As far as the human brain not working to a diagnosis?
i'm a bit obsessed with diagnoses
i don't know where i am sometimes without them

My best friend has Schizophrenia and was thought to have Aspergers but then they discovered she was diagnosed wrong. Maybe one of the meds she was taking affected this? Not sure.

I know I have aspergers and paranoid schizophrenia
Neither are going anywhere

Pretty sure they can bring it out.. from my own experience with ASD. and experimenting with drugs.
especially weed, for up to 2 days later i would still be very paranoid , see things move around like mice that where not there, and hear voices...sounds sticking in my mind, and never had those issues, except when i'm up like 72+ hours straight.... now i stay away from anything that changes the way my minds wired and have had no issues for years now.

I used to smoke a lot of weed a few years ago but stopped because I was worried about developing schizophrenia. All my friends seemed to consistently enjoy smoking weed and rarely ever got negative or paranoid feelings. With me it happened every time. I did like the experience of getting high but it was a double edged sword - it seemed to completely amplify my AS if I was around people I wasn't 100% comfortable with, I felt like I just had absolutely no idea how to communicate or what other people were really saying. I got the nickname 'the observer' because I would never speak once I got high, just watched things happen. A few times when I smoked too much I started getting this really trippy feeling like my nerves weren't working properly so I was numb and couldn't move and had panic attacks - then these started manifesting when I wasn't high. In fact I had a severe episode just yesterday and I haven't been a proper stoner in about a year. I'd also get really bad paranoia about everything.

What I'm trying to say is that with my experience with drugs, I felt that developing some schizoid disorder was only a stone throw away. I never had full blown psychosis (except once which was completely a result of smoking way too much) but none of my friends could understand why, suddenly, I didn't want to smoke any more. I just kinda felt like it could happen, like my brain was fragile or something.

EDIT: Just remembered something I read about schizophrenia which I discussed with my friends. Schizophrenia and autism are genetically linked; deletion mutations on certain genes are linked with both. People who are predisposed to schizophrenia may find that onset is triggered by a stressful or traumatic event. Because cannabis aggravates existing conditions (e.g. my AS, also my ADD), we might find some experiences of being high particularly traumatic (e.g. the panic attacks I had). It's possible that we have the underlying genetic predisposition to schizophrenia which could manifest following these traumatic drug-induced experiences.

I think I found that one bad acid trip plus all the dope triggered it
I don't think I could have lived any other way really