My sibling is schizophrenic and I was wondering what is the chance of me being genetically predisposed as well? I also have 2 more questions
Even if you are genetically predisposed can you avoid schizophrenia through healthy happy life?
If you enjoy to smoke cannabis regularly will the chance of you being genetically predisposed increased?
I understand weed is a trigger for people who are already genetically predisposed, but can it increase the chance of develping schizophrenia instead of acting as a trigger to an already existing case that has just yet to surface?
I’m the one diagnosed, but I worry about my kid sister’s mental health as well. She’s the youngest of 5… and all of us boys have something wrong with us. (-1)
She does have one very huge advantage over me… and my brothers…
After seeing what many years of drinking and drugs have done to us… she has never drank or done drugs. She steers clear… (+1)
But she does push herself hard and has panic attacks about exams… (-1)
She does keep an eye on her health and goes to therapy (+1)
She has studied and does know a lot about this illness… and if she ever starts crumbling, she’ll allow herself to get help sooner then I ever did. (+1)
I really started crumbling when I was 15 to 16… diagnosed at 17. She’s now 18. But girls tend to get it later then guys… (-1)
A lot of the stress management… sleep hygiene… anxiety management stuff that I go through to recover… she’s been taking on… to keep from crumbling in the first place.
I guess if your worried… I’d suggest getting to know about this illness… read up on early treatment… there are a lot of links here on early detection and getting help sooner and how that will help you heal sooner.
I smoked loads of weed when I was a teenager. It’s a shame, now if I smoke it I feel like I am having a panic attack. Last time I had some I forgot to breathe and nearly passed out. I love weed, but I just cannot tolerate it anymore.
get off the drugs…that could trigger rubbish like sz if you already have sz in your family.
you don’t want this, it is a fucking nightmare.
you have been warned.
take care
Please read this post about preventing schizophrenia:
Also - here is an image summarizing the average risks - which may or may not mean much for you personally (because you can do a lot to lower your risk, or maybe already have done things to lower risk):
I’d say that avoiding stress in general or learning to manage stress would be a good idea as well. Most people I know started decompensating as the result of stress. For me this was the stress of college mainly. Also early intervention before becoming psychotic generally means a better outcome.
I think it was LSD that ruined my weed smoking. Ever since I did Acid I started hallucinating off weed like I had taken more Acid. As you can imagine, it didn’t end particularly well.
Sorry to hear you went through that as well. Last time I smoked weed I thought I forgot to breathe and I felt like I was having a heart attack. Not nice. It used to be my main hobby.
I think there are so many factors to developing SZ, and drugs is definitely one of them I think.
I smoked weed for the first time in a year last friday and it caused a lot of anxiety and paranoia. My first thought was “so this is what it’s like to be crazy” and I reailzed I was truly crazy through the weed. That I think “different”. It was the final straw in my drug use. I CAN’T do it again. And there’s zero chance of relapse because it’s just not worth it, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. Peace and good luck to you too.
Your genetic predisposition is what it is. It’s hard to say what might trigger onset. It could be something that’s happened in your childhood that you can’t change. It can be something mild, or severe. Taking care of your mental health is important, but if you do everything right and it happens anyway you can’t blame yourself, that’s just the way it is.
POT- on the other hand is one of the best ways to trigger onset of the disease. Someone mentioned that the science was undecided, that’s not true. Psychosis is caused by too much dopamine in the brain. What does pot do? It increases the level of dopamine in your brain. That’s like having a family history of diabetes, going on a 100% donut diet, and then wondering if you’re going to actually get diabetes. If you have a sibling with the disease you are genetically predisposed to getting it. If you’ve ever smoked pot, stop, and don’t do it EVER again. It’s not worth it.
