I have always believed marijuana was the link between my son Bruce’s first psychotic break in 1984 and the beginning of his lifelong battle with the symptoms of schizophrenia

So many poohed poohed my questioning including medical professionals and those I considered to be much wiser than myself. I had no proof except that I knew he had spent thousands of dollars, mostly on pot, during the short time he was living in Toronto. When he arrived home, a painfully thin, old-looking young man who had voices in his head, he still appeared to be stoned at times.

There had been oddities every once in awhile. Some things that fit in with my on-again, off-again previous psychic experiences

 First oddity – the stacks and stacks of Readers Digest mags that included copies of articles published in January and February 1981 –  2 1/2 years before Bruce’s psychotic break. The articles concerned a link some scientists had discovered between instances of psychosis and the use of marijuana.

When I reached into my disarranged cupboard where I had stored  dozens of old magazines, my hands immediately picked out the exact same copies of Readers Digest magazines that contained the article. It was in two installments. In my mind I considered it to be a warning.

Over the years following Bruce’s  diagnosis in 1984, other oddities showed themselves. In their book “Sensual Drugs” written by Hardin P Jones and his wife, science professors from California, they included a quotation from a study done by the government of India in 1894.

The study noted that insane asylums in India had housed a much larger percentage of patients who smoked “hemp” than there were those that had not.

Other newspaper articles contained similar results from studies discovering a link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. A study in the UK concluded that one in every five people tested were vulnerable to becoming psychotic from smoking marijauna.

For me the TV documentaries done by David Susuki told a scary story. “The Downside of High” revealed that young people’s brains are not fully mature until about age 25. Cannibus can interfere in the maturation process and psychosis may set in, sometimes permanently, which is the predominent symptom of schizophrenia.

Now sadly, the most recent results from a Canadian study where  pot-smoking is legal for adults over 19, has concluded that the rising incidence of young people being diagnosed with psychosis may well be because cannibus use has become “normalized”

Whiffs of weed are in the air on many outdoor corners since legalization. And younger people can obtain the substance as easily as they could alcohol in earlier years.

I can now pat myself on the back for voicing my suspicious over the past forty years. Now that medical science is pinning down information about cannibus that the government of India had noted in 1894, there can be some progress in learning more about what causes some – NOT ALL – instances of schizophrenia.

My book published in 1999 , titled “The Ghosts Behind Him” is still available from Caitlin Press and Amazon.ca.