“Allen” was a normal teen — excelling in sports, headed for university after graduation, no signs of mental disorder — when his personality did a 180-degree turn over two weeks.
Uncharacteristic over-confidence and lack of sleep spiralled into rapid speech, a God complex.
He was “the smartest being in the universe.”
“He had it in his brain that he was going to be very famous, and anything he touched was going to be worth millions of dollars,” his dad recalled.
An Edmonton resident we’ll identify as “Mike” to protect his son’s privacy talked to Postmedia about his teenage son’s harrowing descent into cannabis psychosis.
“It’s like a storm’s coming your way. All of a sudden, as a parent, you don’t know what you’re dealing with. You have no idea — you’re so lost.”
At the emergency room, tests for cocaine and meth were negative.
“Allen” was hospitalized for three weeks.
A baffled medical team tried antipsychotics.
“Doctors are not equipped to understand cannabis psychosis in Canada, so when the kid presents a classic case of psychotic episodes, they automatically say that it’s bipolar disorder,” Mike said.
Two weeks in, Allen finally told him.
“Dad, this is what I was smoking.”
A second opinion from a University of Alberta psychiatrist revealed a classic case of cannabis-induced psychosis.
He’ll never forget Allen’s words after the episode subsided.
“Never in a million years did I think that doing this would cause a mental health break. No one ever talks about that.”
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