Cannabis-Induced Psychosis
Once they realized they needed to get him off the bed, her 21 yr old highly athletic and physically capable son did all he could to pull his father off of the bed and get him onto the floor. In the process the actions he took caused him to puncture his lung but no one knew what had happened only thinking he had overexerted himself in trying to move his father off of the bed and onto the floor. Paramedics arrived and took over and ultimately declared him dead. Fast forward to a job opportunity with this same son who spent time in NYC working as a professional dancer for ~6 months possibly longer. The show finished its run and the son returns home where the facing the reality of his father being dead and the lights/applause of NYC where no longer there.
As it was shared with us, the son began isolating himself in his room and went into depression while now paying a bit more attention to the difficulty he had breathing. He became extremely emotional towards his mother (our acquaintance) and would get into a rage one minute and perfectly calm the next or vice versa. At one point, he took his car and intentionally got into an accident trying to kill himself. Fortunately the wife of the driver of the car he hit was a nurse and realized there was something wrong and shared it with the paramedics at the scene. He was taken to a hospital in Corona where he had X-Rays taken and it was learned he had a punctured lung to further complicate the mental distress. The hospital told his mother that what he needed from a physical standpoint was more than they could provide and they suggested a hospital in Riverside.
He arrives at the hospital in Riverside where he has an immediate episode and they toss him into the psychiatry ward. When the mother and family try to get the point across to the hospital staff that the reason he came to their hospital was the punctured lung but they didn't listen and did nothing about the lung or even look into the validity. They only cared about trying to push drugs into this young man. It was during these moves between hospitals that she learned he was using marijuana while in NYC and since returning home. He told his mom that was how many of the dancers dealt with the pains from professional dancing.
Why does all that matter? This young man decided to use marijuana to deal with pain because he could get it and those around him used it as self-prescribed pain medication. What was later shared during the post-dinner conversation was that the mother's sister had mental problems and was placed on extremely strong medicine to deal with her issues. So you now have a young man who has a close family member with mental issues taking a drug that has psychotic capabilities within it. Since this began, the son has moved out of his childhood home blaming his mother for everything doing things completely opposed to what he was taught by his parents.
So often people talk about marijuana as the end all be all solution for so many problems and completely ignore/downplay/outright suppress the verifiable impacts to so many people especially those who have family history of mental illness. This young man is no longer doing what he had studied for while still using marijuana to deal with what has happened in his life.