Paranoid thoughts

Marijuana intoxication precipitates psychosis, paranoid thoughts, anxiety, and restlessness... 

LSD has no officially recognized therapeutic value. However, its use as a therapeutic drug has a rich history. Early research with LSD suggested that it produces states similar to those experienced by people experiencing a type of severe psychiatric disturbance called psychosis, in which patients often hear voices that aren t there, lose touch with reality, have disordered thinking, and experience paranoid thoughts. Mental health experts therefore tried taking LSD to see if it could help them understand their patients problems. 

An LSD trip, especially a bad trip, can make people lose touch with reality to the point that they are a danger to themselves and others. People have been known to have fatal accidents while on LSD because they lost touch with their surroundings. Some people have even purposely harmed themselves or committed suicide during LSD-induced despair. A bad trip can also bring on paranoid thoughts and aggressive tendencies that have led people to harm or even murder others. While these extreme reactions to LSD are rare, they do occur. 

Bipolar affective (manic-depressive) disorder is a frequently diagnosed and very serious psychiatric disorder. Patients with cyclic attacks of mania have many symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia (grandiosity, bellicosity, paranoid thoughts, and overactivity). The gratifying response to lithium therapy of patients with bipolar disorder has made such diagnostic distinctions important. 

Paranoid thoughts (believing that someone or something is out to get them)... 

It may be instructive to describe one of the cases seen by Spector. A 35-year-old woman, called Ms. 0., was presented for treatment three days after smoking AMP. She felt anxious, was tremulous, was salivating excessively and sweating, and had a racing heartbeat. All of this followed closely the actual AMP smoking. Several hours later she exhibited psychomotor retardation, secluded herself, reported she could not think well and lost all motivation, and described paranoid thoughts. Ms. D. also described hallucinations in which she saw blood on the walls. After three days many of these complaints disappeared, with the exception of the anxiety and tremulousness. She was treated with an antianxiety medication, and the discomfort cleared within several days. 

Schizophrenia is a severe, life-long, idiopathic psychiatric disorder with a polygenic component. It is composed of severe thought disorders, termed psychoses, which are characterized by illogical, delusional, or paranoid thoughts. Schizophrenia typically has its onset in early adulthood with remissions and exacerbations throughout life. 

Marijuana intoxication precipitates psychosis, paranoid thoughts, anxiety, and restlessness NE-augmenting agents (0 2-adrenergic antagonists, yB-agonists, NE reuptake inhibitors)... 

The positive symptoms are the most responsive to antipsychotic medications, such as chlorpromazine or halo-peridol. Initially, these drugs were thought to be specific for schizophrenia. However, psychosis is not unique to schizophrenia, and frequently occurs in bipolar disorder and in severe major depressive disorder in which paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations are not uncommon (see Ch. 55). Furthermore, in spite of early hopes based on the efficacy of antipsychotic drugs in treating the positive symptoms, few patients are restored to their previous level of function with the typical antipsychotic medications [2]. 

Delusions, on the other hand, are persistent beliefs or belief systems that are not based in reality and often cause the person experiencing them to be anxious or paranoid. Many of these delusions have a theme (a common thread), which frequendy involves feelings of threat, concerns about being personally targeted by a conspiracy, obsessive thoughts, or inordinate concerns about ill health. If a person has both hallucinations and delusions, these experiences tend to feed off one another and confirm one another s content. Hallucinations tend to support the delusional beliefs, and the delusions usually are related to the hallucinations. However, you can have the experience of one without the experience of the other, meaning that some people have delusions without hallucinations and some have hallucinations without delusions. 

Paranoid Delusions Hallucination Disorganized thoughts Disorganized behavior Mutism, catatonia Flat affect... 

Deiusionai Disorder. It can be particularly difficult to distinguish patients with delusional disorder from those with a PPD. Again, the key difference is one of degree. The patient with a paranoid personality has vague suspicious thoughts, but these do not reach delusional intensity. In addition, the delusions of someone with a delusional disorder are often very focused and circumscribed, whereas the paranoia of the patient with PPD is more generalized. 

Manifestations of chronic intoxication Severe dermatoses, marked insomnia, irritability, hyperactivity, and personality changes have occurred. Disorganization of thoughts, poor concentration, visual hallucinations, and compulsive behavior often occur. The most severe manifestation of chronic intoxication is psychosis, often clinically indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia. This is rare with oral amphetamines. 

Efavirenz is given orally at a dose of one 600-mg tablet per day. As an important part of the AIDS cocktail, efavirenz is administered with the same protease inhibitors and NRTIs as described in the nevirapine section. The half-hfe of efavirenz after a single dose is 52-76 h, and multiple doses lower the half-life to 40-55 h. Treatment with efavirenz has been associated with the development of serious psychiatric side-effects, including severe depression, suicidal thoughts, aggressive behavior, and paranoid and manic reactions. 

The fundamental reason for taking psychedelics is the experiences they produce. These experiences may be of many kinds. Walter Pahnke (1967) has recently classified them into five types psychotic, characterized by fear, paranoid symptoms, confusion, impairment of abstract reasoning, remorse, depression, isolation, and/or somatic discomfort psychodynamic, in which unconscious or preconscious material becomes vividly conscious cognitive, characterized by "astonishingly lucid thought" aesthetic, with increased perceptual ability in all sense modalities and psychedelic mystical, marked by all the characteristics of spontaneous mystical experience observed in the literature. These experiences may be the cause for the effects of psychedelics on behavior. They are also the fundamental thing that must be explained if psychedelics and their effects are to be understood. 

LSD reactions. During his 500-pg reaction, a large portion of the experience was not perceptual, but consisted entirely of changes in thought. These now came back to him. He began to block frequently, and for two days became very delusional and paranoid about his family doctor. He was a very intelligent man, so, with great determination, he discussed his paranoid ideas with his doctor. His doctor was very helpful, and... 

Time T6 is shown as a question mark because we do not know what the resolution of this conflict will be. if the bulk of energy and contents of consciousness are taken up by the paranoid delusion, the thought DON T take PARANOIA seriously may simply be wiped out or repressed for lack of energy to compete with the delusion. 

Amphetamine psychosis causes feelings of severe paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations. The amphetamine addict who is psychotic typically experiences delusions of persecution, believing someone, or everyone, is out to get them. Because of these paranoid delusions, violence can frequently occur during amphetamine psychosis. Once the amphetamine abuser is free of the drug, psychosis fades quickly. However, symptoms such as mental confusion, memory problems, and delusional thoughts may last up to several months or longer. 

An 18-year-old student had dissociative phenomenon, nihilistic and paranoid delusions, vivid visual hallucinations, thought insertion, and broadcasting after having consumed 1-2 bottles of cough syrup (dextromethorphan 711 mg per bottle) every day for several days (226). The psychotic symptoms remitted completely without any treatment 4 days after withdrawal of dextromethorphan. He was hospitalized twice more over the next 2 months with similar symptoms each time he had consumed large doses of dextromethorphan. 

A 28-year-old man, without a psychiatric history, developed a paranoid psychosis. He had been taking levamisole twice a week in an unspecified dose for 2 years for a stage 4 melanoma and metastatic lymph nodes in the axilla. Physical examination, a CT scan, an electroencephalogram, and standard laboratory tests were all normal. He was treated with perphenazine, with partial success, but after tapering of the dose his symptoms reappeared. It was thought likely that the psychosis had been caused by levamisole, which was discontinued. Three weeks later he had recovered completely. Levamisole was not reintroduced. 

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