HEARING VOICES: CANNABIS: SKUNK: PSYCHOSIS: SCHIZOPHRENIA....

HEARING VOICES: CANNABIS: SKUNK: PSYCHOSIS: SCHIZOPHRENIA...

These words have figured very frequently in the media over recent months - particularly ‘skunk’. The reason being that there has been widespread reporting of the major increase in availability of ‘home grown’ cannabis. Reports say that this home grown product is very potent, so potent in fact as to prompt a senior British drug enforcement officer to say that “a single ‘joint’ can cause psychosis.”

I do not want to detract from his message – for I entirely share his concern – but to take issue with the notion that cannabis causes psychosis or schizophrenia. It may seem like nit picking, but it is important to understand that cannabis and other and similar hypnotic substances may create the conditions in which individuals begin to hear voices and experience a variety of other undesirable phenomena.

I have never used ‘substances’, but I do ‘hear voices and experience a variety of undesirable phenomena’. I have never been ill from this cause, but nevertheless can claim to speak with the authority that 30 years continuous experience can bring. Furthermore, I know without any shadow of doubt that what I experience is the result of spiritual intrusion into my mind, body and senses.

In virtually every part of the world in recorded time, there has been the ‘shaman’ figure – the ‘oracle’, the ‘seer’ – and almost without exception it has been noted that some hypnotic substance, be it cannabis, mescaline/peyote, ‘mushrooms’, opium, has been used to facilitate the entry of the shaman’s spiritual ‘other’.

This, then, is my contention, namely that in modern times, the use of one or other of these hypnotics may inadvertently open a vulnerable individual to adverse spiritual intrusion, usually of a malevolent type, and to all that may follow as personal control is lost.

 My whole book is aimed at creating an understanding of the phenomenon of spiritual intrusion and the effect upon the mental health of individuals. 

In addition to the book, I have written an article that deals specifically with the consequences of ‘substance’ abuse. Entitled  “I Don’t Believe It!”, it is available with other essays in Chapter 16 of my book, which itself is at :

www.royvincent.org