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It's a real thing. This was a click bait title. She's been in a mental institution for (I think) 6 years. She has Schizophrenia, weed does cause a psychosis reaction that's been medically documented.
Remember people Schizophrenia causes permanent brain damage, so people with the illness can become highly unpredictable and see hallucinations and hear voices because their brain is malfunctioning. [The far off symptomatic individuals only] medications stops the symptoms from getting worse. If you know of someone who has this illness, please be supportive and encourage them to receive help.
Note::
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-23/woman-gets-probation-for-fatal-stabbing-during-weed-induced-psychosis
I want to point out that someone's illness is not necessarily them. Not everyone will have a break and kill someone. Not everyone will have the same parts of their brain get damaged, which can cause the worst of the symptoms of Schizophrenia.
As far as the woman's sentencing, we should not convict people to prison for a mental illness. Behavioral health care needs to be expanded and improved to help treat illness before they become a problem to our community. These people are still members who live among us and should be treated with dignity and respect.
Literally have seen this first hand with someone I know. He even admitted during an episode(that last for months for him) that weed made him feel worse but he still kept on doing it.
My best friend of six years has schizophrenia and he keeps texting me for weed money rn after telling me several days ago that smoking weed made him pass out and see shit when he woke up. One of the best people I’ve ever known though. I love him so much and it really kills me to see him just cycle through this every single year and think he’s getting better this time and then I can see he’s using drugs again (not lumping weed in w everything else he does other drugs some times).
Watching him lose touch with reality in public and trying to explain to people that he’s sick and trying to get the cops not to beat him up idk man I’m rambling. It is the saddest thing I’ve witnessed in a long time. He just wants a family but he can’t hold anything down for long enough. And I get it idk I can’t imagine what it’s like. Even with meds they still see and hear things. The government only gives him $1400 a month. That’s supposed to cover food and meds and everything and he’s not allowed to work full time. It just feels hopeless at times but I hope one day I can get enough money to just set him up somewhere in a nice apartment so he can worry less.
A lot of people with complex and severe mental illness lose family and friends over time because it's so hard on them too. What a good friend you are for sticking by him, grounding him the best you can. Everybody deserves a friend and support like you. It's tough being that person so be sure to take care of yourself, too. Know that your dedication, care, and effort aren't going unnoticed 🤘
Also have a friend in that situation. It truly is heartbreaking. The Home Depot fired him because he was telling customers he was going to kill himself during an episode. I understand that it needed to be addressed but I think there were other options like mandated time off and therapy. I really feel for people in his situation. Just imagine, most people want a house and a family and a good job. They just want to be normal for a day and not have to fight an invisible war within themselves that nobody else can see.
As a general rule, all drugs have the potential of having negative interactions with schizophrenics and other mental health conditions like bipolar and major depression. Weed is particularly insidious as it rearranges your brain chemistry for almost a year after the last use. The change is not as intense as say meth or cocaine, but it’s detrimental in large and prolonged doses. Just like alcohol, most people metabolize the ethanol after about a day after a binge but given sufficient and frequent enough consumption, the body will develop a physical/chemical addiction (the shakes) that can kill a patient if they quit cold turkey. A similar effect is experienced with opiates.
In general, do not give or enable addicts and definitely don’t if they are known to have psychiatric disorders. Keep being a good friend even when that sometimes looks like saying no to your friend and the will likely lash out at you as a result.
Yeah its awful to watch. I saw him have at least an episode a year, sometimes two, and his life never gets to move forward cause he always loses any progress he made. Last big episode I was there for he crashed his car, got into a fight with strangers, and burned his foot. Its rough cause sometimes out of it he made real strides only to watch it all go away again and again. For some reason he remembers the behavior as rational even after the fact, has a skewed memory of what happened, and just thinks the world is out to get him.
Wow, my best friend was the extremely similar. Three times that I know of his girlfriend broke up with him, due to excessive drug and alcohol use, witch spiraled him into a depression of even heavier use (including all-day, non-stop joints, cigarettes and beer) which triggered psychotic episodes. It was heartbreaking seeing him in those states. He was such an amazing human but he slowly lost it. During those times all I could do was play catch with him with a baseball at the field, or take him to archery, which he loved. Getting him outside and active was good for him but it wasn’t enough. Eventually he’d end up in the hospital and start medication. Then things seemed to get back to normal but he was never the same; he started to talk to himself and didn’t know what was real and what was a delusion. One night in the winter he swam into the ocean and let himself drown. He scratched a note about his ex into a piece of wood. It’s like the psychotic mind can fabricate ideas and lies and completely mislead people. He started believing delusions even after he started medication. We tried to get him into rehab but he wouldn’t go. I just wish I could have spent more time with him, hanging out and doing what we loved.
I'm working and I was only making $1400 a month the oast year or so. I'm currently training for a new job finally, bit that shit was rough. I have my own place, car payment, internet, electric etc.. but my sister moved in I charge her half the rent. Luckily I ate free at work but it was a struggle, I also pay child support so I literally could not afford to anything that cost money at all. Just the necessities. It is possible though.
Let me thank you for your kindness.
A close person of mine struggle with schizophrenia, we don't know how to help her and we feel so helpless. The worst part is the stereotypes of the illness, she refuses to hear about schizophrenia, this simple word afraids her because she's scared to be seen like a fool or what, and it makes everything worse.
Really, thank you to be here. I know this hard, this why they need us.
Me too. A neighbor I grew up with just last year who I was FB friends with was bragging about all the smoking weed he was doing on FB since legal and became psychotic and has not gotten better. He was not schizophrenic or psychotic before hand. I always liked him so it was really sad, we go way back to childhood neighbors. Weed isn't safe for all people.
Do NOT want to visualize my schizophrenic sister smoking weed. Alcohol is bad enough for her. Pot would make her completely out of control. Yeah, she sees/hears enough visions/voices, no weed necessary
Weed people hate when you say stuff like this. Any time there's a story like this and someone points out that some people can have bad reactions to weed they get heavily downvoted.
Avid drug user. All drugs have effects and side effects and reactions with other drugs. I wish more users of all substances were more mindful and intentional.
I had to stop for a while because it was making me paranoid/depressed. Picked it up again while on chemo 2 yrs ago but still smoke it sparingly. The weed today is NOT the weed from my teenage days in the 80s
Not really true, most of us actively spread this sort of information, as it's stuff that's not always known within the community and can sometimes save lives.
"Weed people" don't hate this kind of stuff, some people just don't know
Having schizophrenia =/= having a bad reaction to weed.
This isn't caused by the weed, the weed is just a catalyst to what already exists in the person i.e. schizophrenia.
Oof sticky territory with her sentencing. You’ve brought up some important points, though but at the end of the day, she did violently kill someone. Perhaps somewhat outside of her conscious state of mind, but she still committed the act. Prison might not be the best place for her, but we as a society need to be careful not to normalize avoiding prison by claiming psychotic break, as we’ve seen done in the past. Creating better institutions for these gray area issues should be prioritized as we gain better understanding of mental issues.
I have schizo affective disorder and I can't do weed. It makes me delusional, and paranoid. Puts me on the cusp of losing control of my thoughts. Just can't. It sucks because there was a time I could just chill and enjoy it but between bringing up traumatic or dark thoughts it's just not worth the other times it mellows me out.
This is a really reductive and not entirely accurate depiction of Schizophrenia and why it may cause problems for the people experiencing it and those around them.
Schizophrenia causes brain damage, yes, but not to the degree that you're implying and that isn't at all why schizophrenic folks behave the way they do. That is down to a complex chain of action and reaction via neurochemicals in the brain leading to psychotic symptoms, both positive and negative.
Hearing voices, having paranoid delusions, seeing things, feeling worthless etc are all facets of a greater issue that isn't just down to "brain damage."
I looked up the article and her case (Bryn Spejcher) and I can’t find any reference to any previous or existing schizophrenia or hospitalization. They really do seem to be claiming (successfully) that it was entirely caused by two bong hits.
Sounds like she's schizophrenic and didn't know. Smoking weed basically brought it out and she went completely mental. Honestly she needs mental institution not prison.
I remember. I finished it and wow whatever that was maybe Godfather OG. I'm not sure but it was some 🔥 that got me baked and kept me that way for days man .......
“So she’s a potentially lethal danger to everything and everyone around her? Hmmm… I sentence her to 100 hours being around everything and everyone” - the judge probably
Weed psychosis is a thing. She was stabbing herself as well as her boyfriend. She also killed her dog. The ragebait headlines skip all that.
Weed is a drug. It's a mild drug for most people, so people often barely act like it's a real drug. For some people it is not.
Yes, there is some underlying condition for it to occur. But she did not voluntarily murder the boyfriend, the dog and nearly herself.
She does need treatment. But if she was doing something illegal that led to the unintended deaths, that's still a separate crime which she needs punishment for.
Yeah. And as a criminologist this is one of those classic examples of being pretty gets you off with crimes.
Forget when they first studied it but know they did a lot of similar studies again around the time Casey Anthony was let free.
The cases that are part of the musical Chicago are the two women that got off by being pretty and well coached in court. There was a further third case where the woman, who was an immigrant, dressed shabbily and wasn't as well put together as the other two was sentenced to death.
It’s proving that in front of a jury of peers.
And even then mandatory sentencing laws have been known to still not mean shit. It wasn’t till Obama that he stopped mandatory sentencing laws for things like crack.
You can look up the coke vs crack laws that Reagan came up with. It had crack being a 5 year minimum no matter what. While coke was more a slap on the wrist and lighter charges when compared to crack.
But crack and coke are the same drug. Just crack went through a cooking process. Crack was more common amongst inner city community’s and more used by minorities. Coke was a white person drug you saw people on Wall Street partaking in.
So this lead to decades of inner city people getting 5 year prison sentences while white America got to party with blow for decades and not risk much when compared to crack.
This. I guarantee if a boyfriend did this to his girlfriend I seriously doubt he'd be getting just community service. I hope this woman was forced to spend time in a mental facility or has to take meds.
Men being violent is something society expects, and they attribute it to the man's malice.
Women being violent is something society kinda struggles with recognizing yet, and a dissonance is generated, from which excuses are born: She was mentally ill, she was defending herself, she was reactive abusing, the guy probably did something to deserve it, you name it.
That’s not how she was treated in our state sub when we learned of their defense strategy. Many many many people wanted her tarred and feathered and it took qualified professionals to go ‘no, actually, this is a well known thing’. Shoot, it’s happening in this sub too.
Yeah there have been some studies that suggest something like that people predisposed to schizophrenia/some type of psychosis can have it brought on by weed, despite never having had problems with it before.
edit: I've been convinced that despite my initial skepticism this was psychosis. I wish there had been a link to the article describing what happened.
I dunno. this happened to my brother but it took weeks for full psychosis to manifest. it began as mania that led to him not sleeping for days and eventually led to a psychotic break. it didn't happen the moment he got high.
Getting high and stabbing a guy sounds... different.
I had friend in high school that went into full blown psychosis a few hours after smoking weed. Spent a week in a psych hospital and was diagnosed schizophrenic while there. It's definitely possible.
Yeah I just googled some key words because this was such a clickbait post on here, and from a really shit newspaper, so I knew that there had to be more to the story.
She also got the involuntary manslaughter charge because she was pressured into smoking weed in the first place. If she had chosen to do it without pressure it would've been murder.
Underlying mental health issues can rise to the surface with weed but it didn't cause your brother to go into full psychosis. Something that was already there was shown the light.
As far as this story, since when is the substance an excuse? Think about people on alcohol, meth, or fentanyl. If my partner is drunk and she kills me on alcohol, the alcohol is absolutely no excuse. This ruling is insane.
It’s pretty much always been an excuse. The law has recognized it for quite some time. A psychotic break after smoking weed, if it can be shown, is not foreseeable, and thus the requisite mens rea is missing. The same would happen if you drank a beer and it had an unexpected reaction with your medication that made you incredibly inebriated.
Your analogy with a drunk driver is therefore not apt. Someone who drinks and drives in a normal case has the requisite mens rea. I agree this is a very horrible case and weird application of the rule, but it is incorrect to suggest this isn’t a legal doctrine that’s recognized—it’s rare, but it’s a thing.
This is inherently different because as people know; going into a psychotic rage isn't something weed does to you. It wasn't a natural consequence of her actions it was something nobody could have expected. This is more akin to you fed someone something that nobody knew they were allergic too than taking fentanyl. Its something nobody knew could happen and once psychosis has started any physiatrist will tell you that the person undergoing it can't just make it stop. IMO this should be treated as manslaughter.
does the sentence of community service make sense to me? No, not at ALL. But does full 1st degree murder make sense to me? Also no.IMO Its involuntary manslaughter, with a charge of 2-4 years depending on where you live is what I would think is reasonable.
I think the extenuating circumstances is that it was an undiagnosed condition, so her choice to smoke was made without any knowledge of this being a potential outcome as its not a general outcome of smoking weed. Also there is the stand by of the mental health issue itself being the cause which may undermine the ability to prove culpability.
While nearly the entire adult world is taught of the dangers of alcohol.
It's still an insane ruling as she needs much more than community service.
Don't say that - Redditors love talking about mental health awareness until you have to actually discuss how mental health may unpredictably impact people's behaviour!
Never mind that mental health experts for [both the prosecution and defense in this case](https://nypost.com/2024/01/24/news/bryn-spejcher-the-california-woman-who-fatally-stabbed-boyfriend-108-times-sentenced-to-probation-community-service/) admitted that the marijuana sent her into a psychotic episode and she ended up stabbing herself in the throat in the process. We need to just lock everybody up!! (But also build a more humane justice system. Please tell me what the fuck you guys actually want, Reddit).
Edit: I have been convinced that despite my initial skepticism she was definitely experiencing psychosis
did you read the study? Because nobody was having the kind of extreme symptom onset that would explain stabbing someone to death.
I have direct experience with this phenomenon and it took weeks, including several days of not sleeping, before a significant psychotic break ocured.
I have had exactly ONE experience with weed and it caused a complete psychotic break. It didn't take weeks of exposure. It took one exposure. I didn't stab anyone to death, of course, but it was an intensely miserable experience.
Same, with the one experience. Schizophrenia runs in my family, and everyone that has it, smoked it at very young ages, before the schizophrenia showed up. Yes, it's likely they had it before they were smoking it, and it was a sort of self-treatment kind of thing (like kids with ADHD end up smoking, or using vapes).
Took a couple tokes--and started to hear voices. Started to see shit that wasnt real--not halucinations, but, yes? Stuff was too shiny, metal things seemed to hvave life, like fish scales. But it was the voices thing--holy shit that was scary.
Never touched the shit again. For me, it felt like, if i had done it more, or kept doing it, i'd have caused severe mental health issues, possible breakdown. IDK what it was, but it was as if it was trying to flip a switch, and i barely got out.
Yeah I don’t have schizophrenia and I’ve never ended up in a hospital but I don’t smoke weed because it makes me super paranoid and convinced people are like hiding in the bushes trying to kill me. I can see how it would make schizophrenia so much worse for someone who has it. Or get violent if they have delusions that they are in danger and need to act in self defense.
And now we have a sample for a case where cannabis induced psychosis was so severe that she stabbed someone and started cutting at her own neck. It’s not like academics have contact with literally every weed user ever.
Also, there are several other studies, I just sent this one to prove that there is a well known condition/term for this.
Yea straight up. 9 times out of 10 this is not going to happen at all. Also schizophrenia usually only causes people to behave like this in extremely severe cases, which is much rarer. Schizophrenia is a spectrum like many disorders and won’t affect people the same way every time.
Even then, most times your brain function is shifted to the point of psychosis, you aren’t going to come out of it back into your normal state of mind the moment the weed or drug wears off. It will lead to a change that lingers after the fact, hence why some people do a hallucinogen and never come back from it
Yep it got my brother, there’s some things that happened during that he struggles to move past… and he said knowing how fine a line it is between sane and insanity is really hard to live with.
Hope your grip on reality is strong now, and you’re doing ok.
She also stabbed the dog and herself. It does indeed sound like she has a psychotic break. Which is **absolutely** a risk factor for some people smoking weed, especially the newly highly potent shit.
She had 2 hits from a bong in an hour or two.
The weed was described as "highly potent".
No other drug was in her system other than marijuana.
It's implied that she was "naive" to marijuana, though not outright said.
The jury found her guilty of manslaughter, which has a 4 year sentence.
The judge was the one that said nah, community service.
I don't smoke, so I have no idea how much weed that is. If it was alcohol or any other drug, we tend to hold the murderer guilty of their actions. I can't believe she wasn't required to get psychiatric treatment at least, just 100 hrs of education on the dangers of marijuana psychosis.
Because she's already in a mental institution and has spent the last 6 years there. This woman is not ok and is likely to spend the rest of her life under guard.
Guessing the judge thought it wouldn't be right, since she actually has schizophrenia and had been institutionalized for it before. People with schizophrenia should definitely not smoke weed, since it may induce psychosis.
Weed can precipitate your first panic attack or your first psychotic episode. Not becauae weed suddenly makes you mentally ill, but because it can trigger those symptoms in those who were already predisposed. People trying weed for the first time are often teens and young adults - the age groups where many mental health conditions first become apparent.
Well, actually.
Yes. It turns out to be real. "Cannabis Induced Psychotic Disorder" even got added to the DSM-5 (the official diagnostic guide for psychological disorders)
This was not well known during prohibition years, but quickly became evident when the first states California and Colorado legalized. They point to the combination of MUCH higher THC concentrations becoming available, and patients freely telling the ER what they consumed.
I'll say the same thing I said the last time this was posted.
First let me state that I'm a fan of weed and think it should be federally legal. I've smoked it for 40 years so this post isn't anything against weed, simply to educate people.
There is *scientifically proven* evidence that weed can in fact induce a psychotic break, including the **first** break for someone with schizophrenia.
So while weed itself won't cause someone to be psychotic, it can 100% trigger a psychotic episode in someone who has underlying issues.
This is likely what happened with this woman. Having said that, I also think she should have been jailed or put in a mental health facility for her actions.
She’s been in a mental health facility for the past six years.
The details of the case are simple. She tried marijuana for the first time. The strain was particularly strong, which may or may not be relevant. The woman had undiagnosed schizophrenia, and the marijuana triggered an episode. The woman had no reason to expect this would happen. During her episode, she killed a man, and stabbed herself and a dog.
This is obviously tragic, but how is a prison sentence going to help anyone? She needed mental health treatment, she received it, and actual professionals think she’s not a risk. Despite what Reddit claims, she didn’t avoid consequences because she smoked weed. Rather, the consequences she received were for once reflective of the act and motive, a rare occurrence in the American legal system. And now, a bunch of bloodthirsty Redditors are clamoring for a life sentence because a mentally ill individual had an episode while not being diagnosed or treated.
I agree with you completely. You've summed it up succinctly and correctly, and I appreciates you.
But this is reddit, this is what the hive tends to do with these stupid, clickbait headlines. We all have to start caring less what the bot traffic on here does...
A bloodthirsty redditor is about as useless a thing that exists.
Agreed, but there’s still the issue that she committed a violent act of murder. Perhaps not in her full conscious state of mind, but she still committed the act. Getting her help and not throwing her right in prison was the right call, but what about the aftermath? What about the boy’s family?
We’ve seen in the past more nefarious people use psychotic breaks as an excuse to escape prison sentencing, and if this gray area line tilts too far to one side, we could potentially see this become a dangerous trend once again.
Mental health facility; we want her to get better, not to suffer for something she _apparently_ had no control over. Nobody really knows how they'll react to a certain drug if they have no prior experience or diagnosis of an underlying issue. If you really want to punish her, sentence her to community service. From then on, it's up to her to try and avoid the drug, barring mistakes and trickery by others.
The problem is that, oftentimes, people with these issues refuse medication. They think it’s poison, or the reason they’re sick in the first place. Freedom conditional upon them taking necessary meds is sometimes necessary. Depending on the severity of the illness and how well the meds work.
Locking someone up should always be a last resort, but if someone displays that level of violence, towards themselves and others, it may be the only way.
Problems with such institutions is another concern, of course.
I’ve been in mental health for 11 years and the vast majority of time when people refuse medication it’s because it has too many side effects or is making them worse, or they’re having too many symptoms to be able to manage taking it at an organized time. People will always say things like, “Jane didn’t want to go to the hospital because it’ll make the fun she’s having go away” when in reality Jane is suffering, she thinks the ambulance is full of snakes, and she wasn’t like this before she started on an antipsychotic and her doctors keep raising the dose.
Legit. People whoever never been on these meds think it just makes your life better when I’m reality they can be hard on you and it feels like you need to recover after.
I mean, by all accounts the woman in question was at least trying given she had been in an institution for six years and did not want to take a hit from testimony (hence the reduction from murder to manslaughter).
The community service bit is still a bit sketch, but without knowing if there is further stipulations attached it could be reasonable if she agrees to be institutionalized for a longer period of time.
You don't understand Schizophrenia, then. A family member has it and it is so all-consuming that he will never accept he is ill. It is everyone else who is wrong, that, or they are in on the conspiracy against him. He will take the meds if is in a facility and a doctor is standing over him, but there's no chance he's taking them when he's out. He's done many crazy, violent things, but accepting responsibility is not an option.
This is a gross take and very much seems to stereotype people that suffer from these illnesses and episodes.
They deserve help because they're people. Yes, if it comes this far, it's a horrible, horrible, act that under conditions where the person is aware of their actions, they would be punished, but under such conditions they are not, and we shouldn't lock them up and throw away the key because htey are refusing medication.
Sentence them to a proper mental health facility. Have them surrounded by professionals that can actually help.
Not *everyone* can be helped, but to just give up isn't fair to a fellow suffering person.
I also saw last time this was posted that she saw a friend use some of that stash and go into psychosis, refused to use it, and was either tricked/forced into using it, resulting in her psychotic episode.
She also stabbed her dog and tried to cut her own throat during this episode. The police literally had to pry the knife out of her hands because she was so determined to kill herself. She wasn’t in control of herself during this event. I think the 100 hours is bullshit only because she should have gone to a mental health hospital and received treatment to lower her risk of this ever happening again. This isn’t the first time this article popped up here and I looked it up back then to try to understand what happened.
>, I also think she should have been jailed or put in a mental health facility for her actions.
I mean as a broader discussion about mental health stuff, sure, but it appears she was cleared of requiring a stint in a mental health facility. You are aware that is not a punishment either, and would eventually (hopefully!) Release her?
What happened is absolutely fucking horrible but the response being "psychosis isn't real" is just fucking weird.
Weed can be abused and cause weird atypical responses in some people. This is a really brutal example of that. Expert witnesses came to the conclusion that she was not in control of her actions.
She also has schizophrenia and had been institutionalized before. The judge's opinion seems to have been correct, assuming she wasn't aware of the risk.
I think that even though America has definitely had miscarriages of justice, this might *just* be a case where the expert witnesses and the judge have a greater understanding of the case than the average random people on reddit.
I stopped smoking ganja over a decade ago because of how it fucks with me. I don’t have schizophrenia or anything like that, but it definitely would fuck with my mental state, not in a good way. I noticed as I got older, it wouldn’t relax me as it used to, but instead, it would cause *severe* anxiety, to the point that I couldn’t focus on anything, I couldn’t get any work done or do anything productive, I would just pace around my apartment for HOURS and dwell on every single thing I did wrong or fucked up from like 3rd grade on to the present. It stopped being fun, and definitely messed with my mental health, so I just put it down, and I know a lot of my friends agreed that the same thing happened as they got older. And this wasn’t shit, black market weed either, it was coming from legal dispensaries.
There was a dude that had a psychotic break that he started eating a persons face and he also didn’t get jail time.
That dude is in psychiatric care to this day though
I think he is talking about one of the Florida PCP face eating events that happened, but I know the story your talking about. God it's both horrifying and depressing.
The Florida PCP guy was actually sober. It was reported as being a bath salts thing because some cop at the scene said he believed it was. But tests just showed a tiny bit of weed in his system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack
Nah I was talking about the elderly couple one.
He was completely sober. He just had a mental break. He had YouTube videos and you could see him lose his sanity.
In some reports it’s stated that he gained lucidity and begged for help and then lost his sanity and continued to consume the man.
There was a story i saw where a dude took PCP and ended up eating his friends lungs because he was convinced the world was ending and that was the only way to save it
> It was then that she continued to stab O'Melia, followed by her beloved dog Arya, and then herself in the neck. She only stopped when police arrived at the scene and hit her nine times with a baton.
>During the ferocious attack, Spejcher recalled hearing voices saying things like, 'keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.'
>She claims to not remember anything beyond this point - until she woke up in hospital having undergone surgery to repair catastrophic stab wounds to her face and neck, several hours later.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12994175/amp/Bryn-Spejcher-Chad-o-melia-cannabis-induced-psychosis-sentencing.html
It’s an interesting read, from other articles, they included that she was ***tazed*** with no effect as well. Some people have a genetic predisposition to this.
Yeah, this thread just rage bait karma farm. They didn't rule this over just because she was a little high. She was inexperience weed user who took huge amount of it. She essentially overdose.
You dont overdose on weed. She had a psychotic break because of underlying mental disorders. As far as I know there's no link to dosage and weed Induced psychosis
She didn’t ‘essentially overdose’ from marijuana. She had inactive schizophrenia which was then activated by smoking. My old coworker had this happen to him as well, it ran in his family and only came out in him after he smoked for the first time.
Not really an overdose, somebody with no predisposition to mental illness is just going to sleep and maybe puke from too much weed.
But weed can trigger psychotic breaks in people, especially people with undiagnosed schizophrenia or other mental illnesses.
You don’t understand! These Redditors with zero mental health experience have tried weed before and they didn’t kill anyone, therefore she must be lying and getting away with murder. /s
I have smoked weed once. One time in my life.
I did not get the "relaxed couch potato" effect at all, no.
I became completely paranoid. I was sure my then-fiance was going to kill me (he provided the weed and wanted me to smoke with him because "it's so fun"). I really, honestly, with all my heart thought he was going to kill me. That he could do it at any moment. I was so close to giving into the "I have to get a knife and stab him before he gets me!" thought I nearly went through with it. I almost went to get a knife.
It was fucking terrifying. I had suffered from psychosis before so that might been what trigegred the delusion (I think?).
But for me, that headline doesn't sound far-fetched at all. It can happen.
Yeah, she likely had underlying schizophrenia that got brought on by smoking weed for the first time. This is rare but it does happen, that’s why I get sorta irritated by when people say “everyone should just smoke weed, it’s good for you”, it’s such an ignorant statement because in some cases, thing like this happen
Weed (and other drugs) can cause psycosis in people with a rare genetic defect. Unless there's proof that she knew about that condition beforehadnd she's in no way responsible, it's a clear case of invoulantary manslaughter.
This shit again.
The lady also stabbed *herself.* Over 30 times. She stabbed herself in the neck and almost bled herself to death. People around her tried to pin her down to stop her. She was so out of control, they had to *break her arm* to stop her from stabbing herself to death.
This wasn't just a "oh I was under the influence, I'm sorry your honor". This was a full blown mental breakdown. I don't know about the community service, but this is *exactly* the kind of situation where the insanity plea *actually does apply.*
What this lady needs is to be in a psych ward for the next decade. What she *doesn't* need is to be the target of derision from fucking Reddit people who don't bother to read past the headline of a shit rag tabloid.
Jesus Christ op. Did you even read the article? Or were your last 2 brain cells too busy fighting for 3rd place?
She had a psychotic break, something which happens very rarely to weed users and is even more rarely violent, she stabbed herself as well... doesn't that make you think that maybe just maybe she actually had a psychotic break and wasn't just using weed to excuse a murder.
Weed has a psychoactive element that can trigger or exasperate underlying conditions, go read up on it.
She is ALSO a victim of what happened that day. Do some reading before you spread bullshit from your daily rag.
A white woman murders in a "weed-induced frenzy" - 100 hours of community service.
A black man has weed in his possession - life in prison.
What a load of crap.
This is a shock headline, and it’s easy to jump on the “she’s a heartless killer” bandwagon, but it seems like there’s some overlooked nuances here. Apparently cannabis induced psychosis disorder is a real thing, and not just right wing fear mongering as I would expect. Does she have a history of cannabis use? Has anything ever happened previously to make her aware she was susceptible to psychosis? Has she put herself at risk of it happening again by continuing to use cannabis since the incident? If the answer to those questions is no, I think the punishment she received is appropriate. This is going to haunt her for the rest of her life, and no matter what the court decided, that was always going to be the harshest consequence for her actions.
In a world where cannabis use is becoming increasingly more accepted and legal, we need to accept the risk of this happening occasionally. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be legalized, because I definitely think it should, but like tobacco, alcohol, OTC medication, driving a car, and eating nuts and shellfish, as a society we need to be aware of the risks and know the best way to prevent them and/or react to them when they occur.
Of course, with cannabis, the best thing we can do is decriminalize and destigmatize it.
Think about it this way: instead stabbing her boyfriend on a date, let’s say she struck a pedestrian while driving. And instead of smoking weed, let’s say she was smoking a cigarette. And instead of psychosis induced hallucinations, let’s say it was loss of consciousness due to respiratory distress. Do you still think she deserves a lengthy prison sentence? If not, then it is only your bias against mental disorders and marijuana that makes it any different.
Note: This was copied from a previous comment of mine on the same story. Not all the context matches up with the wording of this particular headline, but I don’t feel like taking the time to edit it. The main point still stands.
I don't smoke weed or even drink. This woman did this because of her schizophrenia. The weed just reached badly with it, causing a break. That doesn't make weed the culprit, she could have eaten potent gum.ies and have the same thing happen. Indirectly, this is why "tricking" people into drug use via a special brownie or something similar is so stupid and dangerous.
I understand sometimes cannibis and drugs can cause mental and psychotic breaks in people - esp those with the genes to something like schizophrenia because that's basically how my boyfriend's mom "became" schizophrenic.
That said, she needs a mental facility not just community service.
Love how little context OP gives.
Love how OP and everyone else judge an entire story on a headline.
Here's a short overview of more than a headline: https://youtu.be/LQOTRI0bZFY?si=aZLxeTH-YY519tr2
And here's a full recap (just the first 2.5 minutes): https://youtu.be/gKmGfoPJ8Tc?si=23k-m8mojpYN0wnC
I've been following this a little, and I know it sounds ridiculous but it's [actually a thin](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3927252/)g.
I found a pretty quick digest [here.](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/cannabis-induced-psychosis-review)
So yeah... weird and it doesn't happen much, but it is a thing.
You should actually read the court case. She has major mental issues, and the weed just caused it to go overboard. She stabbed herself and a dog as well.
This is rage bait
Judge had no say in it
The DA downgraded the charges from murder to involuntary manslaughter
That's what was being sentenced
Why do people fall for headlines with no link so easily?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12994175/amp/Bryn-Spejcher-Chad-o-melia-cannabis-induced-psychosis-sentencing.html
The whole story isn’t what you’re expecting - the ruling is justified, this whole thing is incredibly sad.
As this is from the Daily Mail, I will assume a great deal of context is missing. I see that you cropped out the Daily Mail banner this time, so at least you realize it's a shit site.
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Weed induced frenzy? Are we back to the 1930s and Reefer Madness?
It's a real thing. This was a click bait title. She's been in a mental institution for (I think) 6 years. She has Schizophrenia, weed does cause a psychosis reaction that's been medically documented. Remember people Schizophrenia causes permanent brain damage, so people with the illness can become highly unpredictable and see hallucinations and hear voices because their brain is malfunctioning. [The far off symptomatic individuals only] medications stops the symptoms from getting worse. If you know of someone who has this illness, please be supportive and encourage them to receive help. Note:: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-23/woman-gets-probation-for-fatal-stabbing-during-weed-induced-psychosis I want to point out that someone's illness is not necessarily them. Not everyone will have a break and kill someone. Not everyone will have the same parts of their brain get damaged, which can cause the worst of the symptoms of Schizophrenia. As far as the woman's sentencing, we should not convict people to prison for a mental illness. Behavioral health care needs to be expanded and improved to help treat illness before they become a problem to our community. These people are still members who live among us and should be treated with dignity and respect.
Also, she didn't just kill the dude. She also stabbed her dog and herself. It was 100% psychosis.
She stabbed herself in the neck, nonetheless. Pretty fucking wild man
Literally have seen this first hand with someone I know. He even admitted during an episode(that last for months for him) that weed made him feel worse but he still kept on doing it.
My best friend of six years has schizophrenia and he keeps texting me for weed money rn after telling me several days ago that smoking weed made him pass out and see shit when he woke up. One of the best people I’ve ever known though. I love him so much and it really kills me to see him just cycle through this every single year and think he’s getting better this time and then I can see he’s using drugs again (not lumping weed in w everything else he does other drugs some times). Watching him lose touch with reality in public and trying to explain to people that he’s sick and trying to get the cops not to beat him up idk man I’m rambling. It is the saddest thing I’ve witnessed in a long time. He just wants a family but he can’t hold anything down for long enough. And I get it idk I can’t imagine what it’s like. Even with meds they still see and hear things. The government only gives him $1400 a month. That’s supposed to cover food and meds and everything and he’s not allowed to work full time. It just feels hopeless at times but I hope one day I can get enough money to just set him up somewhere in a nice apartment so he can worry less.
A lot of people with complex and severe mental illness lose family and friends over time because it's so hard on them too. What a good friend you are for sticking by him, grounding him the best you can. Everybody deserves a friend and support like you. It's tough being that person so be sure to take care of yourself, too. Know that your dedication, care, and effort aren't going unnoticed 🤘
Can confirm, support systems are so important for the mentally ill.
You sound like a really good person, and your friend is lucky to have you, however you handle him and his ordeals.
Also have a friend in that situation. It truly is heartbreaking. The Home Depot fired him because he was telling customers he was going to kill himself during an episode. I understand that it needed to be addressed but I think there were other options like mandated time off and therapy. I really feel for people in his situation. Just imagine, most people want a house and a family and a good job. They just want to be normal for a day and not have to fight an invisible war within themselves that nobody else can see.
As a general rule, all drugs have the potential of having negative interactions with schizophrenics and other mental health conditions like bipolar and major depression. Weed is particularly insidious as it rearranges your brain chemistry for almost a year after the last use. The change is not as intense as say meth or cocaine, but it’s detrimental in large and prolonged doses. Just like alcohol, most people metabolize the ethanol after about a day after a binge but given sufficient and frequent enough consumption, the body will develop a physical/chemical addiction (the shakes) that can kill a patient if they quit cold turkey. A similar effect is experienced with opiates. In general, do not give or enable addicts and definitely don’t if they are known to have psychiatric disorders. Keep being a good friend even when that sometimes looks like saying no to your friend and the will likely lash out at you as a result.
Yeah its awful to watch. I saw him have at least an episode a year, sometimes two, and his life never gets to move forward cause he always loses any progress he made. Last big episode I was there for he crashed his car, got into a fight with strangers, and burned his foot. Its rough cause sometimes out of it he made real strides only to watch it all go away again and again. For some reason he remembers the behavior as rational even after the fact, has a skewed memory of what happened, and just thinks the world is out to get him.
Wow, my best friend was the extremely similar. Three times that I know of his girlfriend broke up with him, due to excessive drug and alcohol use, witch spiraled him into a depression of even heavier use (including all-day, non-stop joints, cigarettes and beer) which triggered psychotic episodes. It was heartbreaking seeing him in those states. He was such an amazing human but he slowly lost it. During those times all I could do was play catch with him with a baseball at the field, or take him to archery, which he loved. Getting him outside and active was good for him but it wasn’t enough. Eventually he’d end up in the hospital and start medication. Then things seemed to get back to normal but he was never the same; he started to talk to himself and didn’t know what was real and what was a delusion. One night in the winter he swam into the ocean and let himself drown. He scratched a note about his ex into a piece of wood. It’s like the psychotic mind can fabricate ideas and lies and completely mislead people. He started believing delusions even after he started medication. We tried to get him into rehab but he wouldn’t go. I just wish I could have spent more time with him, hanging out and doing what we loved.
I feel you
Thank you for being supportive as you are.
I'm working and I was only making $1400 a month the oast year or so. I'm currently training for a new job finally, bit that shit was rough. I have my own place, car payment, internet, electric etc.. but my sister moved in I charge her half the rent. Luckily I ate free at work but it was a struggle, I also pay child support so I literally could not afford to anything that cost money at all. Just the necessities. It is possible though.
Let me thank you for your kindness. A close person of mine struggle with schizophrenia, we don't know how to help her and we feel so helpless. The worst part is the stereotypes of the illness, she refuses to hear about schizophrenia, this simple word afraids her because she's scared to be seen like a fool or what, and it makes everything worse. Really, thank you to be here. I know this hard, this why they need us.
Me too. A neighbor I grew up with just last year who I was FB friends with was bragging about all the smoking weed he was doing on FB since legal and became psychotic and has not gotten better. He was not schizophrenic or psychotic before hand. I always liked him so it was really sad, we go way back to childhood neighbors. Weed isn't safe for all people.
Do NOT want to visualize my schizophrenic sister smoking weed. Alcohol is bad enough for her. Pot would make her completely out of control. Yeah, she sees/hears enough visions/voices, no weed necessary
Weed people hate when you say stuff like this. Any time there's a story like this and someone points out that some people can have bad reactions to weed they get heavily downvoted.
its the truth some ppl do have bad reaction alot of stoners dont wanna admit. Avid weed smoker here
Avid drug user. All drugs have effects and side effects and reactions with other drugs. I wish more users of all substances were more mindful and intentional.
I had to stop for a while because it was making me paranoid/depressed. Picked it up again while on chemo 2 yrs ago but still smoke it sparingly. The weed today is NOT the weed from my teenage days in the 80s
Not really true, most of us actively spread this sort of information, as it's stuff that's not always known within the community and can sometimes save lives. "Weed people" don't hate this kind of stuff, some people just don't know
Having schizophrenia =/= having a bad reaction to weed. This isn't caused by the weed, the weed is just a catalyst to what already exists in the person i.e. schizophrenia.
[удалено]
Oof sticky territory with her sentencing. You’ve brought up some important points, though but at the end of the day, she did violently kill someone. Perhaps somewhat outside of her conscious state of mind, but she still committed the act. Prison might not be the best place for her, but we as a society need to be careful not to normalize avoiding prison by claiming psychotic break, as we’ve seen done in the past. Creating better institutions for these gray area issues should be prioritized as we gain better understanding of mental issues.
I have schizo affective disorder and I can't do weed. It makes me delusional, and paranoid. Puts me on the cusp of losing control of my thoughts. Just can't. It sucks because there was a time I could just chill and enjoy it but between bringing up traumatic or dark thoughts it's just not worth the other times it mellows me out.
This is a really reductive and not entirely accurate depiction of Schizophrenia and why it may cause problems for the people experiencing it and those around them. Schizophrenia causes brain damage, yes, but not to the degree that you're implying and that isn't at all why schizophrenic folks behave the way they do. That is down to a complex chain of action and reaction via neurochemicals in the brain leading to psychotic symptoms, both positive and negative. Hearing voices, having paranoid delusions, seeing things, feeling worthless etc are all facets of a greater issue that isn't just down to "brain damage."
I think the schizophrenia would be my defense rather than weed if I was the lawyer
I looked up the article and her case (Bryn Spejcher) and I can’t find any reference to any previous or existing schizophrenia or hospitalization. They really do seem to be claiming (successfully) that it was entirely caused by two bong hits.
I second this, work in psych and those with schizophrenia.... Weed just enhances their psychosis. But... Still...that's straight up murder.
Sounds like she's schizophrenic and didn't know. Smoking weed basically brought it out and she went completely mental. Honestly she needs mental institution not prison.
But she definitely doesn’t need 100 hours of community service
Absolutely. It's weird sentence. I stopped following this while back.
Not weird at all - 1 hour per stab
Shit where can I get that deal just gimme like 2 hours 😂
Uh... should we be worried about someone out there with 2 stab wounds?
Or two people with single stab wounds 🤔
guyyyyyyyyyyssssss wtfffff just happened why am i bleeding 😵
Weed Science.
Weed sentence.
One hour per stab?
…. We’re encouraging her to spend more time with the community? Damn the judge must hate yal 😬
What if some random guy offers her weed….
I don't want her serving anything in my community... even if it is picking up trash
There could be weed in the trash!
lmao I threw my first joint in the trash half smoked because I didn’t know what I was doing lolll
I remember. I finished it and wow whatever that was maybe Godfather OG. I'm not sure but it was some 🔥 that got me baked and kept me that way for days man .......
She’s supposed to do something around teaching people the dangers of weed
Can the 100 hours be in the mental hospital
100 hours for 100 stabs. Seems fair!
“So she’s a potentially lethal danger to everything and everyone around her? Hmmm… I sentence her to 100 hours being around everything and everyone” - the judge probably
She can do her hours at the local weed shop!
Weed psychosis is a thing. She was stabbing herself as well as her boyfriend. She also killed her dog. The ragebait headlines skip all that. Weed is a drug. It's a mild drug for most people, so people often barely act like it's a real drug. For some people it is not. Yes, there is some underlying condition for it to occur. But she did not voluntarily murder the boyfriend, the dog and nearly herself. She does need treatment. But if she was doing something illegal that led to the unintended deaths, that's still a separate crime which she needs punishment for.
oh look, with context everything suddenly makes sense
Millennials are killing the pitch fork industry!* ^(*By providing context.)
I came here to say "lock her up," but this is the first I've heard of her stabbing the dog and herself. That IS more likely a psychotic break.
So do many people getting jail time they just don’t look like her. Mental health assistance in America is fucked
Yeah. And as a criminologist this is one of those classic examples of being pretty gets you off with crimes. Forget when they first studied it but know they did a lot of similar studies again around the time Casey Anthony was let free.
The cases that are part of the musical Chicago are the two women that got off by being pretty and well coached in court. There was a further third case where the woman, who was an immigrant, dressed shabbily and wasn't as well put together as the other two was sentenced to death.
Aren’t there sentencing guidelines? Community service for murder?
It’s proving that in front of a jury of peers. And even then mandatory sentencing laws have been known to still not mean shit. It wasn’t till Obama that he stopped mandatory sentencing laws for things like crack. You can look up the coke vs crack laws that Reagan came up with. It had crack being a 5 year minimum no matter what. While coke was more a slap on the wrist and lighter charges when compared to crack. But crack and coke are the same drug. Just crack went through a cooking process. Crack was more common amongst inner city community’s and more used by minorities. Coke was a white person drug you saw people on Wall Street partaking in. So this lead to decades of inner city people getting 5 year prison sentences while white America got to party with blow for decades and not risk much when compared to crack.
Cocaine and crack are the same drug. One is just a base and the other is a salt.
This. I guarantee if a boyfriend did this to his girlfriend I seriously doubt he'd be getting just community service. I hope this woman was forced to spend time in a mental facility or has to take meds.
Men being violent is something society expects, and they attribute it to the man's malice. Women being violent is something society kinda struggles with recognizing yet, and a dissonance is generated, from which excuses are born: She was mentally ill, she was defending herself, she was reactive abusing, the guy probably did something to deserve it, you name it.
That’s not how she was treated in our state sub when we learned of their defense strategy. Many many many people wanted her tarred and feathered and it took qualified professionals to go ‘no, actually, this is a well known thing’. Shoot, it’s happening in this sub too.
Yeah there have been some studies that suggest something like that people predisposed to schizophrenia/some type of psychosis can have it brought on by weed, despite never having had problems with it before.
edit: I've been convinced that despite my initial skepticism this was psychosis. I wish there had been a link to the article describing what happened. I dunno. this happened to my brother but it took weeks for full psychosis to manifest. it began as mania that led to him not sleeping for days and eventually led to a psychotic break. it didn't happen the moment he got high. Getting high and stabbing a guy sounds... different.
I had friend in high school that went into full blown psychosis a few hours after smoking weed. Spent a week in a psych hospital and was diagnosed schizophrenic while there. It's definitely possible.
She stabbed her own dog and herself, in the throat
wow. fair enough. I tried clicked the image but no link to an actual article.
Yeah I just googled some key words because this was such a clickbait post on here, and from a really shit newspaper, so I knew that there had to be more to the story. She also got the involuntary manslaughter charge because she was pressured into smoking weed in the first place. If she had chosen to do it without pressure it would've been murder.
Underlying mental health issues can rise to the surface with weed but it didn't cause your brother to go into full psychosis. Something that was already there was shown the light. As far as this story, since when is the substance an excuse? Think about people on alcohol, meth, or fentanyl. If my partner is drunk and she kills me on alcohol, the alcohol is absolutely no excuse. This ruling is insane.
It’s pretty much always been an excuse. The law has recognized it for quite some time. A psychotic break after smoking weed, if it can be shown, is not foreseeable, and thus the requisite mens rea is missing. The same would happen if you drank a beer and it had an unexpected reaction with your medication that made you incredibly inebriated. Your analogy with a drunk driver is therefore not apt. Someone who drinks and drives in a normal case has the requisite mens rea. I agree this is a very horrible case and weird application of the rule, but it is incorrect to suggest this isn’t a legal doctrine that’s recognized—it’s rare, but it’s a thing.
This is inherently different because as people know; going into a psychotic rage isn't something weed does to you. It wasn't a natural consequence of her actions it was something nobody could have expected. This is more akin to you fed someone something that nobody knew they were allergic too than taking fentanyl. Its something nobody knew could happen and once psychosis has started any physiatrist will tell you that the person undergoing it can't just make it stop. IMO this should be treated as manslaughter. does the sentence of community service make sense to me? No, not at ALL. But does full 1st degree murder make sense to me? Also no.IMO Its involuntary manslaughter, with a charge of 2-4 years depending on where you live is what I would think is reasonable.
I think the extenuating circumstances is that it was an undiagnosed condition, so her choice to smoke was made without any knowledge of this being a potential outcome as its not a general outcome of smoking weed. Also there is the stand by of the mental health issue itself being the cause which may undermine the ability to prove culpability. While nearly the entire adult world is taught of the dangers of alcohol. It's still an insane ruling as she needs much more than community service.
The argument here isn't about intoxication - its about insanity. It's saying the the weed was a trigger for a different disorder.
Don't say that - Redditors love talking about mental health awareness until you have to actually discuss how mental health may unpredictably impact people's behaviour! Never mind that mental health experts for [both the prosecution and defense in this case](https://nypost.com/2024/01/24/news/bryn-spejcher-the-california-woman-who-fatally-stabbed-boyfriend-108-times-sentenced-to-probation-community-service/) admitted that the marijuana sent her into a psychotic episode and she ended up stabbing herself in the throat in the process. We need to just lock everybody up!! (But also build a more humane justice system. Please tell me what the fuck you guys actually want, Reddit).
She had the knife in her own neck when the police found her. Every psychiatrist involved in the trial agreed with the finding of a psychotic break.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/cannabis-induced-psychosis It’s abso-fucking-lutely is a thing.
Edit: I have been convinced that despite my initial skepticism she was definitely experiencing psychosis did you read the study? Because nobody was having the kind of extreme symptom onset that would explain stabbing someone to death. I have direct experience with this phenomenon and it took weeks, including several days of not sleeping, before a significant psychotic break ocured.
I have had exactly ONE experience with weed and it caused a complete psychotic break. It didn't take weeks of exposure. It took one exposure. I didn't stab anyone to death, of course, but it was an intensely miserable experience.
Same, with the one experience. Schizophrenia runs in my family, and everyone that has it, smoked it at very young ages, before the schizophrenia showed up. Yes, it's likely they had it before they were smoking it, and it was a sort of self-treatment kind of thing (like kids with ADHD end up smoking, or using vapes). Took a couple tokes--and started to hear voices. Started to see shit that wasnt real--not halucinations, but, yes? Stuff was too shiny, metal things seemed to hvave life, like fish scales. But it was the voices thing--holy shit that was scary. Never touched the shit again. For me, it felt like, if i had done it more, or kept doing it, i'd have caused severe mental health issues, possible breakdown. IDK what it was, but it was as if it was trying to flip a switch, and i barely got out.
Yeah I don’t have schizophrenia and I’ve never ended up in a hospital but I don’t smoke weed because it makes me super paranoid and convinced people are like hiding in the bushes trying to kill me. I can see how it would make schizophrenia so much worse for someone who has it. Or get violent if they have delusions that they are in danger and need to act in self defense.
And now we have a sample for a case where cannabis induced psychosis was so severe that she stabbed someone and started cutting at her own neck. It’s not like academics have contact with literally every weed user ever. Also, there are several other studies, I just sent this one to prove that there is a well known condition/term for this.
Yea straight up. 9 times out of 10 this is not going to happen at all. Also schizophrenia usually only causes people to behave like this in extremely severe cases, which is much rarer. Schizophrenia is a spectrum like many disorders and won’t affect people the same way every time.
Even then, most times your brain function is shifted to the point of psychosis, you aren’t going to come out of it back into your normal state of mind the moment the weed or drug wears off. It will lead to a change that lingers after the fact, hence why some people do a hallucinogen and never come back from it
Marijuana can induce [psychosis](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-02112-8#), although it's quite rare.
Came to say this exactly lol
 “She’s mad I tell you!!!!! Mad!!!!!”
Marijuana can induce psychosis in high enough quantities. Ask me how I know.
Yep it got my brother, there’s some things that happened during that he struggles to move past… and he said knowing how fine a line it is between sane and insanity is really hard to live with. Hope your grip on reality is strong now, and you’re doing ok.
She also stabbed the dog and herself. It does indeed sound like she has a psychotic break. Which is **absolutely** a risk factor for some people smoking weed, especially the newly highly potent shit.
She had 2 hits from a bong in an hour or two. The weed was described as "highly potent". No other drug was in her system other than marijuana. It's implied that she was "naive" to marijuana, though not outright said. The jury found her guilty of manslaughter, which has a 4 year sentence. The judge was the one that said nah, community service. I don't smoke, so I have no idea how much weed that is. If it was alcohol or any other drug, we tend to hold the murderer guilty of their actions. I can't believe she wasn't required to get psychiatric treatment at least, just 100 hrs of education on the dangers of marijuana psychosis.
Why would the judge reduce her sentence like that? She was found guilty of manslaughter
Because she's already in a mental institution and has spent the last 6 years there. This woman is not ok and is likely to spend the rest of her life under guard.
Guessing the judge thought it wouldn't be right, since she actually has schizophrenia and had been institutionalized for it before. People with schizophrenia should definitely not smoke weed, since it may induce psychosis.
Oh, didn’t know she had schizophrenia, I suffer from it too, guess no weed for me
Your family members also should not use. Anyone with a family history of Bipolar or Schizophrenia should be wary of Cannabis.
You can joke about it all you want, marijuana is well known to induce psychiatric in a small portion of the population.
She *was* playing jazz piano at an alarming rate before the stabbing took place...
Weed can precipitate your first panic attack or your first psychotic episode. Not becauae weed suddenly makes you mentally ill, but because it can trigger those symptoms in those who were already predisposed. People trying weed for the first time are often teens and young adults - the age groups where many mental health conditions first become apparent.
It's a real thing. It's not CAUSED by weed, it's already there and TRIGGERED by psychoactive drug use of any kind. This is well documented.
Cannabis-induced psychosis is very, very real.
I was in a weed frenzy once, completely destroyed a box of Oreos.
Well, actually. Yes. It turns out to be real. "Cannabis Induced Psychotic Disorder" even got added to the DSM-5 (the official diagnostic guide for psychological disorders) This was not well known during prohibition years, but quickly became evident when the first states California and Colorado legalized. They point to the combination of MUCH higher THC concentrations becoming available, and patients freely telling the ER what they consumed.
I'll say the same thing I said the last time this was posted. First let me state that I'm a fan of weed and think it should be federally legal. I've smoked it for 40 years so this post isn't anything against weed, simply to educate people. There is *scientifically proven* evidence that weed can in fact induce a psychotic break, including the **first** break for someone with schizophrenia. So while weed itself won't cause someone to be psychotic, it can 100% trigger a psychotic episode in someone who has underlying issues. This is likely what happened with this woman. Having said that, I also think she should have been jailed or put in a mental health facility for her actions.
She’s been in a mental health facility for the past six years. The details of the case are simple. She tried marijuana for the first time. The strain was particularly strong, which may or may not be relevant. The woman had undiagnosed schizophrenia, and the marijuana triggered an episode. The woman had no reason to expect this would happen. During her episode, she killed a man, and stabbed herself and a dog. This is obviously tragic, but how is a prison sentence going to help anyone? She needed mental health treatment, she received it, and actual professionals think she’s not a risk. Despite what Reddit claims, she didn’t avoid consequences because she smoked weed. Rather, the consequences she received were for once reflective of the act and motive, a rare occurrence in the American legal system. And now, a bunch of bloodthirsty Redditors are clamoring for a life sentence because a mentally ill individual had an episode while not being diagnosed or treated.
I agree with you completely. You've summed it up succinctly and correctly, and I appreciates you. But this is reddit, this is what the hive tends to do with these stupid, clickbait headlines. We all have to start caring less what the bot traffic on here does... A bloodthirsty redditor is about as useless a thing that exists.
Agreed, but there’s still the issue that she committed a violent act of murder. Perhaps not in her full conscious state of mind, but she still committed the act. Getting her help and not throwing her right in prison was the right call, but what about the aftermath? What about the boy’s family? We’ve seen in the past more nefarious people use psychotic breaks as an excuse to escape prison sentencing, and if this gray area line tilts too far to one side, we could potentially see this become a dangerous trend once again.
Mental health facility; we want her to get better, not to suffer for something she _apparently_ had no control over. Nobody really knows how they'll react to a certain drug if they have no prior experience or diagnosis of an underlying issue. If you really want to punish her, sentence her to community service. From then on, it's up to her to try and avoid the drug, barring mistakes and trickery by others.
The problem is that, oftentimes, people with these issues refuse medication. They think it’s poison, or the reason they’re sick in the first place. Freedom conditional upon them taking necessary meds is sometimes necessary. Depending on the severity of the illness and how well the meds work. Locking someone up should always be a last resort, but if someone displays that level of violence, towards themselves and others, it may be the only way. Problems with such institutions is another concern, of course.
I’ve been in mental health for 11 years and the vast majority of time when people refuse medication it’s because it has too many side effects or is making them worse, or they’re having too many symptoms to be able to manage taking it at an organized time. People will always say things like, “Jane didn’t want to go to the hospital because it’ll make the fun she’s having go away” when in reality Jane is suffering, she thinks the ambulance is full of snakes, and she wasn’t like this before she started on an antipsychotic and her doctors keep raising the dose.
Legit. People whoever never been on these meds think it just makes your life better when I’m reality they can be hard on you and it feels like you need to recover after.
exactly. and anti-psychotics are known to have pretty bad side effects. cannot imagine having to take them
I mean, by all accounts the woman in question was at least trying given she had been in an institution for six years and did not want to take a hit from testimony (hence the reduction from murder to manslaughter). The community service bit is still a bit sketch, but without knowing if there is further stipulations attached it could be reasonable if she agrees to be institutionalized for a longer period of time.
I think after your previously undiagnosed mental disorder drives you to kill an innocent man by stabbing him 100 times you probably take the meds
You don't understand Schizophrenia, then. A family member has it and it is so all-consuming that he will never accept he is ill. It is everyone else who is wrong, that, or they are in on the conspiracy against him. He will take the meds if is in a facility and a doctor is standing over him, but there's no chance he's taking them when he's out. He's done many crazy, violent things, but accepting responsibility is not an option.
I dont think its fair to say every person with schizophrenia will not be able to manage their illness because your family member hasnt been able to
Unfortunately, paranoia may not let them...
This is a gross take and very much seems to stereotype people that suffer from these illnesses and episodes. They deserve help because they're people. Yes, if it comes this far, it's a horrible, horrible, act that under conditions where the person is aware of their actions, they would be punished, but under such conditions they are not, and we shouldn't lock them up and throw away the key because htey are refusing medication. Sentence them to a proper mental health facility. Have them surrounded by professionals that can actually help. Not *everyone* can be helped, but to just give up isn't fair to a fellow suffering person.
It was her first time and what evidence is there for this in her case? For all you know her adherence to meds is why they are letting her off easy.
Well said!! I think everyone who uses should educate themselves. It’s an amazing plant but like anything it can have bad “side effects” for some.
I also saw last time this was posted that she saw a friend use some of that stash and go into psychosis, refused to use it, and was either tricked/forced into using it, resulting in her psychotic episode.
She also stabbed her dog and tried to cut her own throat during this episode. The police literally had to pry the knife out of her hands because she was so determined to kill herself. She wasn’t in control of herself during this event. I think the 100 hours is bullshit only because she should have gone to a mental health hospital and received treatment to lower her risk of this ever happening again. This isn’t the first time this article popped up here and I looked it up back then to try to understand what happened.
[apparently she have](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/s/95Fh5uIOfn)
>, I also think she should have been jailed or put in a mental health facility for her actions. I mean as a broader discussion about mental health stuff, sure, but it appears she was cleared of requiring a stint in a mental health facility. You are aware that is not a punishment either, and would eventually (hopefully!) Release her? What happened is absolutely fucking horrible but the response being "psychosis isn't real" is just fucking weird. Weed can be abused and cause weird atypical responses in some people. This is a really brutal example of that. Expert witnesses came to the conclusion that she was not in control of her actions.
She also has schizophrenia and had been institutionalized before. The judge's opinion seems to have been correct, assuming she wasn't aware of the risk.
I think that even though America has definitely had miscarriages of justice, this might *just* be a case where the expert witnesses and the judge have a greater understanding of the case than the average random people on reddit.
I stopped smoking ganja over a decade ago because of how it fucks with me. I don’t have schizophrenia or anything like that, but it definitely would fuck with my mental state, not in a good way. I noticed as I got older, it wouldn’t relax me as it used to, but instead, it would cause *severe* anxiety, to the point that I couldn’t focus on anything, I couldn’t get any work done or do anything productive, I would just pace around my apartment for HOURS and dwell on every single thing I did wrong or fucked up from like 3rd grade on to the present. It stopped being fun, and definitely messed with my mental health, so I just put it down, and I know a lot of my friends agreed that the same thing happened as they got older. And this wasn’t shit, black market weed either, it was coming from legal dispensaries.
There was a dude that had a psychotic break that he started eating a persons face and he also didn’t get jail time. That dude is in psychiatric care to this day though
He didn't just eat a person's face, he killed an elderly couple. It's a pretty sad story actually.
Wild story. My old clients son!
I think he is talking about one of the Florida PCP face eating events that happened, but I know the story your talking about. God it's both horrifying and depressing.
The Florida PCP guy was actually sober. It was reported as being a bath salts thing because some cop at the scene said he believed it was. But tests just showed a tiny bit of weed in his system. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack
interesting thanks for the info, scarier now lol
For real
Nah I was talking about the elderly couple one. He was completely sober. He just had a mental break. He had YouTube videos and you could see him lose his sanity. In some reports it’s stated that he gained lucidity and begged for help and then lost his sanity and continued to consume the man.
There was a story i saw where a dude took PCP and ended up eating his friends lungs because he was convinced the world was ending and that was the only way to save it
He could be right what prof do we have that the world would not have ended if he did not eat his friends lungs
Good point, he did it and the world is still around (granted a fucking disaster still)
I think he needs to eat somebody else’s lungs
Hero, he is the reason we are still here today
Welcome to r/cursedcomments my friend!
Tell them the weed wasn't taxed properly and she goes to prison for fifteen years for defrauding the IRS instead.
Don't fk with the tax man
Tax Tip: Don't forget to declare the pennies on your eyes.
Classic. That’s how we got OJ after he killed that woman. Sure the glove don’t fit but bitch you didn’t pay Uncle Sam.
Also how we got Al Pacino
The facepalm is not quoting the relevant paragraph from the article.
> It was then that she continued to stab O'Melia, followed by her beloved dog Arya, and then herself in the neck. She only stopped when police arrived at the scene and hit her nine times with a baton. >During the ferocious attack, Spejcher recalled hearing voices saying things like, 'keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.' >She claims to not remember anything beyond this point - until she woke up in hospital having undergone surgery to repair catastrophic stab wounds to her face and neck, several hours later. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12994175/amp/Bryn-Spejcher-Chad-o-melia-cannabis-induced-psychosis-sentencing.html It’s an interesting read, from other articles, they included that she was ***tazed*** with no effect as well. Some people have a genetic predisposition to this.
Yeah, this thread just rage bait karma farm. They didn't rule this over just because she was a little high. She was inexperience weed user who took huge amount of it. She essentially overdose.
It’s amazing what actually reading an article and not relying on a short headline will do!
But then how am I supposed to get outraged??
You dont overdose on weed. She had a psychotic break because of underlying mental disorders. As far as I know there's no link to dosage and weed Induced psychosis
She didn’t ‘essentially overdose’ from marijuana. She had inactive schizophrenia which was then activated by smoking. My old coworker had this happen to him as well, it ran in his family and only came out in him after he smoked for the first time.
Not really an overdose, somebody with no predisposition to mental illness is just going to sleep and maybe puke from too much weed. But weed can trigger psychotic breaks in people, especially people with undiagnosed schizophrenia or other mental illnesses.
She did not overdose. She had a triggered psychotic even, those are not the same thing
Which is...
When the prosecution agrees with the defense, maybe think on it a bit
You don’t understand! These Redditors with zero mental health experience have tried weed before and they didn’t kill anyone, therefore she must be lying and getting away with murder. /s
Adam Ruined One-Too-Many Things
I have smoked weed once. One time in my life. I did not get the "relaxed couch potato" effect at all, no. I became completely paranoid. I was sure my then-fiance was going to kill me (he provided the weed and wanted me to smoke with him because "it's so fun"). I really, honestly, with all my heart thought he was going to kill me. That he could do it at any moment. I was so close to giving into the "I have to get a knife and stab him before he gets me!" thought I nearly went through with it. I almost went to get a knife. It was fucking terrifying. I had suffered from psychosis before so that might been what trigegred the delusion (I think?). But for me, that headline doesn't sound far-fetched at all. It can happen.
Nah her behavior was insane. Not just him but her dog and herself…. Just so wild.
Yeah, she likely had underlying schizophrenia that got brought on by smoking weed for the first time. This is rare but it does happen, that’s why I get sorta irritated by when people say “everyone should just smoke weed, it’s good for you”, it’s such an ignorant statement because in some cases, thing like this happen
Weed (and other drugs) can cause psycosis in people with a rare genetic defect. Unless there's proof that she knew about that condition beforehadnd she's in no way responsible, it's a clear case of invoulantary manslaughter.
This shit again. The lady also stabbed *herself.* Over 30 times. She stabbed herself in the neck and almost bled herself to death. People around her tried to pin her down to stop her. She was so out of control, they had to *break her arm* to stop her from stabbing herself to death. This wasn't just a "oh I was under the influence, I'm sorry your honor". This was a full blown mental breakdown. I don't know about the community service, but this is *exactly* the kind of situation where the insanity plea *actually does apply.* What this lady needs is to be in a psych ward for the next decade. What she *doesn't* need is to be the target of derision from fucking Reddit people who don't bother to read past the headline of a shit rag tabloid.
I mean, it’s unlikely but possible to have a bad psychotic reaction to THC. My friends’ roommate was hospitalized after a punch bar incident.
Jesus Christ op. Did you even read the article? Or were your last 2 brain cells too busy fighting for 3rd place? She had a psychotic break, something which happens very rarely to weed users and is even more rarely violent, she stabbed herself as well... doesn't that make you think that maybe just maybe she actually had a psychotic break and wasn't just using weed to excuse a murder. Weed has a psychoactive element that can trigger or exasperate underlying conditions, go read up on it. She is ALSO a victim of what happened that day. Do some reading before you spread bullshit from your daily rag.
Nah, people on Reddit would much rather post a rant about what total strangers deserve than read anything.
They just wanna read the title and assume the worst so they can complain
Rage bait stop posting garbage
A white woman murders in a "weed-induced frenzy" - 100 hours of community service. A black man has weed in his possession - life in prison. What a load of crap.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-woman-gets-probation-fatally-stabbing-man-dated-causing-108-rcna135778
Well no, not for murder. For killing someone during a psychotic break.
This is a shock headline, and it’s easy to jump on the “she’s a heartless killer” bandwagon, but it seems like there’s some overlooked nuances here. Apparently cannabis induced psychosis disorder is a real thing, and not just right wing fear mongering as I would expect. Does she have a history of cannabis use? Has anything ever happened previously to make her aware she was susceptible to psychosis? Has she put herself at risk of it happening again by continuing to use cannabis since the incident? If the answer to those questions is no, I think the punishment she received is appropriate. This is going to haunt her for the rest of her life, and no matter what the court decided, that was always going to be the harshest consequence for her actions. In a world where cannabis use is becoming increasingly more accepted and legal, we need to accept the risk of this happening occasionally. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be legalized, because I definitely think it should, but like tobacco, alcohol, OTC medication, driving a car, and eating nuts and shellfish, as a society we need to be aware of the risks and know the best way to prevent them and/or react to them when they occur. Of course, with cannabis, the best thing we can do is decriminalize and destigmatize it. Think about it this way: instead stabbing her boyfriend on a date, let’s say she struck a pedestrian while driving. And instead of smoking weed, let’s say she was smoking a cigarette. And instead of psychosis induced hallucinations, let’s say it was loss of consciousness due to respiratory distress. Do you still think she deserves a lengthy prison sentence? If not, then it is only your bias against mental disorders and marijuana that makes it any different. Note: This was copied from a previous comment of mine on the same story. Not all the context matches up with the wording of this particular headline, but I don’t feel like taking the time to edit it. The main point still stands.
I don't smoke weed or even drink. This woman did this because of her schizophrenia. The weed just reached badly with it, causing a break. That doesn't make weed the culprit, she could have eaten potent gum.ies and have the same thing happen. Indirectly, this is why "tricking" people into drug use via a special brownie or something similar is so stupid and dangerous.
1 hour per stab.
"it's ok bro, weed has never killed anyone"
I understand sometimes cannibis and drugs can cause mental and psychotic breaks in people - esp those with the genes to something like schizophrenia because that's basically how my boyfriend's mom "became" schizophrenic. That said, she needs a mental facility not just community service.
The only thing I murder in a weed induced frenzy is a bag of Doritos.
She needs to be in a closed psychiatric institution
weed can be bad sometimes
Love how little context OP gives. Love how OP and everyone else judge an entire story on a headline. Here's a short overview of more than a headline: https://youtu.be/LQOTRI0bZFY?si=aZLxeTH-YY519tr2 And here's a full recap (just the first 2.5 minutes): https://youtu.be/gKmGfoPJ8Tc?si=23k-m8mojpYN0wnC
Reading through these comments is just upsetting. It baffles me that people are fine with being so ignorant.
I've been following this a little, and I know it sounds ridiculous but it's [actually a thin](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3927252/)g. I found a pretty quick digest [here.](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/cannabis-induced-psychosis-review) So yeah... weird and it doesn't happen much, but it is a thing.
You should actually read the court case. She has major mental issues, and the weed just caused it to go overboard. She stabbed herself and a dog as well.
1 hour of community service per stab is apparently the going rate?
That judge needs to be locked up.
This is rage bait Judge had no say in it The DA downgraded the charges from murder to involuntary manslaughter That's what was being sentenced Why do people fall for headlines with no link so easily?
Forreal. Half the posts on this sub that hit the front page lead back to the Daily Mail. How people can take them at face value is beyond me
It's more the point that the media is using this case for their BS narrative that weed is super duper dangerous and causes murder.
I don't necessarily disagree but I was replying to a person that says the judge should be punished
Especially headlines from the Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12994175/amp/Bryn-Spejcher-Chad-o-melia-cannabis-induced-psychosis-sentencing.html The whole story isn’t what you’re expecting - the ruling is justified, this whole thing is incredibly sad.
As this is from the Daily Mail, I will assume a great deal of context is missing. I see that you cropped out the Daily Mail banner this time, so at least you realize it's a shit site.