Self-Medication

By the time Andrew was in high school, he definitely was using pot to manage his anxiety. I was completely unaware of this. I thought he was remarkably abstinent from drinking, and since booze was definitely the drug of choice in our crowd, I never really considered that he might be using marijuana. Nor did I understand how dangerous hallucinatory drugs are to individuals prone to delusions.

Despite his use of marijuana, Andrew seemed like a normal teenager. He watched a lot of television-so much so that I considered the TV his drug of choice. He also had many friends—Marnie and Eileen used to say that Andrew had the best social life. There were often kids at our house –both girls and boys were attracted to him. As I said before, Andrew was the peer elected captain of his lacrosse team. Andrew was very accepting and accommodating to all types of people. He had friends from a fair number of typical high school cliques—athletes, academics, insiders and outsiders, girls and boys. Andrew was a B student despite his complaint that he could not study like Marnie and Eileen. He did not spend much time on homework but seemed to get his work done. My guess is that Andrew was probably very smart but already experiencing some of the cognitive limitations associated with his schizophrenia that would continue to worsen.

I know that this frustrated him a lot. He felt smart but had difficulty taking on new information. In the end, it would be almost impossible for him to learn new skills. The anxiety associated with not being able to learn on the job literally terrorized him. In the year before he died, he would often call me from work, beside himself with frustration, anger but mostly fear that he would be fired because he could not keep up with the training. This would eventually be a key factor in his decision to end his life. His psychiatrist told us that it was the cognitive deterioration that was most upsetting to him. While we were aware of this, I did not appreciate what this must be like.

I know that the last week that Andrew was alive he found out that a friend of his was having a baby. I said that I wanted that for him. He screamed at me DON”T YOU THINK I WANT THAT TOO? One of the most painful exchanges he and I ever had. I cringe right now as I write this. What a loss.