Main question: Do you think I'm bipolar?

Sorry I didn't know whether to put this in a drug forum or bipolar but I thought you guys would be smarter.

Basically I don't know what to think right now so just read with an open mind. Thanks =)

I feel that I have experienced a true cognitive shift...

*A cognitive shift (not to be confused with cognitive-shifting, a general therapy/meditation term) is a psychological phenomenon most often experienced by individuals using psychedelic drugs, or suffering from mental disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive syndrome). During a cognitive shift, one experiences a change in how their conscious mind and unconscious mind communicate with each other. The result can be a wide range of feelings, from euphoria to panic.* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_sh ift)

...while under the influence of THC after smoking marijuana. My mother's side of the family has a series of mental health issues including Bipolar Disorder and while growing up my parents felt that I might have been past down these traits. Though I've never been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, because I never really felt like I had it, which has stopped our family many times from going to therapists, etc. It was only until I smoked marijuana for the first time the summer of my freshmen year of high school (I was 15) that I really felt something was wrong. My friends weren't phased at all by it, they felt either fine, nothing at all, or euphoric and giggly.

After smoking it I began to giggle, but something told me that I didn't want to feel this way anymore so I tried to refuse the "high feeling." At that point there was a HUGE break with reality, I had lost sense of where I was going and then a split second later it felt like I was reliving a horrible nightmare that I'd seen before as a child. It felt like total deja vu for about 15 minutes of real time but it felt like I was there for a lifetime. I was panicking because my thoughts were racing a mile a minute, they were telling me that I was dead and that everyone who had ever smoked marijuana was in this state of mind and that they were all dead, and the only reason people told you to smoke marijuana was because they were dead inside and just wanted you to die with them. These thoughts were brutal and overwhelming, I felt a huge distortion in time, I could see my body do things and the feeling of it would catch up around 2 seconds later. It felt like I was on a track that was repeating itself over and over and that I would just venture on this course forever because that was life. I came to realize the next morning after waking up all dazed and confused that it was probably just my racing thoughts that were lying to me and none of that was really going to happen and didn't really happen. It completely felt like two different thoughts though, I felt like my true self was helpless inside my head and there was another me outside my head that was spewing these lies at me.

Anyone thinking that this experience was not from marijuana wouldn't be wrong in thinking that. And that’s what I thought too which was a huge mistake. The following school year after smoking the weed I'd been researching Wikipedia on some of the side effects that I'd experienced and I came across the drug salvia. I saw that the effects of Deja Vu and racing thoughts that associated themselves with salvia had been similar to my experience so I'd been telling people, my friends, that we'd had to have done salvia. I thought that the kid who sold me that gram of marijuana thought it'd be funny if they just gave us Salvia instead.

So the next summer I wanted to try marijuana. (UH OH!) We were bored one day so we called someone up and asked to buy weed (it was a different seller obviously haha), we got the weed and were ready to smoke it in my friends pitch black wooded backyard. Thankfully we decided to watch a movie and save it for the next day because I would have really caca my pants. The next day we headed to my high school which is connected to an elementary school and we smoked it on this hill. Once again, BAM, it kicked in and I felt once again that I had killed myself and we we're on another course for eternity and a whole lot of time distortion and panic and fear. Once again I felt that I was split in two, that one self was lying to me and that the other true self was helplessly waiting for it to end. Not to mention I completely lost trust in my friends again because they would push me around and lift me up and drop me which was excruciatingly scary.

You must think that I'm retarted by now for trying it again but it gets worse. THE FOLLOWING SUMMER I was over at my friend’s house and I thought I’d be ok if I just had a puff of marijuana from a different seller, and I was horribly wrong because this was incredibly potent and I felt it the most this time, and it lasted the longest. But what worries me the most is that I have completely pledged myself never to do drugs AGAIN, though one day I was playing baseball and I had to jump over the fence to retrieve the homeruns. As I was walking in the high uncut-grass I felt, for 3 seconds, that BAM feeling, like I started the trip over again, but as soon as it started it finished. And this had been without smoking marijuana for months, I just want to know if I should be worried about this and if I should seek help before it starts again. I definitely couldn't live like that, I'd end up killing myself. It's only happened that one time (sober) and that was 7.21.08, I'm writing this 7.28.08. Hopefully it won't happen again


After each episode I have states of mind when I'm sober of how do we really exist on earth? Am I the center of everything (like the Truman Show)? And sometimes I wake up in the morning and realize that one day I'm going to die and I worry what it will be like.

I am a christian and placing my trust in Jesus really helps me sometimes get through this.