ABSTRACT
Tammy is a twenty-year-old woman who had a psychotic episode, partially related to psychedelic drug use. When I first saw her, she had been hospitalised for six and a half months, first in her home town for two months, then locally at the university hospital. After the transfer to San Francisco, she had regressed still further, requiring confinement to bed and forced feeding. After six and a half months in hospital, her diagnosis was acute and now chronic schizophrenia; psychedelic drug use was viewed as the factor that had tipped her over into psychosis. She came to my office for our first session obviously suffering severe muscular rigidity as a result of high antipsychotic drug use. This formerly pretty, vivacious cheerleader looked like a burnt out, dependent case.
