5 Types of Paranoia

"Well, that's me mental forever, then."

If you’ve ever fiddled about with your outlook, chances are you’ll have encountered some sort of paranoia, or prang. Prang is adverse brain babble that shows up at the party, dressed up like sense. Without this challenging byproduct, druggy funzys would be way too easy.

Most prang seems like a pressing issue, but turns out to be tamable nonsense. Sometimes though, it can whisk up your thoughts into a cyclone of qualms, which tears through your sanity for that time being – or, eternity, as you suspect the case seems to be.

The more drugs you drug down your drug-holes, the more prang tends to creep into the experience.

Lightweight Prang

Most prangs can batted away the instant our brain guffs them up for consideration. Old-skl book-bound logic – 1 - Bonce-nonsense – 0. Prang: dismissed. That scheming little process pulls back to hatch a worry worth worrying about.                       

For example, if 2/3 of the way through a zoot* you develop a powerful inkling that a passing OAP is an undercover.

Anyone between birth and death, spots that’s cosmically farfetched, and a wee bit cliche. That poor old bloke would be knocking on death’s door, had he the strength to make a fist. Chances are not, he’s an agent of the state. Ok, maybe he’s heading up a crack team hell-bent on ridding this particular Frankie & Benny’s car park of the destructive scourge of dusk cannabis use - but, then again, probably not.   

But, when things get really messy, logic doesn’t like to get its hands dirty.

*I don’t know if they’re still called ‘zoots’, I’m far too prang to be in the same room as one of them.

Unquestionable Prang

Picture the scene: a jumpy, bong-high adult making their way home one regularly dark, dark evening – but, wait, what’s that?

A prang can arrive in the head as fully-packaged truth. You don’t feel like someone’s following you, someone is following you. Every synapse of your tweaked hunter-gatherer senses is prickling with flight or flight.

Brain: Who stalks through a cul-de-sac for 25 undeviating yards? At that shifty walking pace? 26, 27, 28. I know, I’ll take my foot of the gas…. ahaa seems the hunter has becomes the hunt- Christ. He’s gaining on me.

All available marbles are staked on this version of reality. Any counterargument gets slapped down as naive. Brain: Save that fancy ‘book logic’ of yours for the coroner, boy. We’re off – stat. 

Right, when I get to that lamppost, I’ll snatch a look at him, then I’m fucking legging it.

When you face this shadowy assailant, it’s either: the wind, or a cat, or a family of 3, or your own rucksack or brain. The relief floods through you. Best hotfoot it home, just to be on the safe side though.

The Harbored Prang

That disembodied rascal is ordering you to ride this one out, alone. Don’t burden your friends with the darkness that gnaws within, they wouldn’t understand. Nor should they have to. 

This harboured prang has you drowning in plain sight. Once automatic actions now take a good deal of brainstorming. Words, gestures, facial expressions – are carefully thought-out plays in a high-stakes game of deception. The aim: imitating what you suspect human behaviour was probably like, way back before faking it consumed your every thought. Cue: launching out laughter that bit too late, like you’re angling for a promotion. HA-HA! Now, how exactly would someone not skirting on the brink of implosion dance?

The prang swells behind your eyes, until it stretches out onto the face. A mate spots a primal angst on your face, way outside the range of emotion you’d expect from someone swaying to reggae in a big, orange tent. “HA!Ha! Nah, I’m good, man.”

NO. This matter will be resolved in-house. I bloody well pranged my way into this mess, and I’ll be darned if I can’t prang my way out.

Anyway: The real problem is the way that guy over there seems to be implying that he’s aware of that reprehensible thing I did by myself 3 years ago.  

A Prang Shared

With every rickety lap of the brain, this prang is gathering power and momentum. Soon it will consume its host. After weighing it up ‘n’ up ‘n’ up for a testing stretch, it’s time to get that monkey off your back. And, yes, I know, a playful back-monkey sounds like the best of times, but, sadly, it leaves you open to attack. Ok, it’s time to say it, now. Go. Go. Go. Go on.

 “Um.. uh.. mate, I think the way you are wearing your hat is making us seem a bit suspicious.”  

Normally, a prang shared is a prang halved. Saying it out loud breaks the spell, you can see it for what it is: hogwash, poppycock & bullshit compost. That nonsense had made more sense with every repetition, like a charlatan’s mantra. Feeeeew. What a relieving load of bollocks. 

Dear Pranger, remember, pick your confidant wisely. No one with outstanding contributions to the field of prang. Plumb for one of those airtight, prang-proof dullards. Even if everyone conspired to blank them tripping, they wouldn’t have the imagination, nay... decency, to assume they were dead - that guy.

In the wrong hands prang is a dangerous contagion. If your rock crumbles into a demonic restyling frenzy straight from the dressing room of Beazalbub himself, then, sorry, my Dear conscientious Pranger: that’s a prang doubled.

Full-scale Prang

This prang only comes from really, really overdoing it. It being a supposed fun-aid that deserved a bit more respect. Maybe, you assumed dab hits were just strong weed, not a gateway to the unchartered crevices between mind, body and soul. Maybe, you did 3 tabs of acid for the price of 2, because, like me, you’re mad for a bargain. Like, temporarily insane for a bargain. Like, this-will-never-end-I’m-calling-mum-TAKE-HIS-PHONE for a bargain. Whatever, you’re in for it now.

So much for that little getaway from reality you had booked. Any chill is completely overrun with a full-scale thought-onslaught. A shelling of prang fragments so harsh and long, it takes on a feeling of permanence; a feeling that whatever is happening will always be so.

After an infinite while you come to the quiet, sensible conclusion that you have gone insane ƒøřęvëŕ ⁸ . Any other theory– ‘maybe, there’s a possibility I’m not, not… irreversibly deranged? - gets shouted down by a know-it-all panel, made up of your doubts, darkness, and regrets.

Well, that’s a door unhinged in the brain, that’s never going to close now. Good while it lasted, sanity, anyway.

Being you, your brain can really put the screws on you. It’s like psychological torture from a villainous clone. This surging prang-storm is picking your existence apart, working from a crib sheet of your every weakness, every failing. Wave upon wave of devious prang, laced with just enough reality to make it hurt. God, I feel sick writing about it.

One thing about mislaying your marbles is you really do value having them stowed away safely, again. The realization that you just overdid it and you are sane is so pure.

The Self-fulling Prang

This is a specialist prang, normally reserved for my ex-stoners who smoked a bit too much of that reaaal skunky-unky, a bit too daily, for a bit too half a decade. When weed doesn’t agree with you anymore, it quarrels with you. This prang occurs long past ‘the day the laughter stops’ – when weed instead of melting away worries, just brings them scrabbling for attention at the forefront. You'll understand when you’re older.

*smokes weed knowing it’s no longer a good idea*

Brain: There’s a real potential for you to prang out, here, having inhaled that stuff that has made me prang out regularly, before. Oh no, here, you go, again, getting yourself paranoid, great. Oh great, it’s official, now I’m pranging out. Nice one, me. Pranging out, again. Help.

Purely from worry about the possibility of worrying, you summon up your own prang, like a really predictable spirit.

Friend: D’wanna a kitkat?                          

You: Yes?