Posted by Anon84 2 days ago
We don't know her full family medical history because her dad was adopted. I do know that she was "microdosing" and macro-dosing hallucinogens for years. Mostly acid and shrooms as far as I know. She followed the band Phish around with a group of friends. I can't imagine most of those shows were sober.
We've also seen a few incidents of paranoia when she was under the influence of drugs/alcohol going back decades. So it feels like this was always there in some form, but maybe the estrogen was holding it back before menopause hit. I read an article about women who get schizophrenia after menopause that suggested this could be the case.
Anyway, whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside. We don't know that all of her hallucinogen use over the years contributed to this. But it's certainly a possibility.
(At least that's what I remember from "LSD, My Problem Child" by Albert Hoffman. Granted, it's been ~30 years since I read it.
Funny what kids pick up on.
Things like stress, drugs, childbirth, significant life changes, etc can trigger psychosis and latent schizophrenia at any age, it's just statistically more likely to happen during adolescence and the period right after.
Another way to look at this is that adolescence is when someone experiences new stresses, significant life changes, drug experimentation, etc, which can be triggers for schizophrenia especially during age-correlated prodromal phases.
The really tough part for me is she was out of work, so I paid her to be a beta reader for my book. She's a brilliant person and very detail-oriented. She went way over and beyond what I asked for. She spent months and took three passes on the book making different kinds of notes. Then her problems seemed to come on right at the end of that. I worry that all the increased mental activity, and then suddenly not having anything to focus on again, might have been the trigger.
If I could go back in time, I would do things differently, but at the same time I can't blame myself for not understanding what was happening and doing what was, at the time, the healthiest thing for myself.
Sorry to hear about your friend.
I blamed it on the drugs I got prescripted for sleeping (I had bad allergy and was scratching myself to the point of bleeding during sleep so I got some "pacifying" drugs).
I still have vivid memories of experiencing what (in hindsight) I realise were hypnopompic hallucinations, around the age of 6 or 7. I wasn’t taking any regular medications, that I can remember. But, I grew out of it, as kids usually do.
I’ll say personally my experiences with psychedelics brought back memories of childhood - how I engaged with the world, how my mind would go off down different paths, the intensity of focus - so, you’re probably not far off here.
I've watched several people go from having a grip on reality, thinking they don't need treatment, to absolutely losing their minds. It's tragic and I hate to see it happen.
Point is moments of lucidity should be seized upon, I say this as someone who briefly experienced psychosis after extreme sleep deprivation. It was fucking terrifying and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
It was an eye-opener when I finally realized the faint FM radio sounds I kept hearing in the middle of the night were actually manic hallucinations.
In the few hours I experienced hallucinations after not sleeping for ~7 days, I also heard a radio playing faintly in the background. "Faintly" doesn't do it justice because it was very much undeniably audibly there, even if I knew it wasn't.
I also heard footsteps, felt their vibrations, heard and felt stuff on shelves shake in response to the stepping. It was stunning how in concert and real it was. It was like it was more real than reality itself.
I was aware it wasn't real which made it fucking terrifying, but it was both beautiful and absolutely fascinating at the same time. I was both in awe and horrified that it could be permanent.
Brains are crazy stuff and I can see just how easily someone can become delusional based on what is very much factual in their own experience of reality. There literally is no boundary between reality and true hallucinations, which is a terrifying prospect and
Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) and DID can apparently co-occur.
From [0] (2016): > One study showed that in a sample of patients diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) 74.3% also met diagnostic criteria of a SSD, 49.5% met diagnostic criteria for schizoaffective disorder, and 18.7% met diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia.
The study cited in [0] is dated from 1996, however(!), so it was done not long after the change from changing the name MPD to DID. Not sure how much weight to put on a study that old.
From [1] (2022): > Numerous studies have shown that up to 50% of patients with schizophrenia meet the diagnostic criteria for dissociative personality disorder.
The two linked studies cited in [1] are dated in 1998 and 2004. So also, still old, but not quite as much.
It seems well-known that the two conditions co-occur. I don't have access to the linked studies, however, and am not willing to pay the subscription or single-paper fees.
I do have DID but SSDs have been thoroughly ruled out for me (I was checked for both, as well as other potential conditions). My assessment seemed quite thorough.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5216848/ [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8885543/
Also, my partner likely has DID and is struggling with it somewhat. If you have advice or are willing to answer some questions, I'd appreciate talking about it. But I know it's a big ask, respectfully, so I understand if not.
Thanks. I appreciate it. Will do if I come across something.
> Also, my partner likely has DID and is struggling with it somewhat. If you have advice or are willing to answer some questions, I'd appreciate talking about it.
Sure. Not sure if you're wanting advice/help for yourself, your partner, or both, but email me at shippage_hn@proton.me if you'd like to talk. I know more about my own particular kind of DID than others, but am willing to talk about what I know of the generalities, too, as well as a bit about my experiences (including getting a diagnosis) if that helps you or your partner.
It's strongly correlated to genetics, and most people are totally asymptomatic, no idea they have it until one day they do.
The story of sudden-onset schizophrenia inducing a psychosis making the patient unwilling to consider treatment is depressingly common.
Depending on whose stats you go with, you can also argue that most people with schizophrenia never know they have it due to anosognosia.
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads?
The voices are quite real, we’re not alone in our own minds, and the it is the greatest taboo of society to discuss.
It’s really sad, all of these sharp modernists determined upon the cult of science explanations for everything. Those who refuse to believe our thoughts are not all our own. That much mysticism is rooted in something that merely cannot be explained by the logical empirical mind.
Readers will be so upset when a perspective challenges their rehashed psychological diatribes as mountains of lies. They got “help” damn you. Their friends (“real people”) are hurt by the craze and they’re more hurt when someone says “modern science and society is wrong.”
The true Truth is whatever existential reality reflects, not what we are prepared to understand. We are not alone in our own minds, we have collectively known this since before our generations and the “straights” of society are so adamant of their self possessed lies they will condemn those insights as crackpot crazy.
That which you try to attack and downplay as "cult of science explanations" is actually something extremely simple: you need to show something, anything at all, that actually supports your beliefs.
How can you tell something exists or works as you think it does if you are unable to show it?
Do you expect everyone should just believe anything anyone says? What is there to tell lunatics and snake oil salesmen apart from those who are actually onto something?
> Those who refuse to believe our thoughts are not all our own.
Ok, you formed an hypothesis. Now tell me, how do you go about showing others that things do work the way you think they do? How can they check them for themselves? What do you expect from others?
> That much mysticism is rooted in something that merely cannot be explained by the logical empirical mind.
If you cannot explain your beliefs, how do you expect others to just take your unverified and unsubstantiated claims as something worth considering over any random claim from any random loony?
Even without an explanation, you can use statistics to find the fruits of the beliefs, though. Does 100 people believe in not working and rather join a cult that worships the watermelon god? Fine! How did that work out for them in the span of 3 generations?
I think that some beliefs can have value and merit, just based on measures of quality of life and society.
I hope you are not serious.
> Does 100 people believe in not working and rather join a cult that worships the watermelon god?
Hundreds of loonies making nonsense statements that no one can verify is collective lunacy that adds no value. It only takes a single person to show something exists and works to add substance to a claim. If all those loonies push a belief that none of them can support, they are fools.
This sort of absurdness would mean absolute morons, such as those in Heaven's Gate cult, should be taken seriously in their claims about aliens and comets. Let that sink in.
You cannot be serious. Proofs take thousands of man hours and decades of railing against well entrenched beliefs such as yours (that you would see it and accept it readily if true.)
This is one of those things that cannot be proven to more than one person at a time through anything other than a personal revelation. Everyone everywhere will respond exactly as you now do regardless of “poof” or the severity and consequence of prolonged incredulity. This is one of those situations where you must undeceive yourself. Observe humanity and your own life. All except those who actively deceive themselves will admit science is as close to understanding our minds as horoscopes.
I do not criticize your doubts, I criticize that you think truth and reality are so easily accepted by the mind who “refuses to believe.”
A good Christian or any good person would viewing that scene would actively fight to make the person sufferings life better instead of feeding into the false "caregivers" or more aptly put abusers who are more interested in robbing people than improving their lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
I wouldn't describe this as "raving", this is someone who has had very real personal experiences. To them, they happened just as much as the sun rises and sets. I don't know what I'm getting at other than have some patience and compassion for people who experience distressing things that they themselves cannot explain.
That is far from even coming close to qualify as evidence. At best they are unverified hypothesis.
Maybe the only way to make enough random looney until they outnumber the "sane" individuals. The only issues being how do you organize the new pyramid structure which will evidently be formed by this new "religious" organization?
That's fantastic, but fails to provide any meaningful input. I mean, the whole point is to have a process that allows you to understand and predict how the universe works. If you formulate s hypothesis that is impossible to verify, how can you tell if it matches reality or if it's pure nonsense? And more importantly, what's the value of a system of beliefs that explains nothing and does not match any observable aspect of reality? Is the only value you see in that the uncertain smugness of being "right", whatever that means, in spite of always being wrong?
So no answer to the question "who am I" is strictly speaking true or false, in an objective sense. But that doesn't mean all self-interpretations are equally good. Some self-interpretations can be very destructive. It doesn't take much imagination, or reading history books, to see how defining yourself to be multiple persons/personalities can be very destructive.
I get impulses. Science knows about and studies these. But I don't hear any voices.
Firstly yes, they’re probably there and not revealing themselves (which is most typical.) They will either reveal themselves for some purpose or not at all (I had caused a stir, and a “hooligan army” went ahead and “recruited” me.)
Well after full immersion I looked back through my life and saw I was not really alone. Little things, some hypnogogia here and there, odd games they play, and other nonsense suppressed or blown off. Most are never aware or comprehend any of it. Those that do, what would they say to you? Look at these responses. And I know what is going on. Most others are desperate.
The noisy networks are usually those of prisons. You will hear very similar accounts among many who have done small stints. Enough for a network to take an interest, not long enough to be coerced into eternal silence. I have never been to prison though you can guess what city I’m from if I say “the most controversial prison system in America up to a decade ago.”
Prisons full of slave (coerced) networks is no doubt how the humanity level horrors began. The streets (and all humanity) are saturated with these various networks. Plenty of accounts by others throughout time, you have ignored them. The prisons and the black ops military power cults are the worst. Don’t worry, those are busy in Ukraine and Gaza. What do you think these would do for fun?
Power extorts ordinary power infrastructures of humanity. No one is going to talk about it.
There is a “you don’t talk about it” element. I don’t care. You cannot make me care. I so don’t care I take pains to be a contrarian. I make people f-off. I do not capitulate. It doesn’t make me “special”, I’m of the few who talk about it, even if it does no good. Let it then be for an account. To remain silent in the face of a tyranny of evil is to be complicit. Complicity be damned. These want to play God among you, and they extort each other for this ends.
And I suppose I should risk a flaggable wall of text to say there are “families” who have protected and guided us throughout our generations. Like all of modernity these are falling apart and cannot compete with the devastating industrialized efficiency of prison networks.
I think blindly accepting the statement ‘drugs can cause schizophrenia’ is harmful because we don’t actually know if the drugs trigger it or if the disorder makes them seek out drugs.
Because, if so, then alcohol's ubiquity in society would imply that it is probably responsible (in the sense that substances are responsible) for most such conversions.
Schizos may take alcohol or cigarettes to calm down, a form of self medication. On the long term these may worsen, in the immediate they help. Why do you think they smoke a lot?!? To treat. If you smoke or drink, what do you do after a tough day - smoke or drink, to relax, feels great. Schizos may have a tough day , but not from external stimuli, but from internal stimuli
I would imagine other drugs which produce severe (and stressful) withdrawal could also trigger this. The stress alone cannot be good.
Keep in mind also the typical onset for schizophrenia is teenage years or early 20s in men, and is often later, up to early 30s in women. These are years you might experiment with drugs.
I think you make some interesting points, and it's a very well thought-out post, but this is the definition of "poisoning the well". You're attempting to preemptively discredit the most obvious flaw in your argument.
There is a massive amount of evidence for the impact on both society, economy and neurology for each of the drugs listed in your last paragraph – and it's these impacts that often change personal and societal perception of risk and reward. Caffeine, at average doses, induces an effect that is comparable to a small cortisol spike – it is mildly addictive, but nowhere near that of an opioid, for example.
Drugs like meth and heroine (and one wonders why you left off fentanyl) are highly addictive and destructive, cause enormous loss of life an an inconceivable scale, and can permanently damage neurological pathways. From what I've read, the impact of hallucinogenics is less well understood... but probably not great.
If your argument is "we like to say caffeine and alcohol are fine, when they're really no different than opioids and meth", well there _is_ a staggeringly enormous difference in the potency and impact of caffeine vs the other drugs you've listed. I do agree with you that alcohol is far more harmful than society cares to admit, however, and that's both well-studied and often ignored.
The point is caffeine etc. corrupt the mind and cause a person's mental faculties to run in a way they were not initially designed to.
The point is not that these drugs are all extremely harmful, only that they are all harmful. Caffeine and other things get a pass because the "hard drugs" are so uniquely and visibly harmful that they overshadow all other forms of harm.
One could even say that this has tricked us into thinking that lesser drugs like caffeine or canabinoids are "effectively harmless" because they're not causing us to OD or steal things to get another hit or causing visibly psychotic states. But that is not true. We've simply accepted that the harm they due is not worth thinking about (this is subjective, not objective).
Some people have conditions that make the way their brains work different than what is considered normal. Western technological culture imposes differences in social interaction and pressures on thinking and required performance that are far different than existed in societies even mere hundreds of years before.
Drugs can be a way to compensate for these pressures and find a way to exist in the world with as much equanimity as possible. And I say all this as a person who avoids all caffeine and illegal drugs, and uses alcohol very infrequently. I'm lucky I can do this and thrive in today's Western culture. Not everyone is as fortunate.
Not everyone is the same, there is a lot of variety, what you say could indeed be true for most people but can also not be true for a small minority of people.
What is the Autosomal dominant disordered gene polymorphism you have that causes your mental illness? I am assuming you are just guessing here?
> I have to take psychopharmacological drugs just to get close to normal.
I hope you can consider that you are taking drugs to manage being in an environment/diet that you are not genetically adapted to.
I used to think like you, but then I saw my genetics, now after 35 years, I am on no meds and have essentially cured my schizoaffective disorder.
I tried the no-drugs and being super healthy approach for the vast majority of my life, I look like a pro-athlete, the only reason I started the meds was due to figuring out the statistical possibility of having X things wrong with me was next to impossible without a common cause, and the ME/CFS with brain fog was destroying my life.
I also tried to quit caffeine but that only resulted in very negative effects that persisted for more than 4 months after going cold turkey, that's 4 months being largely housebound and not able to work for that one experiment. I've been at this so long that if you can think of something I've probably tried it - including the healthiest of healthy lifestyles.
Just comparing within my own family most are anti-drugs and anti-medications and their health is an absolute mess. I wish living a healthy lifestyle would be sufficient, I wouldn't have to walk a tightrope of balancing meds, but I don't get that option.
My use is also light and fully legal, but personally I’m not sure that this is something that’s so binary. It seems more likely to sit on a spectrum, as most things do, and is largely dependent on the individual due to wide differences in brain and body function. It’s the same reason why the prescription drug that works wonders for one person and do nothing or worse, be detrimental for somebody else. We’re not all identical units of a particular model rolling off an assembly line somewhere, after all.
So I guess I would say that yes, we should be more conscientious of how substances (even those that are common) interact with our minds, but I have a hard time labeling them all as harmful. It’s just too broad of a brush.
I do a lot of DIY psychopharmacology, mostly modafinil and amitriptyline, in a successful effort to reduce ME/CFS/hEDS related brain fog. I’ve given modafinil to normal people and they tend not to notice any effects where for me it’s a super strong drug that’ll keep me wired unless I take other drugs to calm down.
I think quite a large subset of human behavior is seeking self medication for genetic anxiety disorders and I think in knowing the mechanisms people can avoid stumbling around in the dark and go directly towards things that work.
You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons...
Two downvotes so far. Any explanation? Can't please everybody, especially Kamala voters.
But my advice: if you value your cognitive abilities, blood vessels health, and I'm sure it's snowballing, stay away from any form of marijuana.
He was smoking a lot of weed leading up to and during the psychosis.
Ended up in psychiatric ward for a month, which was followed by a couple of years of depression/introspection/therapy, but is now doing great with lithium.
It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable.
While that framing might change the aperture for people to support decriminalization efforts, "helping people who have addiction means social progress" is the greater good here.
Unfortunately, at least from a USian perspective, we only got so far as the decriminalizing part, and we did it while actually cutting a lot of the social services, health care access, and safety net that actually help people with addiction function in society.
I had a parent with schizophrenia. I can tell you what a privilege it is to have my cannabis use be the primary risk factor I have to worry about, and not the financial stress and eventual homelessness, untreated health issues, and lack of mental health support my father faced.
And what about those who have a "direct problem of functioning" (like anxiety, depression, ptsd, whatever) and get no real help from the medical profession, but do get help from the drugs?
Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known. It seems to me that these drugs create a feeling of having accessed great knowledge, but the "knowledge" is just whatever nonsense your brain conjures up on the fly, like a dream world that makes sense while you're asleep but whose logic falls apart the moment you wake up.
But I never felt like I was getting at some deeper meaning, and it wasn't something I wanted to keep doing throughout my life.
Past that, psychedelics are (kaleidoscopic, funhouse) mirrors. In the hands of a curious and humble person they can (in addition to being a lot of fun shared with like-minded others) be valuable therapeutic tools for approaching firmly rooted hangups, attitudes, etc. In the hands of someone like your friend, you get what you observed.
Both are commonly occurring patterns, and if you know a person's character even a little well you can usually predict how they'll engage with and come out of the experience.
To quote Shulgin,
> The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche.
If you've ever listened to some of people pushing or debating psychedelics, or natural remedies, or even "totally safe" vaccines, then it should be readily apparent.
Psychoactives and homeopathy have plenty of capacity to be harmful and aren’t necessarily anywhere near as well studied, but at least their effects are more bounded to the individual. (This does not however justify pushing them blindly.)
Saying vaccines are well studied is like saying drugs are well studied, it's a category error. You can't study vaccines as a whole, and the quality of studies of specific cases vary wildly. As a consequence, common psychedelics are probably much better studied than some common vaccines. LSD in 2025 is the same substance as it was when it first became available, as far as I know, and there's lots of research into its effects. Compare that to the COVID vaccines which weren't even the same substance from trial to deployment, as the manufacturing process was changed completely. The trials were done on vaccine made using a very slow, non-scalable and expensive process that yielded a very pure result. The stuff people actually took was made using a totally different process designed for cheap mass manufacture. That second process had problems, leading to DNA contamination in some batches, which seems to explain why injury effect reports clustered by batch serial number.
All this was heavily suppressed for a long time (e.g. by rules forbidding study of vaccine vials), but has been coming out over the past year or so as the initial findings were confirmed. Research into psychedelics at least doesn't have that kind of problem, I think?
The same way that not acknowledging that some accepted-as-benign substances can bring about mental health crises, overweighting of personal risks can cause weight-bearing pillars of modern society to crumble.
It is not just schizophrenia, any mental health condition is isolating, others cannot understand it. I have OCD,ADHD etc so I know it, that's why we prefer who have been or going through same thing than normal people.
(Not to condemn psychedelics, I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the "it's totally harmless" direction.)
Could you elaborate on The Game? What did she say about this?
It's really fascinating to read this, because Alex Berenson has been beating this drum for a while now and he claims the psychosis risk has been downplayed or even denied. It's easy to find evidence supporting his take because if you just search Google for [cannabis legalization psychosis] you get a big pile of papers like this one:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111
"Abstract: Psychosis is a hypothesized consequence of cannabis use. Legalization of cannabis could therefore be associated with an increase in rates of health care utilization for psychosis [...] states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses"
That's from 2023. So apparently it's not that well established? Or if it's well established, there's a lot of researchers denying it.
I realize modern preparations are stronger, but the amount is too low, the dosage difference between relaxed and out there is too small, and after doing some research, it sounds like this is a sign I'm either more prone to schizophrenia, it could trigger it, or increase my likelihood of getting it, so the slightly relaxing high isn't worth it.
Only later I found out that a deceased close relative of mine had schizophrenia. That killed any remaining interest I might have had towards the substance.
Schizophrenia is not defined strictly enough that it's possible for you to be right or wrong when you say your friend has it.
Here's a discussion of the change in diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV to DSM-V, which has the side effect of describing what the criteria formerly were and now are: https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/dsm-5-changes-schizop...
Has your friend seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(1997_film) ?
I don't know if she's seen The Game, but I do know that she's always had a deep insecurity about being the naive one in the room, being the one not in on the joke. It seems like this thing plays on your worst fears and brings them to life.
Might be depersonalization. I had suffered from it in my twenties; everything feels fake, although you know it is not.
For example when you get very aroused your pupils dilate. Your brain fixes this for you so you don't feel like more light is hitting your retina even though it does. When you are high on psychedelics you can experience this though as the world getting literally brighter and darker with your mood. Feels like you are shaping reality with your feelings? As soon as the drugs wear off the effect is gone but you still have the memory that it happened.
Weirdly enough, the same way dreams can feel more like an episodic story or more like an immediate experience, that unfiltered dreamlike experience feels more real than the rest of the trip. Maybe because it literally is closer to reality because it was less bring-filtered, or maybe because the contrast between this and the hallucinations of wallpaper shifting before your eyes put the search for "real reality" into your head in the first place, now the concept of more or less reality is in your brain as an experiential concept. Now you have the memory of having struggled for real perception and achieving it.
Like in inception: you fell into a dream, you are trapped for longer than you anticipated and don't like it and want to wake up. Weeks later when you have a deja vu it triggers the uncomfortable feeling that your mind is playing tricks on you. Are you dreaming now?
Though this is not schizophrenic. From what I was told from someone who had schizophrenic episodes it makes you completely unable to tell apart illusions from reality.
Also I guess there are degrees to it.
If they then become obsessed with the idea being a fact and refuse to even consider updating their mental model when presented with evidence contradicting it then they have developed a fixed belief.
When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief.
When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem.
Or do you think a mind is a perfect thing that can never be ill?
> When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem.
But why does the issue of whether it is “common among their culture” matter? A person unable to function due to a non-bizarre fixed belief has just as big a problem as a person unable to function due to a bizarre fixed belief, if we assume the same degree of functional impairment in each case. The question of whether the belief is “bizarre” seems irrelevant, and possibly even encoding cultural prejudice
But some people’s functioning is impaired by beliefs common to their culture, whereas other people have very unusual beliefs but aren’t impaired by them to anywhere near the same degree
One person obsesses so much over “culture war” topics they lose their job… another person spends all their free time contemplating elaborate idiosyncratic theories of parallel universes, yet still manages to put a lid on it at work to a sufficient degree to keep their job. The first person has a non-bizarre obsession with serious functional impairment (they lose their job due to it), the second a bizarre obsession but the degree of functional impairment is significantly less. So the fact that we label one obsession “bizarre” and the other “non-bizarre” seems of little relevance
For example, I've met several people who reported the set of symptoms and behaviors you describe - but in their case, 'the game' involved the fact they came from a wealthy extended family whose entire existence revolved around hanging onto their pool of capital and ensuring some rogue family member didn't gain control of the capital, which funded all their connected lives (including this guy, who was able to travel the country and go to music shows solely because of his family-linked trust fund). The game they all played was keeping the family members that controlled the capital happy, rather than going out into the world and finding jobs, making their own money, and being self-sufficient.
There's just not enough information in your post to evaluate whether the example was escaping from a cult or being indoctrinated into another cult, who is sane and who is crazy, etc.
But we can't do anything because she still knows how to take care of herself and isn't a danger to herself or others. So it's just sad.
> But when the protective hormone is withdrawn during menopause, some who avoided earlier psychosis get a later onset. Having a first experience after age 40 is uncommon, but it may include up to 15 percent of the women with schizophrenia—twice the percentage of men who have schizophrenia onset after age 40.
No it doesn’t. It sounds like they’re really concerned about a loved one who went off the deep end.
For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by on a low dose olanzapine, but for many people they simply don't work at all.
Even though I'm doing well enough to function normally and hold down a good, well paying job, it's impossible to find a partner. If I were to have kids, I would have to go through one of the embryo prescreening services. I am strongly in support of these screening services - the disease is truly horrible.
There has been little progress on treatments for schizophrenia, the mechanism of action of these drugs has remained the same for decades. The side effects are almost as bad as the disease, which is why so many schizophrenic stop taking them. The only novel medication recently released is Cobenfy, which I have not tried yet.
Personally I am holding out hope that schizophrenia has some basis as an autoimmune disease. There was a cancer patient who had a bone marrow transplant and ended up being cured: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophre...
The most striking thing, is the absolute certainty of the thinking. They feel as if their thinking is crystal-clear, and that they are the only one that "sees the patterns."
Currently, they're doing well. I know of others, that are not so fortunate.
It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use. They are better off chewing tabs of acid. I've not used it in about 45 years, and I've heard that today's pot is a heck of a lot stronger than what I remember.
from the guys I knew who chewed the tabs of acid and had evident schizophrenic problems, I don't think so.
This isn't entirely true, and it's a dangerous misconception. High THC, low CBD cannabis wouldn't be recommended, but that's exactly what making cannabis illegal selects for.
High CBD, low/zero THC cannabis, on the other hand, will probably be one of the paths to treatment if we ever get over our Reefer Madness and pharmaceutical obsession.
On what exactly are you basing that off of? Vibes?
In other words, yeah, don't just believe it at face value- but if you have good reason to trust the source, it's worth considering and checking into further.
In this case it's not just one individual but many people saying that THC and CBD are almost opposites if eachother, for example in how they affect anxiety.
Definitely worth proper research imho, could lead to medication that has more of the pros and less of the cons
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cbd+antipsychotic&atb=v340-...
Who, me? ... Why? It's very well known and established that CBD has antipsychotic properties.
And if you don't know, that and don't bring any evidence against it, then why claim otherwise before like, doing a simple search to check your priors?
In any case, I've provided multiple citations elsewhere in this thread, and a whole bunch more come up on the linked search results. This isn't hidden knowledge or anything.
> CBD has been touted as a miracle drug for over a decade now
That's a separate issue.
> it seems mostly like a fad at this point
If you click the link you can see that isn't true.
> also it's not well regulated so it's easy for unscrupulous companies and individuals to profit from misleading marketing around it.
That's a separate issue.
I will not.
The demonization of cannabis has led directly to it becoming high THC and low CBD, as I said. It also has lead to it often being tainted with all manner of adulterants, from ketamine to glass beads to plaster dust to worse.
> Cannabis is dangerous for schizoaffective people.
CBD is a leading target of research for it's anti-psychotic properties; and if you don't know this it's a complete mystery to me why you feel entitled to weigh in.
And it's not even the only compound in cannabis that is being investigated; there are others with anti-psychotic and synergistic potential.
> Why are people that smoke pot so tiresome about this?
What if what I'm saying might be true, and you're dead wrong to accuse anyone who disagrees of being a 'tiresome stoner'?
... Because, in fact, it may well be [0].
> Just accept that it’s not good for everyone!
If it's not for you, that's fine; but the wilful ignorance around cannabis over decades has caused far, far more harm than cannabis ever has.
Can you accept that it will may well have a role in treating "psychosis, in general and schizophrenia, in particular" [0]?
That's one reason that I have compassion for parents of autistic children, that are vehemently anti-vax. I completely disagree with their stance, but I know what they are dealing with, and the very real fears and stresses that they are under.
It's not a theory that CBD has anti-psychotic properties. It certainly does, we just don't fully understand why.
My theory is that it will someday be part of treatment plans; and as someone with skin in the game I would hope that you care enough to learn a bit more about it. The comparison to anti-vaxxers with autism in the family is not appropriate here.
Actually, if the agenda of pushing CBD therapy applies, then it is. I know a number of folks that have autistic children, of various levels, from "nerd," to "wheelchair-bound." Their parents are usually absolute saints, regardless of their political views, or misinformation diets, and live in constant pain; making daily sacrifices that I don't think many folks here, can even comprehend.
We were discussing a serious mental illness, and, as someone that is a caregiver for someone like that, I think that my experience is relevant; just as someone who believes that their child's condition was caused by something that is really a red herring.
The real villains, here, are the people that have secondary agendas (like legalizing drugs, or pushing political agendas), and look at people like us, with very real pain, as nothing but pawns, to be used to push their agenda (Think of the children!).
CBD, like Blockchain, probably has some valid application, but, because it was so unexplored, scientifically, it is currently about 75% snake-oil. We'll find out what it's good for, over time. The same can be said for other drugs, like MDMA, microdose LSD, or psilocybin.
> The real villains, here, are the people that have secondary agendas (like legalizing drugs, or pushing political agendas), and look at people like us, with very real pain, as nothing but pawns, to be used to push their agenda
Your assumption that I don't also have personal experience, and a stake, and real pain with this issue is based on what exactly? Did I miss the part where you asked me about my own experience, or does your personal experience trump my own for some reason?
I do, in fact, have all three. That has no bearing whatsoever on the basic fact that CBD has confirmed anti-psychotic potential with particular regard to schizophrenia, as was already linked above.
Finally, there's no secret agenda here - cannabis should be legalized. It's just basic common sense and decency, for all the reasons I've already stated and more. Prohibition doesn't work and we have decades of data proving that beyond any doubt.
Have rates of psychosis shot up in states where cannabis was legalized? No, according to a massive analysis of 63,680,589 beneficiaries followed for 2,015,189,706 person-months [0]. So please, stop with the reefer madness. I'm sorry about your family member but if you want to help people you could really try looking at the data.
I don't believe you. If you had, you would have led with it, just like I did. I value people that have skin in the game. Jenny McCarthy is a big fat pain in the ass, but she really does have an autistic kid, is a good mother, and has formed her worldview around that.
> So please, stop with the reefer madness.
WTF? I've never believed that crap in my life. Interesting that it's important to you, that I support that twisted worldview. You've mentioned it a couple of times, so it seems to be something that you're fixated on.
I do, however, have considerable experience with the fallout from drug use. I have spent my entire adult life, helping folks out, who have had their lives shattered by it. There are a small percentage of the population that can't handle drugs, and need help to recover from it. I do my best to help them out, and don't insist that the vast majority of the population change their worldview to fit mine.
Personally, I think that pot should be legal everywhere, including at the federal level (which will basically kill all the "mom and pop" operations out there, so be careful what you pray for). I don't use it, and don't care, myself. That doesn't make me an enemy.
I'd gently suggest that a professional forum, read by many of the most influential people in tech, might not be the best place to be a crusader for drug use.
You really can't imagine someone arguing from scientific research over their own personal experience?
> Jenny McCarthy is a big fat pain in the ass
Again with the autism/vaccines comparison, again missing the point, again doing yourself and your family member a disservice.
> WTF? I've never believed that crap in my life.
You keep repeating the claim that there's no therapeutic value to cannabis. That's madness, my friend, by the very literal definition of ignoring reality.
> don't insist that the vast majority of the population change their worldview to fit mine.
That's exactly what you're doing though? You're insisting that people ignore the research which I've linked multiple times now, and adopt your worldview which is based on vague assertions and claims; and you insist that anyone would argue the same way as you're doing when that's neither true or sensible.
> Personally, I think that pot should be legal everywhere, including at the federal level (which will basically kill all the "mom and pop" operations out there, so be careful what you pray for).
Huh? I can't tell if you're insinuating I'm a drug dealer or what your point is here. I'm certainly not the one who made this debate about whether cannabis should be legal or not; I just pointed out that prohibition made it much more dangerous to consume.
> I'd gently suggest that a professional forum, read by many of the most influential people in tech, might not be the best place to be a crusader for drug use.
As has been pointed out by people above, you're the one on the crusade here. My point, which I've repeated many times now, is that CBD has shown potential to help people vulnerable to psychosis and schizophrenia. I don't know why that triggers you so hard, or why you can't engage with the research which shows that very clearly, but I wish you the best all the same.
Come on man, I've been explicit from the start that I'm talking about high CBD low THC strains. If you refuse to acknowledge that then you're wasting both our time.
> You can feel superior or more intelligent than others as much as you like,
Weird thing to throw out there. Do you often feel like people giving you more information is an assault on your intelligence or value as a person? Is that helpful for you? ...
> You are getting a negative reaction from people who know this because we have been negatively affected by it
By high CBD, low THC cannabis? Be honest now.
> If you yourself “engage with the research” beyond your tunnel vision, you will see that the link between cannabis and mental issues is pretty well established by this point
I never denied there's a 'link'. There's clearly a link, but to claim that it's well understood is a gross exaggeration, and insisting that it applies to high CBD low THC cannabis is an obvious lie (no matter how many times you repeat it).
> refusal to acknowledge downsides of cannabis use is one of the hallmarks of cannabis use disorder. Pluck the beam out of your own eye.
Now you're implying I have a disorder and a drug problem? Even though at no point have I "refused to acknowledge downsides of cannabis".
So, recapping: I posit that high CBD low THC cannabis could help schizophrenics. I provide multiple links to researchers in this field saying the same thing. And by doing this, you feel entitled to make to accusations of me being a drug dealer, having a substance abuse problem, a superiority complex and a mental disorder?
... It's not ok to talk to people like that. And yet you end all that with "pluck the beam out of your own eye"; as if I were the one casting judgment??
The natural state of affairs is silence, as plants don't care about humans. The actual history of plant illegalization is inherently political, and inextricably racist in America due to Nixon.
0 - https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=harry+anslinger+racism&atb=...
Thanks.
And this isn't an academic paper. If you want to learn about Anslinger, so you don't make false claims, my link is a perfectly cromulent starting point.
> Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling.
Not sure you know what shilling means - I trust you can google it if you don't? If you do, what is it you believe I'm shilling?
The search engine you mentioned is who benefits.
We’re both right, actually. I don’t disagree with what you said, just the needless url you linked. I agree with what you said, but Nixon is also responsible for his racist words and recordings thereof. There were a lot of racists in history.
I’m not defending them as I don’t know any details, I’m just curious how you came to be certain about your assessment.
I think what really gets me is that despite my constant vigilance and skepticism toward my own thoughts, I simply cannot talk myself out of how truly real those delusions feel when they happen. I can even acknowledge how absurd they are, even in the moment, but I can never shake the feeling that they're still very, very real. It's so maddening. The best I can do is to just not act on those thoughts.
Maybe the above person's family is actually unearthing valid insights, but if they're prone to psychosis, in that state they'll be prone to finding connections, associations, patterns, and so on between things in a way that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It'll feel very real to them in the moment, but when they exit that state (if they do) they'll likely be on the same page as others in thinking those ideas were a stretch.
I don’t really believe in the dormant/latent argument because once you shift down to the underground (as in, entertain all possibilities, even the possibility that you share something in common with drug abusers) where people abuse drugs, there you can see just how common psychosis is.
The drugs fuck people up. Interestingly, after many years of laying off the substance, many do find their way out of the psychosis.
Many people are actually caught in this trap and don’t tell anyone because they are struggling between reality and their delusions and trying to present a calm face to the world. It’s often directly the result of the substance, but it’s allowed to fester in the person due to all kinds of reasons (”hey, I’m really going to confess this is the crazy shit that feels believable to me?”). By the time they are done wrestling with reality and unreality, often they are left extremely damaged from the ordeal psychologically.
My instances of psychosis outside of depression/mania tend to be triggered by stress. I don't use drugs or take any stimulant medications, but they still just happen sometimes. It sucks. I'm thankfully not in an active episode at the moment, but I do suffer on a daily basis from the "negative" symptoms of schizoaffective disorder (i.e., the symptoms that take away function, like anhedonia, avolition, alogia, etc).
It’s an extremely debilitating condition.
Also, in my days of yute, I was fairly profligate in the use of ... mind-enhancing chemicals, shall we say. They basically gave me the same exact certainty and "insight."
Once, I decided to write down the marvelous insight that I experienced, while tripping. I wrote a whole bunch of stuff in a notebook, and then read it, a couple of days later.
It was pure gibberish. Made no sense at all.
[EDITED TO ADD] I should say that I had the luxury of having two distinct states of mind, including a "control state," in which to review the ramblings in the "enhanced" state. This is not a luxury that someone suffering from schizoaffective disorder has. They have no idea that their thinking is off.
EDIT: Imagine being powerful and wealthy and assured in your position in the Catholic Church and someone comes along and questions geocentricity and says you're wrong. It's a pretty easy leap to huffily say well, they are "mentally ill, crazy, delusional, paranoid"
that said... you just have to have a conversation with someone experiencing psychosis. it's a totally altered state of consciousness, they are sensing and understanding the world in a radically different way. it's never just an otherwise normal person with a nonconformist belief.
From article:
Increasingly, researchers consider schizophrenia to be a “meta-syndrome,” encompassing multiple symptom dimensions/clusters and arising from intersections of diverse underlying mechanisms
As humans we look for a simple A therefore B story. Even then most people in my experience are either (a) poor at spotting cause and effect or (b) go into denial e.g. many political arguments
> kids, I would have to go through one of the embryo prescreening services
Have to? Do you mean you would want to? Or is there some compulsory force where you are?
I've tried 3 times, last time was a bad trip, I went into a very cold state (was shaking) and I was seeing random visual images every second. It felt like my brain was telling chat gpt to generate a random image on the fly none stop.
Anyways I was fine the next day, but I'm not trying it ever again if there is some risks associated with it. I took a low dose (half gummy).
While other stimulant substances when used might also lead to psychosis, it is cannabis which stands out with the highest risk of a psychosis becoming chronic and developing on into schizophrenia.
Sources:
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis
[1]: https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/substance-induced-psychoses...
He might be interested in looking up THC, glutamate and schizoaffective disorder. Here’s a good start.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/some-unintuitive-properties...
One other possible immune system link is the relationahip between the parasite toximoplasis gondii to schizophrenia.
If I'm not mistaken that's the paper about that:
Edit: are you thinking it’s genetic, but exacerbated by weed?
We have a friend whose sister has it and she went to genetics counselors before having kids.
They told her that because her sister has it that her kids had a 20% likelihood of developing it. Obviously 20% is way higher than normal.
I do know that this woman chose to not use her own eggs for their child. And you would think that going from 1-1.2% would not make you do that. Perhaps there is another variable involved that I am unaware of. Her sister developed it after their parents divorce in her 30s fwiw.
90% of the time she is truly the most amazing, compassionate, full of life and thoughtful person one can ever meet. Then there are times when it’s truly awful. She can barely sleep at all, leaves house without telling anyone seemingly thinking the presence of third person around. And she strongly feels others around are judging her hard, giving non verbal communication. It’s truly awful.
I didn’t know to the full extent her symptoms when we started dating. But one thing that was clear was she could barely sleep at night. Or sleep too long. There was no “normal sleep cycle”.
Over the time, some triggers are noticeable. Places with crowds, bright lighting, or sometimes stress at work. Aripaprazole so far seems to be holding up, no one knows for how long. I hear meds become resistant at some point. I don’t know what future holds. Kids are probably not an option. Although she very much wants it.
Schizophrenia has a strong genetic component, so think twice about making a children as well.
Isn't this risk mitigated if the respective person is (also) an anti-psychiatry activist? ;-)
I know people with schizophrenia (both treated and untreated), but I really seem to be the kind of person who seems to have much less problems getting along with schizophrenic people than what is common in society.
If you ask me: a lot of "weird" stuff that I read on the internet over the decades is magnitudes more "weird" than what most schizophrenic people do - so by being an avid internet users for decades, what many people consider to be "repulsive" in schizophrenic people is just "normal variance" to me. Honestly, I often find "well-adjusted", conformist people to be much more repulsive and annoying than what I experienced with schizophrenic people.
Update: If someone told me they hear voices in their head, I'd rather be the kind of person who curiously asks for details, and will attempt to do some scientific investigations (e.g. about the personality traits or "true" intentions of the voices that the respective person hears). :-) :-)
Currently dealing with a schizophrenic brother-in-law randomly calling for the death of his wife. They have a 2-year-old. I have high hopes for her though, but not for the ability for HN commenters to be able to make empathetic comments instead of random barking.
Like many (but not all) people, my bias is love of children. But extend that love to your dearest future hopes. A marriage will be a serious test of commitment and stable teamwork every day — for decades. Otherwise it is likely to crumble and the children will be victims too.
Even as an optimist, I will say to a HN brother... there are short hikes, but for the longest you choose your ascent, your kit, and the weather conditions.
I was on so many meds. I can’t even count them. Now I’m not on any, and I consider myself essentially cured after living with it for 35 years.
If she has triggers, that means she does not have a disease , it means she’s a different person that sensitive to different things. If someone who carries the celiac risk genetics, never eats wheat they never get celiac disease. If your partner was never exposed to triggers, you would never know she had a mood disorder. Do you see what I mean?
This is not the medical consensus. Schizophrenia, along with many other mental disorders, are well known to have a complex interplay with not only background genetic/chemical factors, but also the psychological conditions of the patient -- stressors like homelessness, drug use, and lack of sleep very much can trigger psychotic episodes. Suggesting otherwise is to suggest that a sick person not get care that they very well may need.
Yes, I don’t understand your disagreement, that’s the point I was making. That for some of us these things will cause schizophrenia for others. Maybe some other illness like lupus. The problem isn’t the gene. The problem is the environment. If you’re not homeless, don’t use drugs and get good sleep And you don’t get schizophrenia, an we say schizophrenia is a disease? Or is it a symptom of environment that is not fitting for the individual?
And in fact, schizophrenia is not a disease, it’s classified as a disorder.
You can carry all these jeans and not be exposed to any trigger and would never know you had the disorder so can you call it disorder if you have zero symptoms?
If you don’t mind sharing, what was your progression towards being cured? Did you do anything different lifestyle wise? I have consulted many psychiatrists but the general consensus seems to be that the management is the only option.
I am also somewhat concerned about the genetic component of it. The general feedback I received from pedestrians is most meds are not safe during pregnancy and postpartum episodes are very likely. And the risk of passing down is also about 10-20%. Her dad’s sister also seemingly had it.
There are many psychiatrist that have different viewpoints, for example I’ve talked to many who see purines as a problem and then you have the whole keto/mitochondrial doctors. There are many psychiatrist that will never change their minds about mood disorders because why do they have to?
I should add as well that there are so many things out of my control that are triggers that I still carry Klonopin with me just in case. It’s the one thing that can stop my psychosis in a heartbeat. I think the glutamate GABA balance is extremely important and unlooked with a lot of mental illnesses. Glutamate are a big trigger for my psychosis.
To me, and I think this can be true for anyone, it’s all about connecting the dots between the triggers and not only mood symptoms, but physical symptoms as well. But obtaining my genetics and also learning about genetics over a 10 year period helped me tremendously. I knew it was in my family because my mother, my brother and my nephew, including myself all had extremely similar experiences and also suicide attempts.
The first thing is, I could not have done this if I did not stop my medication. I’m not recommending anyone stop their medication‘s but it’s going to be really hard to find things that affect glutamate, dopamine and serotonin if you’re taking these drugs at the same time. But being on the same drugs my mother was o 50 years ago did not seem logical to me. And then I started hearing stories about people recovering from mental illness, real stories. Then my nephew hung himself at 13 and that changed everything. I knew it was genetic so I knew that’s the direction I had to go to investigate what was going on with my family.
So I got to know my mother side of the family a bit better both genetically and from stories. It definitely came from my great great grandmother side and it turns out while we all thought that side of the family was Polish, they were actually from Finland.
For myself, my gut was a big indicator and clue. I’ve had IBS-D really bad since I was a child. I managed on my own to find foods that were triggers, but it was not until I discovered I was a FUT-2 non-secretor that thing is really changed. Only 20% of Europeans carry this gene so I knew it was important
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9301175/
Eating a diet heavy in Fucose (not fructose!) fixed my gut. Seaweed, mushrooms, etc.
This was not a cause of my schizoaffective disorder, but it definitely was a trigger. When my gut was bad, I was bad. But there were a lot of times when my gut was good and I was bad as well. So I kept looking for triggers.
Then there was the early heart attacks in my family and my hyperlipidemia. In my genetics, I saw that I had genes that were more like people who were the Inuit when it comes to poly unsaturated fatty acids. At this time, I was a vegetarian. With all the research about how omega-3 helps with heart disease I decided to eat more like an Inuit and what do you know, my cholesterol totally reversed. LDL down and HDL from 30 up to 54. Plus, I was feeling much more stable. Don’t underestimate how omega-3 can control receptor function.
Both my mother and I also had what is called multiple chemical sensitivity. I don’t really like that name but that’s what I’m left with. It’s essentially a sensitivity to a lot of aldehydes. The story here is kind of long and complicated so I’m not gonna go too much into the genetic details but I’m just showing you another of several triggers that helped me find out what was going on. A lot of foods have aldehydes, aldehydes impact flavor of foods and food manufacturers add aldehydes to foods as well as add glutamate and purines to increase our taste but sensitivity to flavors.
And then we could talk about air pollution. Another big trigger. My grandparents lived in Manhattan and every time we went back there I would feel worse. I even tried to work in Manhattan for a year and that did not end well.
Alcohol is complicated. At the front end, it brings me really really big relief. But I could never drink too much because it gave me a really bad fatigue in the end. It turns out that the calcium ion channel blocking effects of alcohol are great, but the aldehydes alcohol creates just make me feel worse in the end.
So I just started avoiding those foods and eating Whole Foods that are people in a cold climate would eat, and they went away a bunch of more of my triggers.
And then there was heat. Heat is the number one trigger for me. And for some stupid reason, I moved to North Carolina. Since I ended up homeless because of this and living in a van, I was able to move to different climates to different places and also found not only the cold weather, but high altitude were triggers.
see the problem with all this is my mother married an Italian man. So instead of eating a more Polish/Finnish diet we were eating in Italian diet having a carbohydrates and red meats and little fish. This was the worst diet for me.
I do take some supplements and two supplements. I’ve been tested deficient in, and that helped me are zinc and B6. When I say these supplements help me, I mean they dramatically make me feel different when I’m am low I them and when I supplement with them. And magnesium is another one.
So now I try to live like a Sami. I ate a lot of seafood, salmon, mackerel, oysters, mussels and wild game meets. I say low latitudes in cold climates. And I also avoid polluted cities.
Now that’s gonna sound depressing because I know that not everyone can do what I did, live in an van and move somewhere that fits them genetically. But that’s the truth of the matter. In my humble opinion, they have the idea of mental illness all wrong. It is a disease more like an allergy than a mental illness. There is an environmental trigger that causes a reaction. And make no mistake I think for the majority of us, including myself, it is an immune disorder and not a nervous system disorder in a fundamental way. For example, I’ve had very low white blood cell counts, but also showed signs of lupus that they were always testing me for. They also kept testing me for HIV because of my symptoms in white blood cell counts.
And then the doozy was when I had COVID-19. Both times I caught it I had the worst psychosis in my life. For some reason, no one finds this interesting not even my doctors.
Edited to add
I want to add this in a shorter post cause I can’t believe I didn’t bring it up.
The first thing I would do was get all of her nutrition levels, tested, and ruled out as causes. There are several tests you can get without a prescription.
The first important one is a hair mineral test. But getting a full iron panel, zinc, B6, homocysteine, B12, methyl malonic acid, serum amino acid test, and of course, a complete CBC with differential and metabolic panel. Keeping track of the last two were really important for me. I noticed my white blood cell count changed when I was in different locations. For example, my white blood cell count was consistently higher in North Carolina than it was when I was in Washington state.
As an example, I had a friend who was on Prozac since she was 18 and she was now 48. I looked at her blood test and it was clear she had anemia. They did an iron panel and her serum ferritin was only three. It turned out they were treating her lifelong anemia with SNRI’s and antipsychotics.
The thing about treating it all as some sort of an allergy makes sense for me since connecting some ideas from Gabor Mate about the immune system.
And the covid triggering a phychosis like state rings true for me as well (not that I need to corroborate what you are saying, once you know you know). One of the worst trips I've had was "just" having covid during the summer.
Yes, people underestimate how stress effects the immune system and why it is so hard for people to see this link even when they can become fatigued, depressed and irritable when they have a cold.
They have investigated me for some sort of primary immune deficiency and found low T cells but they said they were "not low enough to cause problems".
When I had COVID I was running around this small town hiding from people and taking pictures of the, texting them to my friend as evidence they were following me and spying on me, and picture of my van and how people were messing with it. They I thought she and her family were in on the conspiracy. She finally convinced me to take a klonopin and I came out of it enough to take some more and it was done. The next day I had a fever and COVID. So it was weird that both time sit preceded my physical illness.
Sending love to you and your partner and hoping she can stay curious about why she is ill.
Every comment you're making in this thread confirms her fears and delusions. Whether or not she was right initially doesn't matter anymore since the situation has now been bootstrapped. If she can't quite tell in which way you're being dishonest, she has the certainty that she eventually will. And here you are, committing a violation of intimacy, taking strong advice from blind strangers to whom you are confiding the destiny of your relationship. You have just put on your shoulders as much, if not more, weight than you wanted to get rid of when you started commenting, and you will leak it through non-verbal communication, 100%. Looking at it a second time, it seems there is as much self-fulfilling prophecy in your behavior as in hers. As you complain about her paranoia behind her back, you are judging her hard and stockpiling the very weapons of silence she's complaining about.
You're nonetheless as captive to the situation as she is: the idea of psychosis, even though it may well be correct, is what allows you to deflect her delusions before they are funneled back to her in the very terms she anticipated – it is also what binds you to her, her delusions, and your reaction which confirms them. You're not just commenting on your situation; you're calling for help.
Your dilemma is that her psychosis allows you to define the problem and helps you enact your decision, but at the cost of painting you as an asshole when you look in the mirror. This is why you're getting so many replies; this is what makes these situations so interesting. Intuitively, every poster has understood this and given you justifications for dumping her or for accepting that you're an asshole. I hope to have given you the tools to see yourself as part of the problem and to consider breaking up as the ethical thing to do.
I believe she can be fixed, though. This requires acknowledging and letting her know that no matter what you do, you're under the spell of her pre-traumatic stress disorder, and you're bound to confirm it. So why not stuff her mouth shut with your passion to prevent her witch's tongue from twisting disharmony into reality, and own her as a slave in retribution?
I’m assuming this is due to life complexity? If it’s generic fear, you could consider adopting (although that also has the potential to be difficult in it’s own way).
Also wanted to +1 to the other comment, you seem like a wonderful person, thankyou for making the world a better place. I hope I “grow up” to be like you :)
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-evolutionary-genetic...
In any case, a fascinating read and well-worth it to explore the linked citations, especially by Crow and Nesse.
The only conclusions I've come to are one of the following.
1. They improve cognitive abilities in some way we aren't good at measuring. 2. There is something about our modern environment that is more likely to trigger schizophrenia which has more recently increased the fitness penalty these genes confer.
But the optimal thing might be to have a number of more typical/boring people to filter their ideas through, and that might be hard to test experimentally
Right after the time I was diagnosed (~36), I started to become weirdly good at some stuff.
Music, for example. I've been playing for almost two decades and couldn't progress after a certain level. This changed almost overnight, and I started to learn new instruments very quickly (now I play guitar, bass, drums and piano). I'm not a genius at them, it's not what I'm trying to say. It's just that the pace at which I learn is very different from when I was younger, I can do things I never imagined being able to do.
Somehow, I also acquired some ambidextry. This might be due to learning the instruments. I now can write with both hands (not at the same time, dominant hand is still faster and more acurate). I also developed a second, completely different handwriting (now I have two "fonts" I can use naturally).
I got worse at dealing with people. Everyone seems to be in a haze from my point of view, and it discourages any kind of meaningful relationship. I can pretend though.
I am highly skeptical of the idea that any genetic component is involved in all of this (my father was ambidextrous though, but he acquired it in childhood), it seems purely psychological. I am also skeptical about the stereotypical triggers people often associate schizophrenia to.
Last year I was reading about Havana Syndrome. That was the thing that most resonated with the kinds of psychotic events I had. Weird sounds and voices that seem to come from nowhere, dizziness, balance problems, insomnia, headaches. By the time I got to a doctor, these effects were not there anymore (they last a very short time, at least for me). I was diagnosed by describing them to the psychiatrist. Since the first episode, it has happened again a handful of times. I have learned since that Havana syndrome is not a thing anymore, but there are no official explanations other than "it's likely to be psychogenic". I also wouldn't qualify for it (apparently, only diplomats and spies had it).
Something can still be (weakly or strongly) genetic, but not inherited in any direct way. I.e. due to a particular mix of genes.
I attribute this to how the illness is researched: finding a genetic factor would be a major breakthrough, so lots of people do studies on that, and eventually force their way into a discovery that represents a narrow subset of the illness but ultimately fails to explain it. It's all over the place.
This makes me extra skeptic regarding the validity of some of these studies.
Some things happen only with the right set of genes, which don’t come together through any obvious combination of parents or ancestors and may also be unlikely to pass on as a set to children too.
Even more complicated, there may be alternative genes, making identifying which genes are a factor and which are not very difficult.
But I am just pointing out that most things have a genetic pattern behind them, since all our features do.
But it appears making any progress there has been difficult.
I guess I'm genetically predisposed to not give much credit to genetics then. Nothing you can do about it, I will always be skeptical regarding these sorts of claims.
I don't need to plan the melody ahead of time I just pick a few notes that go well together then I pick some starting notes and I just intuitively know how to join them together into a full piece. It's like when I play some notes, my fingers themselves resist certain bad notes and whatever note I end up choosing (high pitch or low pitch) seems to work out every time.
Then, suddenly, it all started to click. I was reharmonizing, writing my own lines, improvising, soloing. It was uncanny. I moved to other instruments at similar speed, stuff I never played before. It became so easy.
I heard many times that once you age, you lose some ability to learn music. What made this experience so jarring was that I experienced the exact opposite.
Maybe this thing that you have to start young is all bullshit (probably what's going on here), and before I had some kind of block. I can't explain what that block was though.
On the guitar, I did some identifying and learning.
On drums though, I just sat there and in a matter of months I was able to play to a lot of songs. I was doing polyrhythms, for example, before I knew what polyrhythms were.
Possibly, this is nothing extraordinary and fits the overall learning curve for the general population (I'm assuming lots of people do polyrhythms without knowing them). Which means that before the first episode, I was below that general curve of learning music (slower than everyone else would learn), then something changed right after such episode.
Since I'm on HN, let's use a computer analogy: I would describe it as upgrading a PC to new hardware, things felt smoother. The world of music (and arts in general) felt higher resolution, faster, more responsive to my actions.
Content gets more engagement as it gets closer to the "policy line" of getting banned, and in a competitive information environment (an engagement maximizing algorithm) you end up with a lot of content close to the border of what's allowed.
Consider a change in environment where, for example, oxygen levels drastically drop. That might make living at altitude deadly for those who don't have genetic adaptions to high altitude living.
As an extreme example, in ~500 million+ years when the sun starts expanding, you can bet natural selection will finish off non-extremophiles that aren't living deep within the Earth.
What I'm saying is that evolution matters across large timescales. By contrast, I believe the topics I was commenting on concern timescales where effects of biological evolution are negligible compared to the effects of memetic evolution.
Thus, biological evolution doesn't matter at all for predicting what will happen (or is happening right now) to humanity, unless predicting so far into the future as to be completely futile speculation (imagine someone 200 years ago wondering how biological evolution might affect humanity during the next couple thousand years).
If you could look back far enough and understood most of the enviromental pressures we faced, then we are all lottery winners of our tumultous history.
In my original comment, I was claiming that biological evolution is not relevant for this:
> as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously. Perhaps we've overshot the intelligence cliff and evolution is now gradually pulling us back.
>as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously.
There is also the unmistakeable influence of evolutionary psychology on people throughout human history, that seems to have accelerated. When people decide to have fewer kids, especially the more affluent ones, doesnt yet point to any biological influence. Other than the correlation between wealth, IQ and genetics. I dont think there are any risks of a reduction of intelligence through evolution. The world population reduction we're seeing might accelerate it instead.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...
If the effect from 1934 to 2008 had been 14 points (believable given advances in nutrition and education), what had it been from 2008 to 2025? And is it reasonable to believe that those hypothesized couple points from the old median did it?
During that period I spent an unhealthy amount of time alone. I also spent tons of time reading. During that time the ability of my brain to free-associate seemed to absolutely explode. I felt like I could see a pattern or form a connection between almost anything whatsoever. I read symbolism in everything. The few times I did see friends during that time, I remember them being kind of shocked at the callbacks, linkages, etc. that I was able to fire off instantaneously at the board game table.
My brian no longer works like this. I underwent several lifestyle changes and it seemed to really rewire me. I'm much more logical in my thinking now, but it's taken practice, and the shift was gradual. Every now and then I kind of miss the "semiotic aptitude" I had in those days, but I wonder if I was really just teetering on the edge of a cliff. Maybe a few more months of isolation would have pushed me over the edge.
A schizophrenic member of my family argued in divorce court that her husband, a leading physician at one of the most famous medical institutions in the world, was secretly involved in outrageous nefarious activities.
The stories were all fiction but she was so convincing that the judge awarded her a ruling in the divorce that ruined her husband financially and took an emotional toll.
Or to quote Moby Dick ~ "Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form..."
Note, I don't question your lucidity. But hope it shows the fallacy of your logic train.