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Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

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Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#121

Post by mjreacher »

porknubbins wrote: post #100
perl4ever wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of insight to varying degrees is a well-known feature, but not always the case. Having insight doesn't imply at all a lack of symptoms. It's possible to be aware, but not be able to correct errors in real time. Someone with paranoia is highly sensitive to coincidences, and may have great difficulty blocking out elaborate theories regarding them which seem to spontaneously arise, as well as an intense fear reacti…

I have always wondered why if someone with good logical reasoning skills got schizophrenia they clould not reason their way to seeing their delusions for what they are. For example (real example I heard) if I think everyone who looks at my eyes is from the government and tracking me on my walk to the park- there simply is no agency that could field and coordinate that many undercover agents nor surreptitiously replac…

I agree, two famous mathematicians who had severe mental illnesses come to mind, Kurt Gödel and John Nash. In fact there seems to be a link between the two (intelligence and predisposition to mental illnesses), see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201707/the-mad-g...

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#122

Post by eliasmacpherson »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #119
tcj_phx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your comment. I don't have a success story yet, but I'm optimistic. I've learned a lot, and hope to leverage my 'trial by fire' to help others. > Carl C Pfeiffer Pfeiffer "considered himself a founder of what [Linus Pauling] named orthomolecular psychiatry" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Pfeiffer_(pharmacologist) > he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics hmm? Searching for histadelics: "If y…

It's considered pseudo science, and I've yet to fully work through any of the Carl C Pfeiffer books. There are lots of different anti-histamines with different effects and side effects. Salt and adrenalin are apparently 'natural' anti-histamines, I would go with them over medication, though sometimes I need anti-histamines for allergies. That cyproheptadine seems to be contra the general trend of anti-histamine -> pr…

Pfeiffer, Nutrition and Mental illness 1988, p31, the addiction quote:

Having tested twelve hard-core drug addicts and found them to be high in histamine, we voice the strong opinion that more can be done to correct biochemical imbalance in order to correct the drug addict. We know that heroin and methadone are both strong histamine releasing agents. The histadelic person is depressed and compulsive, and has abnormal thinking. There-fore, heroin, methadone, uppers, downers, alcohol, and sugar all are often craved to compensate for these feelings. The compulsive day-in-day-out drinker of alcohol is usually found to be histadelic. Moderation must be taught tactfully to these individuals as they slowly but surely improve on the nutritional program

Probably worthwhile linking this as a general disclaimer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomolecular_psychiatry

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#123

Post by RalfWausE »

As far as i can think back i always had this weird thing that i heard something like distant voices whenever there was some monotonous background noise in the room (e.g. a fan running or so)... sometimes i could swear that someone called me from downstairs or from the neighbouring room, but in 99% of the cases nobody was there. Though... never spoke with a doctor about this, i just accepted it as one more fact on the "i am sometimes weird" list.

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#124

Post by kayodelycaon »

porknubbins wrote: post #100
perl4ever wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of insight to varying degrees is a well-known feature, but not always the case. Having insight doesn't imply at all a lack of symptoms. It's possible to be aware, but not be able to correct errors in real time. Someone with paranoia is highly sensitive to coincidences, and may have great difficulty blocking out elaborate theories regarding them which seem to spontaneously arise, as well as an intense fear reacti…

I have always wondered why if someone with good logical reasoning skills got schizophrenia they clould not reason their way to seeing their delusions for what they are. For example (real example I heard) if I think everyone who looks at my eyes is from the government and tracking me on my walk to the park- there simply is no agency that could field and coordinate that many undercover agents nor surreptitiously replac…

In my own experience, reality and imagination merged.

Any logical reasoning I had was dealing with massively corrupted input. I was overwhelmed trying to separate want was real and what was not real.

The only way I could tell what was real and what wasn’t was by going off what I remembered to be true about the world. Well, part of memory retrieval got compromised too.

There are things I knew to be “true” about the world that didn’t match my mental model of how the world actually worked. That model was all that was left in the end. The only reason I came back was the episode ended. Even then, I thought the experience was a normal human response to stress.

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#125

Post by Loeffelmann »

colordrops wrote: post #79
perl4ever wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything feels intellectualized rather than a concrete physical reality I'm not sure what this means, but you might read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization It is said to be a common phenomenon that most people experience at one time or another, and can be associated with a great many conditions or events, from head injuries, to schizophrenia, to drug use.

Yeah that might be it. What I mean is that I don't feel like I'm actually here - everything feels flat and dream like, rather than in the moment planted in a physical space. I thought this was normal though, aren't most people constantly in that state due to worry about the future or obsessing over the past? And that's the point of meditation, I think... To bring yourself into the here and now. I do some regular medi…

I have depersonalisation disorder. I got it from drug use. I know that at leadst for me it's not normal. I still remember what it was like before and how different everything is now. I feel the same stuff you are describing.

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#126

Post by Loeffelmann »

drew1492 wrote: post #66
iammisc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One single dose of LSD can cause permanent psychosis, so this is not surprising. This is why drugs like LSD need to be absolutely banned. They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug.

This is not true, or partially true at best. As far as I'm aware, current consensus is that psychedelics are not a causative agent in psychosis or schizophrenia in the absence of predisposing risk factors. 0.5-1% of the population will develop schizophrenia, and for these susceptible individuals, a psychedelic trip can be the event that triggers the full-blown disorder. But so can any other significant psychological…

My depersonalisation disorder started after an LSD trip. Was it really that drug that did it to me or was it always going to happen? I don't know but even so I've never gotten any of the benefits that psychedelics advocates talk about. For me it was just fun and that's it. I still absolutely hate what the drug did to me and I wish I had never taken it but comments like yours convinced me. I feel like the constant advocating and laying out the benefits like they are a guarantee is really dangerous for a chemical this powerful.

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#127

Post by iammisc »

lstodd wrote: post #109
iammisc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance No, because such allowances are made with the assumption that people act reasonably. GK Chesterton said we should tolerate all thoughts except for the thought that stops thought. We can tolerate all kinds of insane thoughts. The only thought we cannot tolerate is th…

What an absolute bullshit. Seriously, you propose to deny adults freedom of thought because there are "wrong" thoughts, defined by "reasonability ", which isn't and can't be defined? In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned. See where this leads?

> In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.

No, because acknowledging the existence of such a thought does not imply thinking it.

The flaw with your claims is the underlying belief that human thought tends -- if left untouched by others -- tends towards freedom.

There is little reason to believe this. Throughout history, many civilizations have independently arisen that have fully embraced the thought that stops all other thought. You see this is in various cultural degradations, human atrocities, etc that have occurred over and over again.

In reality, human thought is not totally 'free'. There are some thoughts that you can think that make you less free, and should be discouraged.

Here's a more poignant example, would you allow adults to drive a metal spike into their brain to allow 'freedom'? Why or why not? If you do allow them, how can you possibly claim to desire 'freedom' for others, since -- by definition -- doing such a thing to your body is going to put you at the mercy of others for many years to come (and if they can't help you, then to the mercy of nature). If you don't allow them, why? If encouraging every liberty is not the goal of this exercise of freedom, then exactly what are you arguing about?

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#128

Post by iammisc »

denton-scratch wrote: post #106
iammisc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My insight is that psychiatrists, and most doctors, are themselves mentally ill. The vast majority think too highly of themselves. Many think so highly of themselves they do not listen to patients because they view them as less capable. The moment something escapes their understanding, it is labeled as a disease. It's almost the way the ancients would make up gods to explain phenomena they could not explain. IMO, sch…

> or whether he's just reacting in the normal human way to the pressures of life and his own experiences. R.D. Laing claimed that psychiatric disorders were a normal human reaction to a crazy world. In my youth, I was on-board with that analysis; but R.D. Laing was discredited, and I cam around to the view that bipolar and schizo were real illnesses, very debilitating, and that make the sufferer very unhappy; and tha…

I'm not 100% sure what meds my uncle takes, we all -- his wife and kids included -- just kinda put up with him and know how to deal.

To be clear, I encourage anyone with any condition whatsoever, including 'normal' ones, to seek help if they are making you suffer.

Here again comes to another problem with psychiatry. Suppose person A has COVID and is experiencing runny noses, pneumonia, cough, etc (whatever the symptoms are). As a society, we've decided that -- independent of person A's view of their own condition -- person A deserves medical treatment (hence all the talk about the unvaccinnated -- likely people who don't particularly mind being infected by covid -- being forced to live their life a certain way by others who are more afraid).

Can we apply this same logic to similarly debilitating disease like schizo? No... because actually none of the schizophrenia symptoms are necessarily bad. Unlike COVID, where everyone feels absolutely comfortable judging the absolute 'badness' of the symptoms without any regard to the sufferer's view, with schizo and other mental health conditions, the sufferer is required to be stressed in order to fix it. If the sufferer doesn't really mind the voices, then no one is going to step in and say anything.

Given how stark a difference it is between physical disease, where we can all observe a symptom and say whether you have it, regarless of your thoughts, with many psychiatric illnesses schizophrenia, it is impossible to do so, calling into question whether these deserve to be called illnesses.

I'll have to read about Laing... I don't know who he is.

Re: Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

#129

Post by tcj_phx »

denton-scratch wrote: post #120
tcj_phx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your response. Sorry to hear about your GF's experience. "Sectioned"... .. . Mental Health Act -> you're in the U.K.? > she'll be taking the mood-stabiliser until she dies "Mood stabiliser" is a marketing term. My friend was on a "mood stabiliser" until the 2nd to last time she escaped. She didn't have those pills with her when she hopped the fence, so she couldn't take them when she was in hiding at my pl…

Yes, "sectioned" as in Section [x] of the UK Mental Health Act (I hadn't realized until just now that there's more than one section of the Act that you can be detained under). > I refer to anti-psychotics as tranquilizers If I've got you right, that's what I call "major tranquilizers", e.g. haloperidol and chlorpromazine. I think they: - Make you fat - Cause you to start rocking - Take away all the interest from life…

> "Lithium also makes you rock, if you take it long-term.

My other friend called me up recently to tell me that she'd just bought supplemental lithium. She thought she was bipolar and needed more lithium. 12 hours later she called again, sobbing: suicidal. I told her she shouldn't have taken the lithium, and that it would probably wear off. She searched and found adverse symptoms associated with her supplement. I don't think she'll take that one again.

> The GF is on a mood stabiliser called Depakote.

That's what my friend was forced to take. She's been off it for nine months, and doesn't miss it.

Another response to my comment, from /u/eliasmacpherson, gets into orthomolecular psychiatry and "histadelics" (histamine, allergies) as an important causative factor in "mental health problems". That thread might be really valuable to you as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27993001

> OK, so they're ranting specifically about US prescribing practices, the DSM, and the US drug industry. They're focused on anti-psychotics.

The essence of Robert Whitaker's books, Mad in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic, and Psychiatry Under the Influence, is that Psychiatry got idealogically-captured by the drug industry, and how psychiatric drugs arguably take episodic conditions and make them chronic.

Whitaker's initial forays into "mental health" was when he looked into Prozac as a reporter for the Boston Globe (newspaper). The trials for Prozac found that it makes some patients suicidal. The Germans FDA-equivalent wouldn't approve it...

Whitaker's organization spotlights more effective approaches to treatment.

> So I see my role as basically "support".

Often times it's hard for patients to notice how adversely affected they are by their medications, but the doctors thinks the medications are working fantastically even though the patient would have gotten better anyways, with just time and a normal diet. Followup visits are opportunities for injecting additional perspective... "What are you going to talk to the doctor about today?" might be a useful question to ask.

Thanks for your comment.

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