Julian Jaynes' theory is always interesting to think about. I self-diagnosed myself as schizophrenic in my late teens and I still stand by my diagnosis 20 years later. I do believe it is a spectrum though and the degree to which one is schizophrenic is not static, and I don't think it's even necessarily a bad thing.
Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
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Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you take adhd medication by any chance?
I used to on and off in the past, but I found it made me more prone to mania, so I've since stopped. Why do you ask?
Stimulant induced psychosis is very common. One of the major side effects of those medications, just like their street cousin, is paranoia.
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.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have family with that. 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 no…
Can I ask how you are sure they haven’t had some novel insight that you just don’t currently understand? Like maybe they are bad at explaining but whatever pattern they noticed is valid? 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.
Talk to them for 2 minutes when they are having an episode. The effects are not subtle.
It’s an extremely debilitating condition.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to on and off in the past, but I found it made me more prone to mania, so I've since stopped. Why do you ask?
Stimulant induced psychosis is very common. One of the major side effects of those medications, just like their street cousin, is paranoia. 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 psychos…
I can't say I've experienced psychosis due to stimulant use personally, but I see what you mean. For me it's maybe brought on instances of hypomania a few times, but I get how it could trigger issues in others, especially in high doses.
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).
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#65Completely anectodal: 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…
Could be age related. I could never play a musical instrument until my mid thirties. Nobody in my family could. My wife found a Ukulele which was left on the side of the road and which was in good condition and took it home. I started playing just randomly tugging strings to understand the sounds and I kept doing that maybe 10 to 30 mins a day for about 2 months and the tunes became less and less random and now I can…
I had a guitar since I was 16, and never gave up trying to learn. I reached a plateau very quickly (knew some chords, simple songs), and could never go past it. I then spent almost 20 years in that plateau.
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.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#66I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I naively took too much. 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 olanza…
I have family with that. 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 no…
> It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use.
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.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#67I wonder if Autism would be even simpler to explain with a cliff-edged fitness function. Because there seems to be a high correlation between extremely intelligent people and people on the spectrum. Maybe the group of genes rewarded for high intelligence/creativity/quantitative ability also, by accidental design, inhibits social capacity.
> Maybe the group of genes rewarded for high intelligence/creativity/quantitative ability also, by accidental design, inhibits social capacity.
Maybe living in a world with neurotypical people who immediately dislike you [0] 'inhibits social capacity' after years of traumatic experiences piling up.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#68I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad w…
You don't develop schizophrenia in your 50s. It sounds like you track her behavior and habits quite closely?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/schizophr...
> 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.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#69Completely anectodal: 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…
> I am highly skeptical of the idea that any genetic component Something can still be (weakly or strongly) genetic, but not inherited in any direct way. I.e. due to a particular mix of genes.
The kinds of genetic claims people usually make about schizophrenia are of the hereditary kind (including the post article), not random mutations.
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.
Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have family with that. 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 no…
> It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use. 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 pharm…
Eh, maybe. I can certainly say that I have "skin in the game." Someone very dear to me suffers from it, and it's difficult to hear theories from folks that don't have as much of a stake.
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.