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The concept of schizophrenia is dying

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111–120 of 128 posts

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#111
post #75
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can you explain why you feel so strongly about this? Because he doesn't like BS arguments? And because "so strongly" is not based on some objective measurement, but what you could gauge from a random comment. Maybe he likes/is used to using strong language (e.g. like Linus is) without necessarily feeling that "strongly" about it.

> Because he doesn't like BS arguments? I agree that they're BS, but they're common and pernicious, and as such worth a proper response, frustrating as that might be. > And because "so strongly" is not based on some objective measurement, but what you could gauge from a random comment. Maybe he likes/is used to using strong language (e.g. like Linus is) without necessarily feeling that "strongly" about it. Fair enoug…

Perhaps you are paranoid which is in no way related to weed.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know somebody who was brilliant (I mean brilliant as hell) as well until the age of about 20. He started suffering from bipolar disorder later on (at about 23). Between that age he was registered at university but was not attending it. Instead he was partying all the time. I noticed him acting odd first when he came back from a trip to the other side of the world - my impression was that the jet-lag in combination…

I forgot to mention: He was smoking a lot as well.

Most schizophrenics smoke a lot of cigarettes. Though not well understood, the nicotine may act as a general stimulant and help with the disease. It's an active area of research right now.

It's a very strange site, but it may be a good jumping of point for those doing research in to the link: http://www.schizophrenia.com/nicotine.benefits.htm

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#113
post #73
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not the case in Poland, which is part of the EU.

Yeah, hence "western" -- for me the "real" EU would always be the early 12 states :-)

That's a rather bizarre definition, by which Greece is a ”Western" country (ex-Byzantine!), while eg. Switzerland is not.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#114
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So have I, and I've had extreme reactions to both. LSD was actually the easiest on me if I consider my worst experiences together. A bad mushroom trip, being the worst of the worst, left my personality in tatters and it took me over a year to truly recover from the experience. Marijuana induces crippling anxiety in me. I was having issues sleeping a few years ago, so I got a medical card. Even one hit was overwhelmin…

A bad trip will happen if you take a psychedelic when you are not in a particularly good mood. If something has been recently bothering you, or you are stressed or depressed or angry about something, those feelings are going to come up to the surface and manifest in very unpredictable ways, given the nature of hallucinogenics. I learned that lesson myself. Never take a psychedelic unless you are in a good place, emot…

It's a moot point for me, at this point in my life. Hopefully it's good advice for someone else. With the psychedelics, we're talking about a 2-3 year period of my life that started roughly 20 years ago. And what you're saying is all common knowledge to myself and my then-friend group. I honestly have no idea what my frame of mind was but I don't recall ever starting a trip in a bad state of mind. I just know that I had good trips and I know that I had bad trips. And the bad trips went very, very bad and grew over time in both frequency and intensity. Maybe I was taking too much? It didn't seem like it, at the time, at least in retrospect. Who knows.

But then, I can't reconcile these things with my experiences with medical marijuana in 2012, either. I was a recreational smoker for probably 4 or 5 years of my life before the bad mushroom trip (after which, I wholesale quit drugs the very next day and also didn't have a drop of alcohol for 5-6 years). I never really experienced much anxiety from marijuana in my youth, but when I went back in 2012 it was a totally different ball game. I worked with my dispensary to try to sort out a strain that would help me and came up short.

FWIW, I opted instead to address the utter lack of physical activity in my life and it sorted out the sleep issues and has persisted to today.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#115
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, hence "western" -- for me the "real" EU would always be the early 12 states :-)

And also in those "real" EU states, you can get serious problems, if you are in the health sector for example. But if you are a student wanning to become a software-developer, then yes, allmost nobody cares.

Could you elaborate on the problems?

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#116
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also in those "real" EU states, you can get serious problems, if you are in the health sector for example. But if you are a student wanning to become a software-developer, then yes, allmost nobody cares.

Could you elaborate on the problems?

Not in detail, but afaik they can revoke your permit to work in health sector, if you get charges from drugs, as you are then not seen fit.

Also in bavaria, there have been charges against people for driving under drugs, even though they only posessed them and did not consume at that time ...

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#117

There's something important the article seems to be getting wrong: psychosis is a symptom, not a disease. There are such things as psychotic depression and post-partum depression; psychosis is a symptom of severe bipolar mania, etc. By the way, the concept of schizophrenia first comes up in Emil Kraepelin's realization that bipolar disorder (manic-depression) and schizophrenia ("precocious dementia") are distinct pat…

Freud is dead. Dead and gone. We moved on. Really, i know he founded the field and made for a nice soap opera gossip generator when discussing other peoples problems sources (generating alot of unnecessary drama, to people who already had drama, like having the genes for schizophrenia in the family)- so please could we stop mentioning him, when discussing modern neurology. Its like a tribe on a pacific island had dis…

Hardly. Freud's proposition that everyone is neurotic is important, relevant, and true. Also, neurology is not the same as psychology or psychoanalysis or psychiatry.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not fear mongering. The Lancet published an article about continued and discontinued use of cannabis after psychosis. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-03... But it states that there is a well established link between cannabis and psychosis.

I resent your being down voted, by a audience running out of arguments. If something that attacks your lifestyle or a dependency of it and you can not bring arguments forth, this does not give you the right to silence the debate.

It's pretty par for the course really.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those feelings are pretty common if you smoke too much pot. I have a very low tolerance for it and while I had a few good times with it, I had what you describe happen more often than not. But the feeling you have while on drugs generally goes away when you’re not on them. I wouldn’t assume that because taking a drug gives you a feeling that approximates a psychological problem that it would necessarily be a…

I don't make that assumption at all. But I've also seen many people, including family, go down a road with the drug that did in fact lead to pretty severe emotional and life function difficulties that went away after the cessation of the drug. All of this applies to alcohol as well, surely... but that is hardly a high bar. I was a lot more tolerant of cannabis advocacy before I had kids and before legalization came o…

> did in fact lead to pretty severe emotional and life function difficulties that went away after the cessation of the drug.

I did in fact say that the psychological problems go away when you stop using the drug. Obviously if you're on drugs all the time, you're going to have problems.

Re: The concept of schizophrenia is dying

#120
post #101
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freud was a misogyn and a drug addict, and he proposed a lot of theories that leave modern people scratching their heads. All three are totally orthogonal to someone being a genius -- and at least the second is a very puritan concern to level at someone regarding their contributions to science/culture/etc. > Eg he attributed almost all mental problems to sexuality And a heck of a lot (of the soft kind, not physiolo…

Your arguments are rather philosophical than based on hard facts (IMO that’s a big problem with a lot of psych research, giving the field a bad rep). Those ideas have been discarded via proper scientific studies, and research has long moved on. Psychoanalytics who hold onto Freud need their patients to come to them for years or even decades - I think this also tells a lot about the efficacy of applying Freudian theor…

>Your arguments are rather philosophical than based on hard facts (IMO that’s a big problem with a lot of psych research, giving the field a bad rep).

On the other hand, I find arguments based on hard facts naive and ignoring that the interpretation of facts (and the framework for understanding them) is what makes them usable for anything, not their inherent quality.

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