Don't get Scizophrenia

To further this topic on Schizophrenia,

After reading rygoody's post, I came to a bit of a wonderous thought,

What if more people began embracing their so called "schizophrenic" thoughts?
The matter in their consciousness they ignore, or turn off.

 

The whole thing about schizophrenia is that it's a big deal because you fight it: if you embrace it, you're just a little quirky and maybe eccentric.

 

they dont because its very diffucult to integrate them. The more people who manage to integrate them and become stable, the more it will spread.

 

I'd like to believe that perhaps if the people already suffering from the illness were to try and accept the "disorder" and accept the effects which brings about to their daily lives, perhaps it wouldn't be so hard to live with, and maybe even somewhat respectable and likeable. Though looking from the outside it's easy to make any sort of claim. Theres no telling if it's actually just random neurons firing off which induce panic and fear on it's own, then they wouldn't have a choice in being able to overcome the negatives. Some Schizo's are in the hallucination like state for most of their lives without medication, and are totally out of touch with reality. What would they do?

 

I really don't mean to be rude rygoody, but schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness that literally torments people.
You guys have been talking about schizophrenics integrating their delusions and hallucinations into their being, but that is exactly their problem. They have COMPLETELY integrated them, because they believe them to be 100% real. And because they believe them to be real, this is the source of their pain and misery.
Schizophrenia is a term that is really tossed around lightly by acid users, and is often lumped together with HPPD, but trust me, they are no where near the same. I work with schizophrenics for a living, and when you have seen these people lay on the ground holding their head in their hands and screaming and crying because voices are telling them to kill themselves, or you see one start running down the hall as fast as he can with a look of sheer terror on his face, looking back at something that isn't even there, you realize that there is nothing beneficial about this at all.
I hate to be the devil's advocate and voice the unpopular opinion in this thread, but the truth is that schizophrenia is not a term for a "highly artistic person". It's a very tormenting and debilitating mental disease.

 

I wouldn't call being tormented by aspects of your psyche 'integration'.

You know in the 60's, how so many hippies went on the hippie trails. Trekked across India, down into South America or other. Became wanderers. Went off in search of something, or following some path, many of them complete with 'spirit guides' that helped to show them the way. Many of them sought healing from mystics, shamans or yogis in foreign countries. I believe for many people this was part of the cure to their psychosis. Many people left the US in an LSD induced sort of psychotic flurry, only to return from potentially years of travels, wised and capable of integration.

Keeping a person trapped in one building, under tranquilizers will never cure them. You cannot make an accurate opinion on this subject by simply observing tranquilized patients in a contained area. You have no idea how there intuitions would manifest if allowed to run about the world a bit. You have no idea what they could find to help them. You really have no idea what it's like to be them, or how capable they could be for themselves when it really comes down to the barebones of the thing.

The subject is far more complex and involved than what biological psychiatry would wish you to believe. It is a crisis of the spirit. Not a crisis of chemicals.


Now on the contrary to that. Don't get me wrong. I do know what you mean when you speak of highly tormented people. And I do know such people exist. But on the flipside of this, I know HIGHLY schizophrenic people, or in other words, shamanic or occultist people. That if a psychiatrist got their hands on them, would no doubt recommend whatever array of psychiatrics to their aid simply by the peculiarity of their beliefs and habits in life. But these people have found a balance in there oddity, a very functional balance, that allows them to live a very happy life. And they didn't get that balance by listening to a single word coming out of psychiatrists. They found that balance through following their intuitions, and through spiritual healing. So I have to wonder, whenever I see a 'tormented' schizophrenic patient. How much of that torment is really caused by the symptoms and how much of that torment is caused because the current psychiatric institutions have convinced that person not to follow intuitions and seek some form of spiritual aid and healing? Not to seek integration and harmonization with their idiosyncracies?

And when I say integration. I mean. Integrated into them, integrated into society, integrated into their friends and family. Having developed a balance between all these things. Someone being tormented I would not call integration in the slightest bit. Yes the symptoms exist, but the reason they are tormented is because they aren't integrated. The word integrate to me implies having achieved a balance. Is it really possible to integrate voices, is it really possible to integrate seeing visuals constantly? Some people have done it... Some call themselves channelers in newagey stuff, others, visionary artists.

 

try taking some good ass shrooms and try to sleep, thennn youll think your schizophrenic... that was a long night.

and i think taking acid in school on a low dose was actually fun. it brightened up my day, made learning more fun.

 

There are probably people with schizophrenia severely who will never recover from it, because personally I believe in an institution, (I could only imagine, though) someone with such a mind fuck, would only get more mind fucked. Like think about it... they'd be wondering where their family left them, why they're with all these crazy people...so far down the rabbit hole, what IS a rabbit any more? and what's happening in all these holes?

I know for myself if I was to be put in one, I would undoubtedly go crazier, AND feel more insecure about everything.

 

amen.

stop trying to rationalize and buddhafy schizophrenia people. you can't learn about it some some guru spiritual book. you read about it in a medical textbook. it's a disease, not an awakening to a higher plane of being or a communion with jeebus. trying to convince people with it otherwise is just stupid, because they might just be crazy enough or desperate enough to believe you.

 

mhm, with my experience with this "schizophrenic" episode i've had that is true, i completely believed reality was too real in some cases, like...yeah...all the thoughts in my head were uncontrollable / wouldn't escape, paranoia, things like that

 

Yeah, but that is what it is. They are tormented by these things because they completely accept them as reality.

Well, we kind of do know how their intuitions would manifest themselves if allowed to run completely unchecked. If no one realizes or supports the schizophrenic, it isn't uncommon for them to continuously end up in the legal system, or killing themselves and others. Trust me, it happens more than you would know. The facility I work at ONLY houses people who have come into contact with the legal system and were found not guilty by reason of insanity, and we are full to the maximum. These people need help. They have an illness.

I agree, but I also think ANY type of illness is a crisis of the spirit. Labeling it "crisis of the spirit" does not help or do anything to cure it though.

I know psychiatrist get a bad rep around here, but this really is not the case. You can walk into a psychiatrist office and tell them all about you, you can be a satanist and do the craziest shit in the world but that does not mean you are schizophrenic or that you have a mental illness, and any psychiatrist will agree with me.

 

This is all understandable.

But I say what I say only because, exploring the mind your going to run into the schizophrenic territory. I'm sure everyone on here has, you get to the point where you understand exactly what it would be like to be schizophrenic. And the typical response upon knowing this, is fear. Incredible fear. The typical mainstream solution that pops into ones mind, atleast my mind, is tranquilizers and padded rooms. And I know for me. That would never be the solution.

Now something is to be said for people who commit crimes and continually return to prison. But Schizophrenia is not inherently violent. People who exhibit schizophrenic symptoms, a small percentage of them ever turn violent in any way whatsoever. Many people who start to exhibit schizophrenic symptoms, don't even go onto develop a fully manifested schizophrenic state for very long, if at all. So this feeling that one needs to watch out for schizo symptoms and keep them well categorized and under control is really just unnecessary and causes more mental turmoil than it prevents.

And to blame schizophrenic symptoms for violence I really don't think is in line. I mean, schizophrenic symptoms also produce artists, they also produce shamanic healers, they also produce channelers. I think McKenna said it best when he said "Schizophrenia is just a catch all term for forms of mental behavior that we don't understand". And that really sums it up. It's just a catch all term, it's just the most severe definition of "weird" and "out of the norm" that you can get. Schizophrenia doesn't really refer to any singular thing. One schizoid to another exhibits more variations in idiosyncracies then one normal citizen to another. The wide range of idiosyncracies that 'schizophrenia' can go on top of can range anywhere from the radically, profoundly, peaceful and well intentioned, all the way to down-right malicious and evil. The simple existence of schizophrenic symptoms is not the cause of the violence, as so many people can maintain very good lifestyles with many schizophrenic symptoms. Rather something else is the cause of the violence and this something else is also coming out in there schizophrenic symptoms. There is nothing innate to schizophrenic symptoms that one should fear. Yes if your considering going on a violent rampage, you should rethink this. But just because someone exhibits schizophrenic symptoms does not mean they're anywhere violent rampage.

And no, I would not call simple belief in a delusion as 'integration'. By integration I mean, it's integrated not only into you, but also into the whole of humanity.

As for the people needing help in prisons. There really might not be anything in the comprehensional ability of current psychiatric institutions to help them. Thats really all I mean by the label of 'spiritual crisis', there problems lay deeper than the need to develop steady habits and take tranquilizers, there problem is so deep it's outside the scope of what psychiatry could currently correct. I mean, what if you put such people through repeated psilocybin sessions to make them confront and get all issues sorted out of them? Tim Leary did studies like that in 60's that showed some promise. But really I don't know, I wouldn't presume to know either. I have no idea what to do with such people. They got caught in the belly of the beast. Unfortunately, it is their karma. But just because those people ended up there is no reason to start fearing schizophrenic tendencies. Or telling other people they should fear them.

All this really comes down to for me is removing fear of portions of my own mind.

 

amen. schizophrenic patients are often overmedicated and underdiagnosed. and i tripped an 1/8th of shrooms a few months ago. i noticed something. a trip=temporary psychosis. (i've experienced psychosis before). can't really draw a valid conclusion based off one experience, but it seemed pretty damn close.

schizophrenia is often misunderstood, as are most mental diseases. too many people try to rationalize the behavior into rational terms, and it just doesn't work like that. too many people shun these people as "weird" or "crazy" too. or even treat them like cancer patients needing a ton of sympathy. i dunno, maybe that helps some people, but if you're schizo, chances are you don't wanna be treated like you're disabled. that might just be me though. i've actually heard of schizophrenics that have become doctors and stuff, so it's not always too debilitating if at all.

to my knowledge it's a "catch all term" for people that exhibit the symptoms of delusions and hallucinations. a diagnosis of symptoms rather than disease perhaps, but that's not a product of it being a bogus diagnosis, rather a relatively new medical field (psychology). and the creative stuff that sometimes comes with mental disease is definitely cool. i'm enjoying it at least. (i still suck, but at least i actually play my guitar)

amen

if this post comes off as a little excited, it's 'cause i just lifted (kinda). i'm PUMPED! lol

 

Schizophrenics have the delusions and hallucinations, but a lot of them can function in society.
Things only become a mental illness when 1) the person cannot adapt 2) the person cannot adjust 3) and the person is overpowered by their emotions.

 

is that what mental illness technically means? i always thought it was just a head disease. like even if they were functional and not debilitated in any way, hell, even empowered by their disease, that it was still a mental illness.

 

Nah, it's only considered an illness if a person cannot function or if it is harming them in some way, same with physical illnesses.

 

But isnt any illness fixable?...Especially with marijuana

 

it's pretty easy to romanticize schizophrenia... and it's hard for non-schizophrenics to claim that they, at some point, "understand" what it's like and make judgments.

part of why it's so destructive is the persistent interruption of reality in a way that most of us will likely never *truly* understand. i do agree that there may be better ways to deal with this illness, and cultivate it into something beneficial, but it's pretty important to remember that, basically, schizophrenia can be traced back to chemical disturbances... it's not exclusively an "artful response" and treating it as such can, in some ways, be counterproductive and even dangerous.

 

think about this:

if someone is functional and not debilitated, how can they be considered diseased?

A disease is something that disables you.

Being different is not considered an illness, only being dysfunctional is

of course, this raises more questions as to what counts as functioning and what counts as dysfunctioning, when we take into consideration the fact that most functioning in modern society revolves around a particular kind of sheeply, socially bound mind. This type of mind would in other hypothetical situations be considered a disability, for example the way that a more 'normal' people can fall in line when presented with certain information, whereas a more 'wacky' person might be able to surpass the system and its limitations.

Schizophrenia, just like other mental illnesses, are characterised by the 'ways that the person cannot be relied upon to act normally'.

Mental illness is only considered an illness because with modern understanding of psychology and law, institutions are recognising that OH&S, as well as many other regulatory systems of managing people and environments, relies on the notion that people can be responsible for their actions and for their perception of certain important facets of their surrounds.

Hence mental illness - people like schizophrenics cannot always be relied upon to be integrit whitnesses of society in the way that society wants, so we develop labels of illness to help identify those people who we must consider with caution when giving them responsibilities and freedoms in society.

dont assume I agree with this system

 

i was more referring to the technical definition. bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, whatever i'm pretty sure are all classified as "mental illnesses." that's not to say that there's not people out there who can function normally with schizophrenia.