4 ms·

I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I d

by api 11y ago

I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not actually be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly imaginative states are not schizophrenia or even indicative of mental illness. Real schizophrenia is a hell of paranoia and anxiety and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art or any of the other things a traditional shaman might do.

dikdik 11y ago
There's some really interesting research out there on schizophrenia. "Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrm...
- taurath 11y ago
  The implications are huge - if you are more prone to actively resist or think that its wrong it will actively trigger panic, PTSD, anxiety and paranoia. If you think of them as spirits and your society values them its not a big deal, sometimes even possible helpful?
  - interesting_att 11y ago
    It seems intuitive to me. People who often do psychedelic drugs routinely state that 'resisting' the experience often leads to temporary mental distress.
benbreen 11y ago
Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparable to Alzheimers or even forms of brain damage or post-stroke states than other mental illnesses I've encountered - it's not so much a visionary state as it is a crippling disability. Really grim stuff, and I suspect that many people who glamorize it don't have firsthand experience with the destruction it can cause. To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" Uncle Tungsten. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I guess it hit a little too close to home for him.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- api 11y ago
  > What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.
  - joe_the_user 11y ago
    Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive stress, stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness. That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.
    - Mz 11y ago
      As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head" /technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b) how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."
      - mercer 11y ago
        Indeed! I've been able to compare friends with similar issues either deal with them as a problem to fix or suppress (therapy, medication, etc.), or as a 'weird, but functional' state to 'live with'. The latter, assuming they were functional enough and assuming they found a place, social group and general environment where their 'issues' were accepted, always were much better off. That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment' and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy with their issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'. It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake. (Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually counteract my problems')
mtdewcmu 11y ago
It's doubtful that schizophrenia is all nurture, but it seems conceivable that coercive circumstances could aggravate a case of schizophrenia, taking a subclinical case and making it floridly symptomatic. Coercion could possibly tip the scales into psychosis.
- Mz 11y ago
  From what I gather, it is not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get better, be sent home to their effed up family and promptly get worse again. My life experience strongly biases me towards believing that how it gets handled absolutely makes a difference ("it" = any mental health issue).
  - harryjo 11y ago
    It's also not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get worse, get over-medicated and locked up.
hoorayimhelping 11y ago
>I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art Makes me think of Wesley Willis [1] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found the only way he could manage it was by making music. Just such a sad and shitty disease. 1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis
DanBC 11y ago
> and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art ...or create an OS?

by api 11y ago

dikdik 11y ago

There's some really interesting research out there on schizophrenia. "Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrm...

taurath 11y ago
The implications are huge - if you are more prone to actively resist or think that its wrong it will actively trigger panic, PTSD, anxiety and paranoia. If you think of them as spirits and your society values them its not a big deal, sometimes even possible helpful?
- interesting_att 11y ago
  It seems intuitive to me. People who often do psychedelic drugs routinely state that 'resisting' the experience often leads to temporary mental distress.

benbreen 11y ago

Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparable to Alzheimers or even forms of brain damage or post-stroke states than other mental illnesses I've encountered - it's not so much a visionary state as it is a crippling disability. Really grim stuff, and I suspect that many people who glamorize it don't have firsthand experience with the destruction it can cause. To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" Uncle Tungsten. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I guess it hit a little too close to home for him.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
api 11y ago
> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive stress, stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness. That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.
  - Mz 11y ago
    As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head" /technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b) how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."
    - mercer 11y ago
      Indeed! I've been able to compare friends with similar issues either deal with them as a problem to fix or suppress (therapy, medication, etc.), or as a 'weird, but functional' state to 'live with'. The latter, assuming they were functional enough and assuming they found a place, social group and general environment where their 'issues' were accepted, always were much better off. That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment' and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy with their issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'. It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake. (Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually counteract my problems')

mtdewcmu 11y ago

It's doubtful that schizophrenia is all nurture, but it seems conceivable that coercive circumstances could aggravate a case of schizophrenia, taking a subclinical case and making it floridly symptomatic. Coercion could possibly tip the scales into psychosis.

Mz 11y ago
From what I gather, it is not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get better, be sent home to their effed up family and promptly get worse again. My life experience strongly biases me towards believing that how it gets handled absolutely makes a difference ("it" = any mental health issue).
- harryjo 11y ago
  It's also not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get worse, get over-medicated and locked up.

hoorayimhelping 11y ago

>I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art Makes me think of Wesley Willis [1] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found the only way he could manage it was by making music. Just such a sad and shitty disease. 1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis

DanBC 11y ago

> and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art ...or create an OS?