5 ms·

Ive lost my mind before. I had a manic episode, my first and only one. Felt immense euphoria. Saw incredible detail like rainbow diffraction of water from the s

Ive lost my mind before. I had a manic episode, my first and only one. Felt immense euphoria. Saw incredible detail like rainbow diffraction of water from the sink faucet. I thought I was Jesus and there were only 2 forces in the world, pushes and pulls. Gravity aka dark light pulls. Light pushes (radiation pressure.) I felt enlightened and had an altercation with the police who ended up beating the living shit out of me causing 3 herniated discs and TMJ that cause me agony and chronic pain daily. I have to take opiates to deal with the pain - otherwise I would be unable to have an active life. This guy didn't experience what happens in most mental breakdowns. If you can get yourself to the doctor you have truly not lost your mind. But its a cute story. Keep downvoting me for posting the hard truth. Real discourse...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lardo 9y ago
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping
- safek 9y ago
  Since you posted the link, can you please share why you think gatekeeping in the sense sketched by those examples is necessarily a mistaken thing?
psyc 9y ago
I too had a manic episode, attained enlightenment, and then caught a beat-down from a police officer. The documentary "Emerging Proud" premiered today, and is relevant.
- samatman 9y ago
  Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times...
- goldenkey 9y ago
  I'll have to take a look at the documentary. Sorry that had to happen to you also. Guess we are brothers in arms. Thanks for sharing.
sha666sum 9y ago
> This guy didn't experience what happens in most mental breakdowns. Your case is really not what I would call "most mental breakdowns" and it's unfair to belittle someone else's issues because they don't match up to yours. Mental issues are an everyday reality for millions of people, and by their very nature might mean the world to those suffering from it while seeming insignificant to everyone else. You don't need to emphasize the severity your own experience, feeling shit is not a competition.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  You're taking things out of context. If you know to get to your doctor, you haven't "lost your mind." That's what I said. And it makes perfect sense.
xkcd-sucks 9y ago
“When you are crazy you [had better] learn to keep quiet.” ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
kranitz 9y ago
That sounds horrible, and much worse than my experience with "losing it". I had a medication-induced hypomanic episode. I stopped eating and sleeping for three days, but never felt tired. I was paranoid, severely agitated and would fly into a rage over small things. I also had what are called "ideas of reference". I thought ordinary things I encountered were placed there specifically for me. The solution was worse. I was put on risperidone to halt the episode. It was a total 180, in a bad way. I felt stupefied and sluggish. I couldn't put two thoughts together most of the day. I ate everything, everything; once to the point of vomiting. I had extremely vivid and bizarre nightmares nightly. It was a Catch-22 situation. I needed the antidepressants to battle winter depression, but SSRIs were the only ones that worked. However, those have a well-known side effect of triggering mania in people (and in my case, for sure). Happy ending is that I moved to the tropics and haven't had to take any medication and have had no relapses since the move.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Yeah those zombie antipsychotics are terrible. Whatever they fix is not worth the total anhedonia they cause. They can also cause severe liver damage. Glad you found a way to cure your ailment.
ebiester 9y ago
He lost it in a different way than you lost it, but it doesn't mean he didn't lose it.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  He went to a doctor. He by very definition, did not "lose his mind" considering he had enough of his faculties to goto the doctor.
abraves10001 9y ago
I don't think "[losing] my mind" has a very specific medical definition, I'm not sure how or why you are attempting to define it so narrowly.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Having a psychotic break is one facet of mental illness but it's not universal to all people who struggle with being non-neurotypical. And it's almost always possible to call upon a more extreme and more harrowing example to overtop another, but it's not worth it. What is served by diminishing the suffering and struggle of others? What is served by trying to sort hardship on a scale? It's not a competition or a race. There's no advantage to trying to prevent wider acceptance of the commonality of mental illness nor to trying to block compassion towards others who are just trying to figure out how to live their lives.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Anyone can have a psychotic break. Has nothing to do with "nuerotypical" or any of that jazz. All I was saying, was his "loss of mind" was cute. Because he got himself to a doc.
safek 9y ago
I'm disappointed by the downvotes this person is getting. I have a close friend who went through a manic episode, and can imagine how "cute" stories like this might seem. As an observer, the most alarming thing to me about this whole "raising awareness of mental illness" movement is that it's another judgment-forbidden sort of "every subjective experience is equal" movement. It's gone mainstream, too, in the usual sickening, missing-the-point way; you now have neurotypical college students with essentially easy lives drawing posters and holding fundraisers. It's not surprising people with authentic mental illnesses are rolling their eyes. The downvotes this person is getting are a symptom of exactly this problem. "How can this person belittle someone else's illness?" In other words, everyone's illness is equally important. We've got to be diverse and inclusive. Never mind that some cases of mental illness are actually more severe than others. If everyone's entitled to their own perspective and experience, isn't this person entitled to theirs? Why downvote that? Because it doesn't fit into the modern mental-health-awareness agenda? I think it's important that instead of lazily saying "everyone's suffering is a problem," we discern between degrees of suffering. Partly because perspective matters, but also because being told your problems are non-problems compared to someone else's is a helpful thing. The truth is, most people's problems are to some extent self-inflicted/self-created, and it's never a bad time to examine the size of that extent.
- re 9y ago
  > If everyone's entitled to their own perspective and experience, isn't this person entitled to theirs? The downvotes (not mine) aren't for their experience, they're for the dismissiveness. It's like the paradox of tolerance; you shouldn't be surprised if people don't support your viewpoint about not supporting other viewpoints. > Because it doesn't fit into the modern mental-health-awareness agenda? Because it doesn't actual contribute anything substantive; it invalidates the author's experience seemly just to make a point that the author already acknowledged ("It seemed the only real difference between us was that I knew something was wrong") > being told your problems are non-problems compared to someone else's is a helpful thing How so? Far more often, people tell others that their problems are non-problems in an attempt to shut them up, not to help them. What actual value comes from attempting to precisely determine who has it worst? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
1. I'm sorry you've had to go through this. Really, I am. 2. This was Your mental break. Folks with other diseases and issues have other ways of breaking down. Some folks can get to the doctor because the fear goes a different direction, and the doctor is a safe spot. Please don't discount other's troubles because they don't match your experience. Yours could have easily been a suicide attempt or something like that as well - my ex did so to try to silence the voices. His paranoia made it difficult to seek help until he got help, but not everyone has this.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Thank you. However, suicide is a totally different beast than manic/depressive episodes. People who try to commit suicide have something extremely wrong with them in a far different way than standard mental delusions. It's good that he got help.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lardo 9y ago

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping

safek 9y ago
Since you posted the link, can you please share why you think gatekeeping in the sense sketched by those examples is necessarily a mistaken thing?

psyc 9y ago

I too had a manic episode, attained enlightenment, and then caught a beat-down from a police officer. The documentary "Emerging Proud" premiered today, and is relevant.

samatman 9y ago
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times...
goldenkey 9y ago
I'll have to take a look at the documentary. Sorry that had to happen to you also. Guess we are brothers in arms. Thanks for sharing.

sha666sum 9y ago

> This guy didn't experience what happens in most mental breakdowns. Your case is really not what I would call "most mental breakdowns" and it's unfair to belittle someone else's issues because they don't match up to yours. Mental issues are an everyday reality for millions of people, and by their very nature might mean the world to those suffering from it while seeming insignificant to everyone else. You don't need to emphasize the severity your own experience, feeling shit is not a competition.

goldenkey 9y ago
You're taking things out of context. If you know to get to your doctor, you haven't "lost your mind." That's what I said. And it makes perfect sense.

xkcd-sucks 9y ago

“When you are crazy you [had better] learn to keep quiet.” ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

kranitz 9y ago

That sounds horrible, and much worse than my experience with "losing it". I had a medication-induced hypomanic episode. I stopped eating and sleeping for three days, but never felt tired. I was paranoid, severely agitated and would fly into a rage over small things. I also had what are called "ideas of reference". I thought ordinary things I encountered were placed there specifically for me. The solution was worse. I was put on risperidone to halt the episode. It was a total 180, in a bad way. I felt stupefied and sluggish. I couldn't put two thoughts together most of the day. I ate everything, everything; once to the point of vomiting. I had extremely vivid and bizarre nightmares nightly. It was a Catch-22 situation. I needed the antidepressants to battle winter depression, but SSRIs were the only ones that worked. However, those have a well-known side effect of triggering mania in people (and in my case, for sure). Happy ending is that I moved to the tropics and haven't had to take any medication and have had no relapses since the move.

goldenkey 9y ago
Yeah those zombie antipsychotics are terrible. Whatever they fix is not worth the total anhedonia they cause. They can also cause severe liver damage. Glad you found a way to cure your ailment.

ebiester 9y ago

He lost it in a different way than you lost it, but it doesn't mean he didn't lose it.

goldenkey 9y ago
He went to a doctor. He by very definition, did not "lose his mind" considering he had enough of his faculties to goto the doctor.

abraves10001 9y ago

I don't think "[losing] my mind" has a very specific medical definition, I'm not sure how or why you are attempting to define it so narrowly.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Having a psychotic break is one facet of mental illness but it's not universal to all people who struggle with being non-neurotypical. And it's almost always possible to call upon a more extreme and more harrowing example to overtop another, but it's not worth it. What is served by diminishing the suffering and struggle of others? What is served by trying to sort hardship on a scale? It's not a competition or a race. There's no advantage to trying to prevent wider acceptance of the commonality of mental illness nor to trying to block compassion towards others who are just trying to figure out how to live their lives.

goldenkey 9y ago
Anyone can have a psychotic break. Has nothing to do with "nuerotypical" or any of that jazz. All I was saying, was his "loss of mind" was cute. Because he got himself to a doc.

safek 9y ago

I'm disappointed by the downvotes this person is getting. I have a close friend who went through a manic episode, and can imagine how "cute" stories like this might seem. As an observer, the most alarming thing to me about this whole "raising awareness of mental illness" movement is that it's another judgment-forbidden sort of "every subjective experience is equal" movement. It's gone mainstream, too, in the usual sickening, missing-the-point way; you now have neurotypical college students with essentially easy lives drawing posters and holding fundraisers. It's not surprising people with authentic mental illnesses are rolling their eyes. The downvotes this person is getting are a symptom of exactly this problem. "How can this person belittle someone else's illness?" In other words, everyone's illness is equally important. We've got to be diverse and inclusive. Never mind that some cases of mental illness are actually more severe than others. If everyone's entitled to their own perspective and experience, isn't this person entitled to theirs? Why downvote that? Because it doesn't fit into the modern mental-health-awareness agenda? I think it's important that instead of lazily saying "everyone's suffering is a problem," we discern between degrees of suffering. Partly because perspective matters, but also because being told your problems are non-problems compared to someone else's is a helpful thing. The truth is, most people's problems are to some extent self-inflicted/self-created, and it's never a bad time to examine the size of that extent.

re 9y ago
> If everyone's entitled to their own perspective and experience, isn't this person entitled to theirs? The downvotes (not mine) aren't for their experience, they're for the dismissiveness. It's like the paradox of tolerance; you shouldn't be surprised if people don't support your viewpoint about not supporting other viewpoints. > Because it doesn't fit into the modern mental-health-awareness agenda? Because it doesn't actual contribute anything substantive; it invalidates the author's experience seemly just to make a point that the author already acknowledged ("It seemed the only real difference between us was that I knew something was wrong") > being told your problems are non-problems compared to someone else's is a helpful thing How so? Far more often, people tell others that their problems are non-problems in an attempt to shut them up, not to help them. What actual value comes from attempting to precisely determine who has it worst? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

1. I'm sorry you've had to go through this. Really, I am. 2. This was Your mental break. Folks with other diseases and issues have other ways of breaking down. Some folks can get to the doctor because the fear goes a different direction, and the doctor is a safe spot. Please don't discount other's troubles because they don't match your experience. Yours could have easily been a suicide attempt or something like that as well - my ex did so to try to silence the voices. His paranoia made it difficult to seek help until he got help, but not everyone has this.

goldenkey 9y ago
Thank you. However, suicide is a totally different beast than manic/depressive episodes. People who try to commit suicide have something extremely wrong with them in a far different way than standard mental delusions. It's good that he got help.