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I actually have a full hypothesis on the connection between trauma, mental illness and psychosis. I think it's possible, let's say that the spiritual hypothesi
by kranke155 2y ago
I actually have a full hypothesis on the connection between trauma, mental illness and psychosis.
I think it's possible, let's say that the spiritual hypothesis is true and I took in a spiritual being. The Shaman's description was that I am already "open" from bipolar, and I was "too open" after I took LSD, letting a walk-in sneak inside.
I have a lot of trauma, and I mean serious abuse, coming in from childhood. That I believe is correlated with me having bipolar.
So my idea is as follows - we know that the edges of mental illness like mine can be caused by trauma, often times because the mind is "protecting you" from the abuse in some extreme way that leads eventually to mental illness. In a way, the mind is running away from the traumatic event, it for instance often erases the trauma years from memory (something that's happened to me). So the mind is protecting you by removing you from reality.
The thing is - we say the mind is removing you and running away but to where?
My perception now is the mind "escapes" into the other world. The spiritual, mushroom, LSD world we perceive and learn from when under psychedelics. That means people with mental illness, like me, get to have psychedelic experiences naturally (my manic episodes pretty much match descriptions of LSD trips, and they don't go away, so I can stay in them for a week+). That means our mind, the mind of those heavily traumatized, is already "in between" worlds.
Having your foot in the other world, the Psilocybin-psychedelic-spiritual world, means you're protected somehow. Somehow, it actually works. Your mind knows what it's doing. Your mind is able to enter a psychedelic or latent psychedelic state to protect itself from the real world being too dark, too grim, and too horrible to think about/remember. In one hand, you could say it explains bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. if the mind is just protecting itself from true horror.
"Normal" people, or neuronormal people, who haven't experienced a lot of trauma, then find it immensely therapeutic to experience the Psilocybin / psychedelic / spiritual world for a few moments, thanks to the chemical changes of taking LSD or your drug of choice. And then they came back.
What happened to deeply traumatized people through trauma happens to neuronormal folks artificially through the introduction of a chemical change. But that chemical change happens naturally in heavily traumatized people, who had to use the same mechanisms to escape reality when they were young, thus "breaking their brain" a bit under conventional psychology. So it could be the mind knows enough to break into a psychedelic state for self protection, which is fascinating to think about!
But when someone like ME takes psychedelics however, someone loaded with trauma, we go too far and we don't come back quite the same. I suspect that explains why some people benefit immensely from LSD and Psilocybin for trauma, coming back healed, and why some people like me, it will just induce a psychotic episode.
Basically regular people get to do a shallow visit to the psychedelic-spiritual world, while people with heavy trauma go WAY TOO DEEP and lose themselves. That's what we call a psychotic episode.
That's because people with trauma are already one foot in the psychedelic world, or they have to go way too deep to find the origins of their trauma, and they "break". The sad reality is that shallow trauma is easier to treat, even in the psychedelic state, while deep trauma might just lead to a psychotic episode.
I have no idea whether this holds up or not, it's been something I think about ever since that experience.
- yieldcrv 2y agoHow long ago was your trip? My first two years after a hero LSD trip had me trying to parse the extended reality. I don’t have BPD or any voices so my experience is more recreational than yours. Now I just appreciate it without a need for explanation. I’m open to more research on the matter, but not holding my breath or speculating on it. I just like that so many other people have experienced it, and that I can tell they have.
- kranke155 2y agoWhich trip? So my first bipolar psychotic episode (or psychedelic episode, which I prefer) was in 2017. January February. Then the LSD trip was in August 2023. Last year. It was funny because I went to that festival really wanting to try psychedelics in some safe way if I found out how. I always felt like people who had done them and had good trips seemed to know something I really wanted to know, if that makes sense? I think Ram Dass described it well. Some people after LSD look like they “get it”, and if you haven’t done it you wonder what the heck “it” is! So the fact that I got a low dose of LSD through kissing someone, it was like the universe was teasing me and trying to both enlighten me and give me some advice - “here’s how it feels” and “it’s really dangerous for you”. It was a beautiful, transcendent and violent experience.
- yieldcrv 2y ago> August 2023 Was this before or after the mud ;) Yeah there is something to appreciate about the journey
- kranke155 2y agoAfter I went to the mud everyday brother I’ve never felt so cleansed (I’m assuming we are talking about a certain event that happens every 2 years in southern Europe!)
- ddorian43 2y agoYour theory doesn't support the case of people with bipolar/schizophrenia psychosis with no trauma.