11 ms·

I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a

I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad was adopted. I do know that she was "microdosing" and macro-dosing hallucinogens for years. Mostly acid and shrooms as far as I know. She followed the band Phish around with a group of friends. I can't imagine most of those shows were sober. We've also seen a few incidents of paranoia when she was under the influence of drugs/alcohol going back decades. So it feels like this was always there in some form, but maybe the estrogen was holding it back before menopause hit. I read an article about women who get schizophrenia after menopause that suggested this could be the case. Anyway, whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside. We don't know that all of her hallucinogen use over the years contributed to this. But it's certainly a possibility.

winrid 1y ago
If you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia it's starting to seem like drugs that seem harmless like marijuana (specifically THC?) can definitely bring it out. At least, that's what seemed to happen to my mother and another friend.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  I also suspect people with schizophrenia that haven't yet started showing symptoms are more likely to take drugs.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Based on what?
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      The huge number of them who smoke cigarettes prior to their first episode - a different form of self medication. 90% of people with it smoke and there is research indicating a greater likelhood prior to first episode. I’ll have to look up those numbers though. (Edit, seems about 60% at a time when the average US population was at 20%)
      - hopelite 1y ago
        [flagged]
        heisenbit 1y ago
        Could there be a similar cliff function for alcohol and psychoactive drugs iff used in moderation which may confer to a society an advantage to the detriment of individual health. If used above a limit things fall of a cliff. Abstinence however may also be sub-optimal even if best for any individual.
        heavyset_go 1y ago
        Recently doctors and research show that there is no amount of alcohol that is "healthy" to drink.
        cjbgkagh 1y ago
        I think the main problem is conflation and averaging out experiences to the general population. There are distinct subsets of people who react to things very differently to the others and the focus should be on first finding out if someone is in a particular group. I do a lot of DIY psychopharmacology, mostly modafinil and amitriptyline, in a successful effort to reduce ME/CFS/hEDS related brain fog. I’ve given modafinil to normal people and they tend not to notice any effects where for me it’s a super strong drug that’ll keep me wired unless I take other drugs to calm down. I think quite a large subset of human behavior is seeking self medication for genetic anxiety disorders and I think in knowing the mechanisms people can avoid stumbling around in the dark and go directly towards things that work.
- tony69 1y ago
  In Europe this (some rec drugs bring out latent schizophrenia) is taught in med school as a “known fact” (source: psychiatrist friend) so it’s well beyond “starting to seem”
  - el_benhameen 1y ago
    This was treated as pretty much a fact when I took a class on psychological disorders in the US circa 2007, too.
    - winrid 1y ago
      Ah okay, good to know!
    - kurthr 1y ago
      Marijuana was known to do this in 1936. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kg0sK-dY98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kg0sK-dY98
    - gwbas1c 1y ago
      This was discovered pretty much early on when LSD was first discovered. One of the early (cough) "uses" for LSD was for medical professionals to simulate what some patients experience. (At least that's what I remember from "LSD, My Problem Child" by Albert Hoffman. Granted, it's been ~30 years since I read it.
  - anthk 1y ago
    And at High School too on talks about drugs; the marijuana->schizophrenia link it's widely known.
    - morkalork 1y ago
      Unfortunately it's hammered on so hard, and without nuance, that kids will discard it with the other half-truths that are told. And also the tendency for families to cover up and hide any "shameful" facts like uncle Jim having spent some time in a facility, that kids might not know at all that there's a family history.
- crtified 1y ago
  I wonder if alcohol is one of the seemingly harmless drugs whose abuse catalyzes such conditions in susceptible people. Because, if so, then alcohol's ubiquity in society would imply that it is probably responsible (in the sense that substances are responsible) for most such conversions.
  - jamal-kumar 1y ago
    It's kind of worse with alcohol because the psychosis associated with that as an exacerbating factor is more related to alcoholic encephalopathy, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome etc... much of which can be brought on with self medicating with alcohol. Definitely a component but more like psychosis and mania drive you to drink because these experiences are awful more than a causative factor that's been proven https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459134/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459134/
  - FollowingTheDao 1y ago
    The aldehydes that are produced from drinking alcohol heighten the risk for schizophrenia if you carry certain genetics. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26941382/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26941382/
    - Melatonic 1y ago
      Interesting - we've known these are very bad for you for years but I had not heard of a direct link
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    Even peculiarly stressful life events can trigger onset
  - amy214 1y ago
    Complicated interaction. Schizos may take alcohol or cigarettes to calm down, a form of self medication. On the long term these may worsen, in the immediate they help. Why do you think they smoke a lot?!? To treat. If you smoke or drink, what do you do after a tough day - smoke or drink, to relax, feels great. Schizos may have a tough day , but not from external stimuli, but from internal stimuli
- jajko 1y ago
  One of my ex' father triggered a lifelong episode of schyzophrenia by excessive drinking during mandatory military service around age 18-19. So i'd say there are number of triggers
  - Loughla 1y ago
    Alternate theory; schizophrenia tends to manifest in men between 18 and 22. The drinking was him self medicating because of symptoms he was experiencing?
    - reactordev 1y ago
      Final thesis: schizophrenia was starting to manifest and the drinking was him self medicating, not knowing it was making the schizophrenia worse and causing further harm.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  Or perhaps people predisposed to schizophrenia are more likely to seek out drugs. Something like 9 in 10 schizophrenics smoke cigarettes too, is schizophrenia caused by nicotine or do schizophrenics smoke because they’re predisposed to do so? I find it hard to believe that so many schizophrenics smoke cigarettes and are not also predisposed towards using other drugs. I think blindly accepting the statement ‘drugs can cause schizophrenia’ is harmful because we don’t actually know if the drugs trigger it or if the disorder makes them seek out drugs.
  - treyd 1y ago
    Iirc, there's some evidence that suggests that nicotine helps with the symptoms, so it's self-medicating.
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    Some drugs have been known to activate schizophrenia; particularly psychedelics like LSD. However, in order for this to happen, one likely already needs to have a genetic predisposition. I use LSD about once every week or two and I haven't noticed any schizophrenia yet, so it is very much a YMMV.
- asveikau 1y ago
  It's important to know that the correlation can have some other cause. Like that people with predisposition to schizophrenia may seek out drugs. Keep in mind also the typical onset for schizophrenia is teenage years or early 20s in men, and is often later, up to early 30s in women. These are years you might experiment with drugs.
- Mars008 1y ago
  > harmless like marijuana You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons...
  - Mars008 1y ago
    > You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons... Two downvotes so far. Any explanation? Can't please everybody, especially Kamala voters. But my advice: if you value your cognitive abilities, blood vessels health, and I'm sure it's snowballing, stay away from any form of marijuana.
comrade1234 1y ago
You don't develop schizophrenia in your 50s. It sounds like you track her behavior and habits quite closely?
- suzzer99 1y ago
  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/schizophrenia-under-diagnosed-women https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/schizophr... https://archive.ph/zT99C https://archive.ph/zT99C > But when the protective hormone is withdrawn during menopause, some who avoided earlier psychosis get a later onset. Having a first experience after age 40 is uncommon, but it may include up to 15 percent of the women with schizophrenia—twice the percentage of men who have schizophrenia onset after age 40.
- superb_dev 1y ago
  > It sounds like you track her behavior and habits quite closely? No it doesn’t. It sounds like they’re really concerned about a loved one who went off the deep end.
e1ghtSpace 1y ago
You should get her to watch one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61Hup6hWWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61Hup6hWWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSWS6rNv0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSWS6rNv0I
- abbadadda 1y ago
  why?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - e1ghtSpace 1y ago
    one of the cards in the first video looks like it says "the game" but then I went back to read it and it actually says "the care", so I though it might help.
krstffr 1y ago
My friend had a very similar episode with a psychosis, but turned out to be bipolar, not schizophrenic. Sounds very similar though! He was smoking a lot of weed leading up to and during the psychosis. Ended up in psychiatric ward for a month, which was followed by a couple of years of depression/introspection/therapy, but is now doing great with lithium.
- woodpanel 1y ago
  It’s why I profoundly dislike the line of thinking that easier access to drugs means social progress. It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable.
  - adaptbrian 1y ago
    I'm all for getting illicit drug users out of jail, that's social progress. There needs to be more education and attempt at shoring up mental health in the public sector and not just kicking everyone into a room and calling it a day, like the problem is solved.
  - anticorporate 1y ago
    > It’s why I profoundly dislike the line of thinking that easier access to drugs means social progress. While that framing might change the aperture for people to support decriminalization efforts, "helping people who have addiction means social progress" is the greater good here. Unfortunately, at least from a USian perspective, we only got so far as the decriminalizing part, and we did it while actually cutting a lot of the social services, health care access, and safety net that actually help people with addiction function in society. I had a parent with schizophrenia. I can tell you what a privilege it is to have my cannabis use be the primary risk factor I have to worry about, and not the financial stress and eventual homelessness, untreated health issues, and lack of mental health support my father faced.
  - tpm 1y ago
    > It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable. And what about those who have a "direct problem of functioning" (like anxiety, depression, ptsd, whatever) and get no real help from the medical profession, but do get help from the drugs?
tim333 1y ago
I have more friends mucked up by LSD like drugs than any other type - at any rate three of them and I don't have much in the way of junkie of alcoholic friends. I say LSD like as they all took other stuff. From my n=3 data I'd say if you do it more than once a week for more than two years you have a good chance of ending up like your friend.
- MarcelOlsz 1y ago
  It's called "getting fried". Know many people that fried themselves doing that stuff recreationally every weekend. Good rule of thumb is if they can't hold their alcohol they won't be able to hold their psychs.
giantg2 1y ago
Of course there's a downside. It's a tale as old as time. Some new miracle cure comes on the scene and people promote it without relaying the risks. You see this with mushrooms, pot, etc going back to snake oil and silphium. I've never looked into it, but I would bet that there are no medications that exist that don't have some sort of side effect or increase in risk of some negative outcome. So if someone is pushing a cure/medicine its best to assume there is risk, even if we don't yet know the risk.
- lotyrin 1y ago
  As opposed to what belief? That it is possible for there to be medical interventions or substances that are entirely risk-free regardless of your individual circumstances, potentially hidden allergies, or other known or unknown contraindications? Was anyone ever under such an impression?
  - giantg2 1y ago
    "Was anyone ever under such an impression?" If you've ever listened to some of people pushing or debating psychedelics, or natural remedies, or even "totally safe" vaccines, then it should be readily apparent.
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      Vaccines are a bit of a different can of worms in that first generally, they’re well-studied and the risks are reasonably well known, and second the impact isn’t solely personal — you’re trading off in most cases a small risk for the betterment of society — maintaining herd immunity, reducing capacity for spreading, etc depending on vaccine. The lives of many others can be negatively impacted, in some cases fatally, by one’s personal choice to not partake. There’s a certain amount of social responsibility involved. Psychoactives and homeopathy have plenty of capacity to be harmful and aren’t necessarily anywhere near as well studied, but at least their effects are more bounded to the individual. (This does not however justify pushing them blindly.)
      - 1y ago
andai 1y ago
Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established. (Not to condemn psychedelics, I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the "it's totally harmless" direction.) Could you elaborate on The Game? What did she say about this?
- dsego 1y ago
  As someone who has a person with psychosis in my family, I don't think you can find any interesting insights from the details of their delusions. It's like dissecting dreams or AI slop, there is no hidden meaning behind it. Usually best not to discuss it.
- kayodelycaon 1y ago
  As someone who has had psychotic breaks, you aren’t going to learn anything from what was going on in their head.
  - suzzer99 1y ago
    100% agree with this. It's not rational in any way. From the period of time when she was still talking to us at least, there's no reasoning with it.
- dialup_sounds 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_referen...
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  > Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established. It's really fascinating to read this, because Alex Berenson has been beating this drum for a while now and he claims the psychosis risk has been downplayed or even denied. It's easy to find evidence supporting his take because if you just search Google for [cannabis legalization psychosis] you get a big pile of papers like this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111 "Abstract: Psychosis is a hypothesized consequence of cannabis use. Legalization of cannabis could therefore be associated with an increase in rates of health care utilization for psychosis [...] states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses" That's from 2023. So apparently it's not that well established? Or if it's well established, there's a lot of researchers denying it.
iamnotagenius 1y ago
> She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Might be depersonalization. I had suffered from it in my twenties; everything feels fake, although you know it is not.
- ChainnChompp 1y ago
  Derealization, I believe - not depersonalization? Believing everything around you to be made up - perhaps even by yourself in some cases. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, just trying to make sure I have the terminology correct
  - iamnotagenius 1y ago
    [dead]
  - hshshshshsh 1y ago
    So brain realizes it's completely making up the reality on fly?
    - mpnsk1 1y ago
      It is more like a feeling. For example when you get very aroused your pupils dilate. Your brain fixes this for you so you don't feel like more light is hitting your retina even though it does. When you are high on psychedelics you can experience this though as the world getting literally brighter and darker with your mood. Feels like you are shaping reality with your feelings? As soon as the drugs wear off the effect is gone but you still have the memory that it happened. Weirdly enough, the same way dreams can feel more like an episodic story or more like an immediate experience, that unfiltered dreamlike experience feels more real than the rest of the trip. Maybe because it literally is closer to reality because it was less bring-filtered, or maybe because the contrast between this and the hallucinations of wallpaper shifting before your eyes put the search for "real reality" into your head in the first place, now the concept of more or less reality is in your brain as an experiential concept. Now you have the memory of having struggled for real perception and achieving it. Like in inception: you fell into a dream, you are trapped for longer than you anticipated and don't like it and want to wake up. Weeks later when you have a deja vu it triggers the uncomfortable feeling that your mind is playing tricks on you. Are you dreaming now? Though this is not schizophrenic. From what I was told from someone who had schizophrenic episodes it makes you completely unable to tell apart illusions from reality. Also I guess there are degrees to it.
prophesi 1y ago
I believe since the 80's it's been well-established that people with a predisposition to schizophrenia have a greater risk to break out into psychosis when taking hallucinogenics. Even with today's clinical trials, they will exclude those with a family history of psychosis/schizophrenia.
absurdo 1y ago
[flagged]
- ryanjshaw 1y ago
  Plenty of intelligent people entertain this possibility, as well as many other possibilities, around how our world works. If they then become obsessed with the idea being a fact and refuse to even consider updating their mental model when presented with evidence contradicting it then they have developed a fixed belief. When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief. When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem. Or do you think a mind is a perfect thing that can never be ill?
  - skissane 1y ago
    > When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief. > When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem. But why does the issue of whether it is “common among their culture” matter? A person unable to function due to a non-bizarre fixed belief has just as big a problem as a person unable to function due to a bizarre fixed belief, if we assume the same degree of functional impairment in each case. The question of whether the belief is “bizarre” seems irrelevant, and possibly even encoding cultural prejudice
    - ksenzee 1y ago
      “Common among their culture” is a quick way of determining whether lots of other people are able to hold this belief and function fine. It also suggests an origin for the belief that isn’t unique to the person. You can’t go around saying “ah this person’s problem is they believe in angels” if the person’s belief in angels is simply part of their religion or culture. “But they believe in imaginary beings” is not a helpful observation in that context.
photochemsyn 1y ago
People who reject in-group socio-economic norms and isolate themselves from their previous in-group may or may not be mentally ill. If they were in one of those cults that programs their members behaviors incessantly, then it's entirely plausible that they became sane and escaped from a community of insane people. For example, I've met several people who reported the set of symptoms and behaviors you describe - but in their case, 'the game' involved the fact they came from a wealthy extended family whose entire existence revolved around hanging onto their pool of capital and ensuring some rogue family member didn't gain control of the capital, which funded all their connected lives (including this guy, who was able to travel the country and go to music shows solely because of his family-linked trust fund). The game they all played was keeping the family members that controlled the capital happy, rather than going out into the world and finding jobs, making their own money, and being self-sufficient. There's just not enough information in your post to evaluate whether the example was escaping from a cult or being indoctrinated into another cult, who is sane and who is crazy, etc.
- suzzer99 1y ago
  This isn't one of those cases. She had a career and tons of friends and now she's shunned everything. Her family lives in another state and had zero influence on her life. But we can't do anything because she still knows how to take care of herself and isn't a danger to herself or others. So it's just sad.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. Schizophrenia is not defined strictly enough that it's possible for you to be right or wrong when you say your friend has it. Here's a discussion of the change in diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV to DSM-V, which has the side effect of describing what the criteria formerly were and now are: https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/dsm-5-changes-schizophrenia-psychotic-disorders https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/dsm-5-changes-schizop... Has your friend seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(1997_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(1997_film) ?
- suzzer99 1y ago
  Yes, I agree with that. I'm just guessing because she's super paranoid of doctors. One of the downsides of being in and around the wellness community for decades. I don't know if she's seen The Game, but I do know that she's always had a deep insecurity about being the naive one in the room, being the one not in on the joke. It seems like this thing plays on your worst fears and brings them to life.
roarcher 1y ago
> whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known. It seems to me that these drugs create a feeling of having accessed great knowledge, but the "knowledge" is just whatever nonsense your brain conjures up on the fly, like a dream world that makes sense while you're asleep but whose logic falls apart the moment you wake up.
- 1propionyl 1y ago
  As someone who has gotten a lot out of psychedelics therapeutically, you are correct. Psychedelics do not in of themselves grant any insight or wisdom beyond perhaps raw experiential evidence that our senses are fallible and our perception of the world is an artifact of cognition. Past that, psychedelics are (kaleidoscopic, funhouse) mirrors. In the hands of a curious and humble person they can (in addition to being a lot of fun shared with like-minded others) be valuable therapeutic tools for approaching firmly rooted hangups, attitudes, etc. In the hands of someone like your friend, you get what you observed. Both are commonly occurring patterns, and if you know a person's character even a little well you can usually predict how they'll engage with and come out of the experience. To quote Shulgin, > The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche.
  - roarcher 1y ago
    That tracks with what I've heard about people getting genuine therapeutic benefits from it, like with PTSD. Thanks.
- suzzer99 1y ago
  Yeah the main great insight I got out of doing that stuff was to see reality from a different perspective for a while. Kind of like travelling and realizing that things you take for granted aren't the same in every culture. But I never felt like I was getting at some deeper meaning, and it wasn't something I wanted to keep doing throughout my life.
Saul1998zx 1y ago
[flagged]
fennecbutt 1y ago
That sounds so terrible. But damn it, "I just lost the game". Sigh.
nerdyadventurer 1y ago
> We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It is not just schizophrenia, any mental health condition is isolating, others cannot understand it. I have OCD,ADHD etc so I know it, that's why we prefer who have been or going through same thing than normal people.

winrid 1y ago

If you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia it's starting to seem like drugs that seem harmless like marijuana (specifically THC?) can definitely bring it out. At least, that's what seemed to happen to my mother and another friend.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
I also suspect people with schizophrenia that haven't yet started showing symptoms are more likely to take drugs.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Based on what?
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    The huge number of them who smoke cigarettes prior to their first episode - a different form of self medication. 90% of people with it smoke and there is research indicating a greater likelhood prior to first episode. I’ll have to look up those numbers though. (Edit, seems about 60% at a time when the average US population was at 20%)
    - hopelite 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - heisenbit 1y ago
        Could there be a similar cliff function for alcohol and psychoactive drugs iff used in moderation which may confer to a society an advantage to the detriment of individual health. If used above a limit things fall of a cliff. Abstinence however may also be sub-optimal even if best for any individual.
        heavyset_go 1y ago
        Recently doctors and research show that there is no amount of alcohol that is "healthy" to drink.
      - cjbgkagh 1y ago
        I think the main problem is conflation and averaging out experiences to the general population. There are distinct subsets of people who react to things very differently to the others and the focus should be on first finding out if someone is in a particular group. I do a lot of DIY psychopharmacology, mostly modafinil and amitriptyline, in a successful effort to reduce ME/CFS/hEDS related brain fog. I’ve given modafinil to normal people and they tend not to notice any effects where for me it’s a super strong drug that’ll keep me wired unless I take other drugs to calm down. I think quite a large subset of human behavior is seeking self medication for genetic anxiety disorders and I think in knowing the mechanisms people can avoid stumbling around in the dark and go directly towards things that work.
tony69 1y ago
In Europe this (some rec drugs bring out latent schizophrenia) is taught in med school as a “known fact” (source: psychiatrist friend) so it’s well beyond “starting to seem”
- el_benhameen 1y ago
  This was treated as pretty much a fact when I took a class on psychological disorders in the US circa 2007, too.
  - winrid 1y ago
    Ah okay, good to know!
  - kurthr 1y ago
    Marijuana was known to do this in 1936. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kg0sK-dY98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kg0sK-dY98
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    This was discovered pretty much early on when LSD was first discovered. One of the early (cough) "uses" for LSD was for medical professionals to simulate what some patients experience. (At least that's what I remember from "LSD, My Problem Child" by Albert Hoffman. Granted, it's been ~30 years since I read it.
- anthk 1y ago
  And at High School too on talks about drugs; the marijuana->schizophrenia link it's widely known.
  - morkalork 1y ago
    Unfortunately it's hammered on so hard, and without nuance, that kids will discard it with the other half-truths that are told. And also the tendency for families to cover up and hide any "shameful" facts like uncle Jim having spent some time in a facility, that kids might not know at all that there's a family history.
crtified 1y ago
I wonder if alcohol is one of the seemingly harmless drugs whose abuse catalyzes such conditions in susceptible people. Because, if so, then alcohol's ubiquity in society would imply that it is probably responsible (in the sense that substances are responsible) for most such conversions.
- jamal-kumar 1y ago
  It's kind of worse with alcohol because the psychosis associated with that as an exacerbating factor is more related to alcoholic encephalopathy, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome etc... much of which can be brought on with self medicating with alcohol. Definitely a component but more like psychosis and mania drive you to drink because these experiences are awful more than a causative factor that's been proven https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459134/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459134/
- FollowingTheDao 1y ago
  The aldehydes that are produced from drinking alcohol heighten the risk for schizophrenia if you carry certain genetics. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26941382/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26941382/
  - Melatonic 1y ago
    Interesting - we've known these are very bad for you for years but I had not heard of a direct link
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Even peculiarly stressful life events can trigger onset
- amy214 1y ago
  Complicated interaction. Schizos may take alcohol or cigarettes to calm down, a form of self medication. On the long term these may worsen, in the immediate they help. Why do you think they smoke a lot?!? To treat. If you smoke or drink, what do you do after a tough day - smoke or drink, to relax, feels great. Schizos may have a tough day , but not from external stimuli, but from internal stimuli
jajko 1y ago
One of my ex' father triggered a lifelong episode of schyzophrenia by excessive drinking during mandatory military service around age 18-19. So i'd say there are number of triggers
- Loughla 1y ago
  Alternate theory; schizophrenia tends to manifest in men between 18 and 22. The drinking was him self medicating because of symptoms he was experiencing?
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Final thesis: schizophrenia was starting to manifest and the drinking was him self medicating, not knowing it was making the schizophrenia worse and causing further harm.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
quickthrowman 1y ago
Or perhaps people predisposed to schizophrenia are more likely to seek out drugs. Something like 9 in 10 schizophrenics smoke cigarettes too, is schizophrenia caused by nicotine or do schizophrenics smoke because they’re predisposed to do so? I find it hard to believe that so many schizophrenics smoke cigarettes and are not also predisposed towards using other drugs. I think blindly accepting the statement ‘drugs can cause schizophrenia’ is harmful because we don’t actually know if the drugs trigger it or if the disorder makes them seek out drugs.
- treyd 1y ago
  Iirc, there's some evidence that suggests that nicotine helps with the symptoms, so it's self-medicating.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  Some drugs have been known to activate schizophrenia; particularly psychedelics like LSD. However, in order for this to happen, one likely already needs to have a genetic predisposition. I use LSD about once every week or two and I haven't noticed any schizophrenia yet, so it is very much a YMMV.
asveikau 1y ago
It's important to know that the correlation can have some other cause. Like that people with predisposition to schizophrenia may seek out drugs. Keep in mind also the typical onset for schizophrenia is teenage years or early 20s in men, and is often later, up to early 30s in women. These are years you might experiment with drugs.
Mars008 1y ago
> harmless like marijuana You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons...
- Mars008 1y ago
  > You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons... Two downvotes so far. Any explanation? Can't please everybody, especially Kamala voters. But my advice: if you value your cognitive abilities, blood vessels health, and I'm sure it's snowballing, stay away from any form of marijuana.

comrade1234 1y ago

You don't develop schizophrenia in your 50s. It sounds like you track her behavior and habits quite closely?

suzzer99 1y ago
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/schizophrenia-under-diagnosed-women https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/schizophr... https://archive.ph/zT99C https://archive.ph/zT99C > But when the protective hormone is withdrawn during menopause, some who avoided earlier psychosis get a later onset. Having a first experience after age 40 is uncommon, but it may include up to 15 percent of the women with schizophrenia—twice the percentage of men who have schizophrenia onset after age 40.
superb_dev 1y ago
> It sounds like you track her behavior and habits quite closely? No it doesn’t. It sounds like they’re really concerned about a loved one who went off the deep end.

e1ghtSpace 1y ago

You should get her to watch one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61Hup6hWWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61Hup6hWWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSWS6rNv0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSWS6rNv0I

abbadadda 1y ago
why?
- deleted 1y ago
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- e1ghtSpace 1y ago
  one of the cards in the first video looks like it says "the game" but then I went back to read it and it actually says "the care", so I though it might help.

krstffr 1y ago

My friend had a very similar episode with a psychosis, but turned out to be bipolar, not schizophrenic. Sounds very similar though! He was smoking a lot of weed leading up to and during the psychosis. Ended up in psychiatric ward for a month, which was followed by a couple of years of depression/introspection/therapy, but is now doing great with lithium.

woodpanel 1y ago
It’s why I profoundly dislike the line of thinking that easier access to drugs means social progress. It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable.
- adaptbrian 1y ago
  I'm all for getting illicit drug users out of jail, that's social progress. There needs to be more education and attempt at shoring up mental health in the public sector and not just kicking everyone into a room and calling it a day, like the problem is solved.
- anticorporate 1y ago
  > It’s why I profoundly dislike the line of thinking that easier access to drugs means social progress. While that framing might change the aperture for people to support decriminalization efforts, "helping people who have addiction means social progress" is the greater good here. Unfortunately, at least from a USian perspective, we only got so far as the decriminalizing part, and we did it while actually cutting a lot of the social services, health care access, and safety net that actually help people with addiction function in society. I had a parent with schizophrenia. I can tell you what a privilege it is to have my cannabis use be the primary risk factor I have to worry about, and not the financial stress and eventual homelessness, untreated health issues, and lack of mental health support my father faced.
- tpm 1y ago
  > It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable. And what about those who have a "direct problem of functioning" (like anxiety, depression, ptsd, whatever) and get no real help from the medical profession, but do get help from the drugs?

tim333 1y ago

I have more friends mucked up by LSD like drugs than any other type - at any rate three of them and I don't have much in the way of junkie of alcoholic friends. I say LSD like as they all took other stuff. From my n=3 data I'd say if you do it more than once a week for more than two years you have a good chance of ending up like your friend.

MarcelOlsz 1y ago
It's called "getting fried". Know many people that fried themselves doing that stuff recreationally every weekend. Good rule of thumb is if they can't hold their alcohol they won't be able to hold their psychs.

giantg2 1y ago

Of course there's a downside. It's a tale as old as time. Some new miracle cure comes on the scene and people promote it without relaying the risks. You see this with mushrooms, pot, etc going back to snake oil and silphium. I've never looked into it, but I would bet that there are no medications that exist that don't have some sort of side effect or increase in risk of some negative outcome. So if someone is pushing a cure/medicine its best to assume there is risk, even if we don't yet know the risk.

lotyrin 1y ago
As opposed to what belief? That it is possible for there to be medical interventions or substances that are entirely risk-free regardless of your individual circumstances, potentially hidden allergies, or other known or unknown contraindications? Was anyone ever under such an impression?
- giantg2 1y ago
  "Was anyone ever under such an impression?" If you've ever listened to some of people pushing or debating psychedelics, or natural remedies, or even "totally safe" vaccines, then it should be readily apparent.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Vaccines are a bit of a different can of worms in that first generally, they’re well-studied and the risks are reasonably well known, and second the impact isn’t solely personal — you’re trading off in most cases a small risk for the betterment of society — maintaining herd immunity, reducing capacity for spreading, etc depending on vaccine. The lives of many others can be negatively impacted, in some cases fatally, by one’s personal choice to not partake. There’s a certain amount of social responsibility involved. Psychoactives and homeopathy have plenty of capacity to be harmful and aren’t necessarily anywhere near as well studied, but at least their effects are more bounded to the individual. (This does not however justify pushing them blindly.)
    - 1y ago

andai 1y ago

Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established. (Not to condemn psychedelics, I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the "it's totally harmless" direction.) Could you elaborate on The Game? What did she say about this?

dsego 1y ago
As someone who has a person with psychosis in my family, I don't think you can find any interesting insights from the details of their delusions. It's like dissecting dreams or AI slop, there is no hidden meaning behind it. Usually best not to discuss it.
kayodelycaon 1y ago
As someone who has had psychotic breaks, you aren’t going to learn anything from what was going on in their head.
- suzzer99 1y ago
  100% agree with this. It's not rational in any way. From the period of time when she was still talking to us at least, there's no reasoning with it.
dialup_sounds 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_referen...
mike_hearn 1y ago
> Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established. It's really fascinating to read this, because Alex Berenson has been beating this drum for a while now and he claims the psychosis risk has been downplayed or even denied. It's easy to find evidence supporting his take because if you just search Google for [cannabis legalization psychosis] you get a big pile of papers like this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111 "Abstract: Psychosis is a hypothesized consequence of cannabis use. Legalization of cannabis could therefore be associated with an increase in rates of health care utilization for psychosis [...] states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses" That's from 2023. So apparently it's not that well established? Or if it's well established, there's a lot of researchers denying it.

iamnotagenius 1y ago

> She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Might be depersonalization. I had suffered from it in my twenties; everything feels fake, although you know it is not.

ChainnChompp 1y ago
Derealization, I believe - not depersonalization? Believing everything around you to be made up - perhaps even by yourself in some cases. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, just trying to make sure I have the terminology correct
- iamnotagenius 1y ago
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- hshshshshsh 1y ago
  So brain realizes it's completely making up the reality on fly?
  - mpnsk1 1y ago
    It is more like a feeling. For example when you get very aroused your pupils dilate. Your brain fixes this for you so you don't feel like more light is hitting your retina even though it does. When you are high on psychedelics you can experience this though as the world getting literally brighter and darker with your mood. Feels like you are shaping reality with your feelings? As soon as the drugs wear off the effect is gone but you still have the memory that it happened. Weirdly enough, the same way dreams can feel more like an episodic story or more like an immediate experience, that unfiltered dreamlike experience feels more real than the rest of the trip. Maybe because it literally is closer to reality because it was less bring-filtered, or maybe because the contrast between this and the hallucinations of wallpaper shifting before your eyes put the search for "real reality" into your head in the first place, now the concept of more or less reality is in your brain as an experiential concept. Now you have the memory of having struggled for real perception and achieving it. Like in inception: you fell into a dream, you are trapped for longer than you anticipated and don't like it and want to wake up. Weeks later when you have a deja vu it triggers the uncomfortable feeling that your mind is playing tricks on you. Are you dreaming now? Though this is not schizophrenic. From what I was told from someone who had schizophrenic episodes it makes you completely unable to tell apart illusions from reality. Also I guess there are degrees to it.

prophesi 1y ago

I believe since the 80's it's been well-established that people with a predisposition to schizophrenia have a greater risk to break out into psychosis when taking hallucinogenics. Even with today's clinical trials, they will exclude those with a family history of psychosis/schizophrenia.

absurdo 1y ago

[flagged]

ryanjshaw 1y ago
Plenty of intelligent people entertain this possibility, as well as many other possibilities, around how our world works. If they then become obsessed with the idea being a fact and refuse to even consider updating their mental model when presented with evidence contradicting it then they have developed a fixed belief. When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief. When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem. Or do you think a mind is a perfect thing that can never be ill?
- skissane 1y ago
  > When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief. > When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem. But why does the issue of whether it is “common among their culture” matter? A person unable to function due to a non-bizarre fixed belief has just as big a problem as a person unable to function due to a bizarre fixed belief, if we assume the same degree of functional impairment in each case. The question of whether the belief is “bizarre” seems irrelevant, and possibly even encoding cultural prejudice
  - ksenzee 1y ago
    “Common among their culture” is a quick way of determining whether lots of other people are able to hold this belief and function fine. It also suggests an origin for the belief that isn’t unique to the person. You can’t go around saying “ah this person’s problem is they believe in angels” if the person’s belief in angels is simply part of their religion or culture. “But they believe in imaginary beings” is not a helpful observation in that context.

photochemsyn 1y ago

People who reject in-group socio-economic norms and isolate themselves from their previous in-group may or may not be mentally ill. If they were in one of those cults that programs their members behaviors incessantly, then it's entirely plausible that they became sane and escaped from a community of insane people. For example, I've met several people who reported the set of symptoms and behaviors you describe - but in their case, 'the game' involved the fact they came from a wealthy extended family whose entire existence revolved around hanging onto their pool of capital and ensuring some rogue family member didn't gain control of the capital, which funded all their connected lives (including this guy, who was able to travel the country and go to music shows solely because of his family-linked trust fund). The game they all played was keeping the family members that controlled the capital happy, rather than going out into the world and finding jobs, making their own money, and being self-sufficient. There's just not enough information in your post to evaluate whether the example was escaping from a cult or being indoctrinated into another cult, who is sane and who is crazy, etc.

suzzer99 1y ago
This isn't one of those cases. She had a career and tons of friends and now she's shunned everything. Her family lives in another state and had zero influence on her life. But we can't do anything because she still knows how to take care of herself and isn't a danger to herself or others. So it's just sad.
- deleted 1y ago
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thaumasiotes 1y ago

> I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. Schizophrenia is not defined strictly enough that it's possible for you to be right or wrong when you say your friend has it. Here's a discussion of the change in diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV to DSM-V, which has the side effect of describing what the criteria formerly were and now are: https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/dsm-5-changes-schizophrenia-psychotic-disorders https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/dsm-5-changes-schizop... Has your friend seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(1997_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(1997_film) ?

suzzer99 1y ago
Yes, I agree with that. I'm just guessing because she's super paranoid of doctors. One of the downsides of being in and around the wellness community for decades. I don't know if she's seen The Game, but I do know that she's always had a deep insecurity about being the naive one in the room, being the one not in on the joke. It seems like this thing plays on your worst fears and brings them to life.

roarcher 1y ago

> whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known. It seems to me that these drugs create a feeling of having accessed great knowledge, but the "knowledge" is just whatever nonsense your brain conjures up on the fly, like a dream world that makes sense while you're asleep but whose logic falls apart the moment you wake up.

1propionyl 1y ago
As someone who has gotten a lot out of psychedelics therapeutically, you are correct. Psychedelics do not in of themselves grant any insight or wisdom beyond perhaps raw experiential evidence that our senses are fallible and our perception of the world is an artifact of cognition. Past that, psychedelics are (kaleidoscopic, funhouse) mirrors. In the hands of a curious and humble person they can (in addition to being a lot of fun shared with like-minded others) be valuable therapeutic tools for approaching firmly rooted hangups, attitudes, etc. In the hands of someone like your friend, you get what you observed. Both are commonly occurring patterns, and if you know a person's character even a little well you can usually predict how they'll engage with and come out of the experience. To quote Shulgin, > The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche.
- roarcher 1y ago
  That tracks with what I've heard about people getting genuine therapeutic benefits from it, like with PTSD. Thanks.
suzzer99 1y ago
Yeah the main great insight I got out of doing that stuff was to see reality from a different perspective for a while. Kind of like travelling and realizing that things you take for granted aren't the same in every culture. But I never felt like I was getting at some deeper meaning, and it wasn't something I wanted to keep doing throughout my life.

Saul1998zx 1y ago

[flagged]

fennecbutt 1y ago

That sounds so terrible. But damn it, "I just lost the game". Sigh.

nerdyadventurer 1y ago

> We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It is not just schizophrenia, any mental health condition is isolating, others cannot understand it. I have OCD,ADHD etc so I know it, that's why we prefer who have been or going through same thing than normal people.