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Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

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262 points Anon84 | 4 comments | 28 Jun 25 21:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.993s | source
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suzzer99 ◴[28 Jun 25 22:20 UTC] No.44408657[source]▶
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.

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1. iamnotagenius ◴[29 Jun 25 12:58 UTC] No.44412769[source]▶
> 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.

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2. ChainnChompp ◴[29 Jun 25 16:57 UTC] No.44414543[source]▶
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
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3. hshshshshsh ◴[29 Jun 25 17:07 UTC] No.44414629[source]▶
So brain realizes it's completely making up the reality on fly?
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4. mpnsk1 ◴[30 Jun 25 17:05 UTC] No.44425594{3}[source]▶
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.