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

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.

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.

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”

The fact that in different parts of the world the voices can be helpful instead of intrusive makes me feel like the drugs are not the problem but how external forces view the drugs or if we really wanna talk like crazy people how the drugs influence the people around you even if they do not directly know you are using the drugs.

You’re right and wrong.

The voices are quite real, we’re not alone in our own minds, and the it is the greatest taboo of society to discuss.

It’s really sad, all of these sharp modernists determined upon the cult of science explanations for everything. Those who refuse to believe our thoughts are not all our own. That much mysticism is rooted in something that merely cannot be explained by the logical empirical mind.

Readers will be so upset when a perspective challenges their rehashed psychological diatribes as mountains of lies. They got “help” damn you. Their friends (“real people”) are hurt by the craze and they’re more hurt when someone says “modern science and society is wrong.”

The true Truth is whatever existential reality reflects, not what we are prepared to understand. We are not alone in our own minds, we have collectively known this since before our generations and the “straights” of society are so adamant of their self possessed lies they will condemn those insights as crackpot crazy.

> It’s really sad, all of these sharp modernists determined upon the cult of science explanations for everything.

That which you try to attack and downplay as "cult of science explanations" is actually something extremely simple: you need to show something, anything at all, that actually supports your beliefs.

How can you tell something exists or works as you think it does if you are unable to show it?

Do you expect everyone should just believe anything anyone says? What is there to tell lunatics and snake oil salesmen apart from those who are actually onto something?

> Those who refuse to believe our thoughts are not all our own.

Ok, you formed an hypothesis. Now tell me, how do you go about showing others that things do work the way you think they do? How can they check them for themselves? What do you expect from others?

> That much mysticism is rooted in something that merely cannot be explained by the logical empirical mind.

If you cannot explain your beliefs, how do you expect others to just take your unverified and unsubstantiated claims as something worth considering over any random claim from any random loony?

> If you cannot explain your beliefs, how do you expect others to just take your unverified and unsubstantiated claims as something worth considering over any random claim from any random loony?

Even without an explanation, you can use statistics to find the fruits of the beliefs, though. Does 100 people believe in not working and rather join a cult that worships the watermelon god? Fine! How did that work out for them in the span of 3 generations?

I think that some beliefs can have value and merit, just based on measures of quality of life and society.

> Even without an explanation, you can use statistics to find the fruits of the beliefs, though.

I hope you are not serious.

> Does 100 people believe in not working and rather join a cult that worships the watermelon god?

Hundreds of loonies making nonsense statements that no one can verify is collective lunacy that adds no value. It only takes a single person to show something exists and works to add substance to a claim. If all those loonies push a belief that none of them can support, they are fools.

This sort of absurdness would mean absolute morons, such as those in Heaven's Gate cult, should be taken seriously in their claims about aliens and comets. Let that sink in.