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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 | 2 comments | 28 Jun 25 21:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.499s | 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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winrid ◴[28 Jun 25 22:32 UTC] No.44408738[source]▶
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.
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tony69 ◴[28 Jun 25 22:40 UTC] No.44408778[source]▶
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”
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euranon96 ◴[29 Jun 25 11:30 UTC] No.44412235[source]▶
Do you know what is considered as "latent schizophrenia"? Is it like in your 40's or 30's or just couple years after the mean?
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lucidrains ◴[29 Jun 25 14:10 UTC] No.44413306[source]▶
if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)
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amarait ◴[29 Jun 25 14:49 UTC] No.44413607[source]▶
We dont even know what constitutes a mental voice. Hell, a huge percentage of people cant hear their own voices in their heads
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heavyset_go ◴[29 Jun 25 17:37 UTC] No.44414840[source]▶
During psychosis there is no question about what you hear. You hear it. You may know it isn't real, but you hear it.
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1. soderfoo ◴[30 Jun 25 04:49 UTC] No.44419495[source]▶
I think people often imagine hallucinations as glaringly fake—I did, at least.

It was an eye-opener when I finally realized the faint FM radio sounds I kept hearing in the middle of the night were actually manic hallucinations.

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2. heavyset_go ◴[01 Jul 25 08:00 UTC] No.44431663[source]▶
As someone who had psychedelic experiences, I thought they'd be like that.

In the few hours I experienced hallucinations after not sleeping for ~7 days, I also heard a radio playing faintly in the background. "Faintly" doesn't do it justice because it was very much undeniably audibly there, even if I knew it wasn't.

I also heard footsteps, felt their vibrations, heard and felt stuff on shelves shake in response to the stepping. It was stunning how in concert and real it was. It was like it was more real than reality itself.

I was aware it wasn't real which made it fucking terrifying, but it was both beautiful and absolutely fascinating at the same time. I was both in awe and horrified that it could be permanent.

Brains are crazy stuff and I can see just how easily someone can become delusional based on what is very much factual in their own experience of reality. There literally is no boundary between reality and true hallucinations, which is a terrifying prospect and