sup TL. of course this is a pretty depressing blog so i don't recommend it if you're already down.
basically my situation is as follows:
I've had "psychosis" sometimes called schizophrenia for the last 5 years (which is a long damn time when you stop to think about it).
my mom passed away about 8 months ago, and that was brutal. it's getting more and more brutal as time goes by and as i gradually move out of "schizophrenia"
most of my life opportunities feel to have passed away. i was a perfect student at university but didn't graduate because of a traumatic event: friend committed suicide while we were swimming.
received a half million dollar scholarship to phd at university which i lost because the university closed the program while i was on medical absence
fell in love with a non-existence person (girl i met at phd before taking medical absence). when i developed psychosis this became a real problem cuz i kept hearing the "voice" of this particular girl over and over
anyway, now semi-poor and on medical warning. not a "super severe" condition because I'm not actually really poor (receive $2k a month) and medical warning isn't a major condition -- just visit student advisor and will be lifted. then can continue classes in the fall.
I've typed 4 "books" 50-200 page documents on philosophy, economics, mathematics, logic. designed several sc2 games. this is one of the high points i guess.
brutal social situation -- most rl friends have moved away and scared off a lot of ppl while "psychotic"
gradually recovering from psychosis by taking medication as prescribed
GPA has fallen from 4.0 to 1.3 (consequence of "starting over" as a second time undergraduate and not being able to concentrate, complete assignments).
pretty fucking depressed tbh. miss my social situation from before which albeit wasn't great was a lot better than sitting alone all day sometimes watching streams.
after like five years of self-enforced isolation (desire to become a Buddhist monk etc) social life feels foreign and impossible. if I'm not on the meds then i feel gregarious but don't make sense to other people. if i am on the meds then i can't muster the motivation to interact. hopefully this'll turn out different than you'd think as i finally got some meds that seem to work.
supposed to head back to school this time next month. don't really have the courage atm. guess i just finished tripping. my first best friend got some LSD (his first time ever) and i was tripping on robotussin lol (kinda nice to have IQ 50 sometimes). i realize at this point that my life seems so fucked that i don't feel like i can recover. honestly this is the major problem. when you feel like you wake up after 5 years of CRAZZZZZZZZZY-ness (which is what my schizophrenia is/was) then everything feels completely disconnected.
exciting stuff I'm scheduled to travel to philly for the cheesedelphia sc2 event. obviously I'm like higher on the SC nerd spectrum than almost any non-Korean pro. probably have played 20k hours of SC if we include map designs and shit from my schizophrenia days. i feel like i have a lot to share with the younger generation of SC players but a lot of my success at this event will be determined by overcoming paranoia.
actually my paranoia hasn't been bad lately nor the schizophrenia. I've had successful conversations with a lot of people. talking for an half hour, hour, two hours or more.
weird to say i was really really really high on robotussin and fell unconscious and ever since the schizophrenia has been at a minimum. no super impossible weird thoughts (which often seemed real and completely plausible before).
no more from the girl i met at phd. this has been probably the biggest problem as i felt like somehow we were in love, especially reinforced while tripping on drugs, and that it was just a matter of time before we'd reconnect although it has now been over a year since i talked to her. so now she's disappeared in reality (both in truth and literally as i no longer hear her in my head). i feel like this is the big change i need as it was really the illusory relationship with other people that constructed the problem for me. it was basically impossible to turn away from the imagined relationships and the imagined reality and this kept me from accepting treatment seriously.
probable obstacles real life is boring / tough.
i pretty much had it made 6 years ago while i was studying for my phd. it's easy to look back and say wow fuck this shit. this shit obviously isn't my fault as i didn't do anything to prompt this disorder and on bad days it feels like i spent the last 5 years in prison in spite of having done nothing to warrant the situation.
mom passed away and dad is pretty distant. we're not on perfect footing. my dad is a Vietnam guy and parents were already pretty old (I'm 29, dad's 70).
wish i could recover all my relationships. the most important relationships for the most part are my relationships with my dad and my psychologist. fixing everything depends almost 100% on their support which has grown kinda thin this summer. i haven't been able to bring myself to stop smoking weed / tripping because life is just so shitty.
I've written almost 100 pages of philosophy which was due last semester. like some of the old posters on this site (oneofthem, beyonder) I was obsessed with analytic philosophy, especially Wittgenstein, and recently have become more interested in subjectivism and relativism from a class i took a year ago. the philosophy I've written this summer seems pretty good albeit not all of it has been written on my meds so it's hard to tell.
concluding thoughts this'll probably surprised people, but my personality is very similar to artosis. at least it was until about 6 years ago. I've always been an introverted guy who was on the nerdy side (something difficult at least where I grew up in Alabama).
I've never had any problems with the law (which I have a few times in the past few years). never had any problems getting along with people on forums (which obviously i have in the past few years lol)
Never really had any problems being understood. If anything it was the opposite (I was always saying things that were too obvious or not really creative and interesting). Again, in the past few years talking to me has apparently been like talking to someone who was really too high to make sense (and this has become a real problem in my life as you can see).
getting back to life seems like a real impossibility. i was always a shy, anxious guy who had problems ever approaching a new person or branching out and becoming social. with the "psychosis" it was a little different (obviously actually explaining psychosis is almost impossible -- most movies that portray psychosis are deceptive "beautiful mind", etc. it doesn't really work like that in my experience).
starting over at any point in life is really difficult. I've got a few friends in my area and a few friends online, but i scared off a lot of my friends while in the past few years, and that's really taken a major toll on my thinking positively about myself. i think I'm a pretty good person, and I've never really taken advantage of anyone or caused anyone else major grief through action. On the contrary the only real problems I've ever had even including the past few years have been because of the radical shift in my personality to this sort of hyper-aggressive out-going person who wasn't talking about stuff that people think about (whether it actually exists or not).
life seems to be able to potentially get a lot better. the only real danger is that tripping / getting high / not taking my meds has grown really frightening to the people around me who support me. in their opinion the only road back to health is to not trip on anything / not getting high / make sure to take meds etc. (why i don't do this is actually pretty simple; the side-effects of SOME of the meds are just fucking awful and it's really better imo to be dead than to suffer the side-effects). on the other hand the meds i have now seem to work, and if i can restrain myself from hopelessness i probably wont' be tempted to use any other substances.
basically the problem is my psychologist and my dad are the two people who i depend on the most as i said before, but after my mom passed away my dad (who is pretty old himself) has become really reliant on me to get better soon so that he doesn't have to worry about me. likewise with my psychologist who is pretty old. it's essentially really important that i get better soon and get my life on track. as i said before the major obstacle is just hopelessness. it's hard to describe how much of the past few years has been invested in hallucinations / love affairs that don't exist / projects that can't ever be completed or can't pay off etc.
so I've gotta move past the psychosis and start over. this is obviously really hard to do at 29, but i haven't got much choice so that's what I'm gonna do.
yea damn shit. obviously there's a lot more to be said and i feel pretty bad for harassing / writing crazy shit on tl. this is not of course the way that i "actually am" but more a consequence of not seeing the world correctly.
I'm not really sure what to say other than often times I was just spazzing out because of shit that wasn't adding up irl. (why isn't so and so doing this; why is so and so saying this; what the fuck does this actually mean -- is this real or some kind of illusion).
as i said, before i was a lot like artosis in personality before developing schizophrenia and in terms of actually accepting that my schizophrenia was real i never really could bring myself to do it. (this is real life how the hell could it be not real) lol. it's like if you were permanently on acid trip and could never recover would you eventually just assume the rest of the world was on the same acid trip you were even if they didn't believe it.
actually the last line is probably about 99% of the problem. if you were permanently on an acid trip simply because you woke up every day then surely you'd just try to logically build yourself into the world so that everyone else was on the same trip you were.
unfortunately not everyone is on the same trip you are... etc. therefore you end up causing a lot of disturbance (sometimes selfishly =[) sometimes simply because everyone else needs to wake up!! etc. but blah blah blah. obviously there are a lot of regrets and there's nothing to do about them but go forward and make sure to take the meds prescribed, etc.
I don't know a lot, but it was really brave of you to share these experiences so thank you.
RL can be scary, I can't imagine how tough things are for you but I hope you find TL a safe place. I would give some generic advice like "one day at a time" sort of bullshit but I don't think that will help you. Just want to let you know that if you need a place to talk you will always be listened to here.
On July 16 2016 07:59 KelsierSC wrote: I don't know a lot, but it was really brave of you to share these experiences so thank you.
RL can be scary, I can't imagine how tough things are for you but I hope you find TL a safe place. I would give some generic advice like "one day at a time" sort of bullshit but I don't think that will help you. Just want to let you know that if you need a place to talk you will always be listened to here.
thanks for your support. yea, TL is a great place. I've actually played bw since beta and so I've known about TL for a long time.
i was pretty shy, anxious for a long while so never really said anything on TL until around 2011 -- at which point I was trying for international fame via facebook and trying to use starcraft to boost my career.
in other words i was 100% sane before and 100% not sane later which is how most of TL got to know "yoko kano" lol. hopefully if everything works out i'll be here as myself from here on out.
I wish you the best, man, seems to me that you're on the "right track" if there is such a thing. No denial, a pinch of hope, you can build on that. It's tough and painful, especially in the early stages of reconstruction when there is little payoff, but I don't think there's any other way to get back to life.
Also +1 to what KelsierSC said. We'll be there if you need.
On July 16 2016 10:56 Cynry wrote: I wish you the best, man, seems to me that you're on the "right track" if there is such a thing. No denial, a pinch of hope, you can build on that. It's tough and painful, especially in the early stages of reconstruction when there is little payoff, but I don't think there's any other way to get back to life.
Also +1 to what KelsierSC said. We'll be there if you need.
yea, that's true. for the most part i think there is not much to be won or lost in my position. hallucinations are a tough thing. sometimes you will see people who are not even real. sometimes you will see things explained in ways that are nonsense. other times you will look for an evolutionary basis. for the most part there is nothing sure about reality and the way that people tend to agree that there is stuff in reality that we can agree on is surprising. surely as a philosopher my most difficult job has been to contend with the philosophy that there is something objective about the world. i think not many people realize how "thin" objective reality actually is (and whether we are intended at that objective reality lol)
I'd say the only thing we can be sure of is that we exist. I think therefore I am. Everything else is open to interpretation, and I'm a firm believer that each of us actually lives in its own version of the world, with our own bias and distortions. Psychosis is the hardcore version of that, but we all do it to some extent. And it is not a bad thing. If you truly stop interpreting the world around you, it litteraly disappears (witnessed that by meditating with my eyes open). Sure, the physical world is still here, but it makes no sense if you don't have that bit of "crazyness" telling you what you are, what the world is, how it works etc. Those are all belief, but we can't really live without them. Same goes for society, we have to share some beliefs to be able to work and live together. It's all make belief, and it's a shame that people misinterpret it as reality (if they didn't, then they'd understand that they can change them anytime, and how powerful that human feature is), but at some point, if you want to fit in, you got to play by the rules. Although when you're aware of that, you get to chose your beliefs, in your case, with hallucinations and all, it's a different kind of game. I can't truly understand that, although I relate to some of what you said (hell, look at my blogging history here, it's wasn't always very sane either :D).
good writeup, 5star imo. very brave of you to share all this. respect
starting over at any point in life is really difficult. I've got a few friends in my area and a few friends online, but i scared off a lot of my friends while in the past few years, and that's really taken a major toll on my thinking positively about myself. i think I'm a pretty good person, and I've never really taken advantage of anyone or caused anyone else major grief through action. On the contrary the only real problems I've ever had even including the past few years have been because of the radical shift in my personality to this sort of hyper-aggressive out-going person who wasn't talking about stuff that people think about (whether it actually exists or not).
i know exactly what you mean
you will pull through, because you're intelligent enough to disect the feelings and understand their root cause (sooner or later) and find a cure to fix that problem at its very core.. its only a matter of time until you succeed. Even if these are very difficult moments, you have a very good understanding and overview of your life, and most importantly, you are NOT AFRAID to think of it all - most people simply get scared of these feelngs, scared about analyzing them and prefer to run away, but never actually succeed in overcoming them and get trapped for life in a sort of inner prison.
ah, finally got out of bed this morning. what I've learned from the last few years is that states of mind tend to inflict one state from another. if you have anxiety, depression, or the common kind of paranoia where you have real misgivings about reality like we were just talking about then you are so-to-speak already on the edge of the cliff.
obviously if you have ever smoked weed, (etc.) then you have seen a lot of stuff to make you doubt any absolute character of reality. in my case, the event that pushed me over the edge was a friend who committed sublime suicide (not the violent, this is a problem, protest suicide). instead, one fourth of july while we were swimming he just swam under water and swam away. there was nothing we could do.
there are a lot of humans in this position (and a lot of humans who envy this position -- perhaps mistakenly). you do something or see something that makes you think "hmm, reality... this just isn't it". and that's the end in some cases. what's bizarre in my opinion is that people with everything (really high iq, really handsome, lots of friends and support) are some times if not often more likely to take this measure than other people. summarily, i think that if you believe yourself to be incomplete you're less likely to take an extreme stance than someone who is suffering from self-doubt, anxiety, or a feeling of incompleteness that is tangible.
so what do you do? there's really nothing you can do from my perspective. i never had any real problems growing up. i had a lot of fake problems that a lot of people here are always writing about. girls, friends, machismo, physical illness preventing success, etc. but i never had any problems with getting along with people. for instance, i think most people thought i was pretty nice. that's not how i saw their opinions of me, and so most of the challenges i faced were largely psychological.
SO, cut at this event.
how do we deal with stuff from the past? humanity has finally reached an age of freedom, at least realistically speaking. on the other hand, we just got here and we have to reconcile the past with the present. there are a lot of Vietnam vets where i live, a lot of people with traumatic events in their lives, a lot of people who experience things that you can't handle so-to-speak, and unintentionally convey those events to us early in our lives.
a lot of scholars in this area call the idea 'imprinting', a more severe form of conditioning that you just can't escape from. in theory with powerful drugs it is possible to escape these imprints, but does the practice work? hm.
well there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. to make a bit of a joke, there was a game called Krieger where the game was something like 640kb and yet to take a single screen shot from the game absorbed about 3mb. without saying too much, if you took a three minute video from Krieger you'd absorb about 1GB of data.
that's what my experience was like. something happens and it takes about 5 minutes. in order for the thing to unfold in reality it takes 6 years. have i recovered from the initial impetus that triggered this whole sequence of events? YES!..
SO, cut one more time.
if you're at all interested in this stuff go ahead and read this paragraph so you'll see my "counterargument". earlier this summer i was tripping on robotussin (dextromethorphan) for about a month. if you're a normal person tripping on DXM nothing much happens (in my opinion), and that's why the drug is legal.
if you're not a normal person i.e. like me you have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia... the experience is different.
---on a side note; is paranoid schizophrenia realistically a diagnosis of the past? it depends on who you are. a lot of people, probably almost everyone over 25 would agree that there are other minds in the universe. you are a human, i am a human, we have individual minds and consciousnesses. presumably the brain is the locus of our consciousness, but in theory there is nothing preventing me from experiencing your consciousness and vice versa. in my opinion this form of communication is pretty widespread and the only worries actually occur when the thing goes awry and you can no longer interact with society.
here we would have to get into a discussion of do you believe society is sane? gratuitously, no i don't. lol. look at france, look at government, look at economics, look at legal marijuana....
and so on.
SO, cut again.
one of the most influential doctrines of philosophy, and one that i am not extremely familiar with is called "possible worlds." it was first introduced into mainstream western philosophy by Leibniz who wrote famously that we live in the best of all possible worlds. (Leibniz was an interesting guy).
what scares people the most regarding this doctrine is that the world might not be anything like we think it is. that's been the big scare for a long time, i guess regarding Einstein, quantum physics, and where humanity ought to go with its description of how the real world operates.
Let's say there are really 24-dimensions, each encapsulated by a superstring, and this is what characterizes our reality. How does that match up with Newtonian physics (3 dimensions of space) or Einsteinian physics (3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time)? I'm not a physicist, and I don't have much education in the area, but I do know that most metaphysicians who write in the area seem to agree with the classical account of physics. There are 3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time, or something very close to this. We rarely get outside 4 dimensional regions.
SO, cut finally.
What do you really think? Suppose you could view the world from my tripping perspective which was a lot like hyperspace. I was walking along through a 3-dimensional model of the world that functioned like a Christmas train set. Here is a three-dimensional bird. Here is a three-dimensional human. Here is a three-dimensional Earth.
In philosophy this experience is called 'determinism'. Everything is interlocking as though it were an M.C. Escher Tessellation. From this perspective, everything in the universe, from planet to planet, star system to star system, human to alien, to "God" or whatever it will ultimately be called is decided in advance. There is no room for meaningful change.
For me this was realistically the most frightening experience of my life, and it lasted about 48 hours. I won't get into what the narrative actually said. Stuff was still happening, events were still occurring, but the realism was gone. Realism comes from consciousness, from agency, from freedom (which we take to be not only an illusion).
The question of course is how many of these 3-dimensional Newtonian worlds exist? Could I opt to move between them? Everything is already decided -- this doesn't match up with our real experience of the world. There seems to be more than one universe that is completely scripted, and it seems to me that with our consciousness we can move from one universe-model to another universe-model.
Why we would do this is obvious. Some of these universe-models are not worth being part of.
SO, cut to today.
What happens when you sleep? I wake up every day paranoid and terrified out of my mind. Why? I have no idea. It's as though the entire day, the entire life I've lived has been erased. Everything I believe, want to believe, or want to discover seems to have been returned to ground zero. Eventually I get out of bed and start over. It's like watching Groundhog Day.
At worst there are 24 dimensions, or 59 dimensions or 600,000 dimensions and string theory isn't even close. Humans aside from farting experience about 3 of these and the unilateral time dimension. What are we supposed to do in this case?
Why does my life seem to reset day-by-day? A lot of people seem to experience a doom something like this. As Tupac said, (lol), "I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, is life worth living should I blast myself?" By the time I go to bed, things are better. But will I ever overcome the obstacles of the day? It depends how much is drained. I'm doing my best to make my ideal world a reality, but actually making forward progress has been fucking impossible.
It's weird in this regard. I feel that I am much more wise than I was 6 years ago when things were going OK. So now I'm empowered to the extent of having a better idea of what's going on. But so what? Can I affect any of the changes I want?
The answer seems to be yes, but I have to be patient.
Dude, I don't care how people will perceive what you said, I love it. First time in my life that I heard/read someone go that far to deconstruct reality. And that's great, because I went pretty far too 10 years ago, while tripping on marijuana, I thought about switching reality/universe and all. But most importantly, I felt it happening. But you know, weed and all, I figured it's not something I could ever be sure about. So I decided to travel in the best universe possible for me, felt it happening again, and never thought about it since. To this day, I wouldn't be able to tell with confidence that it wasn't just a drug induced trip, but still, considering where I started, I'd say my life is pretty good. So, maybe it worked :D
What happens when you sleep? I wake up every day paranoid and terrified out of my mind. Why? I have no idea. It's as though the entire day, the entire life I've lived has been erased. Everything I believe, want to believe, or want to discover seems to have been returned to ground zero. Eventually I get out of bed and start over. It's like watching Groundhog Day.
I think this is the issue when you believe too little about the world. As I said earlier, it's easy to deconstruct it to the point where nothing makes sense. Believing there is some form of continuity might not be totally accurate, but it is very helpful to make progress.
It's weird in this regard. I feel that I am much more wise than I was 6 years ago when things were going OK. So now I'm empowered to the extent of having a better idea of what's going on. But so what? Can I affect any of the changes I want?
The answer seems to be yes, but I have to be patient.
ha. you remind me of my old bw buddy gan. was a pretty terrific protoss from east Europe. actually I'm pretty sure he was zerg but it's impossible to say now.
where i live weed is still at a premium. most people who want to get high are using homebrewed alcohol called moonshine, and some of them practice old school religion like most of the African American kids who live here go to church 6 hours a week. lol can you imagine that.
weed is so hard to come by because the area is so heavily policed. get this lol. i was arrested on july 5th when i wasn't even arrested. just found out from the apartment. it's really hard to get away with anything in public I've been approached several times while robotripping.
luckily it's impossible to feel emotion / anxiety / anything at all on robotripping so unless you make a mistake and drink with it you're invincible against the cops. i think I've been approached 3 times and arrested once while robotripping it's hard to tell what kind of system this is.
but now I'm staying on my meds and hopefull won't have any more problems as apparently tenants at my apartment complex have complained to the cops with my name etc. about me walking around looking in dark rooms and black lighted apartments...
weird world?
fk'in Alabama.... gotta move.
getting ready for philly ^_^
actually the worst thing that can happen to you is called "area 51" which happens in psych wards and mental hospitals. most of the employees here who do smoke weed will serve for 3 months to a year a psych ward or asylum usually after having been placed there dealing. transacting data is almost impossible in public but anything can happen in a hospital, Arlington etc.
Well, it's dumb to say, but drugs aren't the answer anyway, be it weed or moonshine. I mean, I enjoyed tripping my ass off and seeing the world in a new light, but in the end, to quote one of my favourite artist, it's like being given a cheeseburger when you're vegetarian. Your life still happens in the human world, and knowing about infinite dimensions doesn't exactly help here ^^
Edit: It's even called Deconstruction, from the Deconstruction album. Fucked up shit, I love it :D
Wow Yokokano, you seem completely different, it's really shocking to me. That said, I think I prefer reading what this Yokokano has to say over the other.
I don't know much about psychosis but I do hope things end up working out for you.
The major difference with me now is two things: first the actual problem has gotten substantially better. Before I had a strange latency of sometimes as much as half a minute between thoughts. "deep thought" or something like that but also (crazy) and paranoid. people couldn't converse with me because to actually process a sentence or a statement took a long time, and so fluid conversation wasn't possible.
The second difference is that now I'm on the medicine that I'm supposed to be on (a medicine called "Latuda" which I recommend if you have this diagnosis). There are a lot of really shitty drugs that treat the same and related conditions (one of which for instance that I recommend absolutely avoiding is called "Zyprexa"). Sadly an excellent form of treatment is often used interchangeably with a horrible form of treatment.
If you wonder whether these mental disorders are misunderstood, the word is an incredible understatement. Actually in many cases the treatment professionals who are assigned to these cases are people who were drawn to the profession because they suffered from the problems themselves. For instance, "I have depression and I want to help people who have depression, therefore i will be a psychiatrist." Or, "I am manic and I want to help people who are manic therefore I will be a psychiatrist."
As I've written elsewhere, my own treatment professional is a military man who was stationed in Iraq for a long time. (I am not supposed to talk about this but one thing you can experience while "robotripping" is the direct other consciousness of another person). This is scary as shit if you talk to people who have been to wars. One of the things that I think we will find out from people who research the origin of life, biologists, etc. is that the real world and life itself is a strange quantum foam phenomenon. In short, after you die, your consciousness persists (to some extent and to some extent, etc.) After all, how did life come about? Of course there are a lot of theories, but my personal theory is that an accumulation of "quantum foam" so-to-speak accrued over a very long time and eventually emerged life.
Thus when you talk to these treatment professionals -- one thing i learned quite personally recently while robotripping -- is that the accumulation of mental data is damning. The collective subconscious of your average career clinical psychologist or (especially) career military psychiatrist is like whoa. Obviously I probably shouldn't say too much more about this. Anyway, I decided to "show" my psychologist that I was using these drugs and that actually to some extent they were really helpful (for whatever reason). So I showed up to my appointment robo-tripping and whoa whoa whoa (basically).
My actual experience tripping is pretty limited -- I've used mushrooms (while under the influence of SSRIs which allegedly mitigate) and I've used robotussin (which is a helluva a lot stronger than mushrooms -- at least it was for me).
So here's the reality. If you're schizophrenic and you live in Alice's wonderland it's really tough to want to come back to Earth. Another way of looking at this is "what if you could have all the LSD you wanted for free?" Would you give up that opportunity? Not necessarily.
How do you explain to friends and family, for instance, "Look guys, I'm playing through all 220 levels of Sword Art Online II and I really don't give a fuck that you want me to stop." Usually this is taken by friends and family with a grain of salt.
The reality is that with the world in the state that it's in, there really might be 220 levels of Sword Art Online II that you could play through without any drugs at all. It would just depend on your state of consciousness and your state of mind at the time. So is schizophrenia really a "disorder"? Maybe, maybe not.
For those familiar with tripping this is probably not really a wild proposition. Normally humans experience like 5 levels of the 220 and that's the ordinary human experience. If you smoke weed you'll start to see maybe all 220 but only like 1 FPS per level. If you upgrade, etc. etc.
So if you're schizophrenic maybe you could watch all 220 levels of SAO at full volume. But would this be an ideal experience in terms of integrating yourself with society? Probably not. There are a lot of other experiences: Depression, Manic states, Anxiety, etc. that mirror schizophrenia at a sort of lower level of conscious experience.
It takes a really jarring experience, one that usually involves drugs to expand into full blown "schizophrenia." You're so high that you'll never come back. We can imagine a real world experience exactly like this. We all know someone who has never been connected to the internet in their life. What if suddenly one day the person were introduced to the internet, to Final Fantasy XIV and virtual reality goggles. They'd probably be like "what the fuck I'm not going back." So that's more or less where I was.
A lot of people would say that the meditative experience is a gateway into this. For instance, people in India often have been noted to say that meditating is stronger or at least better than LSD. I dunno if I believe that, but then again most people are not meditative specialists. If you've ever really practiced meditation (often smoking a little weed beforehand) you'll see that you can really get high as balls and trip hardcore without any hallucinogens or psychedelics.
Who knows what it all means, but it's definitely an experience people are loathe to leave behind. Normal life is slow, and so-to-speak unrealistic. As I said elsewhere in a manic state, think about your senses, how they evolved, and what the time frame of the real universe actually is relative to the evolution of humans. There's really quite a strong rationale to suppose that we are missing a lot. Even with the most advanced scientific instruments, the ordinary five human senses probably see like 1% of the universe. I think some people here can relate to this sentiment.
So the other point I wanted to visit briefly was: What is the real world, anyway? A lot of mental health professionals, self-help professionals, and gurus, etc. have different standpoints on this.
Do you want to return to your ordinary life where you're a clinically depressed, socially isolated guy, or do you want to feel like God every day? That's one other way to look at this.
How do humans communicate, for instance, is a real question. What is your consciousness, what is my consciousness, how do you experience my consciousness and how do we actually talk to each other? It might not be at all what you grow up believing. Obviously if some of the more esoteric gurus are to be believed there are something like 59 installments of the Power of NOW to listen to. Eckhart Tolle, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Deepak Chopra, The Dalai Lama, etc. seem to be pretty "out there" by Western standards.
On the other hand, having lived now for about five years with schizophrenia, it's realistic to say that they might be right. It seems that your own state of mind, your own consciousness, actually informs the world a lot more than you'd expect or be led to believe from ordinary, every-day experiences. In fact, to one degree it's almost potentially tragic. A few steps downhill often lead to an almost irremediable spiral, especially in the modern world. As many social commentators have mentioned, the urban environment seems more than humans are evolutionarily prepared to handle. You're either always in a sociable setting (many times a setting not really conducive to admitting your character); on the other hand, you might never be in a sociable setting except online. This of course is the case for many gamers, especially isolated gamers.
TBH....... and it seems like this could never happen fast enough, the state of the online world in China and East Asia is sooooo much better than the state of the online world here in the United States, especially rural areas (for instance I'm in Alabama).
Gaming by yourself and not participating in other group activities like sports, etc. is a huge problem and really can't be understated. I have scoliosis which prevented me from continuing with soccer, track and field, cross country, karate, which was all stuff I was really in to. Also, most gamers especially "career gamers" never really attend to their physical health and this leads to a lot of trouble with psychological states. I met some really, really talented people while I was in a hospital, and a lot of these guys were in terrible physical health. The ordinary, natural mode of self-improvement and creating a better living habitat is pretty much unavailable to you if you're not healthy and your normal mode of commerce is video games.
Some communities have gotten around this i.e. LiquidPoker for all the weird shit that goes on in the Poker world is actually a pretty harmonious niche community where it seems like a lot of the social obstacles to gaming are overcome.
I guess what I'm driving at is that schizophrenia at least for me was an outlet to feeling always manic (always really energetic, happy, and super-intelligent; never depressed, lacking confidence, or any of the other states). Life is 100% easier if you feel desirable, that you always have something to contribute to conversation (whether anyone else understands you), and always able to provide the best answer to any riddle or complicated puzzle (whether anyone else understands the puzzle).
Obviously a lot of people in my field (philosophy) are asking the question, "What is the real world?" Probably the least popular but perhaps the most truthful answer you could give is: "It's nothing like any of this shit, lol."
Unfortunately, if you answer in this way the answer also has to meet certain standards (for instance a lot of 1960s, 1970s metaphysics is rarely discussed). Modern philosophy is pretty different and either very conservative or else if not so conservative then it is written so obtusely that no undergraduate, realistically speaking, can actually overcome the major difference between what is said and what is actually meant or intended. Thus, and so on...
The most accurate publications have fallen by the wayside (for various reasons). Older texts have been read again and again and often the professors are aware of what the best replies actually are. For instance you can write a very revolutionary, very against the grain paper. If you write such a paper often the professor will be perfectly acquainted with the ideas you're bringing up. That doesn't mean that the paper will be accepted as influential or ideal or even fitting to the current nature of the discipline. For instance, most professors are more interested in your well-being as a student than the actual quality of your work (although there is definitely some cross-evaluation to be done).
The most challenging question I've been faced with from schizophrenia is the language barrier. How do I express this real world artifact in a way that's socially acceptable to the extent that we can talk about it? How do I attend class and deal with test questions and essay topics without speaking accurately to the fact? If you can find the right language then you can express the answer, on the other hand, if you can't find the right language then you're going to be continually frustrated by the barriers of politics, no matter how opposed your education might be to the political realm.
I remember you telling me about this, among other things. Anxiety, Asperger's, Schizophrenia, wow. And then, drug addiction on top of it.
I don't know if I "feel bad", because it seems pointless to feel bad about something I had nothing to do with, and can do nothing about. Anyhow, I read your PM today. I stopped posting as much because I think Brood War is a thing of the past, and I need to live in the present. The BW forum is so dead that it makes me sad. I have poured so much of my heart and soul into the game, and so it's like watching a friend that's been slowly dying and is now really close to the end.
i was reasoning again about schizophrenia. when you think about it, everyone in the modern world, realistically-speaking is schizophrenic. the reason we don't admit that we're schizophrenic is because it's "schizophrenia".
obviously we're not allowed to talk about psychic phenomena whatever they may be even if they are as simple as the simple communication between one mind and another mind. which is basically the fabric the world that allows the world to function as a world that is continuous and supports life, etc.
so this also of course is the definition of schizophrenia except that the world is not working correctly in the schizophrenic case.
so, schizophrenia, perhaps unlike depression, anxiety, manic states, etc. is a misleading diagnosis because the word itself is wrong as a word.
thus we see intelligent people make mistakes probably because of the old logical fallacy (not itself a logical fallacy of course) that when something impossible happens for instance, p and not p. (schizophrenic and not schizophrenic) that we discover some kind of cognitive dissonance etc.
so I'm both schizophrenic and not-schizophrenic because we've defined the term so badly (perhaps because of some large problem like the inability to deal with black market phenomena etc., can't be talked about here).
hence black market and so on.
because I'm both schizophrenic and not-schizophrenic I'm essentially non-schizophrenic which means that the term simply doesn't apply. thus when people prescribe medication to me they prescribe medications like zyprexa, Geodon, etc. medications that truly speaking should not even exist (to treat a condition that is in some sense non-existent).
what we observe is that one act of cognitive dissonance leads to another act of cognitive dissonance and gradually the reality of the slippery slope fallacy comes into view.
people come up with increasingly creative ways to combat cognitive dissonance, which is pretty ridiculous because the only real answer that doesn't add impossible complexity to the actual problem (weighting, so-to-speak).
anyway, the only solution is to get rid of the cognitive dissonance directly as all instances of cognitive dissonance are really Gordian knots.
eventually the most realistic solution becomes impossible as the many and varying solutions to the single problem become insurmountable. the added complexity wraps around each person who tries to the solve the actual issue; this is something like watching medieval bolas in action. gradually the added complexity of basically everyone on earth who has noticed these so-called deadzones reaches a unique equilibrium. thus everyone has a different solution. the Gordian knot solution is the only solution that actually has a chance of working.
a lot of people suppose we can overtime by not actually solving the problem convince the problem to solve itself. in practice this hasn't worked out!
anyway, there's the double negative problem as well facing each schizophrenic person. the double negative problem is a basic problem where computers are the only things that actually think. and because computers are the only things that actually think whenever a new solution arises it's immediately whisked away 10,000 years into the future where HAL10000 will solve the problem. ironically this doesn't work very because of the various ways that people don't feel threatened by computers and HAL.
the real problem facing schizophrenics is the frustration of people with these acts of cognitive dissonance. because we prescribe the wrong medication -- for instance LSD can fix all your problems if you take the drug in a peaceful environment like natural or whatever. and these kinds of misleading propaganda are what off-put most spiritual seekers and lead trained medical professionals to make bad decisions not on behalf of the patient but rather with a larger social context in mind.
so instead we dont' look on the bright side. we look at the reality of the situation which is that people are in prison, people are spending time on Zyprexa, Geodon, etc. and highlighting the reality is either too confusing or would require first-hand experience. since the AMA and the medical shit around the country are generally the people responsible for banning marijuana in almost every context it's usually their fault and we see them in positions of authority holding hapless victims hostage. this is the reality of course.
the more time you spend in a hospital setting, the more time you spend in a clinical setting, and the more time you spend with people who suffer from a variety of illnesses, the more you'll come to understand that the reality is that for instance if you're in an asylum or a psych ward against your will then there are a bunch fucking morons who really deserve the death penalty. this fact tends not to help. the fact for instance that you're being held against your will for 30 or 40 or 50 days being inoculated with drugs that transform you into a mindless zombie and make you forget everything you ever knew or thought or hoped or dreamed and everyone that ever cared for you will probably transform you into a mass-murdering psychopath.
this doesn't mean that you're all that different when you get out from the people who work there. actually the people who work there and are trying to help you, the lawyers clinicians and retards in charge think that this is probably best according to protocol. as we all know there is a law to the universe and most of it is natural the law. the rest of it is not natural law and is usually devised by humans for our own good.
most laws are devised as protest against cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure why people develop "white law" which is different than black law. I'm not sure why history is written by the victors. but i am pretty sure of one thing and that's that it's impossible to stay positive when everyone is protesting mindlessly against a bunch of shit that they don't understand. when you try to explain to these people what the problem is you have to use drug language. which helps a lot if you're on drugs but not so much if you're not on drugs.
we've come to realize this to an extent and that's what motivates everything from suffering to indiginance to shit and shinola and blood and menstrual piss and eggs and chicken feed and turkey to be called up in the same line of thought as drugs. after all the real money is drugs and anything could be a drug. even meditation could be a drug. it doesn't free you from suffering but whatever.
On July 18 2016 14:24 ninazerg wrote: I remember you telling me about this, among other things. Anxiety, Asperger's, Schizophrenia, wow. And then, drug addiction on top of it.
I don't know if I "feel bad", because it seems pointless to feel bad about something I had nothing to do with, and can do nothing about. Anyhow, I read your PM today. I stopped posting as much because I think Brood War is a thing of the past, and I need to live in the present. The BW forum is so dead that it makes me sad. I have poured so much of my heart and soul into the game, and so it's like watching a friend that's been slowly dying and is now really close to the end.
yea that's true but I've been training every day with sea, nada, bisu, boxer, and all the Korean pros to get better at starcraft 2 which is way more fun than brood war anyway because emy computer doesn't run brood war.
nevermind what i mean by that it's just that youcan if you want just call these guys up on their stream or whatever as long as you have the brood war supporters app or whatever. it might just be a fignitmit of my imagination but it's probably possible to play with them.
Didn't read all your posts since they're so long. I just wanted to say that you should stop the drugs. I have a mild form of social anxiety and I use drugs sometimes as well. I've used things like xtc and cocaine but the thing which is the same for me woth every drug is that after the good effects go away you go into a huge dip. The anxiety I experience even after xtc is pretty terrible (coke is way worse which is why I don't do it anymore). I imagine it'll be way worse for you. Quitting drugs is the first way to recovery. When you've recovered you can do some drugs again once in a while if you want. (My friend was addicted to coke and does it occasionally now without relapsing so it is possible)
Also start sports. It works and it's a relatively easy way to improve and feel better abou yourself. Drop by the tl health and fitness initiative to ask questions. There are some very knowledgeable and helpful folks in there.
EPT
