There's a lot of experienced trippers here and and handful of schizophrenics, so i was hoping to get some advice, help or insight from any of those people. thank you to any responses. this has troubled me ever since i started experimenting with psychedelics.
My question is mainly for schizophrenics who exhibit more of the disorganized symptoms, rather than the full-blown hallucinating and paranoia/conspiracy theorist type, how did your break come about? I worry about the possibility of me falling into (or already being!) full blown schizophrenia, especially since i was raised by a family who constantly presented double bind situations to me and would like to know if this talk about the double-bind that i posted below or if any of my experiences with difficult trips sound famiilar to anyone diagnosed with it?
I've tripped no more than ten times and 80% of those trips were "difficult." My love of the moments that i did break through and experienced life changing revelations had a big enough impact on my life that i've come to be utterly fascinated by the psychedelic experience and interested in tripping more. However, my experiences of difficult trips is something that continues to trouble me. I've pissed my pants before on a particularly bad trip where i was with people i wasn't comfortable with but couldn't leave them. In another particularly bad trip in a horrible setting, I ended up mildly hurting myself. Admittedly, the bad trips usually happen in bad sets and settings for me, and the experience of which really makes me realize why, but their scariness still hasn't left me.
My trips & Sober life problems: It seems when i have a bad trip my social anxiety and fear of being unable to make decisions becomes absolutely catastrophic. I fear horribly that anything i say will be misconstrued, that people will look down on me as stupid, or criticize me, and that i won't be able to say what i mean. I worry about my usefulness as a human being. It's pretty much an extreme magnification of the feelings i've always had when i'm sober. When sober, I have self-consciousness issues in social situations or in jobs where i feel i might be judged by anyone. I also have difficulty communicating often (usually a result of my anxiety and internal monologue) and for a long time had difficulty getting myself to do simple things like brushing my teeth or eating regularly and well (this i have been working on and see the importance at least of thankfully... same with my social anxiety through CBT, meditation, yoga, etc but it's still there). I suppose i could look at the voice in my head that says automatic negative thoughts all the time as a "separate voice" but i could also just as easily see it as my own...because i don't remember ever not having it, i just pay attention to it more now that i've been in therapy and can meditate
With these experiences in mind, when i just came across the term "double-bind" and read about its relation to schizophrenia, i felt deja vu. The term struck me as something that has been prominent in my life in the entirety of my upbringing, as an essential component of the thought process that creates these super-anxious moments for me (including the ways i deal with them, such as ocd, bad habits/addictions, relief-seeking activities) and when i have these horrible trips (the anxiety-ladden and paranoiac effects of which have a couple times lasted for several weeks after, even a month after), it's exactly what i experience.
From wiki:
"A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual or group receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response.
The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation. The term double was first used in discussions on complexity of communication in relation to schizophrenia. Bateson made clear that such complexities are common in normal circumstances, especially in "play, humor, poetry, ritual and fiction". Their findings indicated that the tangles in communication often diagnosed as schizophrenia are not necessarily result of an organic brain dysfunction. Instead, they found that destructive double binds were a frequent pattern of communication among families of patients, and they proposed that growing up amidst perpetual double binds could lead to learned patterns of confusion in thinking and communication.
Human communication is complex and context is an essential part of it. Communication consists of the words said, tone of voice, and body language. It also includes how these relate to what has been said in the past; what is not said, but is implied; how these are modified by other nonverbal cues, such as the environment in which it is said, and so forth. For example, if someone says "I love you", one takes into account who is saying it, their tone of voice and body language, and the context in which it is said. It may be a declaration of passion or a serene reaffirmation, insincere and/or manipulative, an implied demand for a response, a joke, its public or private context may affect its meaning, and so forth.
Conflicts in communication are common and often we ask "What do you mean?" or seek clarification in other ways. This is called meta-communication: communication about the communication. Sometimes, asking for clarification is impossible. Communication difficulties in ordinary life often occur when meta-communication and feedback systems are lacking or inadequate or there isn't enough time for clarification.
Bateson also surmised that people habitually caught in double binds in childhood would have greater problems--that in the case of the schizophrenic, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context from infancy on. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system. (see in Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia-Illustrations from Clinical Data."
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i have had schizophrenic symptoms in the past, i managed to figure out the origins of it tho in my case, maybe this will help you.
ive found that all the symptoms i had were created by very subtlely delusional thought systems. even sane people have some, people with mental health problems just have more, or more intense ones. i believe it can even account for hallucinations. everything youve said in your post can be attributed to thought problems, the big underlying problem is, you believe them. i think the ability to detach from thoughts and see them as just a tool is the cause of most mental illness. you may have noticed this yet it seems to hard or something, what you have to notice is that is also a delusional thought, just keep this in mind, a thought believed is a thought in control.
just be careful tho because, once you disbelieve one thought/idea another idea will come in its place and you will have to keep this cycle up until your able to evaluate a few ideas on each suject which gives you problems and pick the most healthy one to go with. for example, i have social anxiety, is a belief, an alternative is i am comfortable in social situations. you really can pick what you believe once you realize that the only power or validity a thought has is the degree to which you believe it.
-------------------- Thinking is dreaming wake up and enjoy the dream.
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zoomfan said: i have had schizophrenic symptoms in the past, i managed to figure out the origins of it tho in my case, maybe this will help you.
ive found that all the symptoms i had were created by very subtlely delusional thought systems. even sane people have some, people with mental health problems just have more, or more intense ones. i believe it can even account for hallucinations. everything youve said in your post can be attributed to thought problems, the big underlying problem is, you believe them. i think the ability to detach from thoughts and see them as just a tool is the cause of most mental illness. you may have noticed this yet it seems to hard or something, what you have to notice is that is also a delusional thought, just keep this in mind, a thought believed is a thought in control.
just be careful tho because, once you disbelieve one thought/idea another idea will come in its place and you will have to keep this cycle up until your able to evaluate a few ideas on each suject which gives you problems and pick the most healthy one to go with. for example, i have social anxiety, is a belief, an alternative is i am comfortable in social situations. you really can pick what you believe once you realize that the only power or validity a thought has is the degree to which you believe it.
I totally know what you're talking about. Sometimes when i'm tripping on lsd or thc edibles i get into these modes where i can very clearly understand exactly why i feel the social anxiety or feeling of insanity in everyday situations, where i get it from regarding my upbringing and super easy ways in which i can reject it...it always results in a super religious part of the trip for me, and it's what i feel and think when i experience a "good" trip, this sort of hyper-intellectual way of breaking down these issues into "problems with my way of thinking, and then solution that i've always known but never FELT, and couldn't come to feeling without this new found ability for taking in an enormous amount of variables and past experiences into account simultaneously" in other words - seeing the themes of my past relationships and anxieties and destructive ways i've dealt with them, and easy ways in which i'm not going to do it anymore. That's what i was referring to when i mentioned my good trips changed for the better
but I also strongly relate to that feeling that it keeps coming back in different forms. Sometimes psychedelics are an aid to solving this for me, but other times they just seem to make me much worse for a while. And no matter whether or not i have a difficult or good trip, I do tend to feel permanently more "intense" after my trips, which makes me wonder if i'm changing because of the chemical itself, and regardless of whether or not psychedelics are creating the experience of helping me, if it's possible that it may also be making me worse in a different sense at the same time.
Example: I'm becoming better at knowing how to fill silences in conversation because i recognize them better than i used to. However, when i don't fill them right away after recognizing them i tend to get this feeling of deja vu from my bad trips - with a voice saying "this silence will go in forever and it will be AWKWARD AND YOU'LL NEVER MAKE FRIENDS" - that voice is louder than it ever was before since i've tripped the last couple years. This is why i worry about tripping, if every time it gets louder, what if it gets too loud one day after a trip? This very well may be that automatic negative voice ignoring all the useful things i've learned in exchange for that possibility, but i'm not quite sure if that's necessarily BETTER if i'm getting a little closer to some sort of break that i might not be able to integrate
I just realized that it's very well possible that the part of me who said in the original post, "I could also just as easily see (this voice) as my own...because i don't remember ever not having it" the part of me that is once again trying to make me feel like there's something "wrong" with me that i can't get rid of...It very well may be the part of me that's whispering to myself this entire possibility of going permanently insane while tripping that i'm talking about lol
Edited by helix (05/05/11 09:44 PM)
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