Weird semi-story

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

(a bit of story loosely based on my experience with dreaming. includes Wikipedia articles)

My mom is shouting about the locked door.

Overview
Psychosis is considered by mainstream psychiatry to be a symptom of severe mental illness, but is not a diagnosis in itself. Although it is not exclusively linked to any particular psychological or physical state, it is particularly associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depression) and severe clinical depression. There are also detectable physical pathologies that can induce a psychotic state, including brain injury or other neurological disorder, drug intoxication and withdrawal (especially alcohol, barbiturates, and sometimes benzodiazepines), lupus, electrolyte disorder in the elderly (such as urinary tract infections) and pain syndromes.
The term psychosis should be distinguished from the concept of insanity, which is a legal term denoting that a person should not be criminally responsible for his actions. Similarly, it should be distinguished from psychopathy, a personality disorder often associated with violence, lack of empathy and socially manipulative behavior. Despite the fact that both are colloquially abbreviated to "psycho", psychosis bears little similarity to psychopathy's core features, particularly with regard to violence, which rarely occurs in psychosis, and the distortion of perceived reality, which rarely occurs in psychopathy.
Psychosis should also be distinguished from the state of delirium, in that a psychotic individual may be able to perform actions that require a high level of intellectual effort in clear consciousness. Finally, it should be distinguished from mental illness. Psychosis may be regarded as a symptom of other mental illnesses, but as a descriptive concept it is not considered an illness in its own right. For example, persons with schizophrenia can have long periods without psychosis, and persons with bipolar disorder and depression can have mood symptoms without psychosis. Conversely, psychosis can occur in persons without chronic mental illness, as a result of an adverse drug reaction or extreme stress

I think my mom's still at it.

Psychotic states occurring after drug use may be particularly linked to drug overdose, chronic use and drug withdrawal. Certain compounds may be more likely to induce psychosis and some individuals may show greater sensitivity than others. Certain "street" drugs, such as cocaine, amphetamines, PCP and hallucinogens are particularly linked to the development of psychosis. Anticholinergic drugs (atropine, scopolamine, Jimson weed), and many antihistamines can also induce psychosis in some people.
Intoxication with drugs that have general depressant effects on the central nervous system (especially alcohol and barbiturates) tend not to cause psychosis during use, and can actually decrease or lessen the impact of symptoms in some people. Withdrawal from barbiturates and alcohol can be particularly dangerous, however, leading to psychosis or delirium and other, potentially lethal, withdrawal effects.
Psychological stress is also known to contribute to and trigger psychotic states. Both a history of traumatic incidents experienced throughout the life-span, and the recent experience of a stressful event, is thought to contribute to the development of psychosis. Short-lived psychosis triggered by stress is known as brief reactive psychosis.
Sleep deprivation has been linked to psychosis, although there is little evidence to suggest that it is a major risk factor in the majority of people. Some people experience hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, where unusual sensory experiences or thoughts appear during waking or drifting off to sleep. These are normal sleep phenomena, however, and are not considered signs of psychosis.

Her voice is getting muddled

. During the 1960s and 1970s, psychosis was of particular interest to counterculture critics of mainstream psychifishic practice, who argued that it may simply be another way of construeing reality and is not necessarily a signs signs sings signs of illness. For example, R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is a sbmolyic way of situations in concerns expressing where such views may be unwelcome or unsmockable to the cash price receipts. He went on to say that psosichy could be also seen as a transatlantic experience with heeling and distilled spirits aspects. Thomas Szasz focused on the social implications of labelling soup cans as psychotic; a label he argues unjustly melacidlises different views of reality so such undortohox people can be controlled by society.

Shit.

I don,Äôt care mom! I,Äôm in my god damn room!

Her voice sounds like a mumble, but also like fire.
I can see her behind the door.
I,Äôm sure she,Äôs upset about that. (What with me knowing what she looks like and her being in the dark about me.) And her voice is on fire.

Call a god damn ambulance if you,Äôre on fire!

They tend to start talking about pills at this point in the conversation.
She keeps looking different. When her face expresses it seems to overdo things.
Her chin keeps hitting her knees while she shouts fire.

I keep having to be on the internet to find out what has been happening to me.

It may have started when they started giving me those pills.

They said they were concerned about my increasingly erratic behavior.

Well it,Äôs not my god damn fault that I could hear your thoughts!

They cited examples of when I repeated their thoughts to them.
But they got angry because they felt my knowledge of them was threatening.

By that time I learned to control repeating the thoughts. They said the pills were working.
But they knew god damn well they were poison.

Sometimes things start melting without me asking.
Frequently the words melt. Sometimes there are new words, sometimes the letters just dance away from each other and come back when I look at them.
Perhaps their dancing is a secret ritual of sorts, which is why I never see it.

My mom keeps trying to pull things away from me.
She took away my Lovecraft when I pointed out my concern about the Great Old Ones and their schemes. She started calling people more when Cthulu kept using my voice for his thoughts.

I never took a god damn knife mom! It was all a mother****ing lie! I know how to keep away my enemies without weapons!

Ainw runway U diefwr rgGAR NT OIAURUIB UB IB RGW JWTBOARD is out of alignment.

And I can,Äôt turn lights on and off. I don,Äôt know why they had to do that to me.

My enemies are few and far between, despite the misconceptions held by my mother based on my admittedly excessive expressions of my concern about them.

My eyes often move back and forth quickly. I didn,Äôt ask them to.

Whenever I open the blinds the landscape keeps changing without asking.
And it,Äôs always noon.

Why can,Äôt I let some ****ing light in!

Something keeps drifting away, and it might be anything. Things keep disappearing and they don,Äôt come back.

Nightmare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Nightmare (disambiguation).
In common current usage, the term nightmare refers to dreams of particular intensity, with content that the sleeper finds disturbing, related either to physiological causes, such as a high fever, or to psychological ones, such as unusual trauma or stress in the sleeper's life. The occasional body movements seen in nightmares may have a use in awakening the sleeper, thus helping to avoid the frightening dream-situation.

What the hell? I wasn,Äôt on that article.

Reality testing
Reality testing is a common method that people use to determine whether or not they are dreaming. It involves performing an action with results that are difficult to re-create in a dream. By practicing these techniques during waking life, one will eventually dream of performing a reality check,Äîwhich will usually fail,Äîhelping the dreamer realize that they are dreaming. Examples of reality tests include:
,Ä¢   To read some text, look away, and read it again, or to look at your watch and remember the time, then look away and look back. Observers have found that, in a dream, the text or time will often have changed[11].
,Ä¢   Flipping a light switch or looking into a mirror. Light switches rarely work properly in dreams, and reflections from a mirror often appear to be blurred, distorted or incorrect[citation needed].
,Ä¢   Closing one eye and looking at your nose, seeing that it's not there[citation needed].
,Ä¢   Covering your nose and seeing if you can still breathe through it[citation needed].
,Ä¢   Pressing the index finger firmly into an area of the body such as the chest or leg. Since matter is usually plastic in the dream state and does not resist change, the finger will usually penetrate the dream body with little resistance and no pain[citation needed].
,Ä¢   Observe your hand in a dream, often you will find that your hand has the incorrect number of fingers[citation needed].
,Ä¢   Pinching oneself ,Äî in a dream no pain will be felt[citation needed].
Another form of reality testing involves identifying one's dream signs, clues that one is dreaming. Dream signs are often categorized as follows:
,Ä¢   Action ,Äî The dreamer, another dream character, or a thing does something unusual or impossible in waking life, such as photos in a magazine or newspaper becoming 3-dimensional with full movement.
,Ä¢   Context ,Äî The place or situation in the dream is strange.
,Ä¢   Form ,Äî The dreamer, another character, or a thing changes shape, or is oddly formed or transforms; this may include the presence of unusual clothing or hair, or a third person view of the dreamer.
,Ä¢   Awareness ,Äî A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual sensation, or altered perceptions. In some cases when moving one's head from side to side, one may notice a strange stuttering or 'strobing' of the image.
Though occurrences like these may seem out of place in waking life, they may seem perfectly normal to a dreaming mind and learning to pick up on these dream signs will help in recognizing that one is dreaming.

[Felix]

Doing a bit of dream analysis, eh?  What are you postulating based on findings?  Think you're sane?

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

Doing a bit of dream analysis, eh?  What are you postulating based on findings?  Think you're sane?

Not so much dream analysis, but I'm working my way through the oneirosphere and figuring out the nature of my masochistic imagination.
And, according to the state, I'm not sane, but a kid with Bipolar disorder.

All I've been finding out is that all the spirituality and abnormal thoughts will never go away with any pill they give me, even if they have to hide in my dreams. (Who knows, maybe the rash of bizarre dreams I've been having have been a sort of psychic backlash from my previous and preferred state of manic depression.)

[Felix]

Mania is best taken in small quantities, I've found.

Bipolar often comes hand in hand with depression.

Alcohol and like chemicals are known to magnify symptoms.

have you checked with Mayoclinic.com?

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

Mania is best taken in small quantities, I've found.

Bipolar often comes hand in hand with depression.

Alcohol and like chemicals are known to magnify symptoms.

have you checked with Mayoclinic.com?

Of all people, I disagree with you. Mania and depression do go hand in hand, but I feel I live best with both being the primary condition of my life. Mania teaches me all the beautiful parts of life and depression teaches me about the emptiness and hopelessness that coexists with the life and bright idealism of the world. If I'm not learning, I get bored and feel worse than I do when I'm depressed.

And alchohol/drugs aren't my thing. Maybe psychadelics, but nothing else.

[Felix]

Refreshing to be disagreed with, so thanks for that.

So what about being faced with extreme perspectives teach you about life?

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

Refreshing to be disagreed with, so thanks for that.

So what about being faced with extreme perspectives teach you about life?

1. Bitteshoen (or is it Bitteshon? Summer has been affecting my German knowledge)
2. I suppose using "teach" in a traditional, small lessons of growing knowledge sense would be a misnomer. What it does is it places me in a constant state of Satori or near to it at the least. In the space of 5 months I managed to outpace the movie Waking Life in terms of philosophical thought, which I suppose is a bit of an accomplishment considering how many intelligent people viewed that movie as a super mind expanding head trip.
Like during the first notable onset of my condition (I shy away from saying "illness" as I don't feel defective in any way) at summer camp last year, I experienced this massive blast of infinite beauty as the old idea of "beauty is truth" (which I had never heard before) came upon me in all its fullness. But in the same week I was confronted with a sudden awakening to my own apathy towards improving myself and my denial of my shamefully immature past in a way that went far beyond the dispassioned words I told myself beforehand.
By having a brain chemistry in a state of extremes, I've had my own tendency towards revelation allowed to grow and be amplified many times over for some reason I can't quite explain.

And you're very right about chemicals kicking the bipolar back. I used (of all odd things) my old mood stabilizer that got me as high as a kite last night and I think I had a mega intense dream about my dad cheating on my mom. Unless those messages were actually on my phone (which was my dad's two years ago, apparently), in which case I have something worse than intense dreams on my hands.  

[Triple Zero]

1) "bitte schon", no umlaut

2) i think they call it the "long dark teatime of the soul" or something. or the abyss. the odd thing is that you actually seem to be enjoying it, while usually one reaps the actual benefits afterwards, after recovery (which you wouldn't call "recovery" of course) .. there's a lot of writings about how someone first needs to "cross the abyss" before reaching a new (higher) state in life, but i think others here can tell much more about this. it's a bit .. new agey? hippie? fluff-headed, but that never stopped me

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

1) "bitte schon", no umlaut

2) i think they call it the "long dark teatime of the soul" or something. or the abyss. the odd thing is that you actually seem to be enjoying it, while usually one reaps the actual benefits afterwards, after recovery (which you wouldn't call "recovery" of course) .. there's a lot of writings about how someone first needs to "cross the abyss" before reaching a new (higher) state in life, but i think others here can tell much more about this. it's a bit .. new agey? hippie? fluff-headed, but that never stopped me

1. Thanks. I had a feeling that was how it's spelled, but I have a terrible memory.

2. The whole "cross the abyss" thing does make a fair bit of sense. While I am aware of what's going on while the depression is happening, I do really reap the full benefits after the initial experience, where I can see more than I did before, and can place the insights gained into context.

Perhaps the reason I have less of a problem with Bipolar is because I have a unique kind of it, in which I have hyper fast cycling (up to five changes a day, though usually changing every day and a half), and equal amounts depression and mania. Most people (adults at the least) have very slow cycling, lasting from a week to several months, and they have long periods of depression punctuated by short bursts of mania. I also think that an overall spiritual and inquisitive nature helps out my mania too, but I suppose I can't judge considering I'm no authority on the personalities of others.

[Felix]

TLU gains intellectual respeck from Felix.

I believe it's two words, and has the little horizontal colon over the O, like this: "Bitte sch??n".

I've experienced the beauty/truth trip myself.  Remarkable, no?  I haven't however seen "Waking Life".  Would you say it's worth the trouble?

I like your perspective on bipolar, how it 'cycles'.  It's a good model I suppose, as I'd imagine such psycho-chemical turnovers would (now that I think of it) induce far more insight than a stable neurochem' state.

Also, it's interesting to see how others retrospect.

that is all.  The Immutable Cabal thanks you.

[Triple Zero]

watching "waking life" is definitely worth the effort IMO, if not for some interesting insights, a very special/beautifully animated movie either way

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

TLU gains intellectual respeck from Felix.

I believe it's two words, and has the little horizontal colon over the O, like this: "Bitte sch??n".

I've experienced the beauty/truth trip myself.  Remarkable, no?  I haven't however seen "Waking Life".  Would you say it's worth the trouble?

I like your perspective on bipolar, how it 'cycles'.  It's a good model I suppose, as I'd imagine such psycho-chemical turnovers would (now that I think of it) induce far more insight than a stable neurochem' state.

Also, it's interesting to see how others retrospect.

that is all.  The Immutable Cabal thanks you.

Respects for teh newbie!

And Waking Life is definitely worth it, as it goes over a ridiculously wide range of subjects, so it's likely at least one Idea will be new to you. The presentation isn't very movie-like, it's more like a short philosophy book making use of audio, visuals, and a very sparse story/character development to emphasize certain aspects, throw ideas into context, and give a feeling of a dream/trip.

*reminisces on the beauty/truth trip*
Everyone kept saying things about why I was staring up into the canopy of the trees, as everything became this crystalline, shining trip. I half near passed out.

You're welcome Immutable Cabal

[The unimportant one]

I've been through the whole routeand back again, am 20, and just finished with the state a wk ago. Never give up, 'cause once your free, the situation gets way better. also, your diagnosis might not be permanent .Mine wasn't, and I'm now sane (stangenliebung  therapists will never agree.) also, placement =  study time for all skills

[LMNO]

TLU, a word of caution:  my brother is bi-polar, and for a while, he enjoyed his pendulum swings, as well.

Then he went into a black, black depression, and didn't leave his apartment for a year..

Then he went totally manic, and had a complete psychotic break, and had to be hospitalized.



Then he became a Scientologist.



So, all I can say is: watch out.

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

TLU, a word of caution:  my brother is bi-polar, and for a while, he enjoyed his pendulum swings, as well.

Then he went into a black, black depression, and didn't leave his apartment for a year..

Then he went totally manic, and had a complete psychotic break, and had to be hospitalized.



Then he became a Scientologist.



So, all I can say is: watch out.

All I really hope to avoid is the hospitalized and Scientologist part.
Choosing to live with bipolar is a dangerous choice, and I've still got a little while to figure out what I'm going to do, but I think I'll end up making that choice.