Can we discuss psychosis ?

[sweetheart]

They say that cannabis users often suffer from psychosis.
If this is true, then likely as well, those same cannabis
users don't get treatment for psychosis beyond their self-perscribed one.

The definition of psychosis reads so widely (per link below) that
the entire bush administration and most persons on earth could be
suffering from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

I heard, that if the illness is really "real", that the person
will have had in their teenage years a severe emotional breakdown.

On reading the way that they treat these illnesses, they seem to
perscribe these medications i've heard about in "insults" like
"thorazine" that apparently turns you in to a vegetable.

But maybe that is, like in so much of medicine, a branch of
invasive, non-wholistic doctors. Maybe there are lighter weight
treatments?

I wonder if new forms of nutrition are better? I wonder if all cannabis
users could have a rich-man's doctor treatment, would there be a general
perscription? If all persons with psychosis (non cannabis) could get proper nutrition
and medical treatment, would there be a general perscription?

In discussing mental illness, any person is inclined to see it as "outside"
themselves... "those sick people over there". I'm hoping replies don't take
that tone here, but rather, "what if *i* the reader am the one with the sickness", is
there anything i can do to make things better?

[rodeodance]

1. that's the beauty of psy diagnsis--their capacity to be flexible

....The definition of psychosis reads so widely (per link below) that
the entire bush administration and most persons on earth could be
suffering from it.

[sweetheart]

14. Its like psychology's framing of the mind is a religion

by its framing.

In the series of books by Carlos Castaneda about the Yaqui indian brujo (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671600419/qid=1136923517/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9918640-0739132?n=507846&s=books&v=glance)
teacher he was a lifetime devotee-of, the teaching outlines the human
consciousness as "tonal" and "naugual". The definitions of these 2 terms
are the subject of like 4 books... in an allegory called the "sorcerer's
explanation".

The tonal is the little ship on the rough ocean of the naugual. The tonal
is the mind, the thoughts, "me", your ego, all your concepts of past and
your career and all that. The naugual is the unknown, the mystery, profound
and altered states of consciousness that are not explainable, not "knowable"
by the mind or thinking self, yet part of greater knowledge, part of the
what don juan calls "the totality".

So he describes the process of self discovery, as a progressive construction
of a "ship" of the mind/ego that then serves as your vehicle. Then his
teachings discuss making the vecicle impeccable for "space travel", as carlos
wants to learn about profound altered states of mind, jimi hendrix "scuse me
while i kiss the sky."

BY his teaching then, a profoundly deep person would be that way partyl because
their physical life was so-together, the bills paid, the bank account balanced,
and the body healthy. But having a balanced tonal is just half of being sane,
according to don juan's allegory. The other half of sanity is chaos, the
unknown, being undefined, unfettered and wild. This other half happens in deep
sleep and profound meditation, but is walled off from conscious, perhaps what
freud describes as the ID, but not as "lower" or more primal... but rather
like a yin/yang opposite to order.

Any experience in altered attention, by definition, is psychosis, whereas by the
native-indian-brujo allegory, it is part of awakening the greater consciousness
of a human being; part of a religious abstract where we ARE one with the
reality around us in our cultural view of ourselves.

It is a different world-view, another religion, one that sees the human
spirit as infinitely more abstract, genetic and mysterious; where that is allowed,
and not a psychological condition to be eschewed, but part of existance.

[phillinweird247]

2. I Think you might have a psychosis....

because your post reads like a schitzo word salad.(look it up)
and cannabis has nothing to do with it.

[sweetheart]

4. thank you

Sometimes i open picasso

Of course, by asking, i am open to the charge. That we are psychotic
on this thread, a load of nutters, and you too, are a nutter,
jammering away with a psychotic on a planet of murderers.

But i feel that a lot of people who smoke grass, who
might experience psychosis symptoms, do not have the
verbal skills, nor the writing skills to even ask for help.

but more than that, they might not have the financial means.

And this being a progressive forum, i figured by asking in a
way that exposes me to the charge of psychosis, is the best
approach.

I discuss things, blogwise, intimately, as if its me.
What "i" feel about the bush administration, has more
power than some talking head... especially in my blogwork dammit.

So, fine, i accept that i am a psychotic, that thoughts seem
unnatural, and i don't listen to my thoughts anyways. They
are on permanent ignore. DU is fire and forget. I go back to
read my own posts to reply to posters who reply, and inreasingly
i wonder who wrote them. :-)

There, that should add some fuel to the fire. :-)

Please be kind.

[Tace]

3. I've Always Seen Most Psychosis As Maladjustment

There's some harsh things about life, and all environments are not supportive of all people. I think most mentally ill persons simply can't adapt to their personal environment, although they could be happy in a nuturing environment, with supportive people. This certainly includes nutrition.

That said, we know there are genetic factors to various mental illnesses, as well as causes such as tumors, brain lesions, etc. There's some findings that fungus infections may have something to do with some types of mental illness, also. I know a woman (mentally unstable) who said her mother was diagnosed with psychosis, which led to divorce, unemployment and general misery. However, when she reached menopause, all the symptoms went away, and she's very high-functioning and happy now. We speculated that it was some kind of hormonal imbalance.

On Edit: To put it in a personal context, as you suggest, I try to do what I think is right, spend time with supportive people who share my values, eat right, sleep right, and not party too hard or take destructive drugs.

[sweetheart]

9. hormonal imbalance

I had 2 great aunts who were very fat and depressed,
and one time, one of them lst all the fat and was a
ball of joy for a while, and then she plumped back up,
became depressed and eventually died.

Hormones and chemical subtle things like that i suspect
are much more at play.

It is already proven that psychosis is more prevalent
in city environments than country ones, so clearly
environment has some toxic impact in cities that
exacerbate .. perhaps stress.. the body to release
hormones or something.

I wonder if in a hundred years some archeologiest
will read this thread in pity shaking their head at
how sad it was back in the stone ages, when we treated
mental illness with prisons, disenfranchisement and
criminalziation, rather than love, nutrition and
cooperative self help.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Psssst. Read Peter Breggin's "Toxic Psychiatry."

[sweetheart]

6. very interesting (link to some text)

http://www.aperiofilms.com/ExcerptsfromToxic.html

namaste,
-s

[depakid]

7. Chicken & the egg problem

Sure, there's a correlation with cannabis- but there's no causal arrow. Many mental illnesses are comorbid with substance use/abuse.

Also, the age of onset varies person to person, illness to illness. For example, the mean age of onset for bipolar disorders is about 24-25. Since that's the mean, some considerable portion of people don't develop symptoms until even later in life. Others will have problems in teenage years.

[sweetheart]

8. Causality is a theory, proof is lacking indeed

This subject's been itching since the've been discussing it, as if they
are right simply with correlation, not causality, then the vast majority
of cannabis smokers will then, if we are compassionate, have a perscription,
a sort of public perscription, that could be written on a website, could
be part of community outreach.

Sooooo many cannabis users are uneducated (i realize the ones who are!), but
i figure for every person who writes on DU there are 1000 of similar mind
who either can't, don't have the writing skills, the typing skills, the
internet connection, the linguistic skills, or the education. So, without
condescending, i feel the medical profession could use the internet more
powerfully to outreach, if we can make the presumption that people are
self medicating what may be a sickness that can be treated with best practice
advise and whatnot.

Too much of what i've read about mental illness automatically "sections" people
out of their civil rights. The presumption to discuss having symptoms, is to
lose what civil freedom one already has, at the potential of public incarceration,
as mental illnesses have been treated in our culture for centuries. So, the ability
to outreach is terribly damanged by the judgement and criminalziation, and this
forges and impermeable information membrane.

One one side, 38,000,000 regular cannabis users, that if they are not criminalzied
for their smoke, they will be for their "psychosis".

I would expect any degenerative illness to take place later in life, if we are
saying the mind is getting sick and degenerating. But if perhaps, some minds
are simply forged a different way in the soul of the person, maybe the categroization
is difficult to do outside of a 1 to 1 basis.

Hekc, i don't know about this stuff, its why i asked to start with.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. If cannabis use is correlated with ANY psychiatric "disorder,"

it's ADHD. And I don't mean that pot causes ADHD. Rather, a lot of ADHD-types seem to be strongly attracted to pot.

I have also seen a sort of short-term "pot psychosis" that appeared to result from a combination of high stress, pre-existing trauma, and pot-induced paranoid thinking. But these cases seemed to clear up after a few days off the pot & away from the stress.

[sweetheart]

11. ADHD

Its a new term for me.
http://www.adhdnews.com/what-is-adhd.htm

What i think i've seen is the latter of what you describe.
Over many years, one smokes with many people around the
world, and only in stressed western countries have i seen
"babble mouth" stoners... stress high stress.

That explains why i've seen that more in major cities, as of
course those persons would be more stressed to start with, and
when a joint unbuttons their coat, it all comes out. The next
day, all better... like maybe the release of that button
and the stress of letting loose contrasts the rigid conformity
of social existance... ?

So if it seems rather apparent that cannabis is simply correlated
with certain symptoms, not causative, why are they getting away
with saying it is causative? What scientistist journals are not
printing the truth? Is it the drugs company lobbies that needs
to have lots of diagnosable sickensses to sell expensive prozaks for?

I did read that for all the increase in cannabis use, the number
of mentally ill persons per capita diagnosed annually with certain
symptoms should go up?.. of course, if the drug causes people to get
mentally ill, the increased usage in popular culture would surely then
have resulted in more cases today.... but there is no significant
increase in cases, so clearly causation is bunk.

[sweetheart]

12. Is ADHD really a diagnosable sickness

I've just read this link, that says that ADHD does not actually
have any biological symptoms, and that they are pushing the
idea that it IS biological, so they can sell drugs to the huge
"kids" market.

Since 1990, there has been a six-fold increase in the US production and utilization of methylphenindate...no other nation prescribes stimulants in such volume to it's children...methylphenindate is listed in Schedule II of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971, along with amphetamine and methamphetamine...Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD) is the nation's largest ADHD support organization...Ciba-Geigy (manufacturer of Ritalin) contributed $748,000 to CHADD from 1991 to 1994...the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) expressed concern about non-governmental organizations and parent associations in the US that are actively lobbying for the medical use of methylphenindate for children with ADHD

http://www.aperiofilms.com/Aboutbiopsychiatry.html#anchor681528

I had no idea they were targeting the entire nations youth... these drugs pimps.
I'm really shocked.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. I don't think there is a single disease entity underlying ADHD.

You might be interested in Daniel Amen's work. Based on SPECT data, he thinks there are six different types of ADHD, all quite different from each other and all marked by different patterns of brain hyper/hypoactivation. I'm not sure I endorse Amen either, but I think he's closer to the truth than conventional psychiatry.

As for me, I think that the symptoms of classic ADHD tend to arise from frontal hypoactivation--i.e., from frontal lobes that are functioning at a lower than optimal level of arousal. "True" ADHD types display excess slow-wave (delta, theta) EEG & insufficient fast-wave (beta) electrical activity.

A lot of people assume that these frontal activation patterns arise from problems in the physical (e.g. myelination) or neurochemical (i.e. dopaminergic) development of the brain. (Ritalin causes more Dopamine to be produced).

I, on the other hand, think that a lot of things can affect frontal activation. Things like psychological trauma, abuse, and neglect. I think some people learn to shut off their frontal lobes in childhood because their lives are more bearable if they can escape awareness of reality. (You stop paying attention to things. you get an attention deficit disorder. Duh.)

Abused kids learn to block awareness of the abuse. They cease to attend to things around them. They get bored. They seek stim to fight the boredom. They do stupid things to get the stim. They get diagnosed with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, and eventually Antisocial Personality Disorder. Then they turn into George Bush.

[philb]

15. most ADHD appears to be caused by toxic exposures- usually prenatal

similar for autism, Asperger's, ADHD, learning disabilities, etc.
and the largest cause is toxic metal exposure with mercury the largest source, but
commonly related to lead, arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, nickel, antimony also.
http://www.flcv.com/tmlbn.html
http://www.flcv.com/kidshg.html these cite several hundred peer-reviewed studies

Clinics have success treating such conditions, with metals detox being a major focus
nutrition and metabolic balancing is also important

the Pfeiffer Clinic is one such clinic that has treated thousands, but DAMS has interacted with clinics all over the U.S.
treating such conditions and I've posted info on them before.

Pesticide exposure is also common and is documented to cause neurological conditions like ADHD, but such conditions appear more commonly caused by toxic metals.
http://www.flcv.com/pesticid.html

But Endocrine disrupting chemicals like PCBs, dioxins, etc. are also common and commonly cause neurological conditions, as well
as a lot of immune and hormonal related problems. Many have exposures to all of these types of toxics, which are synergistic.
http://www.flcv.com/endocrin.html