I was drunk for almost two days once and at the end I couldn't comprehend conversation!
Always respect your sleep, it's the only thing keeping you from cooking your brain at 30. Anecdotal but my mate's mom got Alzheimers when shes like 55, an overworked overstressed, never sleeping woman.
(Also, I have DID so I experience other personalities all the time!)
It brings 5d chess into my psychology or something
Which sucks, because I really feel like dissociatives would be nice. I've taken memantine orally and it was nice, although it took really long to wear off, and also after a while it made me throw up all over my expensive tech, which was very not fun. Ketamine though I haven't found an adequate way to take.
So you're probably right, but on both points sadly. To this day he still sends me complex CAD drawings of nothing.
[s]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801...
OP did address that. But
Lots of folks attribute things like schizophrenia to hallucinogen use, when in reality, people make questionable decisions in their late teens and early twenties; this is the time that these disorders tend to manifest. So a lot of coincidence leads to a casual relationship in popular culture.
(I've been trying to impact the stability of my brain for years. I just want a way to destroy rational thought but that isn't lethally addictive (benzos), or irreversibly neurotoxic (deliriants), or literal poison (alcohol). Harm reduction is such a drag, I just want to safely explore unsafety!!)
It is not possible, by definition; here’s a portion of the DSM 5 definition of schizophrenia:
“ The disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition”
Hard to find a publicly accessible DSM link, but here is an excerpt
https://floridabhcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pages...
Kind of like how we were "lucky" to get a guy with a railroad spike through his brain to learn about how brain damage affects personality and impulsiveness..
I use schizophrenia to refer to the experience, not to the diagnosis. I'm not sure what to call the experience of schizophrenia other than schizophrenia, given it's not synonymous with psychosis. (Though, granted, I would also want to try psychosis someday; even if it's a terrible experience and I never want to do it again, I want to truly know what it's like. Hopefully without permanent brain damage though. That stipulation heavily limits my options.)
A woman developed what we call schizophrenia. She hid it reasonably well, but eventually was hospitalized for it.
Later they found cancer. While treating the cancer, her schizophrenia "magically" disappeared. Seemingly for good.
The article points that this isn't a unique case, and that schizophrenia, as a "hopeless disease," doesn't get enough attention... And there's no real sub classification to determine what lead to a set of symptoms (which is the only current diagnostic criteria).
So the speculation is that autoimmune treatments might cure or help some forms of schizophrenia.
Read the full article if this story sounds interesting!
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/26/6/2741
https://aaic.alz.org/releases-2024/glp-drug-liraglutide-may-...
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11242057/
Some promise for autism and depression, though little with schizophrenia:
https://www.psychiatrist.com/pcc/efficacy-glp-1-agonists-psy...
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250511/GLP-1-receptor-ag...
There was a phenomenon where sometimes a high fever would cure STDs like syphilis. We generally use antibiotics now that we have them, because they are less dangerous.
Based on this, the article suggests that the rituximab Mary was given along with chemo was the key. However, they were unable to test conclusively for antibody evidence of this theory after the fact.
It's certainly an area which can be characterized as rare disease, whether paraneoplastic or otherwise.
The biggest clue is that she was never responsive to antipsychotics.
According to who?
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.07101562
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158216301000
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395621005793
further i am having a hard time coming up with medical conditions that have a single test pass/fail like this.
Famously, pregnancy...
But as the article mentions it's not a single pass/fail test they seek but any biological marker at all.
Historically autism was lumped under schizophrenia and before that they were both lumped under dementia. Symptomatically similar with insufficient diagnostic precision or theory to differentiate.
Many things cause psychosis. Drugs are a good example. When first discovered LSD was often characterized as causing temporary chemically-induced schizophrenia. A useful metaphor but not accurate.
Is this not true of all things in the DSM, though? there's no "easy" test for ADHD or depression, for examples; fMRI might be able to distinguish, if the literature is to be believed. But generally you have to rely on what a patient self-reports, what caretakers/professionals observe, and what effects, if any, medication has on the symptoms.
There is pretty clear evidence that some subset of schizophrenic diagnosis are due to autoimmune issues. If we can use antibodies in the spinal fluid to detect when autoimmune treatments can be effective in treating schizophrenia, that alone will be huge.
However, the even bigger insight to be drawn from all of this is the potential for other psychological problems that psychiatry has struggled to treat, to also have autoimmune causes. When you try to treat something that has multiple, quite different causes, with a single treatment, it makes sense that it would be hard to find that treatment that works reliably (as is the case for many psychiatric medicines.)
I predict we may eventually see immune antibody tests (or some functional successor) become a standard part of all mental health care.
I personally believe that in the US, our society is quick to demand people seek treatment, even forcibly. Yet the treatment available is insufficient, incredibly destructive and often ineffective.
As far as I can tell, the US is unusually permissive of people with mental health issues. Entire cities have thousands of people who are visibly unwell and free to do whatever they want.
And I didn't mean to say specific policies are in play. It's the outcry of the surrounding communities that have a loud but powerless group that want people forcibly locked up. (Seattle here)
The same thing happened to many low income housing programs in Canada as well. Few people remember that there were once federal programs to provide affordable housing which were also part of the 1990s cost cutting exercises.
Locally we have a few long term retirement homes that are municipally funded, but capacity is very limited with long wait times.
The part I cared about, buried deep
People went on keto diets etc... to heal their psychichiatric issues.
Eg the son of the Roblox founder healed his bipolar with a keto diet.
bookofjoe•10h ago