Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life | Hacker News Reader

Perceptual distortions in late-teens predict psychotic symptoms in mid-life

binghamton.edu

126 pointsgmays127 comments

I have always had these distortions throughout my life. I sometimes feel like high-functioning psychotic. I recall the story of that researcher James Fallon that found out he was a psychopath when he scanned his own brain. Everything feels intellectualized rather than a concrete physical reality.

Just because there's a correlation doesn't mean distortions inherently imply psychosis. It's difficult to know your experience just from your brief comment, but it's possible that you may have something like depersonalization-derealization disorder, without any psychosis.

Psychosis generally involves delusions and hallucinations. For example: hearing things that aren't real, believing governments or other powerful entities are specifically targeting and watching you (much more so than just being caught up in the standard dragnet surveillance), thinking you're a divine being or on a divinely-mandated mission, frequently thinking people you see IRL are stalking and following you, thinking some external entity or machine is inserting invasive thoughts into your head via photons.

And as the other commenter said, psychopathy and psychosis are unrelated, and as far as I know not even correlated. But I understand you're probably just referencing that story as an example and weren't suggesting a connection. (The context, for anyone unaware: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...)

That sounds right. My daughter was diagnosed with bipolar, and sometimes when she is 'manic', she has psychotic, paranoid delusions. She was the one who noticed it and decided that it was "wrong", and went to seek treatment. Her delusions were as mundane as; she thought that her friends were all meeting behind her back, planning to ruin her life.

Anyway; psychosis is more of a symptom. Psychopathy, itself, is kind of a category of disorders; where psychosis is a common symptom.

One of these things is not like the other...

> believing governments or other powerful entities are specifically targeting and watching you

Because that never happens?

> frequently thinking people you see IRL are stalking and following you

Because that never happens?

> hearing things that aren't real

Who decides what's real? Is it not real unless you've got audio?

> thinking you're a divine being or on a divinely-mandated mission

> thinking some external entity or machine is inserting invasive thoughts into your head via photons

Of course the first two things do sometimes happen to people. But people in a psychotic state very frequently think they're happening when they actually aren't happening. A high percentage of them believe it, but out of that sample, the belief is almost never actually based in reality.

That's why I listed a myriad of symptoms. If someone solely believes that, say, some people are following them, that's one thing. But if someone thinks people are following them and that some entity is implanting thoughts into their head via futuristic technology, then they're very likely in a state of psychosis.

If you haven't committed any crimes or done anything noteworthy, it's especially unlikely any government is going to devote resources to following you. If you know you've committed some serious crimes, then it's certainly a much more rational fear and could be real.

Also, if you're really being followed by a government IRL, odds are you're not going to notice it unless they want you to notice it, and that pretty much doesn't happen unless you're an important figure traveling to a foreign country and they want to intimidate you. It's not impossible that you could notice it, but when multiplied by all of the other probabilities, it's very unlikely. Especially if you hold other paranoid beliefs.

>Who decides what's real? Is it not real unless you've got audio?

If you hear someone talking to you but you don't see anyone nearby, or if you hear something/someone while no one else near you hears anything. But, yes, if you try to record it and don't hear anything on the recording, then that would also be an indication.

We are watching you, fakesheriff.

Love,

NSA

One feature of psychosis and mental illness, in general, is a lack of insight into one's own condition, or the lack of a complete picture into how symptoms impact one's thoughts and behaviors.

In psychosis, this very pronounced because many of those who experience psychosis don't know they're experiencing delusions or hallucinations. It's all very real to them.

The fact that you have an awareness of your distortions seems to suggest that you're not psychotic.

You're leaving out a key aspect, which is "while it's happening". My mentally ill friends are some of the most introspective, self-aware people I know. They understand exactly what happens to them and how it affects them. They just don't have the ability to do a lot about it while it's happening.

Psychosis is not always like that. You can have an episode and then retrospectively, like days or weeks after the delusion, realize it was not "real" (tm). An example is people on the bipolar spectrum but this can also happen if you are on the autism spectrum and had an overstimulation episode or some other kind of break.

bipolar and autism are orthogonal.

it's perfecly possible to be on both

Lack of insight to varying degrees is a well-known feature, but not always the case.

Having insight doesn't imply at all a lack of symptoms. It's possible to be aware, but not be able to correct errors in real time.

Someone with paranoia is highly sensitive to coincidences, and may have great difficulty blocking out elaborate theories regarding them which seem to spontaneously arise, as well as an intense fear reaction to the possibilities.

Some people can suppress that sort of thing fairly well. The problem is, that's not a solution to impairment, because suppressing patterns will suppress the ones that normal people consider important as well, sometimes.

I suspect that (knowing how paranoid delusions work as I observe in my daughter - and also, how I process anxiety); that the anxiety is often triggered as a physiological reaction, a hormonal signal that physically jacks up your heart-rate, and adrenaline. This sensation is often processed as fear. And our intellectual coping mechanism for fear, is to try to UNDERSTAND it, to figure out if there's any action that should be taken to prevent harm. And in the absence of any apparent rational explanation for the fear, the mind MANUFACTURES a rationalization. Sometimes it's a completely silly nonsense rationalization. But if it relieves the fear somewhat, (not the anxiety), it becomes an adequate coping mechanism. A healthier coping mechanism is when something triggers inside that helps you to realize that what's happening is a physiological reaction, and there's no actual real reason to be anxious. You can still come up with a silly rationalization, but you will realize that it's not real. I think that's the hairline that separates insanity from a person who's just having a hard time coping with an anxiety attack.

>that's the hairline that separates insanity from a person who's just having a hard time coping with an anxiety attack

Ultimately, it's not entirely intrinsic, it depends on extrinsic factors as well.

When someone is intensely fearful, and interacting with someone else, they're susceptible to spiraling feedback loops and misunderstandings.

I have always wondered why if someone with good logical reasoning skills got schizophrenia they clould not reason their way to seeing their delusions for what they are. For example (real example I heard) if I think everyone who looks at my eyes is from the government and tracking me on my walk to the park- there simply is no agency that could field and coordinate that many undercover agents nor surreptitiously replace all normal people on my route. It seems to me dellusions must involve both imagination and somehow disable logical reasoning for an intelligent person.

That's me. I had all the paranoid delusions mentioned in this thread and logically walked myself out of them. I sometimes have snaps where I let my guard down and get paranoid again but they have been easier and easier to avoid with age and responsibility.

Reading your comments, I can relate. I never found an answer but ptsd, derealisation and schizophrenia all feel like they overlap or fit on a spectrum. Perhaps some of us don't quite have the ingredients to completely detach from reality and can manage our way around symptoms. A lot of the time I think I'm just too imaginative.

If I'm quite upbeat and have good happy mood (not so common) then symptoms are much less likely to occur, so it could also be a depressive state of sorts.

In my own experience, reality and imagination merged.

Any logical reasoning I had was dealing with massively corrupted input. I was overwhelmed trying to separate want was real and what was not real.

The only way I could tell what was real and what wasn’t was by going off what I remembered to be true about the world. Well, part of memory retrieval got compromised too.

There are things I knew to be “true” about the world that didn’t match my mental model of how the world actually worked. That model was all that was left in the end. The only reason I came back was the episode ended. Even then, I thought the experience was a normal human response to stress.

>there simply is no agency that could field and coordinate that many undercover agents nor surreptitiously replace all normal people on my route

It's entirely possible that a person can reason like that and reject some theories, and it may even be comforting to see and feel things that are easily dismissed.

However, paranoia does not necessarily involve things that are so clearly absurd, even to a healthy observer. You're talking about one end of a distribution, even for a given person, and an almost infinite number of possibilities are in a gray area.

It's possible to observe patterns of coincidence without a particular theory, and rejecting a theory or switching to a different one doesn't make observations go away.

Those observations can be mistaken or selective, but that's a separate issue.

I agree, two famous mathematicians who had severe mental illnesses come to mind, Kurt Gödel and John Nash. In fact there seems to be a link between the two (intelligence and predisposition to mental illnesses), see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201707/the-mad-g...

>In fact there seems to be a link between the two (intelligence and predisposition to mental illnesses)

I don't think it's real. I attribute it to a selection effect.

Of all the people with mental illnesses it's necessarily the particularly smart or talented ones that you hear about.

The more of a handicap something is, the more extreme other abilities have to be to cancel out and produce a notable accomplishment or even an average, comfortable life.

People who aren't brilliant in some way, aren't going to be noticed, and have little to gain by sharing their experiences.

I used to volunteer for a mental health advocacy non-profit, and they had a poster listing all the famous people that supposedly had some sort of mental illness. I didn't find it inspirational, because I suspected on the one hand it was kind of reaching for many of them, and on the other, it had the unintentional implication to me, that if you aren't Einstein you can only pretend to be, or be nothing.

Society fixates on geniuses with mental illness for another reason - they are likely to be able to describe their inner life much better than the average person. But they might not be representative.

I’ve had psychosis and knew I was completely out of reality. The problem was my rational brain wasn’t in the driver’s seat. So I got to watch myself believe and do things I didn’t want.

I had a friend who had a few psychotic episodes in her teens and early 20s. She fully knew there were no aliens, but that didn't stop the sensation that they were real and hiding in her apartment, or the actually real fright that came along with experiencing it.

My understanding is that the clinical definition of a delusion is a concrete, false belief. There's no insight, by definition.

People can have hallucinations that aren't delusions (in that they recognize them for what they are).

>Everything feels intellectualized rather than a concrete physical reality

I'm not sure what this means, but you might read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

It is said to be a common phenomenon that most people experience at one time or another, and can be associated with a great many conditions or events, from head injuries, to schizophrenia, to drug use.

Yeah that might be it. What I mean is that I don't feel like I'm actually here - everything feels flat and dream like, rather than in the moment planted in a physical space. I thought this was normal though, aren't most people constantly in that state due to worry about the future or obsessing over the past? And that's the point of meditation, I think... To bring yourself into the here and now. I do some regular meditation and get glimpses of feeling more awake and present, but nothing persistent so far.

I have depersonalisation disorder. I got it from drug use. I know that at leadst for me it's not normal. I still remember what it was like before and how different everything is now. I feel the same stuff you are describing.

>aren't most people constantly in that state due to worry about the future or obsessing over the past

I would think that the alternative that is "in the moment" is social interaction or working on a project.

Or doing nothing!

Psychosis and psychopathy are distinct, for what it's worth.

The article seems to treat psychosis, psychotic symptoms, and Schizophrenia as though they all refer to the same thing.

But not psychopathy.

Psychopathy isn't a medical diagnosis but it generally refers to antisocial personality disorder, which doesn't include psychosis in its diagnosis criteria.

I think it's a common misconception that Psychopathy refers to antisocial personality disorder. It's a related but distinct concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist

Which is how people think clinically. Schizophrenia spectrum disorders are the most common forms of lasting psychosis. Psychopathy isn't related.

They are distinct, but the ego’s attempt to rationalize what they are experiencing is often part of the same framework. Paranoia, delusions of grandeur, narcissism, me-against-the-world (victom-playing).

Drug abuse, criminality, and to a lesser extent - sheer failure at something, also lead to this framework. I failed this class because the education system sucks, I’m burnt out at work because my company sucks, etc. It’s so difficult to explain what’s happening, but somehow, across a variety of circumstances and pathologies, a similar framework emerges.

It’s curiously a human crutch.

I don’t envy shrinks, as they are confronted by the same framework by wildly different psychological explanations. And, it’s there job to find the dangerous ones that show up, needles in the haystack.

You're conflating different things that are unrelated.

Symptomatically, personality disorders are basically relational dysfunctions. Some are developed as compensations for barely having an ego at all. They're fairly well documented.

The most shocking thing for outsiders is realising how alien they are. People with no knowledge of psychology literally cannot imagine how it's possible for people with these issues to lie consistently without guilt, act without empathy, and have conversations that appear coherent but make no sense at all relationally.

Drug abuse is a different issue with a much wider range of causes.

Burn out and educational failures are real issues and can be caused by real external problems. Someone who has a poor teacher objectively, or even just a teacher who is a bad fit, does not have the same psychology as someone who persuades themselves all teachers are bad because teaching itself is evil.

>realising how alien they are

You can't dehumanize someone and claim to understand them simultaneously. It's logically incoherent to draw a conclusion from a failure to understand.

When I try to understand people, I start by assuming that they, like everyone, have an inner self with the golden rule hardwired at a very basic level, and anything appearing to violate that is an illusion creating by coping behavior, distortions in perceptions, or something. Psychic pain being prioritized over everything else can make the resulting behavior very confusing.

Also, since I'm not a professional psychologist I don't have to pretend I understand when I don't.

So, what are you implying, that shrinks know exactly who is off their rocker within a few sessions?

No, they seem to be implying that your armchair analysis that seems to boil down to "everything is part of the same framework" is simplistic at best.

I don't understand why people think lying is so difficult. It is human nature to lie and manipulate. At least that was how I was brought up. I think people who think that normal is goody two shoes are virtue signalling or decieving themselves. The average person in the world just wants to get ahead. Sometimes prosocial behaviors help with that. Sometimes they don't. It depends on the relative amount of hostility vs cooperativeness in the specific environment.

What is a perceptual distortion or aberration? Is it an umbrella term? What's included? Migraine auras? Vertigo? Seizures? Acid trips?

I haven't been able to find a precise definition.

Not sure if there's a clear definition, but the article lists these as symptoms:

>These early perceptual distortions included a heightened awareness of sound or color, uncertainty about the boundaries of one’s body, feeling that the world around them is tilting, and similar experiences.

For me (as someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia): as a child I had a lot of flickering lights/shadows and brief whispers/noises, horrible depth perception, frequent dizziness, and bad temperature coordination (sweating or shivering way too much in response to weather).

One particular indication which I thought was universal but is apparently somewhat uncommon: visual “snow” in low light conditions, meaning that dark rooms look like grey TV static to me. (When my eyes are closed in the dark I usually just see black.)

When I close my eyes I see "snow", and yes the same thing with my eyes opened in the dark. But this is normal, no? It seems like seeing pure black is abnormal. There will be some kind of noise on the optic nerve, it's hard to imagine it being hard "off".

Seeing snow when your eyes are closed or in darkness is fairly typical from what I understand. Visual snow as a diagnosis is visible at least in reading-level light and against light backgrounds.

I see snow against all colours in a typical office environment. It’s less noticeable in daylight but still there.

I can both see it and "unsee" it. If I'm actively doing something and using my eyes for things I don't notice. But if I'm just sitting listening to music or whatever I can notice the "fuzz" and noise. In low light it's a very fine grain. In daylight it's a coarser pulsing of white and black.

I've always thought this was normal. I've asked a couple other people and they've said they see it too, :shrug:

I've always had visual glows when I close my eyes. Not eye floaters, I only see those when my eyes are open.

When I close my eye, I usually see an outline of bright/dark somewhat matching what I last saw, but desaturated and splotchy.

If I keep my eyes close, the patches kinda drift around. It's kinda fun to watch sometimes but I get bored eventually open my eyes.

I've always assumed its my eyes just adjusting to the dark, or maybe its residual light my eyelids can't filter out.

I always remember the term 'eidetic' and always think I am misremembering the correct term, but it is "eidetic imagery" I am searching for. To me this refers to the phenomenon of seeing above-threshold-of-perception patterns or motions, such as lava-like swirling. As you say, such things can be interesting for a time.

This following link discusses the phenomenon in terms of phosphenes:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-do-i-see-patterns-when-i-...

Arguably, there have been spiritual movements fueled by relative ignorace around these things, with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples.

> with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples

I can voluntarily cause a burst of those color patterns by, after closing my eyes, relaxing all my facial muscles and letting my eyes go unfocused. Works best when trying to fall asleep, so I can imagine people unintentionally doing the same during, say, meditation and correlating it with their spiritual leader.

A sort of natural prior is that when you close your eyes, it must be black, right? But it is not, as you observe.

A sociologist who studied the spiritual cultures concluded there were many conformity-related behaviors at work. Oh, yea, I had the experience.

I think I get phosphenes and never had the word for it. I can more or less elicit them on demand by closing my eyes, relax and let them cross slightly. A stroby concentric circle set ensues for a few seconds. Always the same pattern. Red.

I thought that was normal, what everyone saw. Aren't they called something like "phosgenes"?

I guess the optic nerve should see the same in complete dark vs in darkness with eyes closed - if noisy then noise in both cases. But here we are talking about a significant difference between eyes closed and low light.

Same thing here. Male/mid-30s and no psychotic symptoms, so unlikely to get them now, hopefully. I have always noticed audiovisual "brain glitches" every once in a while, but I think that's because I find it interesting to look for them...

This is a bit disturbing to read as someone who had perceptual distortions in my late teens. I always attributed it to HPPD after using LSD around 15 years old. Now I'm not so sure.

I get a world tilting thing maybe once a year. Usually while falling asleep. I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room. I've also had odd sensations that accompany these perceptual changes.

All of these occur very rarely. Like I said, maybe twice a year, but closer to once per year. I can't find it now, but I had learned about seizure activity and how you can experience one without really knowing it, things just might get wonky like your perception, feelings, smells, etc.

>I get a world tilting thing maybe once a year. Usually while falling asleep.

I think this is very common and occasionally experienced by most people, including myself. Typically when you're on the border between being awake and falling asleep.

>I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room.

Haven't experienced this one, but perceptual distortions in a dark environment shouldn't be a concern, I think. I definitely get thrown off sometimes. It's natural, since your brain is constantly trying to predict what should be there, and ambiguous signals due to limited light can throw a wrench into that, especially if you're not habituated to the light conditions.

>I've also had odd sensations that accompany these perceptual changes.

Could there be a nocebo effect? After learning about seizure auras, it's possible that when these things happen, you might enter a brief positive feedback loop where aura-like things could psychogenically manifest. Was this also the case before you learned about such things?

The name for what you're talking about is Hypnic Jerk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk

Also a great name for a person who wakes you up just as you're trying to fall asleep. "You, you hypnic jerk!"

I was going to mention that, but I'm actually not 100% sure if it's the same thing. Maybe it is? Either way, I definitely occasionally experience hypnic jerks and sudden vertigo-ish feelings when I'm right on the edge of falling asleep.

> I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room.

Does this happen in total black ? I sometimes (really rarely, like once or twice a year) have a strange « feeling » at night while in my bed without any source of light : I can distinctively see the objects around me.

The twist is : I’m heavily myopic and even with my glasses (which I don’t wear at night) I can’t see anything in the darkness. So there is no way I could distinctly see things with their contours in the darkness.

It only happened in places I know, so I can’t know if my brain is making my bedroom up or if I really see something, or if it’s a combination.

I've had an object appear huge once (right after an LSD trip), so might as well share my anecdote.

For me it was in a dark environment (bedroom), but I was looking at my phone, without glasses, and holding it pretty close to my eyes (I'm also heavily myopic) so that it occupied maybe ~60% of my field of vision.

The "picture" I had in my field of vision never changed, the "pixels" (though I don't think there is such a thing) did not change. But suddenly my phone was this giant monolith just above my head.

Consciously I could clearly tell this was a hallucination, but the dissonance of having this seemingly suddenly huge object held right above my head was really unsettling to me, a bit scary even.

I'm so used to not questioning how my sense of scale pretty much always matches what I see, it never occurred to me my instinct could be fooled by this wide a margin while consciously seeing that everything was normal.

But on the other hand, I can't say I've really ever had an unusually distinctive awareness of objects like you describe.

Won't happen in total darkness. Also, it's happened in full daylight. Like all the sudden someones head just looks absolutely massive, like I've lost the ability to perceive size. I find the effect pleasurable so I kinda zone out and let it happen. Otherwise I can snap myself out of it pretty quickly.

Sounds like vertigo maybe? Does it feel like someone tilted the floor and there's no "up"? Followed by sweating and vomiting and 48 hours of headaches? (Source: I get it a few times a year.)

None of that, it just looks like the floor is tilted forward. It doesn't feel like it though. It's a very odd visual distortion.

I noticed while at the eye doctor when testing different lenses I guess he could recreate the feeling by using incorrect magnification on one eye? Making my brain thing the room is tilted left or right.

Unrelated, anybody ever feel like they lost consciousness for 250ms? Super rare, but I get the feeling that I feel asleep and all my muscles went limp in that moment. It's like when you are falling asleep and you sometimes jerk yourself back awake.

See another comment on this post about Hypnic Jerk.

FWIW the objects looking large is talked about quite a bit by epileptics and can be a ‘focal awareness seizure’. I got these as a kid and my family has a history of epilepsy but I’ve never had an adverse affect.

https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/epileptic-seiz...

Back when I smoked cigarettes I could tell I had smoked to much because I would get Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I would feel like my bed was rotating in the world, my head would feel like it was too big for the room or that my feet would be dozens of meters away from me.

I thought I was going crazy for a while until I found out what it was.

Migraine. You needn’t have a headache either.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2289227/

The distortions while falling asleep is sleep paralysis. There's nothing weird about this.

Every once in a while, i'll have this and there's an entity in my room. Once, everything in my room flew and the world 'cracked'. It's just a waking dream. Wiggle your toes, and things will go back to normal. Toes still work when the delusion sets in because it takes time for the hormone that causes bodily paralysis to get to your toes, and when the brain notices you moving your body, it wakes back up.

>I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_syndrome

They seem to be lumping things together pretty widely which is a disservice to people like you.

A bit of hallucinating here and there is quite common especially as you age and isn't a big deal (though if it happens suddenly go see a doctor, it can be a symptom of something happening), being unable to determine what is and is not real can be quite a problem.

Can you elaborate a bit? I don't remember hallucinating when growing up[1], so I'm interested what this would look like. I don't doubt that it may still be common without everyone experiencing it.

[1] Or ever, really, unless fever dreams when being really sick count. Though, without any reference point to compare to, they really seemed more like intense dreams.

I consider myself to be a very mentally-stable person, but I have encountered occasional hallucination-like experiences. They're very brief, and my brain seems to correct itself retroactively, which makes them somewhat difficult to notice. For example, a soft noise could be vividly interpreted as someone calling my name, but when it becomes apparent that this didn't happen, my brain files the experience as "probably misheard something", and my attention is immediately diverted. Supposedly smell hallucinations are pretty common too. These are hard to recall because they're so unremarkable. It's difficult to tell these things from common daily "mistakes", but is there really a difference except in effect size?

A classic one that many experience is thinking you see someone or something notable or scary in the dark, that turns out to be whatever ordinary thing is actually there.

Is that really a hallucination? Or is it your brain’s pattern recognizer making an incorrect guess and then quickly course-correcting when more data is present?

The surface boundary of what does or doesn't count as a hallucination isn't necessarily clear or well agreed upon.

> is it your brain’s pattern recognizer making an incorrect guess

This part is more or less an accurate explanation of a lot of hallucinations. Input misinterpreted and incorrectly "output" into consciousness.

I've had events in deep meditation where I hear things as though they were actually audible and not just a memory of sound or see things as though my eyes were seeing them and not visually remembering them.

They always scared me even though the audible events would be something simple like a "Hello!" or like, a bottle cap opening or a bit of music and the visual events would be like, a match striking or a bit of fire.

I am not sure what causes this transition of perception. Some people say its your brain releasing DMT, some say it's activation of your parasympatheic nervous system. I don't know for sure, but I don't think it is anything to be afraid of.

Yes, these are quite common. I believe persistent, full-on visual hallucinations tend to be rare among the general population, assuming you're sober and not sleep deprived or in a half-asleep state or in the process of waking up.

This, and similarly Déjà vu, both happen to me too, very occasionally. I definitely also see a correlation with times I'm significantly fatigued, for example after being awake for 20 hours during a multi-day fast.

The parent poster mentioned having taken LSD and later experiencing HPPD (hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder). Visual disturbances and distortions are often associated with both. In rare cases it can last for months or years, if the HPPD is severe.

Yeah, although I may have been too aware of my body's normal distortions, it was fairly typical HPPD from what I hear. Walls breathing, tile floors becoming 3d, constant visual snow layered on my vision. I'd say my thinking became somewhat more disorganized after the experience as well. I used to be a fairly fast reader and afterwards I had to slow down and also start re-reading more. I also had a fair amount of panic attacks, even ending up in the ER once when I was 18.

HPPD would definitely be a major confounder, here. I really wouldn't be worried. If it's been many years since it happened and you haven't ever experienced anything that seems like it could be psychosis, then it very likely isn't something to be concerned about, I think.

One single dose of LSD can cause permanent psychosis, so this is not surprising. This is why drugs like LSD need to be absolutely banned. They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug.

This is not true, or partially true at best. As far as I'm aware, current consensus is that psychedelics are not a causative agent in psychosis or schizophrenia in the absence of predisposing risk factors. 0.5-1% of the population will develop schizophrenia, and for these susceptible individuals, a psychedelic trip can be the event that triggers the full-blown disorder. But so can any other significant psychological stressor, like the death of a family member or friend, or going off to college alone. But in general, psychedelic use is not correlated with mental disorders, in fact there are some studies that suggest that psychedelic users may have lower rates of depression, anxiety, and increased empathy and openness.

oh, here's an interesting one I hadn't seen before: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/aop/article-10.155... "Lifetime use of psychedelics is associated with better mental health indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic"

But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance? We don't ban alcohol because a certain percentage of drinkers will develop alcoholism. We don't ban smoking even though it is a (or even THE?) leading cause of preventable death in the US. Why should other drugs be any different?

My depersonalisation disorder started after an LSD trip. Was it really that drug that did it to me or was it always going to happen? I don't know but even so I've never gotten any of the benefits that psychedelics advocates talk about. For me it was just fun and that's it. I still absolutely hate what the drug did to me and I wish I had never taken it but comments like yours convinced me. I feel like the constant advocating and laying out the benefits like they are a guarantee is really dangerous for a chemical this powerful.

Exactly... We're expecting those affected negatively by the drug to come out in force to combat the LSD advocates. How can this be possible? Those given psychoses by these drugs end up in mental institutions, at best, on the streets at worst. They are in no position to advocate for themselves.

The truth is the drug is a mixed bag. Some people take it and may only report benefits. However, some people take it and develop intense psychological disorders they may not have ever developed otherwise. Simply saying 'oh they were pre-disposed' is hardly an excuse. Maybe they were pre-disposed, but not enough to develop it without an intense trigger event, like an LSD trip.

Here's a similar situation. Auto-immune disease runs in my family. My older cousin has vitiligo. My brother didn't have it, but then one day he suffered a severe burn. A few weeks later, he started developing vitiligo. Burns and other severe events are known to trigger vitiligo. Had he simply avoided it, he would likely never have developed vitiligo. But alas he did.

My uncle has schizophrenia. I see how it can affect him and the family negatively. You can't put me within 10 feet of LSD. Sorry, I'm just not interested. The risk of me developing actual schizophrenia is simply not one I'd be willing to take, but most LSD advocates would not even mention this, instead mentioning the silly pleasure it brings them. Sorry, no amount of poetic creativity, artistic brilliance, or musical talent is going to convince me that a non-zero risk of beginning to hear random voices is good.

The negative symptoms are so bad, that the positive ones, which are basically momentary pleasure, are simply not worth it being tolerated as a self-medicated drug. Even the supposed medical benefits deserve intense scrutiny given how dangerous the drug can be.

> But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance

No, because such allowances are made with the assumption that people act reasonably. GK Chesterton said we should tolerate all thoughts except for the thought that stops thought. We can tolerate all kinds of insane thoughts. The only thought we cannot tolerate is the thought (the will to take LSD for 'fun') that has the potential to stop all thought. LSD, and other psychedelics, cause the breakdown of rationality that is the very reason we allow adults to make their own decisions. It is completely incoherent to allow LSD while also using adult cognitive skills as the basis of adult freedom.

What an absolute bullshit.

Seriously, you propose to deny adults freedom of thought because there are "wrong" thoughts, defined by "reasonability ", which isn't and can't be defined?

In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.

See where this leads?

> In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.

No, because acknowledging the existence of such a thought does not imply thinking it.

The flaw with your claims is the underlying belief that human thought tends -- if left untouched by others -- tends towards freedom.

There is little reason to believe this. Throughout history, many civilizations have independently arisen that have fully embraced the thought that stops all other thought. You see this is in various cultural degradations, human atrocities, etc that have occurred over and over again.

In reality, human thought is not totally 'free'. There are some thoughts that you can think that make you less free, and should be discouraged.

Here's a more poignant example, would you allow adults to drive a metal spike into their brain to allow 'freedom'? Why or why not? If you do allow them, how can you possibly claim to desire 'freedom' for others, since -- by definition -- doing such a thing to your body is going to put you at the mercy of others for many years to come (and if they can't help you, then to the mercy of nature). If you don't allow them, why? If encouraging every liberty is not the goal of this exercise of freedom, then exactly what are you arguing about?

no, it's not. best estimates (admittedly poor) put the incidence around 1/50,000 for frequent users.

considering the potential mental health uses and the extremely low toxicity (i'm not sure anybody has ever overdosed on lsd) banning psychedelics would be a huge mistake.

and > They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug. applies to legal drugs too. alcohol for example. or painkillers or benzos.

One drink of alcohol is unlikely to lead you to become unstable. I don't know about the others.

I didn't call for a blanket ban. LSD may have therapeutic uses (other debilitating drugs like paracetamol do), but the self-dosing that people do 'for fun' shouldn't be tolerated.

You called for a blanket ban.

Sorry, I figured doctor prescriptions were not included. My view is that they should be a controlled substance, the way they are now. You'd have to show amazing cognitive effects for an illness to legalize it for prescription. I don't know the science here though.

By 'absolute ban' I mean they should be controlled, and classified as an illegal drug. This is not something people should self-medicate. Those using without a prescription or worse, distributing, should be jailed.

The experiment had 191 random participants, and around .5% of people have schizophrenia. Without seeing the full paper, it seems like there would be single digit differences in the resulting cohorts.

The original paper indicates the starting sample was 3500. On a quick read I didn't quite follow how things were narrowed from there (it's complicated) but it was not just 191 random folks off the street.

Wouldn't a better title be: Psychotic symptoms across a range of psychiatric disorders in midlife preceeded by perceptual distortions in late teens in xx percent of cases, exclusive of circumstances concomitant with perceptual distortion but not psychosis such as ptsd, synesthesia, autism, genius, artistic talent, prescription, drug, alcohol use, trauma, poverty, poor nutrition, health issues, the world actually being tilted...

You could have predicted a parade of "but I had this.. does it mean.." from the story.

(I wrote that as a late age male who read the medical dictionary and had everything, from leprosy to pregnancy. Classic hypochondriac)

I went though Alice In Wonderland syndrome in my mid teens where it would feel like my hands would grow to a massive or super tiny size.

I had this a few times when I was really young, probably around 7 yrs old or so. Super bizarre perception distortions, it was really scary. The bed and my legs would stretch out really far, my fingers would become cartoonishly huge and swollen or tiny. But the worst part by far was the distortion of time, my experience could move in fast-forward, like 10x speed.

I think around after puberty these things stopped happening. The developing brains of children can be so wild. I think it's a temporary form of synesthesia that happens as your synapses are developing and pruning.

Possibly related article on synaptic pruning in adolescence: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-018-0334-7

So for the med nerds in here, what would this mean for someone that have something like a dysmorphia or other distortions around eating disorders.

Is there a distinction between those visual distortions and a less structured one?

In a book on eating disorders I recall an anecdote relating back to World War 2 and interviews with people that survived various camps while extremely malnourished. Several people we're completely out of touch with how skinny they were. The book had a very women-centric perspective so the only stories pertained to women perceiving themselves as curvaceous (in the positive sense) despite being very skinny. Their body image was distorted from being so underfed but unlike a person presenting with something like anorexia the way they viewed their body was not as "hateful".

As far as i can think back i always had this weird thing that i heard something like distant voices whenever there was some monotonous background noise in the room (e.g. a fan running or so)... sometimes i could swear that someone called me from downstairs or from the neighbouring room, but in 99% of the cases nobody was there. Though... never spoke with a doctor about this, i just accepted it as one more fact on the "i am sometimes weird" list.

I had alice in wonderland syndrome a lot as a child and a teen, I distinctly remember feeling like I was a smaller "core" further inside my body. I hadn't ever noticed this was clearly a perceptual distortion, but it is isn't it?

For the most part I haven't had many psychotic symptoms aside from during lockdowns when I've had constant, obsessive thoughts about suffering. Sometimes I'll lay awake unable to fall asleep thinking about people forced into slavery, human trafficking, torture, my own future death etc.

This sounds rather intuitive. Is anyone using ML to look at inputs like 3rd - 6th grade writing exercises to predict things like schizophrenia and other mental illness?

This reads similar to some reading I’ve done on epilepsy and visual/physical “distortions”: https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/epileptic-seiz...

All this study says is that stressed teenagers who don't know how to cope become stressed adults who don't know how to cope. People display more psychotic attributes when they don't have the resiliency associated with being a teenager. Emotional stress is the primary cause behind "psychotic breaks" and "schizophrenia" (a worthless diagnosis). Stressed brains need more fuel, derived from glucose, b-vitamins, etc.

> The precise causes of illnesses such as schizophrenia are largely unknown, although genetics and brain-based factors are known to play an essential role.

My understanding is Psychosis is basically a metabolic disorder: people become psychotic when their brain runs out of fuel.

When I first met my friend who taught me about "mental illness", I thought she was 'high as a kite'. As the months went on, I noticed she was most chatty ("psychotic") when she was using crack cocaine. I didn't know about the term "psychosis" at the time, or that cocaine shreds the mitochondria [2][3]. When the effects of cocaine wore off, she was basically normal. When we ate well, she did pretty well. It wasn't until she ran out of alcohol that she became profoundly psychotic.

The involuntary doctors said, essentially, 'Patient expects us to believe that she was psychotic because she was drinking 2 bottles of liquor a day, and using cocaine. We know that this is not the case because we previously got her stabilized on medicine 5 years ago and 7 years ago. After those year-long orders for treatment she discontinued services. Here it is, 4 years later and she's back in the mental hospital. She's clearly been psychotic this whole time.'

I read that one of the problems of psychiatry is that they usually see people when they're at their worst, thereby missing that they were mostly functional just before they fell apart.

One of the early nutritional treatments for schizophrenia was Niacin. Psychiatrists who think in terms of drugs managed to torpedo this line of research, so our doctors tend to not think in terms of physiology. But the research is still being done:

Two-decade-long study links lack of vitamin B3 to schizophrenia among Indians - https://researchmatters.in/news/two-decade-long-study-links-...

Successful treatment of schizophrenia requires optimal daily doses of vitamin B3 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19238764/

Nutrition, NAD and exercise: vitamin B3 supplements to stay fit and healthy? - https://www.endocrinology.org/endocrinologist/135-spring20/f...

My friend eventually figured out that she's a poor methylator whose genetics are such that she can't turn folic acid (a shelf-stable provitamin B-9 used to fortify foods) into L-Methyl-Folate. (My previous comments said the treatment providers ran this test [1][2]. She later corrected me: new clients at the treatment center were getting their cheeks swabbed, she wanted to be swabbed too. The test came back that she needed methylated B-9. She'd previously said it was like flipping a switch from 'depressed' to 'not-depressed'.) But the doctors kept her on tranquilizers anyways.

Just last month she convinced her doctors to take her off tranquilizers. What's wrong with Psychiatry, that they think people become broken and require palliative treatments for the rest of their lives? Do any of you have any insights?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859585

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591378

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22132272

My GF is diagnosed bipolar, and had a breakdown before Christmas and got sectioned. I didn't see her at that time, but the behaviour that she describes sounds mildly psychotic.

She was home by the end of February, on a mood-stabiliser, an anti-psychotic, and a minor tranq.

She's off the minor tranq now; she'll be taking the mood-stabiliser until she dies, and it's not much of a problem.

But the anti-psychotic is troublesome. It makes her sleepy, so she needs a nap every two or three hours. It makes her shuffle around, a bit like a drunk; she used to run several miles daily, but she can't do that now. And she's gaining weight. I hope the shrink weans her off the anti-psychotic soon; I don't think she needs it.

> But the doctors kept her on tranquilizers anyways.

That sounds wrong to me. Tranqs are horribly addictive (meaning the withdrawal is horrible and dangerous) - even minor tranqs. You need to get off them within a few weeks.

IANAP.

Thanks for your response. Sorry to hear about your GF's experience. "Sectioned"... .. . Mental Health Act -> you're in the U.K.?

> she'll be taking the mood-stabiliser until she dies

"Mood stabiliser" is a marketing term. My friend was on a "mood stabiliser" until the 2nd to last time she escaped. She didn't have those pills with her when she hopped the fence, so she couldn't take them when she was in hiding at my place. She was perfectly "stable" without the drug, so they dropped it from her treatment program at the next visit & she felt better.

> But the anti-psychotic is troublesome. [...]

Whitaker points out that psychotic patients who do the best are those who are never put on anti-psychotics. Those who do second-best are those who are taken off the anti-psychotic promptly. Those who do the worst are those who are "maintained" on anti-psychotics indefinitely.

Random link to Whitaker's organization: https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/psychiatry-defends-its-...

>> But the doctors kept her on tranquilizers anyways.

> That sounds wrong to me.

I refer to anti-psychotics as tranquilizers, because Robert Whitaker points out that the drugs that got re-labeled as the first generation anti-psychotics were originally used as tranquilizers. Maybe this doesn't accurately reflect how today's patients are told about the medicines they're given, but it's better for being dismissive of their inappropriate use.

> I hope the shrink weans her off the anti-psychotic soon; I don't think she needs it.

You're almost certain to have help with this: look for a psychiatrist for a second opinion, someone with experience with tapering patients off psychiatric medications. Let the guy know that you're advocating for your GF, and are prepared to complain to licensing boards/etc...

I may have been overly-aggressive in my personal efforts. No one cared, but I don't know that a softer, gentler approach might've been more effective.

Since this is all sort of new for you, I'm happy to read your questions and see if I have any insights for you. I've been at this for almost 6 years... You may also find my comment history useful. hth. :)

Yes, "sectioned" as in Section [x] of the UK Mental Health Act (I hadn't realized until just now that there's more than one section of the Act that you can be detained under).

> I refer to anti-psychotics as tranquilizers

If I've got you right, that's what I call "major tranquilizers", e.g. haloperidol and chlorpromazine. I think they:

- Make you fat

- Cause you to start rocking

- Take away all the interest from life

"Mood stabiliser" is actually a new term for me; it used to mean simply "Lithium", in my book. Lithium also makes you rock, if you take it long-term. It does seem to work, in the sense of preventing episodes. The GF is on a mood stabiliser called Depakote.

> Random link to Whitaker's organization

OK, so they're ranting specifically about US prescribing practices, the DSM, and the US drug industry. They're focused on anti-psychotics. I think the system here is less crazy than in the US; although they're severely understaffed and under-funded, UK mental health services aren't in the pocket of Big Pharma.

I'm also concerned about anti-psychotics - especially long-term. My assumption is that they gave her an anti-psychotic because her behaviour at the time she was admitted was chaotic, she posed a risk to herself, and they wanted to prevent a relapse when she was returned to her own home. I've never known her to manifest delusions or hallucinations, which as far as I'm aware are required indicators for a diagnosis of psychosis.

I'm a bit suspicious of the bi-polar diagnosis; she doesn't suffer from wild mood swings or extended periods of depression; she just gets agitated, and jabbers. She says she hasn't had a depressive episode for 20 years. She's as honest as the day is long, and although she's told me some far-out things, they all turned out to be true when I checked; so I believe her. I can't find a medical description of bi-polar that matches the behaviour I observe. And it's not clear to me that the different kinds of "bi-polar" are really different kinds of one thing.

My own ad-hoc definition of bi-polar is "psychological condition that responds to Lithium".

> Let the guy know that you're advocating for your GF, and are prepared to complain to licensing boards/etc...

I've met her shrink, and members of her care team. It would be premature to say "I'm advocating..." - I'm keeping an eye on her treatment. I believe they mean to get her off the anti-psychotic, but not the mood-stabiliser.

I'm her BF, not her carer. I don't police her taking her pills. If she starts going off the rails, I'll give them a heads-up; I imagine I'll be the first to notice. If I eventually have to stick my oar in over her prescriptions, then I will; but for now, I trust her care team (and so does she).

So I see my role as basically "support".

> You may also find my comment history useful.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

> "Lithium also makes you rock, if you take it long-term.

My other friend called me up recently to tell me that she'd just bought supplemental lithium. She thought she was bipolar and needed more lithium. 12 hours later she called again, sobbing: suicidal. I told her she shouldn't have taken the lithium, and that it would probably wear off. She searched and found adverse symptoms associated with her supplement. I don't think she'll take that one again.

> The GF is on a mood stabiliser called Depakote.

That's what my friend was forced to take. She's been off it for nine months, and doesn't miss it.

Another response to my comment, from /u/eliasmacpherson, gets into orthomolecular psychiatry and "histadelics" (histamine, allergies) as an important causative factor in "mental health problems". That thread might be really valuable to you as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27993001

> OK, so they're ranting specifically about US prescribing practices, the DSM, and the US drug industry. They're focused on anti-psychotics.

The essence of Robert Whitaker's books, Mad in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic, and Psychiatry Under the Influence, is that Psychiatry got idealogically-captured by the drug industry, and how psychiatric drugs arguably take episodic conditions and make them chronic.

Whitaker's initial forays into "mental health" was when he looked into Prozac as a reporter for the Boston Globe (newspaper). The trials for Prozac found that it makes some patients suicidal. The Germans FDA-equivalent wouldn't approve it...

Whitaker's organization spotlights more effective approaches to treatment.

> So I see my role as basically "support".

Often times it's hard for patients to notice how adversely affected they are by their medications, but the doctors thinks the medications are working fantastically even though the patient would have gotten better anyways, with just time and a normal diet. Followup visits are opportunities for injecting additional perspective... "What are you going to talk to the doctor about today?" might be a useful question to ask.

Thanks for your comment.

My insight is that psychiatrists, and most doctors, are themselves mentally ill. The vast majority think too highly of themselves. Many think so highly of themselves they do not listen to patients because they view them as less capable. The moment something escapes their understanding, it is labeled as a disease. It's almost the way the ancients would make up gods to explain phenomena they could not explain.

IMO, schizophrenia is a great example of this. My uncle is schizophrenic, and doctors (and some in my own family) accuse him of not making sense when he talks. But he makes perfect sense, if you pay attention. Most people are just not smart enough and don't pay attention and aren't interested. Doctors especially pretend that since they don't understand him, he's certainly crazy.

I'm not saying my uncle's easy. He's not, and he needs to be 'treated' (i.e., managed specially so he doesn't go off the deep end and become so self-isolated he convinces himself he needs to stab someone), but it's unclear to me whether he's sick (i.e., has some chemical dysfunction or biological dysfunction) or whether he's just reacting in the normal human way to the pressures of life and his own experiences.

> or whether he's just reacting in the normal human way to the pressures of life and his own experiences.

R.D. Laing claimed that psychiatric disorders were a normal human reaction to a crazy world.

In my youth, I was on-board with that analysis; but R.D. Laing was discredited, and I cam around to the view that bipolar and schizo were real illnesses, very debilitating, and that make the sufferer very unhappy; and that they benefit from chemical treatment.

It seems R.D. Laing and his ideas are now back in favour.

I don't know what the treatment for schizo is nowadays; they used to treat it with major tranqs - haloperidol, chlorpromazine etc. Major tranqs == major side-effects.

If you were trapped and the only way to free yourself was to cut your arm off like that guy in 187 hours, any person could make that decision.

A sane person would verify that they are trapped, call for help, wait as long as possible in hopes of rescue, and then when it was all for naught and it came down to life or death, if they had decided they were going to live no matter what they could start cutting.

An insane person might also make that decision, but might make that decision without verifying that they are trapped first. Might make that decision in response to a feeling of being trapped, an internal one with no external verifiability.

The idea that psychotic people are sane people in a crazy world sounds poetic but doesn't hold up to examination. If you are trapped in a rushing river you can swim against it or give up and go with the flow, but psychotic people are trapped in the raging river of their perceptions and can only "go with the flow" under the effect of exogenous chemicals.

It's not a "sane reaction to a crazy world" to go crazy, going crazy is a helpless reaction to a crazy perception of the world.

It's not always forever though. I've heard of people who go crazy for a while and then return to normal, or find an outlet for it that allows them to adapt and integrate. Maybe everyone should go a little crazy every once in a while just to shake things up a bit.

Well, the terms "sane" and "insane" aren't really very helpful. "Insane" could cover almost any unusual kind of experience or behaviour. "Sane" is equally flexible in meaning.

Psychosis is not a disease or condition; it's a symptom supporting the diagnosis of a wide variety of conditions, and is sometimes a direct result of childhood trauma, which can be susceptible to complete remission through therapy.

So you're right - it's not always forever.

Apparently some psychotherapists contend that all of those conditions characterised by psychosis are the result of childhood trauma. [citation needed]

I disagree that the terms aren't "very helpful" as in this case the context should have been sufficient for any adept English reader to comprehend the meaning of my post without digging into the individual etymology of the word choices I made.

Also, psychosis can be the temporary or permanent result of foreign chemicals, injury, or diseases damaging the brain directly such as untreated syphilis.

I'm not 100% sure what meds my uncle takes, we all -- his wife and kids included -- just kinda put up with him and know how to deal.

To be clear, I encourage anyone with any condition whatsoever, including 'normal' ones, to seek help if they are making you suffer.

Here again comes to another problem with psychiatry. Suppose person A has COVID and is experiencing runny noses, pneumonia, cough, etc (whatever the symptoms are). As a society, we've decided that -- independent of person A's view of their own condition -- person A deserves medical treatment (hence all the talk about the unvaccinnated -- likely people who don't particularly mind being infected by covid -- being forced to live their life a certain way by others who are more afraid).

Can we apply this same logic to similarly debilitating disease like schizo? No... because actually none of the schizophrenia symptoms are necessarily bad. Unlike COVID, where everyone feels absolutely comfortable judging the absolute 'badness' of the symptoms without any regard to the sufferer's view, with schizo and other mental health conditions, the sufferer is required to be stressed in order to fix it. If the sufferer doesn't really mind the voices, then no one is going to step in and say anything.

Given how stark a difference it is between physical disease, where we can all observe a symptom and say whether you have it, regarless of your thoughts, with many psychiatric illnesses schizophrenia, it is impossible to do so, calling into question whether these deserve to be called illnesses.

I'll have to read about Laing... I don't know who he is.

Glad to hear your anecdotes and the success story, sounds like hell.

I've found the work of Carl C Pfeiffer interesting, seems to apply to me, histedelia, although pun intended I do take it with a healthy dose of salt. I've seen a lot of professional dismissiveness towards the idea. More recent blog reading material seems to term it as a 'methylation' issue. What I found most 'appealing' about the theory was that he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics personal biology: when intoxicated the histadelic feels 'good' whereas they normally always feel 'terrible'. This is in contrast the average person who feels 'good' sober a lot of the time.

I would 'go nuts' every 18 months like clockwork before making a lot of diet changes after a year of psychosis a few years back. One thing that prevented issues in the past were high levels of physical exercise, so I had a handful of years here and there without issues.

I wouldn't say I'm 100% now but I have more good days than bad. I'll try this levomefolic acid.

Thanks for your comment. I don't have a success story yet, but I'm optimistic. I've learned a lot, and hope to leverage my 'trial by fire' to help others.

> Carl C Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer "considered himself a founder of what [Linus Pauling] named orthomolecular psychiatry" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Pfeiffer_(pharmacologist)

> he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics

hmm? Searching for histadelics: "If youre lying in bed at night hoping for sleep, but your brain won't stop, this can be the chatter of histamine expressing itself. Histamine is metabolized through methylation. When histamine levels increase, the pool of available methyl donors can be depleted..." [0]

Oh, how helpful. Thanks, I hadn't really looked into this a whole lot. The old anti-histamine drug cyproheptadine is also an anti-serotonin drug, many people have problems with "serotonin syndrome" that are really helped with this safe prescription. Serotonin and histamine must have some important interaction, I'll have to look into this more.

Another interesting quote from [0] (my comments are sometimes my notes that I go back to...):

"An interesting and illustrative anecdote on folate and histamine was observed by the late Carl Pfeiffer, M.D. who was a leader in this field. He reported that he and his colleagues were puzzled that so many histadelic patients relapsed in the summer months. Eventually, the reason was found to lie in the increase of dietary folate that was found in green, leafy salad vegetables that people ate throughout the summer months."

[0] https://www.natures-source.com/blog/post/histadelia-a-primer...

> I'll try this levomefolic acid.

This site seemed useful when I ran across it a few months ago: https://mthfr.net/

It's considered pseudo science, and I've yet to fully work through any of the Carl C Pfeiffer books.

There are lots of different anti-histamines with different effects and side effects. Salt and adrenalin are apparently 'natural' anti-histamines, I would go with them over medication, though sometimes I need anti-histamines for allergies. That cyproheptadine seems to be contra the general trend of anti-histamine -> pro-serotonin (I think the mechanism here is that once the histamine is gone, more serotonin can be made, this takes a long time, days not hours or minutes).

If you are into Meyers-Briggs or Astrology type categorization: https://www.diagnose-me.com/symptoms-of/histadelia-histamine...

a quote from the above link: "Nutritional treatment for drug and alcohol users will depend on the results of a test for blood histamine levels. In one series of such analysis, all users proved to have high histamine levels, leading the scientist to conclude that this abnormality – with its impact on brain function – is a major force in creating addiction. [Nutrition Guide for the Prevention and Cure of Common Ailments and Diseases, Carlton Fredericks, PhD. p.58]"

I'd swear I've seen Carl C Pfeiffer quotes saying similar things but haven't turned them up after a cursory google. I should mention I know during opiate withdrawal many addicts take antihistamine to counter the itching from the histamine released by the opiates, which might confound attempts to establish a link to addiction.

I have particular problems with allergies during the summer months, so it's not just eating too much salad - "salad bowl depression", ha - but a combination of both tree and grass pollen. Another thing I found interesting is that there are foods that are low in histamine but high in histidine, which gets turned into histamine in the gut.

Optimism, a healthy dose of skepticism and diary for food and activities seems to be a good way to check things out personally, although not exactly scientific. One thing I found interesting was the claim that too much histamine in the stomach prevents vitamin-c from being turned into gut serotonin. So oranges are high in vitamin-c but also high in histamine, so the 'material' recommends ascorbic acid instead. Personally I enjoy oranges more than any other fruit so I go ahead, I don't think I have the worst symptoms anyway.

One final edit, a lot of vitamin and multivitamin tablets quietly include 'folic acid' so watch out for that avoid them and buy tablets that do not have it, if you are convinced of an issue here (this is also in a lot of food as fortification as you already know).

Pfeiffer, Nutrition and Mental illness 1988, p31, the addiction quote:

Having tested twelve hard-core drug addicts and found them to be high in histamine, we voice the strong opinion that more can be done to correct biochemical imbalance in order to correct the drug addict. We know that heroin and methadone are both strong histamine releasing agents. The histadelic person is depressed and compulsive, and has abnormal thinking. There-fore, heroin, methadone, uppers, downers, alcohol, and sugar all are often craved to compensate for these feelings. The compulsive day-in-day-out drinker of alcohol is usually found to be histadelic. Moderation must be taught tactfully to these individuals as they slowly but surely improve on the nutritional program

Probably worthwhile linking this as a general disclaimer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomolecular_psychiatry

I cannot relate to any of distortions mentioned in the article. The most "bizarre" thing that happens to me, is that I unvolontaly see wierd shapes and colors when about to fall asleep,that's about it

The government rations rationality, but hey, that's just like my opinion, man.

How long before we see comic-character ads related to perceptual distortions?

The British Psychological Society produced a report[1] in 2014 or so from the perspective that specific symptoms can be found in populations on a spectrum, and significant in terms of treatment is the question: Do these cause distress?

Looking for a link I found this[2] article in response, which contributes mightily to a back-and-forth. It is a longer read, but worth it.

[1] https://www.bps.org.uk/what-psychology/understanding-psychos... (YMMV getting past GDPR consents at that link; a second try worked for me.)

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-normal/201412...

why does perceptual distortion occur?

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