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Comment by j4hdufd8 | Hacker News Reader

are you sure he was unaware of any mental illnesses?

how did he prepare for the trip? was he familiar with set & setting and other such recommendations?

Psychedelics don’t cause bipolar. What it can do is reveal it. (Or make it worse.)

I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 32 after a massive psychotic break caused by stress, despite mania, paranoia, and depression clearly starting when I was 9-years-old.

My mom suspected but never told me.

Does the reveal make bipolar treatment possible that was otherwise not being provided previously? It almost sounds like it can be used as a diagnostic tool for surfacing certain neurological disorders that otherwise might go untreated.

Psychotic breaks can be extremely damaging. I'm still recovering from the one I had in August 2018. There are less dangerous ways to diagnose possible disorders. (Family history is a major red flag.)

Good to know. I believe the genetic markers are pretty well known for some disorders; perhaps a component in diagnostics besides family history (which can be an issue if your parent was never diagnosed, died young, you’re adopted, etc).

> Psychedelics don’t cause bipolar. What it can do is reveal it. (Or make it worse.)

AFAIK, we don't know enough about the mechanics of bipolar disorder to rule out anything that causes you to transition from not meeting the diagnostic criteria to meeting them as being a cause rather than a revelation of some existing underlying problem. If it makes you transition to meeting the diagnostic criteria, it causes the disorder as best we understand it now and anything else is speculation.

Definitely nothing officially, however i wouldn't be surprised if drugs helped him feel better so it was a form of self-medication. With hindsight you could probably find a few signs, but nothing that required hospitalization before the trip.

I wasn't his first time doing mushrooms, but teens don't really use responsibly. I'm definitely not saying that it's common enough for people to be scared, but it's not like teens do full medical assessments before they start to use drugs.

Side note years later he had a seizure due to lsd, but we believe that was because he was on lithium for mood stabilizers. The drugs while helpful have side effects so it's not perfect and we have a long way to go for treatment

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