Atheists believe in themselves?

[Psykhronic]

But I believe I can do this. Why I believe I can do this, I can't explain. But I feel I have to go this path, even if it risks my total loss with reality and reason.

I do not know what you are hoping to find by delving into psychosis. The entire experience is misleading.

[Rahul]

I find it interesting that psychosis, especially schizophrenia, seems to have a preoccupation with religious beliefs.

Muhammed is widely believed to have had schizophrenia. I've met a person with it once that believed the Dallas police department was full of demons in human form. He also believed he was a reincarnated disciple of Christ. He ran around Dallas one time calling 911 telling the operators that he was at various places around the planet, believing he was dispersing the demonic po po to the four corners of the Earth.

He also later that night hallucinated that Satan himself dropped from the sky and stalked after him bending heavy street light poles over like they offered no resistance to his strength.

He also believed that when Christ returns a fault line through Jerusalem along with a fault line through Austin Texas proved that Jerusalem would be transported instantaneously to Austin.

Interesting conversation. Batshit insane but fun.

You were prescribed meds for a reason friend. The chemical balance of your brain is faulty. Take the meds. Stay on the meds.

This is all chemistry and biology, your madness. It's cold, hard facts. Not fictional crap like Harry Potter.

Take the meds.

[Mystic]

I also believe Mohammad went through schizophrenia/psychosis. The Quran however has some themes that mystics are baffled by. It has contradictions, yet it has deep spiritual topics. It also has significant awakening to the reality of society when it talks about the strong misguiding the weak, and weak blaming in the leaders they followed, only for the leaders to reply on the day of judgement that they in fact had no authority on them.

---

By fictional you mean they have no physical existence, then I agree. Partially of course, they are created by the mind.

False beliefs and true beliefs, form our psyche, and fictional characters also influence our psyche.

[Angrboda]

I don't know why you have chosen not to take your medication, Mystic. Sometimes there are good reasons for stopping medication, but the times when doing so is not good far outweigh the times when doing so may be beneficial. Given that, I hope that you will reconsider taking your medication.

As someone who has suffered severe mental illness from childhood, I'm somewhat familiar with the questions. Medication has never offered me much relief though, so I haven't faced the same questions you face. I haven't been taking my blood pressure and cholesterol medication for a long time, which might very well mean that I could die as a result, have a stroke, or a heart attack. But the reasons I don't take my medication aren't in any way similar to yours, except, perhaps, in that you may face some very real mortal risks from not taking your medication. (I recently watched a video talk of a psychiatrist discussing the problem of people with psychotic illnesses who aren't aware that they are ill [not meaning you]. He made a point of turning the usual expression of "he killed himself," around to emphasize that it is less that people who are mentally ill choose to die as it is that mental illness causes these people to kill themselves; the illness killed them, they didn't "kill themselves.")

I understand that perhaps, by not taking your medication you will be unbinding possibilities that are more important to you than stability, but often that's a false hope. [There is an apocryphal tale, attributed to many such as William James or Ogden Nash about a person who was convinced that the euphoria induced by opiates or some such psychodelic drug enabled him to reach insights that could not be obtained in a sober state (opening what the poet Blake referred to as the doors of perception, after which the rock band "The Doors" is named). In one particular drug induced revery, he had what he considered a sublime epiphany, which he hurriedly wrote down before he lost it. When he awoke the next morning, returned from his drug experience, he read what he had written. "Hogamus bigamus, Men are polygamous, Higamus hogamus, Women are monogamous." Now, granted, this likely never happened, but I think it is a useful cautionary tale that, when one ignores the sign saying, "Here there be dragons," some dragons may be found, and some fair maidens rescued; most, however, just get eaten, or lost. (I suggest watching one of the documentaries on DMT and ask whether you think the tales of wild trips are more likely pieces of truth, or fragments of error.)


Anyway, I've got off track and started rambling. I've been harsh with you in the past, and perhaps you think it's because I dismiss you and your ideas. It's probably closer to the truth to say that I'm harsh with you more because of the ways we are alike than because we differ. I entertain the same questions as you do, the same wonder, the same ecstacy. But we differ for reasons which I'm tempted to address, but perhaps need not do so. I care about you Mystic, and despite my harshness, I do like you. And I rather suspect, like what I see as you "rushing from an interesting beginning... to an imaginative ending or answer" without doing the hard, painful, slow work of taking each step, carefully, cautiously and slowly, rather than lose one's way in the rush to reach the end, I suspect that not taking your medication is another example of you not accepting your (and my limitations), and looking for a shortcut, or a cheat, that will get you there faster than simple, patient, sober reasoning. If it is, I think it is a mistake, and hubris.

If you have chosen unwisely to discontinue your medication, I hope you will reconsider. If you choose to continue without medication, I simply wish you the best. PM me if you feel like.



(ps. Canticle for Liebowitz is AWESOME!)

[Minimalist]

Do you suggest I read it?

I doubt it you'd appreciate it.

Deep in the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has miraculously discovered the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list.

Of course, none of them know what a "blueprint" is, or, for that matter, what a "bagel" is, but it doesn't matter. They are certain that it is a matter of deep theological importance.

The reader gets the joke - they are trying to canonize a Jewish electrical engineer - but the characters never do.

You don't seem as if you much of a sense of humor. I suspect it would be lost on you.

[Faith No More]

I plunged in a deep ocean and I have to come out rational and strong when I make it to the surface. I am drowning. I don't know how deep I am lost in, but I know there is a way out where there is a will.

You cannot defeat schizophrenia by sheer force of will, Mystic. I don't know why you have stopped taking your medication, but it appears as if you have fallen into the trap that many others have, which is seeing some sort of value in the psychosis created by mental illness. Please, talk to your doctor, and take his/her instructions seriously. You are going down a dangerous path, my friend.

[Walking Void]

Take your meds Fred.

Become rational again. Have an official logical debate with your sane self. Recognize your own coherence. When You ever drop off the meds again, You may understand the dissent between your sane and insane self and have an easier time working towards what You discovered to be your logical stance.

[Mystic]

I know it's dangerous. Every false idea can consume me. Every irrational perception. And the more will power intensifies, it's easy to let go of focus. Right now I am learning primarily to learn to remain focused while increasing will power. Also remaining calm at all cost.

The danger is not simply that I will lost control, but if I don't learn to rationalize properly, even if I don't lost control, I might reach a deep end of delusion.

But I can't live the alternative, when I feel totally blind, subdued, unable to create direction and motive, unable to go forward any step. The most I can go with the medications is probably getting a job and being productive in that sense.

The difference is you guys believe there is no soul. I believe there is a soul and it can learn to wield the chaotic brain, the absurd, the contradictions, the motives, the double standards, the false delusions, the perceptions that are not based on reality, and bring it to reason. I also am learning I can teach myself to remain calm when I become distressed, overcome with courage when I become fearful of falling into disarray, and the despair I can't bring my brain back to order with hope that I can do that and much more.

I am learning to block all emotions sometimes just to remain focused. I am learning to wield this chaotic mind, it's very hard right now, but I will beat the beast.

It's been 2 weeks I been going through psychosis. My doctor knows.

---

Also meds don't make you sane. All they do is make you mimic in your own perception of normal people. We can play a sport and we think we are feeling similar experience to normal people but we aren't. You aren't normal and you don't experience life like normal people.

Our path is suppose to be different. But if we are taught there is no purpose to this, there is no way out of it, there is no way to heal and bring our mind to reason, and everyone we meet, everyone who cares about us, and the main academic/medical authority in the country does that, then of course we will never heal, even if it was possible to.

My path in life is very hard. First, doing this for myself, I can't do it. But I realize if I want to help the world significantly, I can't remain on the meds. Still, I wanted to write that book with logical errors in Quran, but I've decided, not until I show a better path and code and law then Islam's, I will not plunge a society into chaos and break their foundation. I need to find a better way. I need to understand various sciences, the controversy etc, in them, and I need to do it objectively, and show argumetns and counter arguments.

I can never imagine myself living a life of "happiness" and ignoring the problems of the world and not trying to bring a solution. I do this because I want to do all I can for the world. I want to do everything I can for everyone I can help.

[Cyberman]

Also meds don't make you sane.

Of course they don't, but they do throw your body and mind a lifebelt to cling onto while your brain works out for itself what sane means. It's like wearing a plaster cast on a broken leg. That's the general idea anyway.

Mind you, I'm a fine one to talk since I've not been taking my antidepressants. They react badly on my stomach and make me physically sick.

[Rahul]

I also believe Mohammad went through schizophrenia/psychosis. The Quran however has some themes that mystics are baffled by.

Mystics? Mystics are baffled by every day technology. Baffling those types is not proof of some grand revelation.

Mohammed was a loon. A blood thirsty, hallucinating, pedophile.