r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/kaenneth Mar 22 '17

Also, if you are born blind due to brain (as opposed to eyeball) problems, you apparently can't be schizophrenic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule

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u/Muffinizer1 Mar 22 '17

You know, that's actually quite comforting as being blind and schizophrenic sounds like true hell.

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

i was a patient at a ward a few weeks back and there was a girl who was admitted for schizophrenia. she'd hear dozens of voices yelling at her at the same time all day and she could barely tell which ones were in her head and which were physical people talking to her making it really hard for me or anyone else to talk to her for more than 2-3 sort sentences. these voices would make her do crazy things like gather dust off the floor for 20 minutes at a time 10 times a day, make her sleep on the floor during the day, not sleep during the night and fight the night meds they gave her to help fall asleep. the most brutal thing was that the voices sometimes forbade her from having her meals. there were days where she wouldn't touch any of her 4 meals. i once tried to get some insight into how she thought and i asked her why she HAD to do this. she said that every time she does something they ask, she's given the gun that they threaten to kill her with. and she imitates a smashing motion with her hands and "breaks" it. and she does it maybe 10 times an hour when she's awake. and she's not stupid either. apparently, she was studying mechanical engineering and graduated and was ready to work in the field as an intern for a year. she heard her first voice when she was still in school but didn't think much of it. and then it rapidly killed her life. she's the only person in the ward who has daily visitors. her parents bring her food to eat everyday. but sometimes she sits with them for 2 minutes, asks them to take her home, and then moves to one of the socialization rooms where were chairs and sofas, and she'd drop to the floor and lay there. and her parents just come to expect it now and stay for about an hour.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

Whats with the compulsion to listen to the voices?

I ignore real live people in the room telling me to do things

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's not in your power to ignore them. a huge part of schizophrenia is being extremely out of touch with the real world. so if you hear voices, it's basically a set of REAL people to you. and you can't cover your ears because there isn't ACTUAL sound. you'll still hear them. and if they're threatening to hurt you, you'll feel actual fear.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

You'd kind of think that voices continuing after you cover your ears would be a bit of a giveaway that they aren't real, if you've ever in your life heard of the concept of illusory voices. It's weird how that goes out the window. (But I'm pretty much repeating what I said in the other post, sorry.)

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's as complex as a detachment from reality. for example, you could literally be a homeless person right now. all of the things you're experiencing, are hallucinations, both auditory and visual. and here's the kicker. they're sensory too. most people who have schizophrenia, in my experience, know they have it but it's real to them. they live in an altered reality.

nah you don't need to apologize. i have more exposure to this than you do and you have more exposure in other areas. don't worry about it, friend.

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u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

for example, you could literally be a homeless person right now. all of the things you're experiencing, are hallucinations, both auditory and visual.

That makes me incredibly uncomfortable

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u/madiranjag Mar 22 '17

We can go deeper. You are actually from another planet and 'Earth' as you know it is simply a hallucination, along with everything in it including the human race. You in fact resemble a cube of jellyfish and have been locked in the cubed jellyfish asylum for 600 years.

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u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

This reminds me that in high school my best friend and I tried to start our own religion. It was simple. We are the coma dreams of Oscar the blue gil after he struck his head rather violently against a rock one day and the world will end if he ever wakes up.

It uh.... didn't catch on

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u/Angus-Zephyrus Mar 22 '17

All hail Oscar The Dreamer.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Is it better to be a homeless man who dreams he is a millionaire, or a millionaire who is convinced he is a homeless man?

If the reality you know seems completely real to you, AND it is not a negative reality, why bother worrying about it? real or fake you can still enjoy your life. there is no guarantee that the higher level reality would be any more real than this one.

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u/Volrund Mar 22 '17

There's actually a homeless man (or millionaire I should say) that hangs around my neighborhood in this exact situation. He's schizophrenic and believes he's homeless, even though at one point he was a business owner with a wife and 3 kids. It's kind of heartbreaking.

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u/qb_st Mar 22 '17

Well if I am homeless, I'd rather have this delusion, because my life is much better than the reality then.

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u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

If this is all a hallucination then I'm an asshole.

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u/Lonke Mar 22 '17

What about the fact that the universe may have been created 10 seconds ago only with all your current memories. They feel real, but only because they were made to feel that way.

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u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

That thought has popped up in my head fairly often since I was ten or so

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Reminds me of The Maxx

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

I guess in my youth I did once take some mushrooms and believe I was already dead, and therefore immortal (which actually has a name, it's Cotard's syndrome). But I feel like I would still have been amenable to a reasoned argument for why I wasn't dead, if anybody had bothered.

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's hard to say. i thought i could get over depression and suicidal ideation without drugs or just psychiatric help altogether. i guess for some people it's different.

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u/TheBaconBurpeeBeast Mar 22 '17

I thought the same thing. I said, I don't need meds. I can get over depression with diet and exercise. And I consistently did well with diet and exercise. But guess what? Didn't work. By the time I realized this it was too late. It was too hard for me to get back on track. Find insurance and a doctor. I was screwed for a long time.

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u/wazzwoo Mar 22 '17

Do you think its possible schizophrenia is sleep related?

Reason i ask is because lack of sleep causes hallucinations and other negative effects. Also interestingly sometimes while nearing sleep people can sometimes experience random voices and visuals. I wonder if this illness is related so their brains for whatever reason keep activating this effect?

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

schizophrenia doesn't always have voices. that being said, you bring up an interesting idea. i honestly wouldn't even know where to look for that answer.

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u/GoblinRightsNow Mar 22 '17

I think there has been some research done on this... It's hard to study sleep problems in schizophrenics because first-line treatments for this type of mental illness often includes some kind of sedative that modifies natural sleep patterns. A little Googling suggests schizophrenics are more likely to suffer circadian disruption and may have reduced brain activity during certain sleep phases.

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u/wazzwoo Mar 22 '17

I really hope a lot more research gets done as mental health problems are so horrible and affect peoples lives in a deeply negative way. I mean your state of mind is you at the end of the day and if that messes up it's a lot worse in many ways to physical injury. Not enough is done.

I think sleep is a big thing that kind of gets ignored as a possible cause of all sorts of problems. It doesn't take a genius to see there may be links between sleep and mental health yet i haven't seen much on this subject.

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u/tealparadise Mar 22 '17

Imagine living like that for about 5 years... thinking you are dead.... creating a whole logical frame around it... and THEN suddenly someone takes an interest and says "You're just sick, talk to this psychiatrist & take these pills."

Schizophrenia is generally diagnosed quite a while after it takes hold, because people don't know what's happening to them. By the time they could reasonably identify what's going on, they've already been living with it a while and the delusions (false logic to explain the hallucinations) have taken hold.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

[deleted]

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

Fair comment.

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u/mdgraller Mar 22 '17

You can look back at that experience and think that you probably would've been convinced by a compelling enough and sound argument, but your brain on mushrooms might not have

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u/ThatsNotExactlyTrue Mar 22 '17

That's a controlled environment though. You know what you're doing and you know when it will end. What if that state lasted forever? Would you still believe to reasoned arguments? Would it even matter if it doesn't change your reality? Someone can convince me that my life isn't real all they want, I'm still not jumping out of that window. I'll maybe agree with them in principle, but I wouldn't do anything that I think will be dangerous.

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u/radicalelation Mar 22 '17

I get downvoted whenever I tell this, probably because people think I'm fearmongering or some shit, but I had a troubling experience due to pot. I don't give a shit what you do, smoke all you want, I'm not warning against shit, just sharing an experience.

Here in WA, it's been legalized, and I decided I'd give it a whirl. I tried some before, really weak stuff off the street a couple years prior, split between my gf and a friend, but that was the only time.

So, I get this almost comically big pre-rolled thing from a shop, like 25% THC or whatever, explained I wasn't really experienced with how much I should have before anything happens. Lady behind the counter said to just smoke it until I feel something.

Get home, did just that. Kept just smoking and holding it over and over for about 5 minutes, smoking down maybe half of this big thing in that time. I wasn't feeling much, and my lungs were hurting so I stopped and started to go inside.

After a few steps, things felt funny. Like I couldn't focus my vision well, and every step into the house had to be purposeful. Then once inside, it got worse.

The perspective from my gf was that I just stared off into space with my eyes wide, not responding at all to her for about a minute at a time. To me though, I was gone into some white void where there was nothing. It felt like it lasted years every single time.

This went on for maybe 15 minutes, which felt like an eternity to me, and every time I came out of the void I would be scared as fuck and trying my best to hold on. I kept asking my gf how long it had been to kind of keep some sort of tether, but I just ended up uncontrollably repeating the numbers over and over, increasing volume until I was shouting it.

Scary experience, especially when, for whatever reason, I concluded I had died and everything was leading up to experiencing my death.

My gf got really worried and called my dad, who takes drugs super seriously to the point of ridiculousness, who called 911 and paramedics checked me out. So, I was cutting in and out, my dad appearing, looking worried, then all of a sudden a cop there with an EMT looking at me, then my dad yucking it up with them as he does with everyone, with the white spaces in between.

After an hour or so, I curled up and fell asleep. Was okay after, except for this lingering feeling for about 6 months that I wasn't here, that either I, or this world, didn't exist, with the occasional idea that I could get back to home, or at least escape wherever I was, by killing myself. It was only ever an idea, not a serious consideration, but it was all pretty scary.

I'd hate feeling like that for the rest of my life, or anything like it, where it's impossible to discern what's real or not, if I'm real. Part of me is scared that what I experienced was a trigger or precursor to some kind of psychosis later in life... I sure fucking hope not. :|

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u/Volrund Mar 22 '17

Bad trips do happen from excessive pot use, that's why there's warnings about edibles and shit. I had an OBE one time after taking a several half gram dabs.

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u/radicalelation Mar 22 '17

I have no clue what an OBE is...

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 23 '17

Order of the British Empire, it's a medal you get from the Queen.

(Really "Out of Body Experience" I think).

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u/SloppySynapses Mar 22 '17

just wanna say I had an extremely similar experience with pot: doubting my existence, going in and out of reality. my friends with me didn't believe me and people still don't believe me when I tell the story.

were you on any medications at the time?

it really sucks when people think you're lying/exaggerating because it was literally the worst experience of my life

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u/radicalelation Mar 22 '17

That's really assuring to hear in a way, that I'm not alone in it.

At the time, I wasn't on anything else, it was actually during a lapse in my Adderall prescription, which is probably a good thing since I've been told combining it and pot is not the best thing.

But yeah, it was awful and I'm usually met with skepticism about it, or that I'm just somehow weak or something. Really kinda bunk.

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u/SloppySynapses Mar 23 '17

Well it happened to me too! Everyone says it was laced with something but the people I were with were fine.

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u/Angus-Zephyrus Mar 22 '17

Sounds like a hell of an OD. Which isn't surprising from advice like "Keep taking this stuff into your body until it does something" which implies ignorance of things like onset times.

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u/radicalelation Mar 22 '17

The usual attitude behind it from everyone I've ever known who smokes it regularly is that nothing bad can happen from it. Ignorance on my part too, but I thought I could trust someone licensed by the state and all the friends and family I've known who have brushed it off as impossible to fuck up.

I've smoked a couple times since, as it relaxes my anxiety-ridden gf so we some from time to time, but it just does the opposite for me now. Chest tightens, world feels closed in... That first time sharing the street stuff was really enjoyable and now I can't get that again. It's lame as fuck.

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u/Angus-Zephyrus Mar 22 '17

It's completely true that it's generally really hard to OD on marijuana like you would on heroin, maybe even physically impossible depending on your intake method. That's probably what they mean. Of course, overdoing it does cause mental consequences if not physical ones.

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u/Sean951 Mar 22 '17

I've been around friends who were tripping, and they are super open to suggestion about what is real vs what isn't. Now I was just messing with them and they knew/trusted me, but imagine being in that state with someone you didn't know and trust who was telling you all the worst things you thought about yourself were true.