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Yesterday, when I was mad

00:00 / 15.12.04

This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been.

Yeah fucking right. I get pissed off with the way 'craziness' is bandied around in the media, to denote all kinds of bollocks. People readily tell me they're depressed, they're manic-depressive, they're schizoid, they're OCD, they're whatever. I tend to wait until I see it before believing it.

On the other hand, I think the vast majority of individuals have some experience of 'madness' - at least, those states which shade into 'normal' and are, basically, a matter of degree. Myself, I think I've been depressed on two, maybe three occasions. I don't just mean sad, pissed off, unhappy with my life; I mean if I'd walked into my own out-patient clinic and described my own persistent inability to sleep, eat, experience happiness (de dah de dah de dah), I'd likely diagnose myself with at least mild-to-moderate depression.

There've also been times I've experienced diluted forms of psychosis - when I'd gone three nights without sleep and began thinking I'd heard my name called - and specifically mania (again, gone without sleep, bought stuff, started thinking I don't really need to sleep). And there're those drug experiences (first time eating a dope-cake, became very paranoid)...

Have you come close to madness (and I use the term advisedly)?

03:36 / 15.12.04

You know that thing where if you find an eyelash on your face you're supposed to blow it off a fingertip and make a wish? I used to yank mine out to wish away diseases I didn't have. I was pretty much terrified all the time. I only managed to go to class because I was afraid of failing. I'd say that's probably the closest I've come, though I have the standard moments, like most, when the whole world starts to seem disturbingly surreal to me, and I'm very worried that I'm the Samsa, but that passes, and is probably just indicative of not getting out enough.

04:00 / 15.12.04

I've gone through pretty hardcore periods of depression, coupled with intense anxiety symptoms -- and yeah, that stuff will make you feel like you must be nuts, especially if you haven't done any reading on the subject and so don't have any clue about what you're feeling. Looking back, I think I probably was completely cracked as a teenager, but I imagine this is par for the course; as an adult, it's been rare that I really thought I was notably whacked-out. Even then, brief exposure to people who are is typically enough to convince me otherwise.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:04 / 15.12.04

I have a phobia, I don't know if that counts. If a dog owner is walking hir dog on the same sidewalk as me, I will cross the road to avoid them (depending on the size of the dog). I have walked into traffic, ventured into snowbanks, and frozen stiff and pretended not to exist to avoid the wrath of the Happily Walking Dog on a Leash. I cannot pass a dog on the street without changing my behaviour, no matter how hard I try to talk myself into normalcy.

I wasn't born with it. And if you have a dog at home, I'll be its best friend for the hour - I love dogs. I had a dog back in Canada. About 10 years ago I was walking down the street, and a passing dog took a very sudden disliking to me and went for my butt with its gnashing teeth. All it did was scare the hell outta me, but apparently it left its mark.

Also, in times of stress I've been hit by crying/laughing fits that have wigged my roommates out. There's an interesting (but I wouldn't want to stay there) mind state that I slip into when the pressure gets to be too much. It's vaguely as though I'm transparent, or I have two minds that talk to one another, or that I can even feel the chemicals upstairs trying to sort out the simplest ideas. It's difficult to describe at all, it feels like time alternately stretches and collapses. And boy do I sleep in. There were times in university where I actually worried that if I didn't get out of that state, I really would go mad, and I think it was at that point that I realized there was such a capacity in me.

08:53 / 15.12.04

Last year I was under the impression that I was suffering from depression. Sleeping all the time, complete inability to enjoy anything. Not suicidal, understand, but nothing worth living for. Went to the doctor, and he helpfully pointed out that consumption of more than 8 units of alcohol every day probably wasn't helping much, and flatly refused to prescribe anything. Thanks, doc. I made a few small changes, stopped drinking quite so much and I can now usually directly link how unhappy I am to the amount of booze I had the previous day. In other words, I have a small drink problem, not depression (more an existential ennui).
I reckon lots of people who think they are "clinically depressed" and pumping themselves full of drugs to cope really shouldn't be, and they trivialise the problems of those who really do have a problem.
I know several people recovering from eating disorders and get annoyed when people bandy around the term "anorexic" when they mean nothing of the sort and desensitise others to the reality of the illness.
I knew a guy who was schizophrenic at school and having seen the reality make a special point of taking people to task when they use it as a catch all term for that comedy "split personality". Oh, and a close friend with OCD recently had a psychotic episode.
The bad side of this (there was a good side?) is that I'm now very cynical when people claim they have some sort of unspecified mental illness which manifests itself as being a bit weepy and needy. Or that they or their kids have ADHD or an autistic spectrum disorder when they're just not living up to the modern consumerist ideal. When you've seen people with real problems holding themselves together it seems to become easy to spot the people who are trying to get attention and are just plain flaky personalities.
Not quite sure if that came out right. It was a very me me me post, wasn't it?

09:39 / 15.12.04

I think the vast majority of individuals have some experience of 'madness' - at least, those states which shade into 'normal' and are, basically, a matter of degree

Definitely definitely definitely. I've thought for a long time that there's a continuum of mental illness/insanity/strangeness, and that most of us are somewhere along it, and also that we move up and down it through our lives. I'm also interested in the idea that a lot of men are mildly autistic/aspergers, which could explain why some guys find emotional interaction, expression etc. so hard (I say this in a non accusatory tone, as I firmly believe that a lot of women need to look beyond all the cosmo advice are realise that their male partners just are not able to engage in highly emotive/verbally expressive communication). So, leaving behind bizarre-relationship-advice tangent, I do believe you're right, and it of course goes without saying that I've been touched by the madness many times myself....And one other thing, I'm no anthropologist but it just crossed my mind that there are so many different socially sanctioned types of 'madness/strangeness' across the world, and that one culture's normal and acceptable may well be anothers hospitalisation.......

09:53 / 15.12.04

also, to add to the sharing, as I was approaching a breakdown many years ago I did become very strange - bizarre outbursts of hysterical laughter (complete with colleagues swapping nervous glances), bursts of creativity leading to very bad poetry, excessive self medication, episodes of paralysing fear, hyper promiscuity, not eating, racing brain, oh the list goes on, and there's probably a load more stuff I've selectively forgotten. And although I've been well now for a very long time, I find that the shadow of all this follows me around, and every now again passes over, and I get a reminder of what it was like. In many respects I think I'm fortunate, its a bit like having been on a extremely exotic foreign holiday, only one that not everyone gets to go on.....

10:10 / 15.12.04

I've been convinced I'd died while on mushrooms once, and once I became
convinced two friends, one of whom I taking care of and who was starting
to show symptoms of schizophrenia, were conspiring against me. I got
extremely afraid, really in a panic. I went to a friend's place and he
gave me hot sweet tea and warmed me up and then I was OK. It was a very
complicated relationship and I may have been over-exhausted. And I'm
transsexual. When I first visited a doctor and asked for help getting the
operation I was sent to a psychiatrist, who sent me to a therapist, who
told me I was depressed. If I was depressed at that time then I've been
depressed much of my life, which can hardly be true as really quite a lot
has happened, but life is much, much brighter since I faced up to my
situation, so it could be true. I still feel very insecure though.

The friend I mention above really is schizophrenic, that wasn't a figure
of speech.

10:25 / 15.12.04

Yo Cube (always wanted to say that

) I can definitely understand what you mean. I have my down periods every now and then, but little over a year ago my mother suffered a real depression. Closed ward, medication, electro therapy, the whole baggage.
It kind of puts things in perspective. At least when I feel down, I still manage to get some food and take care of my cat.

10:41 / 15.12.04

Its so hard to distinguish between difficult periods of your life and emotional and mental problems. Largely, for myself, I don't think it is particularly worthwhile to do so. I mean, I look back on my teenage years amazed at how difficult they were and how badly I coped with them, but that describes a pretty common experience.

I did go through some dark times in my early twenties, though I never saw a professional about it. I think I was depressed for a least a couple of years. Maybe. I functioned pretty well, in some respects. Having said that, I plausibly have an autism spectrum disorder which makes everything a little odd. Mathematicians are pretty eccentric people, after all, though linking it that directly with autism may be overstating it.

But, as hypo cube says, if you fuck your body up enough, all sorts of things go wrong. For instance, mild hallucinations like hearing your name, I got pretty steadily for a couple of months when I was finishing my phd. My insomnia combined with amphetamine use and overwork to leave me feeling pretty...wierd. Everything kinda felt like I was dreaming.

My feeling, with no real justification perhaps, is that these sorts of things are pretty common. And one of the biggest obstacles to coping, at least for me, was thinking that coping with shit wasn't part of life. That, somehow, things would and could be perfect.

10:45 / 15.12.04

one of the biggest obstacles to coping, at least for me, was thinking that coping with shit wasn't part of life
absolutely

12:54 / 15.12.04

And one of the biggest obstacles to coping, at least for me, was thinking that coping with shit wasn't part of life. That, somehow, things would and could be perfect.

Right - and, to go off at a slight tangent, I get the impression that the notion of a perfect life is, broadly speaking, more reflective of American psychiatry than European. The latter includes existential elements, specifically the idea that suffering is an integral part of the human condition; what I read and see of the former suggests a greater degree of medicalisation of life in general.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

13:37 / 15.12.04

This thread reminds me of a poem by Rumi, in which a student of medicine is shocked to discover his teacher taking medicine prescribed only for crazy people. The teacher tells him that the other morning, a crazy person on the street grapped his arm, smiled, and winked in such a conspiratorial manner that the teacher decided he himself must be just as nuts. It all ends with Rumi telling us that the mark of Adam's divinity wasn't that the angels would bow to him, but that Satan wouldn't.

That Rumi. What a cad.

I used to think I was going crazy until I watched a friend lose their shit completely and eventually kill a man. Because Satan told him to, apparently. Kinda puts things in perspective. All of a sudden my depression and mild hallucinations didn't seem all that big of a deal.

My grip on consensual reality may be a tad loose, but it could be a great deal more so. Let's all thank the gods that we have Major Depression, ADHD, and mild drug hallucinations instead of an amalgam of Jewish and Persian belief structures telling us to do things.

14:04 / 15.12.04

Hi LykeX,

At least when I feel down, I still manage to get some food and take care
of my cat.

well, having a cat may be one of the reasons you do. When I was young I
was often too down or absorbed to get something to eat for a day. I can't
imagine behaving like that anytime I care for my best friend's dog, or her
dad.

14:22 / 15.12.04

i like douglas adams and terry pratshit books, and those ones with spoof titles like eats, shits and loafs. that's more 'zany' than proper mad though i suppose.

23:31 / 15.12.04

Im sure ive mentioned this before but when i was 7 or 8 i was convinced that most of the popluation of the planet where a alien bug type race posing as humans to flush the rest of us humans out, all my freinds, people in the street and yes even my parents where bug people. i used to cry myself to sleep with the sheer lonlyness and frustration, i developed all sorts of OCDs about it, like flicking the light switch on and off, in my broken mind, killed a bug person somewhere, and i used too hide food in case my parents ever tried to starve me.

i can laugh about it now but i still feel a little scared when i picture myself back then

00:02 / 16.12.04

Also, in times of stress I've been hit by crying/laughing fits that have wigged my roommates out.

I used to get that the most when living at home and a rather rough transition from GCSE to Sixth Form. I remember discussing things with my Dad, a man who is a combination of A-Team's Hannibal and Judge Dredd, who was asking me in a very.pressing.tone what I wanted to do with my life and would the witness please answer the question? He cracked a joke and I just laughed. And laughed. And laughed. It may have freaked and amused him in equal doses but I didn't ask. It's not so much that anything was funny but that if I wasn't laughing I'd be crying my eyes out. Weird.

14:47 / 16.12.04

During the absolute worst time in my life I was drinking very heavily (alone), slutting around while feeling awful about it, behaving in other ways I'm still ashamed to remember, and generally hating myself deeply. Even so, I'd diagnose then-me with acute lonliness and circumstancial depression, rather than clinical depression. I also realize that in times of stress (three time periods I can remember since my teen years), I have been known to restrict my food consumption in order to gain a sense of control and power. But never to the extent of being anorexic - I still ate enough, though just barely, and I got skinny but not scarily so. So I do count myself among the lucky enough to never really been "mad."

My grandmother, in her 30s I believe, went to the mental hospital with "nervous breakdowns" several times, and was treated with electroshock therapy. To this day, she'll tell you the ELT worked wonders and she's better off for having done that. But it's so hard to look at 1950's America and figure out what "nervous breakdowns" really meant. The woman was an alcoholic and was raising six kids plus a few more foster kids at any given time. Some people in the family think she just went away for "a break" (and massive electrical jolts to the brain, I guess).

14:58 / 16.12.04

my mother-in-law reckons ect saved her life too. she's a fucking mad bitch though. fucking stupid ect.

15:06 / 16.12.04

i was convinced that most of the popluation of the planet where a alien bug type race posing as humans to flush the rest of us humans out, all my freinds, people in the street and yes even my parents where bug people

You are Rowdy Roddy Piper and I claim my £5

00:28 / 17.12.04

funnily enough i do track it back to watching THEY LIVE at too early an age, that and all the other video nasties i got my grubby young hands on before i was ten.