Hi thank you for that upload. Not only was this upload fascinating, once again but you raise a very important issue. It is also true of a fair few other psychiatric disorders aside but bi polar disorder, perhaps more than most are widely misunderstood. Not that I am close to either of them but both my elder brother and my brother in law are bi polar diagnosed. Though I don't know which strain the pair of them have, they have both been hospitalised many a time on this account. Moreover, I have known many people with the disorder. Back when I was living in SW England I shared flat with a guy with a guy for a year or so, with a long history of hi polar mood disorder and I have read a fair bit about too but even I don't fully understand the disorder. Thank you also for sharing what you disclosed of your own history. While didn't realise some of what you said here about yourself, it comes as no surprise. I have often found that the brightest, most insightful & most sensitive of souls often, if not invariably have some kind of mental health troubles. Like you, as you've probably realised I too have a rather full on history of psychiatric problems. I have a long standing but not altogether accurate duel diagnostic status. It's no longer done but back back in the 50s and 60s many disturbed children were once restrictively & stigmatically labelled with psychopathological labels.. However, by my time, in the interests of stigma reduction, as a result of children's & mental health rights campaigns and the writing of influential social scientists such as M. Foucault, E. Goffman, T. Swarz and R. D. Laing but my day they were just labelling such kids as "suspected" as opposed to fully stated irrediamdeemable monstrosities.... As if being suspected is any less stigmatic than being the real macoy. When I just 9 or maybe 10, (as I tried unsuccessfully to set a social services kid's home ablaze) I was assessed as having a "suspected" psychopathic personality disorder (wrongly) with paranoid psychotic tendencies. (rightly) Psychopathy, the invisible mental disorder was not just by my reckonning, but many professional therapeutic type folk I have seen since, was a misclassification but I do have a long history of paranoid psychotic breakdowns, where in I hear the voices of folk who hurt me way back in the past when I was just a kid, as if they were present today & still as they were back yonder. Although as you'll see in the writing one therapist, whom I saw for 3 years figured these disturbances to be disassociative, rather than psychotic in nature, whatever they are, they ain't through yet. I am one of the minority of mentally disturbed individuals , who in the past has helped bestow greater stigma the broader collective, by being more than capable of violence when I am spinning out. However, beyond that, as you describe it, our conditions, though different sound to have more in common than might at first be imagined. Both diagnosis are manifest in terms of episodic, as opposed to continuous breakdown. It's not always the case but normally there is a build up too a breakdown. Like bi polar, episodic psychosis is widely misunderstood. More often than not, folk confuse it with it's constant sister condition schizophrenia, which is quite different in terms of its' etiology & they don't even fully grasp the symptomology of that either. Similarly, I have never been able to abide traditional anti-psychotic medications, which I think of as the modern day equivalent of the chains and shackles of mental asylums of old. Like your mood disorder, downers are better suited to my head problems than uppers... Though barring THC/ CBD, I don't take drugs, nor alcohol now, as I have a history of & strong addictive tendencies. Mind you back when I was young I've heavily abused & indeed had dependencies on substances such as solvents, amphetamines & crack, none of which did my mental health any good whatsoever. Another thing we have in common with one another. If you ever have the opportunity to come to Spain, or I have the good fortune to travel to the states we should meet up and get completely stoned... I'll cut and paste here what I wrote about CBD and psychosis. "For me personally, most interesting of all are CBD's psychiatric applications. It is effective against some strains of chronic and acute depression, for treatment of social anxiety disorder and quite at odds with its' close cousin 'THC', the compound offers an effective route to counteract schizophrenia and other psychotic spectrum conditions. 'CBD' enhances anendmide signalling stabilising the brain's NMDA receptors, essentially counteracting not only the adverse effect 'THC' has upon the caudato nucleus but also elevating organic or otherwise externally stimulated psychotic symptomology..... each and every person has their own individual brain chemistry and varying level of susceptibility to different cannabinoids. Clinical tests have been conducted in the USA, Holland and Germany, comparing the use of 'CBD' to that of more conventional anti-psychotic medications, on patients with schizophrenia and other strains of psychosis too. Not only is 'CBD' every bit as effective a treatment as standard phenothiazine family, anti-psychotic medications typically prescribed for such conditions but it produces none of adverse side effects associated with standard anti psychotics. Looking on back down through the years,.... I've experienced many episodic breakdowns; right on back to childhood pre-drug terrors, throughout my years as an addict on many different cocktails of narcotics, my time of total abstinence and two decades, as a marihujuana connoisseur. These episodes are triggered externally of but impacted upon by narcotics. As has already been explained some narcotics, particularly uppers have clearly exacerbated my psychosis and had a detrimental effect upon my mental health. In contrast, others drugs reduce or even quell psychotic symptomology altogether. I'm most certainly not referring to conventional anti-psychotic medication, which I've never been able to abide, nor specifically 'CBD', to which the text shall soon return. If I've ever found a drug that was really effective in suppressing the voices that occasionally scream from within then it was heroin but that's not a road I'm up for going down again under any circumstances. I'd prefer to go crazy than return to being the junkie I once was. As for the years I've toked, I've continued to have mostly mild episodes from time to time but not very often any more. As a stoner I generally look more for 'THC' than 'CBD', despite the wonder cannabinoid's health enhancing capacities. Though more often than not, marihujuana contains the two compounds. My physiology is such that I seem to be more sensitive to 'CBD' than to 'THC' and my sympathy goes out to folk prone to psychosis for whom the reverse is true. Certainly cannabis has never substantially accentuated my episodes, as other narcotics did in the past. If anything marihujuana slightly calms rather than feeds my paranoias. Some modern day skunk strains, particularly sativa, as opposed to indica dominant hybrids such as Cannatonic, Blue Cheese, Amnesia, Jack Herrer, Great White Shark, Blue Dream, Critical Mass, Shark Shock, Skunk Haze, Lemon Skunk, Lavender, Swiss Bliss, Himalayan Gold, OG Kush, Sandoria, T-Rex, Sour Skunk, Sweet Tooth, CBD Shit, Agent Orange and Diesel Tonic contain a highly potent concentration of the CBD compound. Armed with this knowledge in recent years I've sought out and self medicated through such strains, at times when I've had psychological problems and the weed has helped. Whilst for me, 'CDB' doesn't quell such disturbances altogether it does take some of the edge off of their intensity." Thanks for this upload.... Though almost no one has watched it is another first upload.
Richard Darwin some of the newer psychiatric studies have been done with narcotics ie ketamine, marijuana, psilocybin and other non SSRI's. I think though people with certain neurochemical imbalances do create a drive to seek out chemical compounds that stimulate those chemicals in the brain. I think it's approclimation is that the only way drugs abuse is a "disease", is in the since that some people are predisposed to crave a particular drug based on the type of neurochemical the brain has a lack in. For instance many people who have high anxiety aren't really at risk to stimulants as it's the energy they want to slow, as the flow of adrenaline is the uncomfortable thing they are trying to prevent. So some with anxiety and panic disorder might be more at a high risk of of wanting to consume downers as it counteracts the undesired effect. Thus they are self medicating (unknowingly) and then have a higher chance of becoming addicted.
+Richard Darwin. This strays onto other issues such as prohibition. Despite the associated danger heroin is arguably the best and most effective pain killer listed in medical literature. In contrast to the health benefits to be drawn from jail, as the British government drugs education posters so dramatically announce, "heroin screws you up". This point, is actually not as 'black and white' as it might first appear to be; indeed it is highly contentious. In saying this I am not defending, nor promoting smack addiction. Beyond its' legitimate use as arguably the most effective physical pain killer known to modern medical practitioners, I am very much anti-heroin, in a broader sense. Nevertheless as I've said before, I think that in many ways Methadone is much worse. I feel that total abstinence is by far the best solution to addiction: to break an addict's dependence on opiates altogether, as I did is the ideal; yet we do not live a Utopian world. What would be best often never comes to be. If addicts feel unready or unable to detoxify and stay clean for whatever reasons (or excuses) they may have, I reckon the state ought to be prescribing such folk surgical diamorphine, as this would have far greater impact in terms of harm reduction than methadone linctus ever will. If you ask the average person on the street what is the most dangerous drug; nine times out of ten or more, the odds are folk will say heroin. In reality, heroin is nowhere near the most physically harmful of narcotics. How can I say that when so many of my old friends/ acquaintances have died as a direct result of smack: when I've witnessed so much opiate addiction related suffering and been so heavily addicted to and seriously ill myself, as a consequence. The 'war on drugs' is a war against drug users/ addicts. The crooks at the top of the sales chain rarely fall. What I have lived through and the reason that so many former associates of mine are now dead, was in my understanding more a result of heroin prohibition than of heroin, itself. Let us for a moment, consider the plight of long-term prescribed diamorphine or rather more likely morphine, for the purposes of pain relief, as it is more commonly prescribed than heroin, due to reactionary governmental medical guidelines. Such addicts are not caught up in a criminal underworld of naferious trade. Thus nigh on every penny they acquire isn't destined for the pockets of the gangsters who control and greatly profit from the illicit opiate business; the fruits of prohibition. They are thus able to afford to eat and keep a roof over their heads; two factors crucial in the maintenance of physical health and resistance to illness/ disease. Then, when dosage is medically controlled we find something remarkable in the physiology of prescription users; a distinct lack of long term tissue damage and organ deterioration. Indeed if properly administrated and clean, heroin is not only safer than legal drugs such as tobacco or alcohol; it is in fact, according to the 'Collective Evolution' website, in medical terms, slightly less harmful to the body than white sugar. In respect of its' long term disease causing potential. Whilst undeniably addictive: prescription addicts are able to lead as close to a normal life as say a diabetic, who is dependent on insulin. The principle difference between the two is of course that no one ever died from not taking heroin; where as a lack of medication has killed many a diabetic. If this is true, which I've no doubt it is, then why does "heroin screw" people "up"? I reiterate, prohibition is wherein the problem lies. A smack head jacks up a wrap of skeg; turns blue, goes over and dies as a result. They have quite clearly passed on as a result of a heroin overdose; or have they? In reality, in opposition to what is typically assumed, the correct answer is probably not. At the point of autopsy, many such deaths, turn out not to be a result of heroin at all but of heroin adulteration. Skeg dealers on the whole are a pretty unscrupulous set. Their principle interest is in making just as much money as they possibly can. The collateral damage of addict disease and death makes little if any odds to them. Typically gear sold on the street is less than half way pure. A big consignment of heroin will first be bulked up with glucose powder, soap powder and/ or brick dust. The product will then be further adulterated with cheaper; frequently more dangerous drugs; crushed tranquillisers, barbiturates, aspirin and/ or paracetamol. These adulterants cause not only the majority of deaths but are also the principle factor behind abscesses, thrombosis, prelifferal neuritis and organ deterioration/ degeneration. Coupled with lower resistance levels, that come hand in hand with homelessness and an inadequate diet; dirty needles (another product of prohibition) spread infectious disease amongst addicted populations. Heroin itself, carries neither the HIV virus, nor hepatitis. A portion of fatal street heroin overdoses do in fact result from addicts having, typically accidentally, consumed a more excessive dose of the narcotic than their bodies were able to handle. These deaths are in my eyes once again a matter for which prohibition should be held to account. Not only are opiate 'OD' deaths rare indeed amongst prescribed diamorphine/ morphine users but the vast majority of genuine street smack (as opposed to adulterant stimulated) 'OD's' result from one simple factor. Junkies are used to purchasing an impure product. Thus they typically do not realise when they buy from a cleaner batch; with for example no cut of glucose, they will consequently hit up their standard quantity; not realising that the dosage of skeg being shot into their veins is far higher than their system is able to tolerate. This oversight is what, so often kills users. I'm digressing wildly again. As a street/ jail addict, subject to the conditions of prohibition, heroin screwed me up physically.
Hi thank you for that upload. Not only was this upload fascinating, once again but you raise a very important issue. It is also true of a fair few other psychiatric disorders aside but bi polar disorder, perhaps more than most are widely misunderstood. Not that I am close to either of them but both my elder brother and my brother in law are bi polar diagnosed. Though I don't know which strain the pair of them have, they have both been hospitalised many a time on this account. Moreover, I have known many people with the disorder. Back when I was living in SW England I shared flat with a guy with a guy for a year or so, with a long history of hi polar mood disorder and I have read a fair bit about too but even I don't fully understand the disorder.
Thank you also for sharing what you disclosed of your own history. While didn't realise some of what you said here about yourself, it comes as no surprise. I have often found that the brightest, most insightful & most sensitive of souls often, if not invariably have some kind of mental health troubles. Like you, as you've probably realised I too have a rather full on history of psychiatric problems. I have a long standing but not altogether accurate duel diagnostic status. It's no longer done but back back in the 50s and 60s many disturbed children were once restrictively & stigmatically labelled with psychopathological labels.. However, by my time, in the interests of stigma reduction, as a result of children's & mental health rights campaigns and the writing of influential social scientists such as M. Foucault, E. Goffman, T. Swarz and R. D. Laing but my day they were just labelling such kids as "suspected" as opposed to fully stated irrediamdeemable monstrosities.... As if being suspected is any less stigmatic than being the real macoy. When I just 9 or maybe 10, (as I tried unsuccessfully to set a social services kid's home ablaze) I was assessed as having a "suspected" psychopathic personality disorder (wrongly) with paranoid psychotic tendencies. (rightly)
Psychopathy, the invisible mental disorder was not just by my reckonning, but many professional therapeutic type folk I have seen since, was a misclassification but I do have a long history of paranoid psychotic breakdowns, where in I hear the voices of folk who hurt me way back in the past when I was just a kid, as if they were present today & still as they were back yonder. Although as you'll see in the writing one therapist, whom I saw for 3 years figured these disturbances to be disassociative, rather than psychotic in nature, whatever they are, they ain't through yet. I am one of the minority of mentally disturbed individuals , who in the past has helped bestow greater stigma the broader collective, by being more than capable of violence when I am spinning out. However, beyond that, as you describe it, our conditions, though different sound to have more in common than might at first be imagined. Both diagnosis are manifest in terms of episodic, as opposed to continuous breakdown. It's not always the case but normally there is a build up too a breakdown. Like bi polar, episodic psychosis is widely misunderstood. More often than not, folk confuse it with it's constant sister condition schizophrenia, which is quite different in terms of its' etiology & they don't even fully grasp the symptomology of that either. Similarly, I have never been able to abide traditional anti-psychotic medications, which I think of as the modern day equivalent of the chains and shackles of mental asylums of old. Like your mood disorder, downers are better suited to my head problems than uppers... Though barring THC/ CBD, I don't take drugs, nor alcohol now, as I have a history of & strong addictive tendencies. Mind you back when I was young I've heavily abused & indeed had dependencies on substances such as solvents, amphetamines & crack, none of which did my mental health any good whatsoever.
Another thing we have in common with one another. If you ever have the opportunity to come to Spain, or I have the good fortune to travel to the states we should meet up and get completely stoned... I'll cut and paste here what I wrote about CBD and psychosis. "For me personally, most interesting of all are CBD's psychiatric applications. It is effective against some strains of chronic and acute depression, for treatment of social anxiety disorder and quite at odds with its' close cousin 'THC', the compound offers an effective route to counteract schizophrenia and other psychotic spectrum conditions. 'CBD' enhances anendmide signalling stabilising the brain's NMDA receptors, essentially counteracting not only the adverse effect 'THC' has upon the caudato nucleus but also elevating organic or otherwise externally stimulated psychotic symptomology..... each and every person has their own individual brain chemistry and varying level of susceptibility to different cannabinoids. Clinical tests have been conducted in the USA, Holland and Germany, comparing the use of 'CBD' to that of more conventional anti-psychotic medications, on patients with schizophrenia and other strains of psychosis too. Not only is 'CBD' every bit as effective a treatment as standard phenothiazine family, anti-psychotic medications typically prescribed for such conditions but it produces none of adverse side effects associated with standard anti psychotics.
Looking on back down through the years,.... I've experienced many episodic breakdowns; right on back to childhood pre-drug terrors, throughout my years as an addict on many different cocktails of narcotics, my time of total abstinence and two decades, as a marihujuana connoisseur. These episodes are triggered externally of but impacted upon by narcotics. As has already been explained some narcotics, particularly uppers have clearly exacerbated my psychosis and had a detrimental effect upon my mental health. In contrast, others drugs reduce or even quell psychotic symptomology altogether. I'm most certainly not referring to conventional anti-psychotic medication, which I've never been able to abide, nor specifically 'CBD', to which the text shall soon return. If I've ever found a drug that was really effective in suppressing the voices that occasionally scream from within then it was heroin but that's not a road I'm up for going down again under any circumstances. I'd prefer to go crazy than return to being the junkie I once was. As for the years I've toked, I've continued to have mostly mild episodes from time to time but not very often any more. As a stoner I generally look more for 'THC' than 'CBD', despite the wonder cannabinoid's health enhancing capacities. Though more often than not, marihujuana contains the two compounds. My physiology is such that I seem to be more sensitive to 'CBD' than to 'THC' and my sympathy goes out to folk prone to psychosis for whom the reverse is true. Certainly cannabis has never substantially accentuated my episodes, as other narcotics did in the past. If anything marihujuana slightly calms rather than feeds my paranoias. Some modern day skunk strains, particularly sativa, as opposed to indica dominant hybrids such as Cannatonic, Blue Cheese, Amnesia, Jack Herrer, Great White Shark, Blue Dream, Critical Mass, Shark Shock, Skunk Haze, Lemon Skunk, Lavender, Swiss Bliss, Himalayan Gold, OG Kush, Sandoria, T-Rex, Sour Skunk, Sweet Tooth, CBD Shit, Agent Orange and Diesel Tonic contain a highly potent concentration of the CBD compound. Armed with this knowledge in recent years I've sought out and self medicated through such strains, at times when I've had psychological problems and the weed has helped. Whilst for me, 'CDB' doesn't quell such disturbances altogether it does take some of the edge off of their intensity."
Thanks for this upload.... Though almost no one has watched it is another first upload.
richdarw english have you seen the self medication hypothesis?
Richard Darwin yeah hold on let see if I can find it.
Richard Darwin en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-medication
Richard Darwin some of the newer psychiatric studies have been done with narcotics ie ketamine, marijuana, psilocybin and other non SSRI's. I think though people with certain neurochemical imbalances do create a drive to seek out chemical compounds that stimulate those chemicals in the brain. I think it's approclimation is that the only way drugs abuse is a "disease", is in the since that some people are predisposed to crave a particular drug based on the type of neurochemical the brain has a lack in. For instance many people who have high anxiety aren't really at risk to stimulants as it's the energy they want to slow, as the flow of adrenaline is the uncomfortable thing they are trying to prevent. So some with anxiety and panic disorder might be more at a high risk of of wanting to consume downers as it counteracts the undesired effect. Thus they are self medicating (unknowingly) and then have a higher chance of becoming addicted.
+Richard Darwin. This strays onto other issues such as prohibition. Despite the associated danger heroin is arguably the best and most effective pain killer listed in medical literature.
In contrast to the health benefits to be drawn from jail, as the British government drugs education posters so dramatically announce, "heroin screws you up". This point, is actually not as 'black and white' as it might first appear to be; indeed it is highly contentious. In saying this I am not defending, nor promoting smack addiction. Beyond its' legitimate use as arguably the most effective physical pain killer known to modern medical practitioners, I am very much anti-heroin, in a broader sense. Nevertheless as I've said before, I think that in many ways Methadone is much worse. I feel that total abstinence is by far the best solution to addiction: to break an addict's dependence on opiates altogether, as I did is the ideal; yet we do not live a Utopian world. What would be best often never comes to be. If addicts feel unready or unable to detoxify and stay clean for whatever reasons (or excuses) they may have, I reckon the state ought to be prescribing such folk surgical diamorphine, as this would have far greater impact in terms of harm reduction than methadone linctus ever will.
If you ask the average person on the street what is the most dangerous drug; nine times out of ten or more, the odds are folk will say heroin. In reality, heroin is nowhere near the most physically harmful of narcotics. How can I say that when so many of my old friends/ acquaintances have died as a direct result of smack: when I've witnessed so much opiate addiction related suffering and been so heavily addicted to and seriously ill myself, as a consequence. The 'war on drugs' is a war against drug users/ addicts. The crooks at the top of the sales chain rarely fall. What I have lived through and the reason that so many former associates of mine are now dead, was in my understanding more a result of heroin prohibition than of heroin, itself. Let us for a moment, consider the plight of long-term prescribed diamorphine or rather more likely morphine, for the purposes of pain relief, as it is more commonly prescribed than heroin, due to reactionary governmental medical guidelines. Such addicts are not caught up in a criminal underworld of naferious trade. Thus nigh on every penny they acquire isn't destined for the pockets of the gangsters who control and greatly profit from the illicit opiate business; the fruits of prohibition. They are thus able to afford to eat and keep a roof over their heads; two factors crucial in the maintenance of physical health and resistance to illness/ disease. Then, when dosage is medically controlled we find something remarkable in the physiology of prescription users; a distinct lack of long term tissue damage and organ deterioration. Indeed if properly administrated and clean, heroin is not only safer than legal drugs such as tobacco or alcohol; it is in fact, according to the 'Collective Evolution' website, in medical terms, slightly less harmful to the body than white sugar. In respect of its' long term disease causing potential. Whilst undeniably addictive: prescription addicts are able to lead as close to a normal life as say a diabetic, who is dependent on insulin. The principle difference between the two is of course that no one ever died from not taking heroin; where as a lack of medication has killed many a diabetic.
If this is true, which I've no doubt it is, then why does "heroin screw" people "up"? I reiterate, prohibition is wherein the problem lies. A smack head jacks up a wrap of skeg; turns blue, goes over and dies as a result. They have quite clearly passed on as a result of a heroin overdose; or have they? In reality, in opposition to what is typically assumed, the correct answer is probably not. At the point of autopsy, many such deaths, turn out not to be a result of heroin at all but of heroin adulteration. Skeg dealers on the whole are a pretty unscrupulous set. Their principle interest is in making just as much money as they possibly can. The collateral damage of addict disease and death makes little if any odds to them. Typically gear sold on the street is less than half way pure. A big consignment of heroin will first be bulked up with glucose powder, soap powder and/ or brick dust. The product will then be further adulterated with cheaper; frequently more dangerous drugs; crushed tranquillisers, barbiturates, aspirin and/ or paracetamol. These adulterants cause not only the majority of deaths but are also the principle factor behind abscesses, thrombosis, prelifferal neuritis and organ deterioration/ degeneration. Coupled with lower resistance levels, that come hand in hand with homelessness and an inadequate diet; dirty needles (another product of prohibition) spread infectious disease amongst addicted populations. Heroin itself, carries neither the HIV virus, nor hepatitis.
A portion of fatal street heroin overdoses do in fact result from addicts having, typically accidentally, consumed a more excessive dose of the narcotic than their bodies were able to handle. These deaths are in my eyes once again a matter for which prohibition should be held to account. Not only are opiate 'OD' deaths rare indeed amongst prescribed diamorphine/ morphine users but the vast majority of genuine street smack (as opposed to adulterant stimulated) 'OD's' result from one simple factor. Junkies are used to purchasing an impure product. Thus they typically do not realise when they buy from a cleaner batch; with for example no cut of glucose, they will consequently hit up their standard quantity; not realising that the dosage of skeg being shot into their veins is far higher than their system is able to tolerate. This oversight is what, so often kills users.
I'm digressing wildly again. As a street/ jail addict, subject to the conditions of prohibition, heroin screwed me up physically.