Chapter 14 - Schizotypal or Visionary?

Chapter 14 - Schizotypal or Visionary?
My mind reignited and manic once more, the mundane once again grew fantastic. Though invariably pestered by mental health experts, these episodes became an awakening of spiritual proportions. Though disturbing to some around me, the higher realities that common man was not party to were what seperated me. They made the dull mediocrity of consensus reality seem a determined conspiracy to strip the world of colour. There may well be a fixed reality but no one is able to bare witness other than through their own eyes. Our senses aren't the illusions they seem. Eyes are not windows but devices that detect information from which the brain creates images. We never can see what is there. Quantum mechanics even suggests reality, certainly at a sub atomic level has not yet decided what it is, only when viewed does it becom particle or wave. Is it too far to jump to say consiousness, our personal awareness is the only thing we can be truly sure of. Because trained men who still haven't a clue how matter could think, men who form the profession psychiatry yet have no clue why schizoid episodes plague some people. It is estimated between 5 and 10% of people are schizotypal. This means they exhibit at least one symptom of schizophrenia. Hearing voices is common, it doesn't make you mad. You are diagnosed as schizophrenic if you exhibit more than a few symptoms. It is not an illness like cancer where all sufferers share common physiological distinctions. Two schizophrenics can not share a single symptom yet share a diagnosis. A category of clumsy antipsychotic drugs developed in the 1950s are the sole armoury. These subdue some of the more extreme positive symptoms but have brutal side effects. Weight gain, sluggish thinking, loss of any enthusiasm. Talking therapies are out of fashion since RD Laings disastrous attempts to understandp schizophrenia, largely blaming the family. It is common for an individual to be diagnosed schizophrenic by one psychiatrist then bipolar by another. They genuinly havnt got a clue. Many schizophrenics refuse their medicine as they don't believe that their perception of the world is any less valid than anyone else. To acknowledge another person is right regarding reality undermines all sense of identity. Many successful people undergo a schizoid episode. To be honest, you are better off consulting religious or spiritualists, their framework accommodates religious experience. For some, alongside terrifying delusions come moments of utter beauty. There is little to suggest genetics are that significant. Epigenetic's, genes that may never affect a person can be triggered by experiences. Cannabis, trauma, parental rejection, parental loss, many things can trigger psychotic episodes. Some people have a single episode, a single period of life then grow out of it. Some get worse. Some have periodical bouts. There are strong indicators that schizoids and very creative people are connected. During a manic episode I feel better, sharper, quicker thinking, better at making unusual connections, less needing of sleep. It is utterly seductive. A super power. Yet this can crumble to long periods of gloom, lack of self belief, depression. Psychotic episodes are seldom total. Usually windows of normality punctuate the delusions. There is nothing I have experienced that is as personally hurtful and undermining as when people think you are mad. You see it in their eyes. A patronising look of false sincerity. The rare horror story perpetuates a grand misconception. Unless undergoing a severe psychotic episode, most schizophrenics appear normal. A schizophrenic is 100 times more likely to kill themselves than kill another. Once diagnosed as mad mental health professionals see anything as a symptom of your self delusion. Trying to convince a psychiatrist you are sane can be impossible. Yet their 'science' has no factual or physical basis, only the symptoms. There is no physical test to diagnose schizoids. I prefer manic depressive. It fits me more accurately than bipolar 1. Besides, I'm usually neither manic nor depressed. The greatest moments of my life have been whilst manic, my best work has come from these periods. I don't hurt people, not by intent and I am not violent. Is there really much difference between an artist building purposeless objects obsessively and a manic quest for reality? And personally, though my life is seldom easy, I would never give up that which makes me me to join the grey conformity of normal life. I am regularly astonished how blinkered most people's thinking is. I may never structure as solid a realised reality narrative as some, but I prefer my mess of contrasting angles, and I somehow think the major leaps can not come from the stable minds. Schizotypal individuals occur in all societies and at roughly the same rate throughout history. This condition that lowers life expectancy dramatically ought to be evolved out of. Yet it remains. I believe it is because you need us. All great paradigm leaps in human understanding appear crazy at first. By definition they must. So, to quote David Bowie, 'I'd rather stay here, with all the madmen.' Whose right is it, from the sole window of their own perception, to decide what reality is? what is the truth? No one knows. We all go through periods of good and poor physical health to greater or lesser degrees. Isn't the same true for our mental health? It requires strength to stick to what you see as real when all around you form a consensus, not wanting to be left out of the in crowd. Yet political fashions can sweep a nation as nazism did. The current conservative agenda of blaming the victims of circumstance does not hold up, yet many are taken in by it. With online communities of common interest, freed from the random cut and thrust of diverse opinion we experience out in the street, perversions become compounded, from radicalised Islamists, to fine woodworkers to paedophiles. Almost any moral structure can form free of the small boy, prepared to say the emperor wears no clothes. Society needs its loonies, it's outsiders, it's weirdos. It's mental health depends on it.


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