What is Insanity?

[IanEye]

if eye didn't care

*









*

more than words can say

.

[Harvey]

Insanity is an idea before or after it's context.

[coffin_dodger]

When you no longer realise that everyone else is looking at you with a mixture of sadness and fear.

[Harvey]

When you no longer realise that everyone else is looking at you with a mixture of sadness and fear.

They still are. I still don't mind. But at least I realise it.

[divideandconquer]

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.
Ray Bradbury

[identity]

Just happened to be reading today in an article/annotation on the "superstimulant"/antimalarial/antibiotic amfonelic acid aka AFA (from the October Harper's):

" [...] I have a strong belief that you don't understand the psychopharmacology of a compound unless you've actually ingested it. I used to say that AFA made methamphetamine look like caffeine. The main problem is that tolerance develops. I began taking more and more of it. It's amazing how rapidly AFA segues from euphoric stimulation into psychosis; it's such a smooth transition you don't even realize you're going out of your mind. It's the most potent psychotogen I've ever encountered.
[...]
Fortunately, I had a trusted friend calmly explain to me that I was saying things that made no sense, not recognizing people I'd known for decades, hallucinating, hearing voices, having extended conversations with inanimate objects––the whole bit. After about ten days of continuous use I was unable to get back to earth with benzodiazepines and finally gave myself an intramuscular dose of haliperidol just to put an end to it."

Marasca was later found unconscious by one of his colleagues, which raised questions about some of the psychoactive substances he'd ordered for his experiments. He was threatened with legal action and lost his job. After his departure from Schering-Plough and a brief tenure in a psychiatric hospital, Marasca transitioned into information technology.

Where is the insanity here? In the ten days' continuous use of AFA leading to psychosis? In the subsequent (continued) psychoactive experimentation, firing, and psychiatric hospitalization? Or in the "transition into IT"?

Or is it madness all the way through???

[lucky]

^^^ I 'know' this guy from and old forum he use to have access to pretty much unlimited amounts of research chems and everything else - had a huge knowledge on drugs. ....If it's the same Brian M. Very intelligent man looked a bit like a mad professor : )

[divideandconquer]

Just happened to be reading today in an article/annotation on the "superstimulant"/antimalarial/antibiotic amfonelic acid aka AFA (from the October Harper's):

" [...] I have a strong belief that you don't understand the psychopharmacology of a compound unless you've actually ingested it. I used to say that AFA made methamphetamine look like caffeine. The main problem is that tolerance develops. I began taking more and more of it. It's amazing how rapidly AFA segues from euphoric stimulation into psychosis; it's such a smooth transition you don't even realize you're going out of your mind. It's the most potent psychotogen I've ever encountered.
[...]
Fortunately, I had a trusted friend calmly explain to me that I was saying things that made no sense, not recognizing people I'd known for decades, hallucinating, hearing voices, having extended conversations with inanimate objects––the whole bit. After about ten days of continuous use I was unable to get back to earth with benzodiazepines and finally gave myself an intramuscular dose of haliperidol just to put an end to it."

Marasca was later found unconscious by one of his colleagues, which raised questions about some of the psychoactive substances he'd ordered for his experiments. He was threatened with legal action and lost his job. After his departure from Schering-Plough and a brief tenure in a psychiatric hospital, Marasca transitioned into information technology.

Where is the insanity here? In the ten days' continuous use of AFA leading to psychosis? In the subsequent (continued) psychoactive experimentation, firing, and psychiatric hospitalization? Or in the "transition into IT"?

Or is it madness all the way through???

Hmmm..."saying things that made no sense, not recognizing people I'd known for decades, hallucinating, hearing voices, having extended conversations with inanimate objects" seem to be the drug induced signs and symptoms of a person who appears insane, right? Other than that, I don't see insanity.

Check out this list of signs and symptoms of insanity

The list of signs and symptoms mentioned in various sources for Insanity includes the 10 symptoms listed below::
Previous history of mental illness
Previous history of alcohol or drug abuse
Aggression
Emotional lability - labile affect or pseudobulbar affect refers to the pathological expression of laughter, crying, or smiling. It is also known as emotional lability, pathological laughter and crying or emotional incontinence.
Increased energy
Elevated mood
Suspicious mood
Thoughts of conspiracy
Hallucination
Delusions

Really? With the exception of hallucinations, previous history of drug and alcohol abuse, and emotional lability (does taking anti-depressants count for history of mental illness?) this list describes me at times.

Legal definition of insanity: mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. Insanity is distinguished from low intelligence or mental deficiency due to age or injury.

Well, between virtual reality technology, hologram technology, and the "simulation argument" that some scientists and philosophers are beginning to take seriously, external reality is becoming increasingly harder to define. What does this do to the already vague, complicated and relative concept of insanity?

^^^ I 'know' this guy from and old forum he use to have access to pretty much unlimited amounts of research chems and everything else - had a huge knowledge on drugs. ....If it's the same Brian M. Very intelligent man looked a bit like a mad professor : )

Any links?

[Nordic]

"Emotional incontinence".

I love that.

[bks]

Can they make themselves a sandwich right now?

15 years ago during the warm summer sometime, I'm walking in a now-hip section of town that at the time was populated by a large numbers of downtrodden folks. A "homeless-looking" man from central casting sidles up to me, fully jacketed and his hand clutching a wrinkled brown paper bag containing what looked like a quart-sized bottle. His hair was greasy and unkempt. Dirt streaks on the face. His pants were that color between grey and black that blue jeans get when they haven't been washed for a few years. I could hear him muttering, but it wasn't words. There was an emotional intonation to the utterance, but they weren't words.

Almost imperceptibly, as he approached he shifted a bit to the right so we wouldn't brush or collide. I noticed that. He also didn't smell as bad as I had expected he would. I noticed that too.

He ducked left into a convenience store after passing me. The door was propped open. Something told me to stop, and listen.

Two seconds later, clear as day, I heard him say: "Pack of Pall Mall reds, please."

[zangtang]

Now you've been building for yourself a cool place in the sand
You're thinking that it's mighty fine
You've got dust in your eyeballs, you got mud in your mouth
But it's your head, it ain't mine
I've got a madman of my own to contend with
Cursing in the cave of my skull
Turn the other cheek
Find a new streak


world party - the waterboys

[identity]

^^^ I 'know' this guy from and old forum he use to have access to pretty much unlimited amounts of research chems and everything else - had a huge knowledge on drugs. ....If it's the same Brian M. Very intelligent man looked a bit like a mad professor : )

Yes, it was Brian M. But the article gave of a date of 1985 for when he was recruited from MIT by Schering-Plough, with his descent presumably occurring not too long (a few years?) thereafter. Was he still participating in drug-related forums in the 90s-00s, after his move to IT?

[mentalgongfu2]

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.

-Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"

[identity]

The single most important issue in coming to grips with the
problem of drug use and drug avoidance is, in my opinion, the
medical perspective on moral conduct. As I have shown elsewhere,
the psychiatric claim that personal conduct is not volitional
but reflexive – in short, that human beings are not subjects
but objects, not persons but organisms – was first staked out in
relation to acts that were socially disturbing and could conventionally
be called "mad" or "insane."

The pioneering eighteenth-century "alienists" managed the first
factories for manufacturing madmen, and developed the earliest
advertising campaigns for selling "insanity" by renaming badness
as madness, and then offering to dispose of it. The famous
nineteenth-century "neuropsychiatrists'' made decisive advances
in both the production and promotion of madness, establishing
the "reality" of the modem concept of "mental illness": first, they
progressively metaphorized disagreeable conduct and forbidden
desire as disease – thus creating more and more mental diseases;
second, they literalized this medical metaphor, insisting that disapproved
behavior was not merely like a disease, but that it was
a disease – thus confusing others, and perhaps themselves as well,
regarding the differences between bodily and behavioral "abnormalities."

By the time the twentieth century was ushered in – thanks in
large part to the work of Freud and the modem "psychologists"
– madness was bursting through the walls of the insane asylums
and was being discovered in clinics and doctors' offices, in literature
and art, and in the "psychopathology of everyday life."

Since the First World War, the enemies of this psychiatrization
of man – in particular, religion and common sense – have lost their
nerve; now they no longer even try to resist the opportunistic
theories and oppressive technologies of modern "behavioral
science."

Thus, by the time the contemporary American drugabuseologists,
legislators, and psychiatrists came on the scene,
the contact lenses that refracted deviance as disease were so deeply
embedded into the corneas of the American people that they could
be pried loose only with the greatest effort; and only by leaving
both the laity and the professionals so painfully wounded and
temporarily blinded that they could hardly be expected to tolerate
such interference with their vision, much less to impose such painful
self-enlightenment on themselves.

The result was that when, in the post-Prohibition, post-Second
World War, better-living-through-chemistry era, the so-called drug
problem "hit" America, the phenomena it presented could be apprehended
only as refracted through these irremovable contact
lenses. Those who used drugs could not help themselves. Since
they were the victims of their irresistible impulses, they needed
others to protect them from these impulses. This made it logical
and reasonable for politicians and psychiatrists to advocate "drug
controls." And since none of this has "worked" – as how could it
have? – the blame for it all could at least be affixed to those who
sold illicit drugs: they were called "pushers" and were persecuted
in the horifying manner in which men wallowing in the conviction
of their own virtuousness have always persecuted those about
whose wickedness they could entertain no doubts.

(Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry)

[mentalgongfu2]

I think the Conrad quote does a superb job expressing the lonely nature of reality experienced most poignantly and painfully by those courting madness (or believed to be doing so). Separating oneself from the communal myths often is considered madness, and while the communal belief itself may be a delusion, abandoning the group delusion can be a gateway that leads to further separation and loneliness that I suspect is a playground for the more dangerous levels of insanity, especially when the resulting isolation is combined with a deep assurance of one's own correctness.! hope to add more to this line of thought soon. It deals with some personal stuff that will take me a while to properly express. Suffice to say, I think there is a reason for the phrase "descent into madness," as it involves going lower into the psychosphere, deeper into oneself and the dark part of existence, and perhaps correlates with the ideas of the underworld, demons and passages/invitations to such.