Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions? 1128
Jagercola asks: "My sister was recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia. It's a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease that we don't know a lot about. The movie, A Beautiful Mind, paints an accurate picture of how the disease affects someone in a best case scenario. I would like the vast audience here to help me understand the disease through experiences and that it might help me aid my sister. If you know someone how has the disease, how has it affected your and their life? How have you been able to cope with it? What are the long term implications for quality of life?"
Best case scenario??? (Score:2, Interesting)
A Beautiful Mind... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kuro5hin (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the severity, I guess... (Score:2, Interesting)
One time we were all taking a long ride in a car. Just having the usual conversations that people have. She totally flipped out. In her mind, she thought that everyone in the car was talking about her, saying that she was ugly, stupid, a slut, whatever. She was having some major auditory hallucinations or something. But that was the only time that I ever saw her do anything strange.
The above incident is what prompted her to tell all of us about her schizophrenia. If it wasn't for that I never would have even known that she was schizophrenic and I had been hanging out with this girl at least twice a week for over a year.
Work hard, become rich (Score:2, Interesting)
Therefore, unless your family is already wealthy, it is up to you and the other able members who are willing to provide for your sister to create and pool wealth to use for this purpose. Some families are not willing to do this, or are only willing to contribute enough to ensure basic care. To ensure the best possible outcome, ideally you and your able family members must adopt a completely altruistic stance regarding medical care for your sister, and work hard to the end of improving her condition as best it can be improved.
Re:Schizophrenia (Score:5, Interesting)
Replace any and all mercury/silver/amalgam filling (Score:2, Interesting)
In case it helps, I once heard about someone with a sudden onset of schizophrenia. After going through a divorce (consequence of schizophrenia), she had her mercury fillings removed and fully recovered. The symptoms from mercury (heavy metal) poisoning are essentially asymptomatic (non-deterministic), so it affects different people differently at non-lethal amounts. FYI, another common (perhaps the major) symptom of mercury toxicity is (often undiagnosed, asymptomatic) CFS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which creeps up on you and can be debilitating.
I've had all my mercury (aka amalgam, silver) fillings replaced and would recommend doing so. If your sister has any silver/amalgam/mercury fillings, I'd suggest getting them removed --- for general health if not to address the possibility of causing symptoms of schizophrenia.
Not to complicate matters, but I'd also recommend going to a dentist who is not a quack (the silver filling fiasco has been abused by unscrupulous, incompetent dentists) but sensitive to the issue. Removal of mercury fillings can be toxic in itself, so extra measures can and should be taken including an air/water dam around tooth (to avoid swallowing any additional mercury) and a ventilator (to avoid inhaling mercury fumes as byproduct of drilling, removal).
And, no, the ADA (American Dental Association) won't corroborate any of this advice since, according to them, mercury (silver/amalgam) fillings are only toxic when outside your mouth (i.e., before filling, and after removal --- where it's required to be dealt with in toxic disposal!). (Can you say huge liability lawsuit (a la tobacco) for conflict of interest in supporting amalgam fillings?) Unfortunately, the NIH is no more accountable on this issue.
Best luck.
Dating a schizophrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
For the most part. 6 months couldn't go by without some sort of psychotic lapse. She could always feel it coming on days or weeks prior, and could voice her anxiety about it, but was terrified because she couldn't do anything about it. Doctors would up her doses of medication, but it wouldn't help. Before I knew it, little episodes would become more common...we'd be in the middle of a conversation and she'd be staring off into space, her voice would lower to almost mumbling, and I'd not be able to get her attention for up to a minute or two. She'd have no recollection of it, deny that it happened. She'd spin around to catch people that she 'saw' in the mirror behind her. These were the signs that a real lapse was coming.
The real psychotic lapses were the dangerous ones. Self mutilation, overdoses on massive amounts of pills, or worse...finding her screaming, clawing at her skin, not able to recognize anyone (myself included) from whatever horrible visions she was in the midst of. I got used to visiting the "behavioral medicine" department at all the general hospitals in the area, as well as the full-blown mental hospitals.
She turned out to be generally terrible with long-term personal relationships (surprise.), whether with a friend or a boyfriend, and I stuck around much longer than I should have. It's very difficult to fall in love with someone so internally tortured.
Oh, and the medication they use to dull a schizophrenic's brain with have some horrible side effects. She slept 12 - 15 hours a day, and couldn't enjoy sex because the antipsychotics prevented her from ever having an orgasm.
Hrmph, posting anonymously for the first time ever because this post actually chokes me up.
The Sights and Sounds of Schizophrenia (Score:2, Interesting)
My Experiance (Score:2, Interesting)
I can only assume from my grandmothers accounts the difficulties in dealing with this. I have always been somewhat distanced from him due to his illness and \ or treatment (he is in a hospital far away), so this may not be too accurate.
The first step is to completely understand the illness, and how the person suffering. Be that suffering due to perceiving things that are not real and mental anguish rather than traditional pain.
It is difficult when someone fails to recognise their own mother, hears voices or sees things but remember this is an illness.
As far as I am aware my uncles quality of life has improved since moving to somewhere specialized to deal with things like this. While he was local to me he actually got the reputation as the village tramp. This page [knowhere.co.uk] is a community edited guide to places in the UK and it's quite a shame to see his name included.
People don't understand, one of the things you could do to improve quality of life is try to educate the people around you.
Sorry if this doesn't make a great deal of sense as it's a bit rushed (I want to go home).
Feel free to contact me to discuss my experiences further and while I'm not so rushed.
My friend (Score:5, Interesting)
gregory bateson & bicameral mind (Score:1, Interesting)
interesting to read is the anthropology of jaynes joyce and the origin of consciousness in the bicameral mind. he proposes that historically most humans thought in a schitzophrenic manner; that our "inner voice" (as in when you read to yourself) was once not recognized as such, that self-identity didn't exist and your inner voice was "the gods talking through you".
on the nurture side of things are some interesting work by gregory bateson, basically stating that some people's brains have a very difficult time simultaneously holding contradicting views, particularly children raised in heavily contradicting environments such as troubled or broken homes. the summation of which leads to the full-blown break from reality in the form of schitzophrenia.
perhaps the best description i've heard is the metaphor of your ego being your house. some people use psychedelic drugs to leave their house and explore for a time, but ultimately returning to the safety of their coherent mental models (or schemas). for those with schitzophrenia, it's as though their house has a hole in the roof where the rain gets in (no pun intended to the beatles); the inner world of their modeled schemas aren't adapting well to the physical world of consensus reality.
now, for a solopsist, it would be fair to argue that the viewer determines the observed. there are also some big questions as to whether those judged "sane" within consensus reality are truly any better or worse off than the "insane" others. see "dust theory".
for all you know perhaps quantum probability is assembled by tiny demons to pull the wool over your eyes as to what's "really real". or perhaps wittgenstein is correct in that abstraction notions of "real" and "true" are just misapplied words/metaphors themselves.
A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
He got gradually worse, to the extent that we didn't really notice. First of all he was wierd to begin with. Second, he was a horny fucker, no doubt. We used to say that he would fuck anything (not anyone). Third, we were partying a lot. Not to mention that we smoked weed on a quite so daily basis.
All in all, we were used to weirdness from his this guy. It took some time until we figured.
So when he started saying that "he could see that those girls wanted him", from hundred meters distance or so, nothing less , he wasn't mental in our eyes, he was just horny and weird.
In the end his mother realized he needed help, and he agreed.
When he got committed, he was pretty much in his own delusional world. From his point of view, and he loves talking about this, so this is not speculation, he were held captive by agents trying to manipulate him. I am not kidding.
And he believed that he were part of a big syndicate smugling heroin, so he really couldn't talk to these agents. Which ofcourse were the people attending him at section 8.
He also believed he had raped, extremely brutaly, a not so little amount of young girls. He believed these agents were trying to tag this onto him, but he did not want to get caught. So he shut up as much as he could.
He also was manicly trying to control his own thoughts. Believe it or not, he thought that others could see what he was thinking, and he wouldn't want to embaress himself in front of others. After all he was quite a perv.
When I called him at the instituition, he talked to me somewhat refusingly. He believed I was in on the agent plot... You get the picture.
But with time and medication, he is returning more to his old self. It has taken a couple of years, but now we can hang out and have fun.
But recovery takes time. Just a few months ago when talking to us, he realized for the first time that people actually cannot see his thoughts.
And he still isn't entirely customed to "being sane" as he himself put it, so it happens he makes a few bloopers. But all in all he is recovering quite well now.
If I hadn't known that he had been committed, and hadn't seen him since he was, I wouldn't see the difference.
If you are lucky and get good treatment, all you need is patience.
Hope this helps in some ways. Feel free to ask any other things if you like.
Schematic (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a bit of research about schizophrenia a few years ago, and one thing that I read stands out in my memory more than anything else. One very common symptom of schizophrenia is hallucination, and I was a bit surprised (although I immediately realized that I shouldn't have been) when I read that hallucinations can involve any of the five senses, or combinations of them. Tactile hallucinations are quite common.
Anyway, the thing that stands out in my memory was a schematic diagram of the brain that had two boxes, each with arrows pointing to a third box in the center. The two boxes were labeled "SENSATION" and "THOUGHT" and the third box in the center was labeled "INTEGRATION". The narrative on the opposite page explained that you can think of the brain as an integrator of thoughts and sensations, and that hallucination represents a "crossed wire" in the integration center so that the brain perceives a thought as a sensation. For example, a person may think of spiders crawling on their skin, but the brain interprets that thought as the actual sensation.
This simplified schematic model made good sense to me, and helped me to understand the phenomenon in a more analytical way, rather than just being scared of the unknown.
I've never seen the movie, but I have seen a PBS documentary about John Nash called A Beautiful Madness [biomedcentral.com]. It was quite interesting and talked about his condition in some depth.
Also, check out the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the disease. (There's probably a good article about John Nash as well, while you're at it.)
It's been my experience (I've just been accepted to medical school) that medical conditions or procedures that are initially "scary", "disturbing" or "gross" become easier to cope with after a bit of education. Science can do wonders to calm the soul, if the condition is one that is well understood. You're correct that our current understanding of schizophrenia is relatively incomplete, but it is much better than it was in Nash's day. Where the answers are not available (or are not satisfying), you can always find comfort in some good, old-fashioned prayer or meditation.
Mathematics and personality (Score:5, Interesting)
Occassionally people saw him brushing his teeth in the bathroom, but no-one thought that was weird. I think some people knew he spent the night at the department sometimes, but even that is not too weird. Heck, I've done it myself when I had a final exam due at 8am the next morning. But somehow, someone finally checked his ID carefully against official documents and discovered that he was neither a student nor a postdoc, nor a professor. It turns out he was an escaped mental patient that was living in the department, carrying around math books.
So the point is, if an escaped mental patient can live in a big math department for a YEAR before being found out, that tells you something about how close real mathematicians are to mental patients, and how tolerant they are of mental "quirks" in their colleagues. It's no accident that John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind) was a mathematician.
My advice to all schizophrenics: become mathematicians (or artists).
Re:My Recommendations (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
If your friend says something very odd, instead of letting it go with a "whatever", ask him a question about it. When they answer the question "So how are the neighbors watching you?" with the response "With reflections." (which happened to me) Then it's time to get some help.
-B
"Childhood" Schizophrenia = Autism (Score:2, Interesting)
The repetitive teaching method you're speaking of is Applied Behavioral Analysis, and virtually every adult autistic that I have spoken to is against it. Instead of helping the autistic leverage our natural savant skills, ABA just spends years forcing us (in an extremely abusive manner) to do mindless tasks precisely as told on command, like dogs. The drugs jammed into the autie are primarily to keep him/her from showing autistic signs of distress or that they're different.
(I'm telling you this because autism *is* genetic... Don't be shocked if you get another autie in your family -- and speaking as an adult Classic Autistic, if you do have one, please don't torture it with ABA. We develop at our own rate and become much *more* functional members of society by adulthood if that isn't done to us.)
My Story (Score:3, Interesting)
She started saying that her friends were talking to her and kept telling her that they were coming for her. She also called up her dad (divorced parents) and asked him why he never told her about her other siblings (besides the one she knew about). It was really weird. They diagnosed her with schiz. and she started to get help.
She was doing a lot better. It was about a year later. A man was driving down a country road looking out into the field for deer. He wasn't paying attention and he hit her head on. She died. She died a year later in the same way as her friends who she claimed were coming to get here from the other side. It's a true story, but you got to ask yourself, was it delussion or a super natural awareness?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:commonly seen (Score:5, Interesting)
While anti-psychotics are the only choice for those truly far gone unfortunatly they have very unplesant effects. They cause permenent brain damage (the new atypical anti-psychotics aren't as bad) can cause permanent facial ticks and other issues. Also they often cause extreme depression and those taking them find marijuanna is the only thing which makes them content.
I find it disturbing that people are happy to tell individuals they have never met that they need to be taking their anti-psychotics. This reveals one of my basic disagreements with most of the psychiatric community. Most psychiatrists (conciously or uncouncisly) seem to put as their first priority the normalcy of their patient. Perhaps they believe normalcy is equivalent to good but this simply isn't always true.
Having had both depressive and psychotic episodes myself I would rather be commited and psychotic then sane and sufficently depressed. To be fair this would have to be a fairly extreme depression but this really is a choice each person needs to make for themselves. If an individual decides he doesn't want to take his anti-psychotics anymore that should be his choice (although he should alert care providers).
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to mention that we smoked weed on a quite so daily basis.
If schizophrenia runs in your family, you might want to consider not smoking the weed.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s777336.ht
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/marijuana/s
Re:commonly seen (Score:5, Interesting)
HELD 6 YEARS WITHOUT CHARGES
"Nobody told us", official says.
A 45-year-old man remains locked up in a state hospital even though the charges against him were dropped six years ago.
When [he] protested and insisted that he should be released from his locked ward because the charges no longer existed, state mental health officials concluded he was delusional. The proof of his insanity, they said, was his repeated insistence that the charges had been dropped.
[Attorneys] with the Disability Law Center said they discovered [the man's] plight when they were doing a review of other cases. Noting that he had been confined for a long period, they began to look into the details of his case.
"When I heard about it, I though well, I'll just go and check it out," [the attorney] said, but when she got to the facility a cocial worker called her aside and offered a friendly warning.
"You shouldn't listen to him," the social worker told [the attorney]. "He's delusional."
In fact, [the attorney] said, every single thing that [the man] told her turned out to be true.
"He was telling the truth the whole time," said [the attorney],"But no one believed him." Though he has slurred speech because of [previous head injuries], [the attorney] said [the man] was "perfectly lucid."
-----
Just goes to show. Once the head-shrinks get their hands on you, for any reason, claiming to be normal is proof of your insanity and reason for them to hang on.
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
Schizophrenia is thought to be exacerbated by isolation and social separation. There is an early stage where the person will start having "odd" thoughts and beliefs, and they will feel apart from others, and become increasingly exclusively involved in their own affairs.
And it goes downhill from there.
A big issue is making sure that your sister, your friend feels like they can trust you, talk to you. It will keep them from feeling so lonely.
When I had a bad episode several years ago, it wasn't until after I was on anti-psychotics that I realized how little I was talking to anyone else. Much of the destabilization was at night, alone in my apartment with the voices and thoughts. Things start to make sense that really shouldn't.
A major component of schizophrenia is belief. The person is unable to not believe what they believe. Watch The Caveman's Valentine which is a fabulous movie anyways. The schizophrenia in that movie is pretty accurate in that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, he continued to believe his crazy thoughts. Tried to tone it down sometimes because he knew it didn't look good, but nevertheless believed.
Having someone to talk to can help provide a focus point, and keep some of the beliefs from cementing.
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
The time when the sh!t hit the fan, I was working on my Commodore 64 (yeah, I still used a commie in 1991) and I was loading a game from a disk (load"*",8,1...or if you had and Epyx Fastload cartrige like me, c= key+runstop). While this was loading, lyrics to the Doors, "Light My Fire" was scrolling across the screen horizontaly and then would drop down when it got to the middle of the screen. I thought I was getting hacked or something.
Well, it was kinda freaking me out so I looked outside the window. There was a Chemlawn truck and a cable TV van parked on the street. There were men in lab coats in these trucks. I "knew" that they had hacked my C=64 and was broadcasting my thoughts on the screen. That's when I freaked out, and ran outside screaming my head off.
My parents took me to the hospital (they were part of the conspiracy) where the men in lab coats were there to fix my defective android self. I saw them cut me open and expose my internal wiring.
Eventually, I got sent to the psych ward where I got treated. 6 months, inpatient. I got slapped with the label of "Paranoid Schizophrenic." During this time, I was stoic, couldn't express myself. Couldn't talk, almost catatonic. I couldn't trust the men in labcoats and the way they were broadcasting my thoughts over the TV, radio, and hospital intercom(thought broadcasting). Of course they could do these things because they worked with the cable company.
Anyhow, moving forward...I eventually got better through treatment and medication. For the first three years after I was released, I was still paranoid and hallucinating. It's been a long and difficult road to trudge but today I am well and it's been great for the past several years.
Today, I still take medication and still see a doctor about once a year. The men in lab coats went away about 9 years ago as well, as the halluciniations. Today I live a normal life. I was admitted when I was 17 and today I am 30. I work a full time job in the IT industry (I've been at this job for over a year now...my previous job was during the dot com days and there was a time of unemployment because of the bubble/911...but that's a different story.), I'm married, I just had a baby boy a little over 2 months ago...
So yeah, I live a normal functional life. I could not be any happier! Yeah, there are times where I don't feel so well but those time are so much easier to cope with these days because of the treatment and experience I've gone through.
Hopefully this can help someone out.
deli-x
Re:commonly seen (Score:1, Interesting)
At what point does an individual's "right" to be insane run into a societal limit that does not want to deal with this level of behavior?
The target poster was lucky, in that the patient agreed to be committed. In most states, 72 hours is the time limit that someone can be involuntarily committed, unless they present a danger to themselves or others. Not a lot of time to help someone get back on the wagon, so to speak, unfortunately.
I would say that all psychoactive drugs can cause permanent or highly persistant brain chemistry changes, prescription and non-prescription (marijuana, lsd, etc). There is nothing special about antipsychotics.
Yes, some of the older drugs almost seem cruel in what they do (Haldol, thorazine). They stop the voices and hallucinations (to the outside observer), sure, but at what cost?
The problem with the choice issue is that at some point a person is not capable of making choices for themselves, even if they think they're making the appropriate choice. But oh well.
I guess it all comes down to this. If your neighbor (or relative) had a very negative mental illness, should it be his choice to stop taking his meds, especially if you have been a target of some of his negative behavior in the past?
Sympathy and advice (Score:3, Interesting)
Be aware that the anti-psychotic drugs given to control schizophrenia, while they do help to keep the more peculiar symptoms under control, are highly toxic in themselves and cause spacticity and brain damage. When you see someone twitching and drooling in the street, they aren't twitching and drooling because they've got schizophrenia, they're twitching and drooling because they're taking drugs to control schizophrenia. Some people who have the diagnosis 'schizophrenia' also have problems sustaining relationships, but again I think this is related to medication. And finally at least some of the medication offered for schizophrenia causes progressive and permanent brain damage.
Don't worry about the popular perception that schizophrenics are 'dangerous', 'violent', or 'out of control'. It just isn't true. A very tiny group of people who have very severe paranoia are dangerous, but on the whole people of the type who get diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' are quiet and gentle and are dangerous only to themselves.
Most of the time, for most people who have schizophrenia, schizophrenia isn't a problem. Occasionally it will be a problem. They will experience things the people around them don't experience, and consequently there's a severe dissonance between reality as they experience it and reality as the people around them experience it. And this is very distressing - for everyone, but most of all for the person who is out of step. It is possible for people diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' to live successfully in the community without medication, but this requires a good deal of committment from the people around them to support them and stay with them through the difficult times. Schizophrenic episodes seem in my experience to be at least partly related to stress, so trying to keep stress levels low is a good strategy. Finally, with the best will in the world, if you are dealing with someone who has severe psychotic episodes there will be times when you can't cope and may have to call in the psychiatric services.
But do bear in mind that however concerned and professional they are the psychiatric profession really do not know what schizophrenia is. They don't know your sister as a person, only as a 'case'; and they don't love her. Their committment to her is is professional, not personal. If you and your family are prepared to put the committment in to supporting her through the difficult patches, there's no reason why your sister shouldn't live a mostly normal life, hold down a job provided it isn't too stressful, and form her own relationships.
Delusions (Score:3, Interesting)
If I start down the path of "I don't think that's true" she will immediately incorporate me into some paranoid belief about them-vs.-her. But if I go along with her delusion, it seems like a cop-out. What do other people do?
very interesting for slashdot (Score:2, Interesting)
Well let me start off. I was dianosed with SchizoAffective disorder, it like Bipolar mixed with Schizophrena about 1 year ago. I have not been able to concentrate very well and thus am not working right now. Getting the medication straight was the real first thing, getting some anti psychotics really helped everything work. Just if you want to know I am on 150mg of Lamictal, 4mg of Risperidone, and 20mg of Prozac. This helps slow you mind down and get it back on track.
Also I am involved with a young adult group, most of them are bipolar and some are schitzo. This really helps me come to grips with what has happened with my life. Adapting after shuch a mental break is hard and you will never get over comparing yourself to how you used to be. But talking about it with other people in the same situation really helps quite a bit.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Hi (Score:2, Interesting)
Just from my own experience it changes a person character totally. My brother was always a sharp minded individual but the disease changed him so that he is now very vacant and uncommunicative. I also have a cousin whose personality has been altered. He was very quite; when I herd about him last he kept getting into fights and talked too much.
Lastly a friend of mine, who was known for his tact, became the most irritating individuals you could have ever known.
The disease from my experiences changes people, but many people recover (like my friend) and get back to normal, just don't expect it to be soon.
Okay, let me explain some things... (Score:1, Interesting)
Then one day, I realized something. Maybe I'm a lucky one, but I realized it. THAT'S NOT FUCKING NORMAL! What sets humans apart from the rest of the animal world is the ability to self-reflect. Introspection. We can look at ourselves, judge it, and change it. Anyone, ANYONE, who says "well, it's diagnosed, so that's that" is a damn cop-out. ANYONE who says "I was told I'm this by a guy in a coat, so it's okay if I don't try" is taking the coward's escape. Any human being on the planet, including those severely detached from reality, have the ability to look at themselves and change it. Everyone has the ability to think "You know, I'm horny, but I don't want to have a kid, so I won't fuck", or "Yeah, it would be fun to get drunk, but I have to work in the morning", or "Yeah, I could kill everyone and everything in the school, but that wouldn't be right." Everyone can say "but". The challenge is that someone who is extremely skitso, will look at themselves and see something that others don't. That's what the therapy is for. Stick with it, work with the person to show them that they aren't crazy, and that they can get better, and they will. They have to realize that they can change themselves, and then it will be almost over-night. Working up to that point, on the other hand, is a long, hard process. Believe me. I've been through it.
And whoever told you that the movie "A beautiful mind" is the "best case scenario" was out of their mind. Schizophrenia is just a detachment. It can be mild, or extreme. The best case is that you sister will realize, "I don't want to live this way anymore", and change it. I will keep you both in my prayers that that will happen.
Sorry about the rant, but it's the truth, and I hope it helps.
Schizo-effective Spectrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:commonly seen (Score:1, Interesting)
Lowering dopamine in the brain (which is part of what these drugs do) is extremely dangerous in my opinion. We all see old folks with Parkinson's, and they suffer from an inability to produce enough dopamine for proper brain function. Messing about with these levels might cause Parkinson's-like symptoms or even predispose one for the problem later in life. You do occasionally see permanent brain damage from use of these anti-psychotics.
I'd rather risk ECT than an anti-psychotic, truthfully.
Re:what are some good books on the topic? (Score:5, Interesting)
It started off innocently enough; a question on how to block radio waves in his home. An odd request, sure, but... Faraday cages and such were being talked about, and someone asked in passing if there was some particular frequency he wanted to stop...
He basically stated that there was a group near him that was using some sort of broadcasting equipment to play thoughts in his head in an attempt to brainwash him. He didn't know what the frequency was, so he needed to block everything.
In addition he stated that he had been recommended to various psychologists, but since they were a part of the group doing the broadcasting he could not accept their diagnoses. I think the final answer to that question was a detailed explanation of radio physics, faraday cages, and also a caution suggestion that radio broadcasts can't be received by the human brain directly. I hope that guy, whoever he is, found some help...
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder when I was very young. With the right prescriptions and the regular intake, one can lead a relatively normal life. The impact that it had on myself and my siblings is that one really has to have check up and make sure that the medication is being taken at regular intervals.
The biggest impact, is now that everyone's up and moved out, someone from family must always stay in town to keep an eye on her. That also means being prepared to drop everything you're doing for about 24 hours during a breakdown. The legal system is a reactive entity. That means that one has a choice of either spending quite a bit of time attempting to get someone submitted based upon symptoms the legal system won't necessarily view as insanity or waiting for that person to hurt themselves or someone else. There's no clean method for dealing with someone who's stopping take their meds and is on that slippery slope to mental breakdown.
Oh, yea. In my experience, schizos are pretty crafty about hiding their lack of medicine intake.
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:2, Interesting)
Effectively what I believe causes this is the fact that I tend to jump to conclusions quickly without an emotional response. I personally am on a low dosage of Anti-psychotics to treat negative symptoms, but well below the dosage required to treat positive symptoms. For the positive symptoms, I apply cognative theropy to myself with great success. I can now recognize my paranoid/delusional thoughts and figure out how I "feel". This is in the end a great deal of what the problem is in my head. Until a few months ago, I had never felt annoyed -- instead I though people were against me. I chose this route as I have to deal with far fewer side effects from medication than I would deal with on strong medications.
I further prefer my direction because as a result I found Nirvana in the Buddist sense. Yeah, I know, you're saying I'm crazy (which I am), but I really did. Envision a temple, and on the top of this temple is a statue. The whole thing is surrounded by a forest. That's what I found in my head. The statue symbolizes my soul, the trees symbolize where I was lost in, and the temple symbolizes that something important is on top.
In terms of meds, I can safely say that at least in the metaphor above, the drugs act to cut you off from your soul. I believe this is why Schizo's (like myself) don't like anti-psychotics. It's kind of wierd to think that the problem is your soul, but it is your soul that spews out the garbage -- something that is very difficult to accept.
Of the drugs I've tried, I like Geodon the best as it only tries to build a wall around my soul. At my dosage, I can jump between sides as needed, but can live on the "reality" side without too much interference from the fantasy side. I hated Abilify as it turned out the lights in the above metaphor, so being on it was like living in the forest again (where you live prior to finding Nirvana), complete with anxiety.
Advice for your friend: TRY COGNATIVE THEROPY. It is MUCH better than being dosed up the wazzu on Anti-Psychotics. Many Psychiatrists don't like this approach, so it may take a while to find one who does. Mine doesn't but he's willing to go along with me on it. I keep him as reviewing events with him helps me to verify that 1) Cognative Theroy is working; 2) Modern psychology is full of shit when it comes to this disease.
Re:Yes, find out more (Score:3, Interesting)
Try the Personality Disorder Quiz [4degreez.com]
Re:Just Remember... (Score:4, Interesting)
To render it a bit more accurate: There have been laws until recently against minorities and women, so you can't really say "it's against the law, so it's wrong" as an absolute. And guess what... you can't. Ok, now back to the topic: the best resource is probably going to be support groups for families dealing with mental illness. I suspect your local hospital's mental health department will have such a group or at least a pointer on where to find one.
Re:God be with you (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need absolute proof to declare something present or not present. I don't have absolute proof that there isn't a "dragon in my garage", and that doesn't stop me from not believing in one. It's simply unrealistic for
Agnosticism is not the belief that "something is out there". Perhaps you should look up your terms before spouting nonsense. That is closest to deism, not agnosticim.
It doesn't waste *your* time. I seriously doubt there is anything the OP could actively do to help the article poster. Praying is no worse in this situation than simply reading about it on
It doesn't waste my time? No, not now, but it once did, and I'm still incensed at being lied to. Also, again, one does not need absolute knowledge to declare something is true or false. Science never advertises absolute knowledge, yet it has showed us many things which we accept to be facts simply because they are demonstratable. The world secretly being run by aliens, for example, is a spurious claim, and people will deny it because it's ridiculous. I'm sure you know of the Occam's razor principle? It's possible that prayer works, but with the knowledge I have it's highly unlikely. I'm simply making a statement involving perceived probabilities, like the rest of science.
You can't disprove man didn't really evolve from clams, but that won't stop people from saying it's not true. There are better explanations out there.
If your doctor says 'I'm praying for you instead of administering medicine," that's totally different. However, if that's the kind of doctor you want to go to, it's your life and your health. You have the option of accepting that or going to a different doctor. That's the beauty of choice.
But that doctor shouldn't be allowed to claim success unless scientifically shown to be true.
It's not MPD but DID (Score:3, Interesting)
IANA Psychologist so stake this a grain of salt, but my mom is (MSc)and I talked her about this out of general interest and have read some abnormal psychology.
Agreed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Up to this day I'm not sure whether it was the weed or true schitzophrenia, though I suspect the latter. And while I have been tested, tried, drugged and shrinked from childhood for my bipolar disorder, I had/have never been tested for schitzophrenia. I would guess that, if it IS the case, it is simply difficult to detect since I'm already eccentric by myself. I also feel no need to find out because whatever the case, I've learned to deal with it insofar as possible. I also have tolerant friends who don't freak out if one of my colorful observations are off the mark in whichever way. But I DO remember clearly that during my stoning times, I was in my own hell where I trusted almost no-one out of pure paranoia and had plenty of delusions to go with it. My bipolar disorder in manic phase was, ironically, the only time that I functioned well; I had the energy to have a normal life and it sharpened my wit far enough that it compensated for the inevitable slowdown that weed gives you.
These days I've given up on drugs (except for beer and the occasional cigar), including perscription drugs. My bipolar disorder is mild enough that I can control it by simply keeping an eye on myself - eating and sleeping habits, spending tendencies, etcetera - and compensate by applying the brakes wherever necessary; also, under certain conditions, you can keep yourself slightly manic without danger of the fallback into depression by not overworking.
I suspect that the backslide into depression is caused by heaping up too much work on your plate when you're manic; by keeping yourself in shape, getting plenty of sleep and decent meals, and knowing when/how to give your brain a break - and that means something which requires little thought, such as reordering your baseball card collection, or ironing, or cleaning up, or going for a walk or jog (NO tv, no internet!) - you can keep yourself an a heightened mentally active state indefinitely. I suspect that bipolar disorder may have been an evolutionary advantage once, and that due to social pressures and/or the differences in our modern ways of living compared to, say the stone age, it became a liability rather than a bonus. It might even be that depression wasn't always a necessary component, I don't know.
The delusional aspects from the schitzo-like affliction from my teens (I am now 27) gradually faded through time; one thing that really helped was writing down my delusions and seeing if they stood any statistic chance of being true. For example, when I was convinced I could control stoplights mentally; I simply drove around and compared how often it worked to how often I thought it worked. Needless to say, there were a few discrepancies
Jynx
Re:My Recommendations (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, malaria gives you nightmares. Serious, terrifying nightmares. Everyone who was in our group reported having dreams about dead people. It also gave me weird lucid dreams -- after a few weeks, at one point in a dream I asked a character, "Is this one of those crazy Lariam dreams?" and he said, "Yes, this is a lariam dream."
Anywho, a girl who was on the program the year before us would wake up screaming in bed, sweating. They were ready to ship her home before they thought it might be the Lariam and took her off of it.
Two things. (Score:3, Interesting)
Get a second opinion! (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad's second wife had MPD, and she is cured now, because her therapist was not so old-fashioned, and knew that what she needed was to merge the fractured parts of her psyche, as opposed to drugs, restraints and denial (even though in other cases some of those things might be more effective). I just hope that whatever your sister has, that somebody can be so insightful for her as well.
Beautiful Mind Rather InAccurate (Score:5, Interesting)
The brilliant mathematician stopped taking anti-psychotic drugs in 1970, and then slowly recovered over two decades. This is much more the rule rather than the exception. In ''undeveloped'' countries, nearly two-thirds of schizophrenia patients are doing fairly well five years after initial diagnosis; about 40% have basically recovered. But in the USA and other developed countries, most patients become chronically ill.
The outcome differences are so marked that WHO concluded that living in a developed country is a ''strong predictor'' that a patient never will fully recover."
Hollywood is known to never let facts get in the road of a good story. Or would the lack of drugs be a better story? It is also worth while to check out Psych Watch [blogspot.com] for various items about psychiatry going down the tubes, etc.
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:4, Interesting)
I speak from experience. A member of my family suffered episodes of bipolar disorder requiring several hospitalizations. A period of a few painful years and she stopped taking her medication but seemed okay. She was occasionally difficult to live with, but functional.
Flash forward ten years or so. A sudden, weeklong descent into mania was capped with psychotic delusions. Under delusions that the devil was after her, she ended up stabbing a family member in the chest with a kitchen knife while they slept (no permanent injury resulted, miraculously). This all happened so quickly... there simply wasn't time to get help. She'd seen a doctor already and begun taking an antipsychotic, but there wasn't nearly enough time for it to take effect.
Consequently, several years of her life were wasted in institutions even though, with medication, she almost immediately returned to the most functional I've ever seen her in. If you say you'd rather live in one of them than be depressed outside of them, I seriously question whether you've ever visited an institution. They are not nice places. I've been in them a lot in order to support my relative.
The meds might make you feel different. You may feel "off". Work with your doctor. Find one that works for you. You will get better acclimated to it. Frequently bipolars mistake the absence of mania for feeling "dulled". The thing to remember is: you are not the best judge of whether you need to take your meds or not. Your doctor is.
To the original poster: I'm sorry you and your sister will have to go through this. Some people respond very well to the medications; those medicines are getting better all the time. Hopefully your sister is one of those people. I would strongly suggest getting some counseling for yourself and the rest of your family, particularly if your sister turns out to not be one of the lucky ones. You will need it in order to be able to supply the support your sister deserves.
Re:Schizophrenia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:commonly seen (Score:3, Interesting)
I HIGHLY recomend "LSD Psychotherepy" by Stanislav Groff MD. It is THE work on the subject and a very aproachable book overall. It talks extensivly about his clinical work with LSD over the years and what techniques have found good results.
The overall process falls somewhere between ancient shamanic ritual and modern psychoterepy (and in a way, uses both). It is not seen as a treatment in and of itself so much as a part of a larger treatment plan involving more traditional counseling before and after the experience(s).
From my own LSD experiences I can see the value. LSD is not an escapists drug. I have seen people try to use it that way, and it can do that for a while. However, if you are fundamentally not happy, you can expect very difficult experiences. LSD will cause your inner world to project outward into your perceptions. If you emotionally feel like shit, then with LSD you will quite likely find yourself in a world of shit.
One of the more fascinating effects was noted with schizophrenia. Its been noted that often schizophrenics who are having an episode will "get worst before they get better". LSD experiences tend to make the episode get worst faster, but also, lessen the overall average length of the episode. (really read the book. Dr Groff is the authority)
As for flashbacks, they are normal. ANyone who says they have never had one either doesn't understand them, or is really abnormal. Ever felt deja-vu? guess what? Same thing. Flashbacks can be much more intense or vivid, but thats rare.
Now on topic again... I have seen people go through several psychotic breaks. Some drug related, some not so much. In all cases its been similar, but not in a way I can easily describe. Its an odd skill that you pick up from seeing people that you care about go through delusions. A way of relating to them and even helping them when you can (even if that means just steering them away from trouble long enough for them to get a grip or not get arrested)
You realise that knowing they are having a delusion doesn't really make the delusion any less real. You have to know that it IS real for them, and you have to respect that reality.
As for being on the other end, I don't know. I have philisophical problems with anti-psychotic drugs, and never mind their side effects (look at the side effects for thorazine sometime... it can (rearely) cause a permanent parkinsons syndrome after even a single dose!)
This is one of the reasons I liked Brillient mind. Wonderful movie and great story. He came to a realisation that alot of people don't get. The mind is very trainable. Just as a person can be trained to stop at a red light at 3 am on deserted city streets waiting for that green, just as a person can be trained to see the world in such black and white terms that they could blow themselves up with a crowd of their "enemys", so can a mind be trained to pay attention to things or see things that it would normally ignore.(or ignore things that it would normally see)
Thats the funny thing about lsd too. Many of the odd effects are just things that you stop ignoring. Like the little trails in your vision, or the faint echo of your voice off the walls, or the feeling of various parts of your body that you normally wouldn't be paying attention to.
Its just a matter of remembering, as long as you cankeep yourself healthy and alie and socialize with outher people to a level thats satisfactory for your own happiness, it doesn't matter how many deamons are running around or how many songs inanimate objects sing... its only a mental disorder if its causing a problem for you.
The hard part is learning to not let it cause a problem. As a friend of mine once said "sure after you have done as much acid as I have you might startto see ghost images in mirrors and all sorts of weird disturbances, but eventually you get used to them" (if we could only all be so calm about it, I think we would have less problems with people overall)
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
I call bullshit - I'm pretty positive you're making those numbers up on the spot. This is an article [apa.org] about the efficacy of drugs versus therapy. What's more useful is the two therapies (drugs and psychotherapy) combined.
Also "talking cures can take years to reach that sucess rate, most drugs take weeks. Also "talking cures" are billed at $100 per hour, drugs, even expense ones are far far cheaper.
That might be true, about the drugs having an effect sooner - however, most psychotherapy is time-limited. Drugs often are prescribed for a lifetime. 24 weeks of psychotherapy once a week for an hour at $100 an hour begins to sound like a bargain in comparison to a lifetime of drugs. And more importantly, drugs have significant side effects.
Re:fair enough (Score:3, Interesting)
I think your response gets to the fundamental question I am raising, what is it that we should consider when we medicate someone. Certainly any moral person will take into consideration the effect they will have on family and friends but no one has an obligation to be miserable just to keep their family from morning them.
My point is that ultimately doctors should be concerned primarily with the subjective well-being of the patient and not just their level of functioning. Even if an individual might not be 'sane' or normal off their medication if anti-psychotics drive them into extreme depression wherein the patient would prefer to be dead then this isn't a good solution. True, a responsible individual knowing he would be not sane should make arrangments (commitment?) so he will not be a danger to others. However, ultimately sanity and functionality should only be viewed as means to the end of personal satisfaction/enjoyment.
Let me be clear, I am not advocating blind pursuit of immediate pleasure. Many individuals will feel locally better off of their meds but because this will cause encounters will law enforcement and harm to friends or family and possibly eventually commitment they will in total feel worse off their meds. However, in some cases taking the meds makes life not worth living for these patients to the extent that they would prefer to be commited and reasonably happy then functional and suicidally depressed. In this case we should not put functionality over subjective enjoyment.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's easy to talk about the frog as having felt no pain because it was sedated but pain is a lot more than the instantaneous effect. Just as with any surgery the pain persists long after the administration. There is cellular damage which results in tissue atrophy, muscle cramping, and a generalized secondary immune response to clean up the resulting mess. There is also the lingering headaches due to neurochemical imbalance and the general feeling of dizziness, disorientation, and haziness which comes after the procedure and can linger on for weeks.
Of course you would believe they feel no pain because they're sedated. You want to believe in a magical high-voltage cureall.
But many people find it to be a good treatment for depression
That's my point. The patients that agree do so out of fear of readministration. The doctors that agree do so because they believe their patients or they don't dare discredit their own work. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, or a self-perpetuating lie... however you like to view it.
Your posted links are dubious at best. A link to "freeessays.cc"? How about a link to "healthyplace.com", where the linked article is in a depression community? Of course there's an underlying motive to promote positive results. no one's going to antagonize the depressed community by discrediting a potential treatment. And lastly a link to the Royal College of Psychiatrists which shows a press release of all things. No organization in their right mind would publish anything bad about themselves.
Enough with the one-sided links. Do you have anything objective to justify your superiority?
Re:Just Remember... (Score:3, Interesting)
Prayer works (Score:2, Interesting)
I suffered from schizophrenic type symptoms in early high school. I heard voices tell me to do things and all that jazz. I was utterly confused about reality; sometimes I would have to leave class balling crying because I was so confused. I thought people were talking to me subliminally, and heard other voices too. It really wrecked my life. My deliverance from all that crap was nearly instantaneous the summer of my sophomore year, and it happened when I placed faith in Jesus Christ and prayed to Him to be my Savior. That instant I knew that I was healed. It gave me an anchor of reality, of absolute Truth in a world of relative thought and morality, which allowed me to determine truth from fiction and "real" reality from inner thoughts or temptations. As I read His words and submitted to the Creator'sworldview, I was delivered more and more.
For some prayer may not work, especially when not combined with faith (which is deeper them simple intellectual belief, it goes one's core and effects their actions and morals). For some it may not work because God doesn't will it to work for whatever good reason He may have. Sometimes medicine is the only way to find relief. But for many, prayer has worked and continues to. Prayer has helped me in so many ways it isn't funny.
I also used to speak with such a terrible stutter (later on in high school, after becoming a Christian) that I could not even read to my classmates in school. After praying as directed by Philippians 4:4-9 (which is a verse I'd found in the new testament of the Bible) for a few weeks I was able to give my testimony and share my faith at a home for troubled boys and girls in front of 400 people. It went off without even a hint of stuttering. I was amazed. That night several other people decided who the Answer to their problems was and began to be transformed by Christ. And one I have kept up with to this day continues to find help and comfort through faith and prayer.
Prayer works. I'm 25 now and I have many personal experiences proving it through and through to me, as do many friends of mine and family members dealing with everything from depression to addiction. All I can say is it works for me, and many others.
And so I'll pray for you, that one day you might have a more open mind and more freedom of thought then you've shown in this thread.
Jay
Synthetic Telepathy (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to be a bipolar manic (Score:3, Interesting)
Through medication and self evaluation, I have returned to "normal". That is the most important part to remember. You CAN return to "normal". It's not an end-all. I have now been off of all medication for a year and a half, and I'm doing fine.
Re:commonly seen (Score:1, Interesting)
May I kindly ask you if you are an academic on this territory or a guy, who likes to take drugs ?
I was the latter one. Back in 1988/1989 there was the Acid House movement all over the States and Europe. I was in London back in the summer of 1988 and met some cool people over there. They all were big on dope, and since some time, big on LSD. I took it once with them and it was fucking brilliant ! But I did not do it any more. I had the luck, so I think, that what I experienced fulfilled me enough, that I did not need it another time. Been there, done that.
One of the guys I met there was an artist from San Francisco. He paintet really cool and huge pictures, and I liked him a lot. However, he was like a sausage. You could punch him, beat him up, roll with a tank over him, all he would do would be to smile. So much for his aggressions. He told me once, he'd taken more than 200 trips in four years. There you have it...
The other folks I met over there I met again half a year later. I went (happily) there to meet them for New Year. When I visited them, they would let me in, lead me to a room with a TV and make me wait. And wait. And wait. After half an hour or so I went into their living-room, where he and his girl-friend would sit and stare into the empty nothing. At least by judging their eyes. They were like Zombies. When we said, we'd like to go (I was there with a friend of mine) they'd say: "Okay, goodbye." That was all of their reaction, they did not even to bother of leading us out. That was all. Quite a contrast to people you would spend happy and crazy nights for two weeks, folks who gave their addresses so you come to visit them some time you're there. Apathic freaks!
Later I have had heard by others, that they'd trip around like idiots, throw acids all the time.
Now you may have prove, that there is no physical damage. But then, tell me, what were with those people ? They were, without doubt, mentally very changed, not to say, abnormal.
So it is dangerous to imply, that there is no brain-damage by LSD and not talk about the mental illness it causes. Especially in a world (and on a website) where most people are of technical believe and connect all with chemistry and biology.
Weak Argument (Score:2, Interesting)
I have found your account on my fans list and have read quite a few comments and journal entries of yours, where I have even found a link to one of my older texts--you might also find this one [slashdot.org] interesting--and as much as I usually like your reasoning, this one is sadly based on not a particularly strong argument, I am afraid.
Nevertheless, I find your comparison of organized religion to a bus terminal quite intresting. Also, I generally like your masturbation analogy (no pun intended) however its strength might be questionable.
Despite many interesting similarities, I usually take offense when someone tells me about either of those activities in somewhat different situations and for quite different reasons. More precisely, the question whether I want to hear about someone thinking of me while praying depands almost entirely on the subject, reason and purpose of said prayer, while with the masturbation it is almost entirely dependent on the person doing it, the reason and purpose is usually the same, the subject notwithstanding.
For example, when someone tells me she is going to pray for my health, I will take offense (and in fact I will get terrified) if that is my doctor and I might get irritated if that is someone who prefers praying instead of physically helping me. If someone tells me she is going to pray for my soul, implying that I am evil, I will always take offense. If someone just tells me she prays for me because she likes me, I might be very happy with it, like if one would say she thinks a lot about me. It might be a manifestation of feelings and emotions, or even some dependence or submission. Of course it all depands on whether one indeed is going to literally pray or is just using it as a rhetorical figure, for the strenght of my reaction, positive or negative, will be usually proportional to the time and energy one actually devotes.
My reaction to someone thinking about me during the prayer is rarely dependent exclusively on the person in question without considering its subject. Quite to the contrary with masturbation. The subject itself seems usually irrelevant or at least secondary to my opinion regarding the very person who tells me about it and the sexuality thereof, subjectively perceived. It is also interesting to note that people tell me about their prayers at least twice as often as about masturbation. But the most important is not the frequency but the very reason of my reaction.
(Of course I might be committing a genetic fallacy mixing argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad verecundiam depanding on the subject of my ipse dixit reasoning, but I believe one might consider it perfectly justified in the subjective matter of sexuality, or at the very least I do really hope so.)
For that reason I wonder whether your analogy, while certainly interesting and intellectually entertaining, might indeed need some better introduction and further explanation, for it might seem weak for some people with similar experience as mine.
It is very interesting nonetheless and undoubtedly deserves some serious analysis. I will think about it more thoroughly.
Re:Weak Argument (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm afraid it was a quote from the popular animated TV show called "The Simpsons" and repeated entirely in jest.
More precisely, the question whether I want to hear about someone thinking of me while praying depands almost entirely on the subject, reason and purpose of said prayer, while with the masturbation it is almost entirely dependent on the person doing it, the reason and purpose is usually the same, the subject notwithstanding.
But I think that prayer is also entirely dependent on the person doing it. Some people pray for their sports team to do well, while others pray for the competing team. It is entirely a personal decision to pray and what to pray for.
If someone just tells me she prays for me because she likes me, I might be very happy with it, like if one would say she thinks a lot about me. It might be a manifestation of feelings and emotions, or even some dependence or submission.
I guess what we're saying is that there are varying degrees of vulgarity with individual levels of acceptance. I think that prayer is like masturbation in that there are levels. As you say there is praying for health and simply prayer due to liking someone. I say there is masturbation simply due to physical attractiveness and there is obsessing, stalking, fantasising about whips/chains/beasteality with a dose of scat fetish thrown in. Clearly there are more offensive actions here. But, simply because a one action is greatly over shadowed by another one that is arguably more offsenive does not make that simplier one entirely acceptable.
For that reason I wonder whether your analogy, while certainly interesting and intellectually entertaining, might indeed need some better introduction and further explanation, for it might seem weak for some people with similar experience as mine.
I think that to labor on with introductions and contorted setups reduces the meaning of an analogy. To equate the two intially, with no other bias or setup, and then continue on a discussion that links the two several times builds a case for something. Pointing out a possible flaw, as you are doing here, furthers the discussion, and perhaps strengthens the analogy. But to be required to list many facets of several things before ever getting to an analogy reduces interest because it makes things needlessly complicated.
I think that the majority of people haven't given this analogy half the thought you and I have. To point out tiny details to them is boring and pointless. But, this does not mean they should be ignored, that is specifically why I am replying to you.
If anything I find my analogy to the bus terminal thing to have more interesting holes that I'd like to fill. For example, I can't equate the truely evil wackos in society that misuse religion to their own evil ways with the hapless crazy people at a bus terminal.
For example, there is talk right now on the news about a priest who molested a child and told the child that "God didn't want him talking about it." This is clearly using religion as a weapon in the furtherence of a personal goal. I can't think of how a person at a bus terminal can do anything even remotely like that.
Maybe I'm taking the bus terminal analogy "too far" with this area, but then again, have I taken it any further than your analysis of masturbation as related to prayer?
To say that there is a perfect direct analogy to anything that entirely encompasses all relative issues is a bold statement, and often impossible to support after long analysis. However, to say that two things, at their base, work in similar ways can be useful to show people that "Hey, you know, that is I guess how others may see it." That is my goal with the masturbation/prayer analogy. Often people who pray feel that what they are doing is entirely good and never offensive to anyone. They often are incapable of seeing how anyon