[UA] Schizophrenia

[Timothy Ferguson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu [mailto:ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu]On

> From what I understand of schizophrenia, it is a disturbing, even
> traumatic
> thing to hear thoughts that you do not believe to belong to you. I don't
> know how many people "cured" of mental illness wish they still
> suffered from
> it, but I'm guessing that it's not many. Genuinely desiring a
> mentally ill
> state is probably a form of sickness sin itself.

The later sentence is particularly disturbing for those who have ongoing
conditions they choose not to treat.  I know some quite happy MPDers who
would be deeply offended by the concept that to desire not to be cured is a
pathological choice.  I have OCD, and choose not to treat it at this time,
as I'm in post-treatment stable phase and the drugs that have been
recommended to me (which I've never taken - they weren't popular back when I
was first diagnosed) have serious side-effects.

It is my genuine desire not to be treated at this time using conventional
CBT because it would require me to take addictive substances which suppress
my condition until I'm forced to go cold turkey lest my liver pack it in and
I don't want, 18 months from now, to have to hold a pill in my hand and know
that if I don't take it, my condition will return worse than it is now (for
lack of practice dealing with it) and if I do take the pill there is a
cumulative, but small, chance that it will cause permanent and irreparable
damage to my internal organs.

Also, I quite like sex, and men taking SSRIs suffer impotence in the vast
majority of cases.

That they have now bought out Prozac chocolate does not tempt me nearly as
much as it should.  After all, who wants to only eat two squares of
chocolate a day?

> I'd have some difficulty believing in this situation unless it was very
> convincingly depicted.

Fair call.  If you don't want to be cured - you aren't.  People can't cure
you against your will.

> After therapy (or life-changing circumstances that break you out of the
> cycle of emotional problems) do you think that an adept ever
> finds himself
> not as obsessed with his "insane" behaviour as he used to be? What if an
> epideromancer loses the urge to cut himself, and thus the obsession with
> epideromancy - does he lose his magical knowledge, or just the
> benefit of an
> obsession skill?

I'd say he loses the necessary emotional connection to it.  Think, for
example, of a musician who loses an emotional connection to music.  They
don't "feel" it.  They can go through the motions and can make something
that looks good, but they can't do anything they've never done before and
really can't practice anything to extend their repertoire.


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua