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I recently met a guy called Kai, who I knew vaguely when I was little, and have seen around occassionally since then...
He was a little bit crazy as a kid, violent and maybe schitzophrenic (sp?)....he took a massive ammount of acid as a teenager, and is now insane. When I met him, the first thing he said to me was 'The revolution's going really well...'. He is convinced that he is a hacker, and part of a revolution. He may genuinely be a hacker, or he may have just imagined it. The friend who I was with at the time has a brother called Daniel, and Kai repeatedly mistook my friend for him. He callled him 'Dan' all the time, despite being told that it was not Dan at all. He enlisted me into his revolutionary army. He asked me incessantly to imagine what would happen if we phoned up Britney Spears, Keanu Reeves and Ewan McGregor and asked them to publicly denounce all world governments. He asked me what would happen if all countries took down their flags and put up one flag...he asked what would happen if we phoned up the chairman of NatWest bank and had him install one world currency, h asked me if I had ever been taught to make a list, and he asked me who had sold me my drugs, and why he was selling drugs to an underage user. He also told me that he had once eaten half an oz of hash and imagined that he was a bird. He also started talking Japanese. I don't speak Japanese myself (he was talking more to himself than to me anyway), so was unable to tell if he actually was speaking it, or if he was just talking gibberish - However, I am certain that he thought that he was talking Japanese.

I was rather shocked by the incident. I have been thinking about him constantly since then - I wonder how he survives normal life, concealing his insanity....is his entire world imaginary, or is some of it real, and does it make any difference anyway?

It was deeply tragic - he is probably 24 - maybe 22, maybe 26, but he is very young, and now his life is over, as far as I can consider.

So what can be learnt from him, what can life hold for him? Is this world any better than an imaginary world? It seems to me like suicide - is it the same thing?

Also I would be interested if anyone can diagnose what may actually be wrong with him from my anecdote, or tell me about what actually occurs in the brain when it is fried by acid.

Please share your thoughts .

Acid has been known to cause paranoid schizophrenia.

@frogus: I have unfortunately seen for myself the results of excessive hallucinogenic drug use in people...and I do believe the #1 primary condition it leaves the user - some sort of warped gift, a reminder of the abuse - is indeed paranoid schizophrenia, as Grunty pointed out.

I have seen someone a bit younger than the fellow you described - he was a senior in high school, and had used LSD since his early teens - attack his parents in an exceedingly bizarre manner. Apparently LSD remains in your body on a permanent basis, and is present (and can be detected) in spinal fluid, and brain tissue. The continuing effect it has upon the body is somewhat of a mystery (to me, anyway, perhaps more research has been done), but people who have used LSD at some point in their lives are permanently marked by it. "Flashbacks" can happen without warning. Many, however, experience periods of relatively normal lucidity. It seems to worsen depending upon how much was used, and the person's own body chemistry.

...that's why I stay away from Drugs...

No worries,

Beldin

I really don't know what to say about your friend, but it seems that drugs are pretty much a lose lose situation. My cousin went to jail for a while for drug use. I have a friend who was sent to a work camp in Utah for drug use. I have a friend who went to Juvie for a while for growing marijuana in his attack. I know 3 guys, one who I am good friends with, who went to juvie for nearly a year because they beat some kid nearly to death when they were drunk. Just about everyone I know abuses drugs. It really saddens me and I've in fact found myself alone on my computer a lot more recently instead of out with friends. It's really depressing. Oh well, I guess that I'm the only person I have control over and I can't make choices for other people.

Originally posted by ruined letters
for growing marijuana in his attack

OK...make that "...away from dangerous drugs..." for me.

And abuse or overindulgence is BAD no matter WHAT you're swallowing, drinking or smoking... !

No worries,

Beldin

As my pop would always say...

...for almost anything, excess and abuse are always bad.

As for Kai, I do hope that despite his present state of mind, he is not of the violent kind. In my country as well as here in Thailand, drugs have caused people to do things against fellow people too gross to even mention in this forum.

Frogus, I am sorry to hear about your friend Kai, it is indeed very tragic to see people enter a world that is neither their own nor the one we can share with them, but a world induced by disease. A world induced by disease or damage of the central nervous system, is as far as I am concerned, always a limited and inflexible world without the freedom to choose your acts, thoughts and general consequences of your life. It is a world where the person becomes a victim of the experiences the disease elicits in him, and it is a constant struggle to bring some kind of meaning to this stream of chaotic, uncontrollable events. So in this sense, I would say Kai's world is far worse than our world. But is his world worse than the world of a 6 year old in the Dominican republic who is sold by his poor parents as a sex slave to rich tourists? This, I cannot say.

It is impossible to make some kind of reliable diagnosis from an anecdote, but from what you tell it is at least clear that Kai is having a psychotic episode, or perhaps it is a chronic state. Maybe it is schizophrenia, maybe it is some other psychotic disease, maybe it is a drug induced psychotic disease. But don't loose hope entirely, there is always room for change whatever type of psychotic state he is in. Most psychotic disorders are fluctuating in intensity, and a majority of people can improve with long term treatment. Maybe his life is not over just yet, sometimes psychotic patients even get better spontaneously.

A quick word about LSD and schizophrenia: LSD is not known to trigger or cause schizophrenia. However, some people can get symptoms that resemble paranoid schizophrenia, but it is not really schizophrenia. Statistically speaking, abuse of amphetamine, cannabis and MDMA (Ecstacy) is more common prior to outbreak of psychosis than LSD. However, we do not know what is cause and what is effect here. We cannot say for sure that drug abuse triggers psychotic disorders, it is also possible that people who are predisposed for psychotic disorders are also more inclined to take drugs - we must remember that a lot of drug abuse is maintained by people as a kind of self-medication.

Regarding what happens in the brain when it's friend by acid, this is subject too big for a PhD dissertation. LSD is known to cause acute behavioural, perceptual and cognitive effects that resemble a psychotic state, and it is also known to cause feelings of mystic, spiritual character as well as well-being. However, extensive research over 40 years has not yet succeded in answering the question what the exact mechanism of action of LSD is. LSD is an extremly "dirty" drug, it affects a large variety of receptor subtypes in several different major neurotransmitter systems in the brain, such as the serotonin, dopamine and glutamate systems. LSD may also have the property of changing intracellular cascades of events, and a recent study published in the scientific journal Neuropsychopharmacology demonstrates the much discussed question of LSD induced altering of gene expression. LSD seems to alter transcription factors and proteins that affect things like the stability of the cell architecture (for instance how stable the cell membrane is), the general activity level of certain types of brain cells, and the growth and flexibility of brain cells. These effects may explain why LSD can cause long term effects such as flashbacks and long term psychosis like states.

Thanks CE, and many thanks Ned for your PM on the subject.

Well, I don't think I will ever be able to take acid now...

but anyway, what about this -

Due to us having two eyes, we see things as a compromise between our left field of vision and our right field of vision. So the world which we see is not the real world at all (if such a thing exists), but a very very similar world, exactly the same in every way apart from tiny and unimportant visual features. But nevertheless, it is not the real world, as far as I can see. This makes me think that my world is no more real than Kai's - and as far as I can tell, Kai is in no great discomfort. He has a purpose to life (the revolution), and judging by his appearance he has clothes and housing and food. He has friends (although the firends in his world do not map directly onto his friends in our world, as his calling my friend 'Daniel' indictaes), so is his world worse than ours?
I feel that due to the frailties of human sensory perception, saying that my world is better than his, because it is 'truer', would not necessarily be true....

anyway, I am rambling.

So if a person were to close one eye, they would see the one real world...or are you making a case for the cult of the unseeing eye (apologies for spam).

Originally posted by Chanak
Apparently LSD remains in your body on a permanent basis, and is present (and can be detected) in spinal fluid, and brain tissue. The continuing effect it has upon the body is somewhat of a mystery (to me, anyway, perhaps more research has been done), but people who have used LSD at some point in their lives are permanently marked by it. "Flashbacks" can happen without warning. Many, however, experience periods of relatively normal lucidity. It seems to worsen depending upon how much was used, and the person's own body chemistry.

I think CE already sort of went into this...but LSD does not remain in your body permanently, it is water-soluble and flushed out of your system within 3 days. Since it is water-soluble, it also cannot alter your chromosomes. The only drug out there that could affect the chromosomes in that way is marijuana, since it is fat-soluble (which is why it stays in your system for a month). Also, I think that the idea of "Flashbacks" was propaganda by the anti-drug organizations dating back to the late 60's, and probably confused with people who were actually suffering chronic psychosis. The type of psychosis induced by LSD is actually quite different from schizophrenic psychosis. LSD primarily induces visual hallucinations, whereas Schizophrenics rarely suffer from visual hallucinations and almost always have auditory hallucinations (hearing voices). The drug that induces more of a true schizophrenic-like state is amphetamines.

There are many theories as to the cause of schizophrenia. The last time I went to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical School/NY Psychiatric Institute's Schizophrenia Conference, one of the most popular theories was the diathesis-stress theory. What this states is that some people carry the potential to become schizophrenic. If exposed to extreme stress (such as a really bad acid trip, or going to war, etc), it can trigger the disease. This is similar to the theory about Diabetes - that some people carry the gene, but only if they become obese does the disease become triggered.
There are some other interesting theories out there now, such as that both Schizophrenia and Multiple Sclerosis are caused by a long-term virus (like the AIDS virus - only more delayed). Both diseases attack only certain parts of the neurologic system, as a virus would, and both first emerge in people from age 16-25. The long-term nature of such a virus could also make it appear to be genetic when it was actually passed on during childbirth. Fascinating theory.
Most research scientists in schizophrenia think that there is a complex combination of factors (genetics, brain chemistry, epidemiological --such as nutrition or infectious diseases during gestation, socio-economic (mainly affects lower income), educational (more severely affects least-educated), etc.) Like cancer, this disease is now thought to be many different diseases with many different causes. However, drug use of any kind has not been shown to directly cause schizophrenia - although the extreme stress of a psychotic drug episode could certainly contribute.

How do I know all this? I worked in psychiatric hospitals as an art therapist for many years, primarily with schizophrenics. It was truly tragic to see so many people just starting out their lives have it all snatched away by such a devastating disease.