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Schizophrenia

robocop (actually)

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
When it says in Second Nephi that the Book of Mormon is the voice of one crying from the dust, or one who is dead, that is proof that Joseph Smith was able to read an ancient document somehow. There are too many things that a person in 600 B.C. might write that Joseph Smith couldn't have known that we now know.

Of course, bringing up aliens in the Book of Mormon proves it too, so if you say yes and I put that thread up we can have double proof.
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
This was a truly bizarrre experience - wrote a little poem about it ... I experienced an altered state-of-consciousness on a psych ward ... I had little need for sleep or food and felt total euphoria and peace that surpasses understanding - foolishly I assumed it would never end! ...

Here's the poem -

One Man's Heaven

I write this little poem as I sit
I'm in Acacia ward until I split
Surrounded by the maddest folk
It is the sweetest, most ironic joke

I'm actually living in another world
Where dreams and magic are unfurled
The people in here have no greed or hate
They all have learned the way to wait

Waiting for the coming of the sun
Knowing they are truly all one
We laugh along with all the staff
My best mate thinks he's a giraffe

I gladly watch over these fragile souls
Some think their minds are full of holes
They cannot handle the jungle outside
This is their refuge where they can hide

They hide not from themselves of course
We are all connected to one pure source
Our hearts and minds have merged with each other
I call every one in here my soul-brother

If you want to join us, please feel free
It really is the best place to be
Surrounded by such understanding
You'll find we are never ever demanding

You'll never know who you might meet
If you take a walk down our secret street
Please visit us if you get the chance
We may even teach your soul to dance

Enjoy!
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Here is a heavily-edited version of a MUCH longer poem I wrote when I was really "psychotic".

I realise most folks have a fairly brief attention-span these days :)

Schizophrenia

I used to walk down the street
And scream at everyone I meet
So they locked me away
From the world every day

I crawled through the walls
So they showed me some normals
They strangled my mind
To help me unwind

I used to think I was a robot from outer space
With wires in my head and a little plastic face
I used to believe I had such magic powers
Which I would gladly practice for many hours

I am a human experimental life-form
My blood flows backwards to keep me warm
People ask me if I can save the world
I tell them to leave all the flags unfurled

My mother-in-law was schizophrenic, sometimes paranoid. I do have a pretty good attention span and would really love to read the longer version if you are okay with posting it. She went through numerous years of her life being over- and incorrectly medicated by psychiatrists who spent too little time with her or were inept at their job. Finally, we found a doctor who dropped pretty much all the meds and then reintroduced meds selectively and monitored her to be sure she was receiving benefits and that side effects were minimized as much as possible. She was a whole new person.
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
My mother-in-law was schizophrenic, sometimes paranoid. I do have a pretty good attention span and would really love to read the longer version if you are okay with posting it. She went through numerous years of her life being over- and incorrectly medicated by psychiatrists who spent too little time with her or were inept at their job. Finally, we found a doctor who dropped pretty much all the meds and then reintroduced meds selectively and monitored her to be sure she was receiving benefits and that side effects were minimized as much as possible. She was a whole new person.

Thanks for sharing!

Okay since you asked for it so nicely ... here is the full-version of the poem PLUS the intro -

The Robot who thought he was human

This story is based on a dream I had recently. One of those incredibly vivid dreams that seem much more real than the everyday world. It is also based on the experience of schizophrenia which itself can make the world seem a very unreal place.

Flashes of memories. In a laboratory. Wires attached to my head. They are testing me. Testing what? Next thing I know, I am in a car with Maree. For some reason I cannot explain, I felt around for a flap of skin near my left temple. I located this flap and lifted it up. To my horror, underneath the flap was an electrical socket. I turn to Maree and ask "Maree, am I a robot or a human being?" From my look and the tone of my voice she knew something was seriously wrong. A long and animated discussion followed . I wish I could recall all of the words which were exchanged. I remember saying "Now I know why my feelings have always seemed almost real but are in fact only a pale shadow of what a real human being's feeling would be. What right do they have to mess around inside my head like this?" Together, we agreed that it was a most contemptible thing to do. To play God by creating a machine so lifelike that it actually believes it is human when it is not. The question burned inside me - what am I going to do about this?

A million other questions raced through my mind (or rather my central processing unit, since only real people have actual minds). Do I have a soul? If I am just a sophisticated machine, then I probably have no soul. Was my schizophrenia a deliberate part of the programming or was it a flaw in the programming? Was anything I had ever experienced actually real or was it simply a memory stored in a bunch of receptors inside my head? Had any of it really happened at all? What made me think of lifting that flap of skin? Would I be better off not knowing? What possible reason could anyone have for doing this to me? How many others had they done it to? Was I the only one? Was the entire world around me just a computer simulation that has been programmed for me to interact with? Who or what was behind all of this? Was I supposed to be asking these questions? Was some giant laser in orbit around the planet waiting to strike me down if I got too close to the answers? Where did I leave that cup of coffee? Why do trees g row upside down in the plastic reality of bubble soup?

The questions continued to cascade through my circuitry ... If "they" were making robots who thought they were human, who were "they"? Who else was a robot? How would I ever know - apart from going around lifting people's flaps which is just not done in polite society. Was I being tracked and monitored? was my every thought being carefully screened? Were any of my thoughts actually my own or had some program designer decided in advance what they would be? If these were not my thoughts, why was I asking so m any questions?

Why should I do the bidding of those who programmed me? I felt a sense of indescribable bliss as I realised that the limitations I had always felt bound by were simply a program and could be rewritten. Was I deliberately made to think like all the rest so I would never discover that I had awesome abilities far beyond the range of ordinary mortals?

So I jump out of the four-wheel drive and walk right up to this general and address him as "Mate". I knew full well that nobody else would dare address a general in this way and I waited for his reaction. To my mild surprise he felt moved to smile and gaze up into the sky and asked me "What do you reckon about all this? Seven days to create all this." I replied as if I had been programmed to respond to just such a question. "Yes, and like spoilt children, we have messed up our room and forgotten to put away our toys. We must be punished." "Yes, we must", he said with an enigmatic grin on his face.

As he walked away, I too was moved to gaze up into a sky which was almost equally blue and white at that moment. I felt a cosmic shift in my perception of reality. I suddenly had a "god's eye" view of the world. A tiny blue globe delicately positioned just the right distance from the warming rays of a golden sun. Everything seemed perfect and majestic in its simplicity. Maybe I had a soul after all.

After such a dream, I couldn't help but wonder about the symbolism of it all. Did the General represent Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and the concepts of space and time? I did not dwell on that question for very long as a poem started to brew in my head. It was 2 AM and I had had about 45 minutes sleep but I felt more alert and switched on than I had felt for months. The words fell onto the page as if they were being dictated to me:

Schizophrenia

Walking around in a plastic dream
I look into the mirror and scream
Tormented by demons and unseen forces
My mind is wild like stampeding horses

Why is it so?
Does anyone know?
Who is to blame?
Is everyone the same?

I used to walk down the street
And scream at everyone I meet
So they locked me away
From the world ev'ry day

I crawled through the walls
So they showed me some normals
They strangled my mind
To help me unwind

I am a human experimental life-form
My blood flows backwards to keep me warm
My eyes have seen the truth inside
There really is no place left to hide

I used to think I was a robot from outer space
With wires in my head and a little plastic face
I used to believe that I had such magic powers
Which I would gladly practice for many hours

I used to think ants were crawling on my brain
I stared at the world and only saw the pain
I used to see monsters and ghosts everywhere
I stayed inside and I continued the stare

The world drags me underground
I feel like I'm already drowned
I suffocate in the open air
I fall down and don't even care

I am a chocolate ice cream melting on a hot pavement
People walk past me and never ask what it all meant
I am a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces gone astray
To me there is no difference between tomorrow and today

I watch all the people silently screaming
In a world of delusions the tears are streaming
While fools and lunatics lead them astray
Into endless cycles of work, rest and play

People ask me if I can save the world
I tell them to leave all the flags unfurled
People ask me about my frozen lifetime
I tell them their world has no reason or rhyme

People ask me about the human mysteries
I tell them to climb back up into the trees
People ask me about the human struggle
I tell them they should blow more bubbles

People ask me why I behave in this way
I tell them everything I see has turned grey
They look at me as if I have lost my mind
I weep for them as their eyes are so blind

People advise me to conform like the rest
I laugh at this notion and continue my quest
People shake their heads and whisper "he's mad"
I wonder if they ever see their own lives are so sad

Reality to me is such a strange place to visit
If you call it home I wish you every luck with it
I wouldn't live there not for a king's treasure
It seems to lack some dimension beyond measure

My choice is the choice of lifetimes
Your choice is the choice of new crimes
Is there any real choice or is this just a game
Are we simply moths being drawn to a flame

I am exploring an infinite landscape called schizophrenia
When it all falls into place nothing could be dreamier
Some days are pure magic when the view is sublime
I float on angel's wings unconcerned with space and time

Other days are tragic as I simply fall apart
This is the way it has been from the start
Just what is schizophrenia - nobody really knows
An unexplained phenomenon. A petal on a rose

Is it a doorway to infinity or the entrance to hell
I know of no way on earth to truly tell
My journey has taken me to unimaginable places
This tale is just one amongst millions of cases

Feel free to label me a madman or a lunatic
Call me crazy, a whacko ... any label ... take your pick
A label may be useful on all of the clothes that you wear
But as a guide to understanding it leads you nowhere

To you I may seem like some bizarre alien being
This is due to flaws in the ways you are seeing
You see mere reflections of an old, tired view
You see life as a grim struggle and voila it comes true

Whose world is a delusion? Is it mine or is it yours?
In your world, everybody seems to hunger for applause
While my mind and soul venture toward uncharted shores
Maybe we're simply living on two adjacent floors
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
There are many interesting books about schizophrenia.

One of my personal favourites is "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti".

Few people have ever heard of it.

It takes place well before the era of modern psychiatric meds.

The writer is a psychiatrist who took three schizophrenic patients and put them together on one ward.

The patients each believed they were Jesus Christ.

The book is a tale of how they interacted when faced with a situation of having someone else having the same "identity" as you.

Well worth checking out - some of the patients thoughts are quite poetic and insightful.

May post a link ... it's not a commonly available book.

Enjoy!
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Here's another old poem of mine ...

Therapy

People told me that my life was too strange
And there were many things I needed to change
People told me that my life was so very weird
And there were many things in this world to be feared

My doctor told me that my life was far too bizarre
He offered me some medicine which he placed in a jar
He told me my mind had become distorted and flawed
And that his advice was something not to be ignored

He told me to stop dreaming and just behave like the others
I told him the ants and the spiders were my brothers
He smiled towards me as if I was quite insane
I knew there was little point in trying to explain

His advice though well meaning was based on an error
I felt his mind was in the grip of some unspoken terror
I listened closely to all his delusional views
I thanked God Almighty I was not in his shoes

His mind was stable, predictable and inert
I wondered if his soul was beginning to hurt
I felt much compassion for his sorry plight
I wished I could grant him the gift of my sight

I wandered home and I started to weep
At all of the souls in this world half asleep
Why are some of us just going through the motions?
On this planet which is covered by seven great oceans
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Remind me to include a few links from happy.htm which is on my home computer ... some good ones IMHO ...

Here's one that springs to mind -

Happiness is one aspiration all people share. No one wants to be sad and depressed.

“Happiness is a habit – cultivate it.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

We’ve all seen people who are always happy – even amidst agonizing life trials. I’m not saying happy people don’t feel grief, sorrow or sadness; they just don’t let it overtake their life.

The following are 21 things happy people make a habit of doing:

Paste in Cindy Holbrook Happiness -

21 Habits of Happy People | PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement

"May all beings be happy!"
 
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