Amnesia and Psychotic Episodes

I went to see my psychologist the yesterday and we talked a bit about my psychotic episode.

As I suspected, he was rather freaked out that I was hallucinating. Even more so that I could communicate with them. It doesn’t appear that alcohol is the only factor in these things. Partly because I’ve had drinks before and this has never happened. It was definitely a trigger for the event and as a result I’m staying away from drinking too much from now on. What also caught his eye was that this was unlike the previous psychotic episode. That time I just thought I was being watched by invisible people and had to make them stop looking. No voices or anything with that one. He explained that in many psychotic episodes, there is continuity between them, so in future episodes I might hear The Council again. But that’s for another time.

The amnesia though was possibly a good thing. At first I thought it was bad and I hated not being able to know what went on in my mind. There’s no information to learn from or be able to predict when other psychotic episodes will occur. It’s frustrating. However, given the magnitude of the event, he said that it might be a good thing for me in terms of living in an unaltered reality. Apparently, psychosis can be isolated in these events, but gradually bleed through into reality. Causing disturbances and undermining the grasp on reality. Not remembering anything might be a blessing in disguise in that my normal reality will not be impacted at all from it.

He did praise me for one thing though. In both my psychotic episodes, I recognized that something is wrong. In the very first one, half way through cutting up the cardboard boxes to put up in the windows, I thought something was wrong and I should call my psychiatrist. I couldn’t exactly tell what was wrong or why it was wrong, I just knew that it was off. I told Dr. A that people were watching me and I couldn’t see them (though I didn’t know why that was wrong) but he did and then began my escapade into half a dozen medications at the same time. This time around, I didn’t have the impulse to call, but I had another one that I had engrained in me, it was to take my medication. I had horrible memory so I tried to take it more than once, which would have screwed me up really badly and endangered my life. But it was a persistent idea that I had to take it. And in taking it, I literally woke up the next morning as normal as one would be after a night of drinking. He emphasized that this wasn’t just because I had formed a habit and had to take my medication on a regular basis. That might have been strong enough to come through in such an episode (though I was manic at the time so probably not). Rather, the reason that it came through is because I have a very strong attachment to my medication as something important. In actuality, it’s one of the most important things. My view of my medications as life saving devices is probably what made me think of it. So now I’m very happy that I have that impulse and attachment, because it could have probably gotten really ugly if I didn’t.

Philosophy and the Journey to Atheism

I guess I’ll share a little bit of how philosophy has influenced my life.

For background purposes, I go to a college that stresses analytic philosophy. This is a school of philosophy that grew out of mathematicians and logicians and stresses logical coherence and clarification of concepts, very much along the lines of Wittgenstein. There are, of course, other forms of analytic philosophy and there is no general form of it beyond the fact that it’s generally the philosophy of english speaking countries as opposed to continental philosophy which includes existentialism, deconstructionism, and others along those lines.

This stress on consistency and evidence in the use of clarification is what brought me to atheism. Above all else was the striving for consistency in the way that I view evidence and infer from it. By consistency I mean that I treat all similar bodies of evidence in a similar manner. In the case of other religions that I rejected, I noticed that I demanded a large body of evidence from them in order for me to ever believe them. Miracles could be explained in alternate naturalistic ways. Claims to prophethood is something that seems to be relatively common, so it’s not a claim that genuinely comes from actually being a prophet (since I thought there was only one prophet, Jesus). Quite simply, I rejected other faiths because I required a significant body of evidence to believe their claims, but then I noticed that I did not require the same amount from my own beliefs, despite the similar bodies of evidence.

I also noticed that it didn’t approach my common sense epistemology. If someone were to approach me with a book, in which it claims to be the truth in terms of claims about the afterlife, miracles, fantastic claims about history, I would require quite a bit of archeological evidence and some pretty powerful arguments within it about the truth of its claims. Just as I learned to do with any philosophical text. But for some reason, at the time, I noticed that I didn’t apply this scrutiny to the Bible. I treated it as exceptional, but I didn’t have an argument for why it is exceptional. I allowed for the possibility that it was, but I couldn’t find any arguments for why it was special.

Some of the special arguments were appeals to moral authorship. But philosophy generally rejects this with many good reasons. Ones that I couldn’t argue against. Another was biblical foreknowledge, but learning about history showed me that many ancient civilizations were very advanced, so it wasn’t unique. And over time, I began to believe that it wasn’t unique. Thus I became a relatively weak form of atheist, which is that I cannot decide between religions, so I would choose none of them.

And that was enough at the time, to simply find it nonunique so it isn’t a positive option above all others. In bayesian terms, the probability that it is right is no higher than any others, so no choice can be made.

I later came to apply this same bayesian analysis to the concept of gods in general. Where the characteristics and the number of gods could also not be shown to be more or less probable than alternative hypotheses. And then, faced with an alternative hypothesis of naturalism that was confirmed in a way that I could see, while the number of gods I could conceive of I could not see how they were directly supported over and above naturalism; I adopted a parsimony argument, that gods overcomplicated the evidence, that I should only support what is directly supported by observational evidence, which are naturalistic probabilities.

Philosophy influenced me at every step of the way by pointing out how to argue, different arguments, what constituted an argument, and a logical background for claims. The biggest contributor to my understanding of the world is definitely owed to David Hume, whose arguments against the existence of God are generally used even today by pop atheist books. Philosophy also stressed consistency as a primary goal as opposed to feelings. Combined with being bipolar, I now deemphasize feelings about things to a great degree since I can become delusional.

Now, working in philosophy of science, I realize that evidential support is incredibly complex and it’s reasonable to even doubt scientific accomplishments. Works by people like Nancy Cartwright and Bas van Fraassen, showed me how it’s difficult to even demonstrate the existence of hard to observe phenomena like atoms. So now I’m even more skeptical of the existence of a God since I have enough problems trying to argue for things.

And that’s my basic transition to atheism through philosophy’s influence. It’s relatively mild, without a lot of pomp and rejection. Just slow sober reflection and an emphasis on consistency along with reading philosophy. The combination of these made it very difficult to believe, and so I stopped. I guess you could call me more of an agnostic than an atheist, but I don’t care for labels. I behave as though there is no god, and that is enough. Beyond that is quibbling about semantics about my beliefs that I’d divine no discernible difference in my life. I guess I’m a pragmatist in that way, and a Wittgensteinian.

The Synergy of Skepticism and Bipolar

Ok, time to talk about skepticism. Skepticism in this light is not a standard philosophical skepticism, it’s more of a scientific skepticism. That is, I maintain an attitude of either agnosticism or disbelief toward things that do not have empirical testing to back them up. I’m also a reality skeptic of my own brand. Since I get some grandiose ideas and what may be paranoia (the jury is out on that one), I also have to be skeptical of what I actually perceive on a daily basis. This kind of skepticism means that I do not believe immediately what my senses are telling me, but I instead rely upon a consensus opinion or at least one other person’s perception of the situation.

I’ll start with my reality skepticism. I sometimes think things are going on that are not in fact going on. Within my internal workings, it is very difficult to reason out which one actually is the real assessment of the situation and which one is the delusional one. Hence, most of my judgments I remain skeptical of. I do not disbelieve them, but I remain rather agnostic as to their veracity and keep a safe distance if it seems that they are making big claims. I rely on my girlfriend as a constant check on these things. She informs me all the time about what is going on, and even if I disbelieve her, I try to work this into my thinking. In short, what I try to do when I’m the most rational possible, is to discount my opinions quickly in favor of someone who I trust is in a better place to judge than I am. This is especially helpful when I get the repeated thoughts that I’m a failure and worthless and all the other negative thoughts that barrage my mind when I’m depressed or mixed. So in short, I try to remain a skeptic about myself.

The other type of skepticism is scientific. One does not simply get better by thinking about it, one has to try many different things, but what things? There are hundreds of supposed self help paths that vary from crystal power, special water, cleansing diets, meditation techniques, pills, etc… There is only so much time and energy that one can spend trying out every last one of these. My approach is to find things that are not anecdotally accepted, but something that I can find some support for. PubMed is a great place for finding research, and if you have access to a library, there are plenty more articles that you can find testing these procedures. My method is that I find something that claims to help, and then I start researching it. Whenever my doctors suggest something, I quickly go online and look up studies on the pills that I’m taking. I’ve learned statistics so I can understand what is actually being said in the studies. I attempt to find the mechanisms that the practice is supposed to work on. I remain solid in my trust in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy because of its strong empirical backing. So here is the list of things that I do:

• Find any studies relating to the effectiveness through pubmed or other sites
• Find the original studies to find the effectiveness of the drug or program over others (often you’d be surprised at how little the effectiveness is)
• Identify the mechanism. If the mechanism is not scientifically based, I usually disregard it since it doesn’t have a testable procedure that can ensure it’s success
• Talk to my psychologist about what he has found to work best, they are a repository of things that work best
• Go to RXList to see the details of the medications that I’m prescribed

These are just some of the simple rules that I live by. Granted, there may be something that is overlooked, but I’d rather overlook something than waste my time on something that doesn’t work. This also allows you to maintain a healthy skepticism about certain drugs since finding the original research allows you to see the sample sizes and the effectiveness of the drugs. And there are plenty of sites that offer this kind of information without much digging. RXlist is one of my favs, as well as drugs.com. These offer a wealth of information about everything from side effects to the actual chemical compound. They also suggest other drugs in the same class so if it doesn’t work, you have resources that you can ask your doctor about later.

The point is though, if you are given a supposed solution, and they do not have the kind of documentation that you can find on places like RXList, you should be seriously doubtful. You should be even more doubtful if they do not upfront provide both a published study AND repeated studies. Simply having one study is not good enough, it must be repeatable. Time as taught us that there  are many one off studies that show giant things (think the MMR being linked to autism), but under repeated scrutiny, it doesn’t line up. Remember, this is your body and mind, they are fragile and need to be taken care of. Before you do anything to tamper with it, read as much about it to make sure that it is right for you. Hopefully, that will eliminate at least some of the trial and error that goes into the process of equalizing your moods.

Atheism and Dealing With Mental Illness

It’s a write off day for me, feeling tired and antisocial. But I feel compelled to write.

So I’ll write on my experience of my diagnosis with bipolar and atheism. It’s an issue that will probably come up again in later posts. Dealing with bipolar is not the first experience I’ve had with a major life crisis. When I was younger, I was chronically ill and had chronic migraines. Everyday I had a migraine. At the time, I was quite religious. It’s fascinating to me now about the different response I’ve had to being diagnosed with bipolar than I had with chronic migraines (I got better from that one).

When I was diagnosed with bipolar back in late January, it came as quite a shock. At the time I thought that I had an anxiety disorder and some depression, which most people get over. Bipolar means that you cope. But I’ve reacted quickly and have made some quick progress. But I’ve noticed that it’s peculiar to have no religious lens to look through when dealing with this particular diagnosis.

When I was younger, I believed that god had a plan for me, that I was special, and that I was loved. And that helped me cope to some degree. This time around, I didn’t have any of that to help me. But I’ve done better this time. Maybe it’s being older, but I think it’s also because I’m a lot less religious.

I’ll focus this time on just how I’ve coped without the “special plan” belief.

The belief that I used to hold was that god had a special plan for me. And while I didn’t know that plan, there was one. It comforted me because it made my diagnosis seem less negative. God would make sure that it turned out for the better. It felt great since I didn’t have to worry at all about the negative aspects of my life, god would take care of it for me.

I lack that belief now. So when I was diagnosed, I didn’t believe that it was part of a special plan, it was just a crap fact about my mind. It explained a lot about me, but that doesn’t really help ease the reality of the diagnosis. So what did I do? I accepted the fact as part of life. Just as I accepted the fact that I was going to have migraines everyday for the rest of my life.

But acceptance in this case was a completely different beast. When I was younger, I passively accepted it and tried to forget about it. I pushed my reality to the side as it was just an element in god’s bigger plan for me. This time, since there was no bigger plan, I had to be more active. I had to come up with creative solutions to a problem that I would have to face daily for the rest of my life.

Reality impressed itself on my life and it wasn’t going to go away, I had to fix it. If I wanted to get better, I couldn’t rely on god, I had to find the solutions on my own. I had to confront it. And that’s what I did. That need to fix something and the reassurance of my psychologist that it was manageable, along with the correct pharmaceuticals, gave me a bit of energy to learn more about the world that I lived in. These non religious ideas gave me more hope than I ever got from religion, and it was hope that gave me directions on how to fix the things I wanted to be rid of.

Looking back, if I had the same mindset that I did when I was younger, I might have died. My acceptance would have been too passive. I would have hoped to get better, but hope is not enough and is never a panacea for serious issues. Hope requires direction to be effective, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking. And while it might be said that one might benefit by figuring out “what god has in store for you”, that still leaves the passive airbrushing of reality. It still ignores the reality that something serious has happened and that requires some grave reflection. Without god, one can still be optimistic about the future and turn the diagnosis into something positive, but one cannot ignore the negative realities. To do so would be in denial. And that’s what “god’s plan” often results in, in forgetting the negative aspects.

In this denial, untempered religion is no different in this way than the “always think positively” groups. Instead of soberly reflecting on the facts, it just gives hope with no direction. The real help comes from elsewhere, through your own action and through the help of your support group. All the real gains you make are by assessing the details of reality that are unique to you. It is not helped through thinking happy thoughts. And this is a crucial problem I have with the god’s plan mentality. All the real gains you make are through other reality based psychology and analysis.

This is what makes me irritated at times. The gains that are made are through things beyond religion, they’re made through experimentally verified practices. They’re made through sober reflection of reality. To think of these things as god’s plan or to think positively about these things, that’s just to be in denial (as I was about migraines). Furthermore, it cheapens the hard work that psychiatrists and psychologists put into my life to be in denial or to think that this random undirected hope is what is actually helping. It demeans them as being subsidiary, rather than the primary reason that I got better. And that’s a real tragedy, to diminish their work as caring human beings.