someone who was clearly mentally imbalanced came into my work today...I am guessing it was schizophrenia. anyone ever experience someone like this before (more than just someone on the street, I mean)

half my family is crazy

my mom is a hairdresser and this woman used to come in to get her hair done and would rant and rave about how the flourescent lights were government mind control devices and that Elizabeth Taylor was trying to speak to her through the hair drying machines.

xix, you've got to cough up the story if you want us to reciprocate

There was a paranoid schizophrenic in New Brunswick in the late 80's, affectionately known as the "Commie Clairevoyant".

His delusions caused him to rail against "gangster commie clairevoyants" who were generally plotting to overthrow the US government and do away with the Constitution.

The days when he would come into the store were banner days indeed. I recall one instance, where we observed this individual walking on the other side of the street, not in any visible delusional state. Our store owner leaned out the front door, shouted "Commies!". This dude perked right the hell up, ran across the street, crying, "You've seen 'em? You've seen 'em?" and then proceeded to ramble on about the GCC's.

For a while, there was a local band in town calling themselves The Commie Clairevoyants.

I've had some considerable experience with schizophrenics, but nothing i'm gonna recount specifically for the amusement of this board.

well, I don't want to give too much info on the internerd but she was talking REALLY loud and relating the art to all these random things ie these two girls probably just "murdered someone" like RObert DeNiro in this movie...she was pulling chairs across the room and banging on books. it was so odd bc she was well dressed and everything...

I don't mean it in a mean way, it's just nothing I have ever experienced before in this capacity

I wasn't implying that, it's just that in many cases they're good friends of mine and, while normally I'd find that sort of thing hilarious, I feel for them when it comes to this.

the woman you describe could definitely be. It's always off-putting to see someone who doesn't look like a drunk chuimp dressed them act in this way, but it's pretty common. Everyone's got bad moments, I guess. It's a shame because she might've been totally lucid like 15 minutes before that. or not. Art does strange things to people.

I have an older brother who was in and out of hospitals from age 18 to 28 or so. He has an imbalance currently well controlled by medication. I mean at its uncared for peak let's just say the FBI was involved. He has truly won himself over mind over mind. He lives a normal life with a wife and daughter now. He has always had peculiar interests like UFO's, Gov't Conspiracies, etc. I am proud of him.

I think everyone in our family has a residue of this crazy gene in each of us. I'm serious. I see bits of it all the time during gatherings. Me included.

that is what I was so fascinated by- does she know she is acting this way? Does she just stop and become normal? Does she remember how she was behavig later on?

to me i've always treated it like being on an acid trip. Sure, later you remember it what you said and did, but explaining the rationale for WHY is where things get blurry.

it's not really a "stop and become normal" thing (at least in my experience) but more like day to day stuff.

The people I know have a pretty sordid history of going off meds and that's invariably where all the trouble starts.

My brother was schizophrenic. Destroyed a bright, funny and remarkable guy, it did.

The disease sucks hard.

my bipolar friend is like that. I don't know why she thinks she doesn't need them. then, bam.

well, with the people I know they just hate feeling like their emotions are curbed along with their behavior. It's understandable, really. Not that it makes things better, (or justifies the amount of emergency room drives I've had to make) but still, people want to act like themselves. Clozapine (sp?) doesn't really allow that much. Also, the side effects for these drugs are almost always really bad.

I won't go into great detail here (as one who's had way too much exposure to these things), but there are very real reasons people go off meds. Fear of lack of control . Fear of having to accept a label. Fear of being tied to major medication the rest of your life. But more than that, the facts that:

1. Most of these drugs cause severe weight gain and bloating, destroy energy, sex drive, creativity, sense of self, etc., etc. The subsequent self-loathing that results from one turning into a listless tub of bloat can be worse than the erratic mindset of the untreated, at least to the patient.

2. Many people are terrified of being sucked into a faceless system and labelled crazy. And with good reason. At least you have a life apart from it, if a nutty one.

3. Many so-called experts are really only trial-and-error prescribers who know little about the drugs they're giving out other than that they "seem to help some people." Patients become guinea pigs, not people, even though that's not the doctor's intent.

4. Most of these drugs are incredibly powerful and do many, many things to the mind, body and spirit, most of which are mighty creepy and barely understood. The fact that certain ones work for certain people to a certain exent is no more comforting than the fact that you can kill a mosquito by spraying your entire town with planeloads of defoliant.

What the fuck is it with them?
On second thought, I guess its like when you get a cold, take half the medicine, feel better and don't finish it...but don't these folks know the outcome of going off the meds?!

or it's "Crazy with Boner" vs. "sane and bonerless"

Not thinking you need your meds is one of the symptoms, basically. Sucks. I wonder if they could get subcutaneous norplant-style things.

what's your job cotton?

I edit medical textbooks. I know fuckall about medicine (that I will leave to the lovely lady above and Dr. f4df), I just correct doctor spelling and fix up their monkey grammar most of the time.

This isn't stuff I know from work, i tends to work and/or make friends with a lot of unbalanced people.

sometimes i think i'm pretty close to developing a case of this