Posts by Joseph Bailey41

briskwalker10 said:Brandon Lopez6, you and Jerry Robinson56 basically think the same way—you just can't communicate with each other, which is the whole joke here. I was laughing while reading this... 🤣

But wait, what are the odds that several of your friends would kill themselves? How many people do you actually have in your circle...

Exactly. That’s why I love this thread. 🍿

Brandon Lopez6 said:Man... whatever you're on, I need a hit of it 😬

Well, he didn't hold back—he basically told you straight up that you're living in a state of psychosis. 🤣

Brandon Lopez6 said:Guilty as charged.
I spent exactly two years studying religious studies 😳.
(Yeah, the same degree DoA finished 😁)

And honestly? I picked up some pretty "useful" insights along the way.
1. Mental illness is just all in the patient's head.
2. People are mentally unwell because they aren't devout enough.
3. If they prayed for a cure and nothing happened, clearly they just didn't pray hard enough. More prayer required.
4. Pills, doctors, therapy... yeah, it's all nonsense.
5. Church, church, Church, God Jesus, prayer, healing.

That’s basically the whole curriculum.
Now you're an expert too, huh? 😳

🎉

Now I just need to go out and buy a diploma so I can become a religion teacher. 🤣

In my generation, most of the girls enrolling in those programs were basically lost causes. Either they started out that way, or they pivoted during their freshman or sophomore year. Some ended up joining cults. I know a girl who left that school and went straight into that sect over in the Czech Republic or Canada—the one founded by some Korean guy or some shady character... I can't recall the name, but I Googled it once and found out they had these mass weddings where hundreds of couples would marry at once. Of course, the guru would pick your spouse based on some "karma-dharma" logic. Apparently, that was supposed to bring peace to the world, but she bailed before they could marry her off, which is probably why we still don't have world peace. 😵

They have some pretty clever tactics for recruiting people into that cult... first, they approach you talking about world peace and hand you flowers or something. Then, they lure you away to some remote ranch in the middle of nowhere. After that, they spend days telling you how incredible you are, how everyone loves you, how Jesus loves you, and how special and perfect you are. Once you're hooked, they slowly start brainwashing you until you sign over all your assets to them. Quite the crowd. 😁

Brandon Lopez6 said:Reminds me of this psychology of religion professor who used to claim people are mentally ill because they don't pray enough... and then they can't get better because they aren't praying well enough. Pure logic, right?
That was the day a part of me died. Any shred of desire I had to study Religious Studies just blew away in the wind 🙂.

Still, whenever I'm feeling particularly low, I just wish all those people who jump in to lecture others on problems they've never actually lived through—which is a huge factor—could just step into my shoes for one single day. Just one of my worst days.
After that, honestly, I wouldn't give a damn what anyone thinks 😈.

So, you took a class in the psychology of religion and now you're just asking nonsense instead of actually answering our questions? What a troll. 🤣

Jerry Robinson56 said:🙂 That is simply called evolving, though I suppose there are still plenty of wonderful believers out there.

foreigners, yet they are people

Run away from that—I'm a proud primate. 🙂

🤣

Brandon Lopez6 said:I bet they’ve got some excuse for acting like total snakes, and honestly, maybe this whole mess with the Swiss guy is just one of those lessons God intended for you to learn. 🧐

Look, I hate to say it, but this whole thing isn't even worth quoting. 🙂

Personally, I don't have an issue with religious people, at least not until they turn into fanatics and start shoving their beliefs down everyone's throats.
The same goes for pretty much anything else in life. Don't push it, because all you're doing is driving people away.

You're actually right. I didn't want to be a believer, so I ended up just being reckless. 😬

But everything's fine now—the Aliens went ahead and reprogrammed my credit score. Thanks, Aliens! 🎉

briskwalker10 said:No, that’s just a blatant misuse of scientific tools. (And if it isn't intentional, then they're just delusional 😳)

Since our friend Judas is actually a mathematician by trade, let's see what he has to say about this 😁 ..

😂 😂 😂

👍

Brandon Lopez6 said:I get it.

So sorry. 🙂

The author doesn't want to talk about God.
Maybe that other thing will work 🙂.

I don't buy this second option. 🤣

So, my godmother was actually my father's cousin. My dad didn't have a father figure growing up, so he went looking for a replacement in the spiritual realm. After poking around in the natural sciences, Eastern philosophies, yoga, and all that, he ended up falling in with some questionable crowds (that one jerk downtown in New York City—not that I’d name specific high-end lounges)—and he discovered... drumroll please... God!!!

If only he had kept it to himself. But he didn't. In the beginning, he was somewhat lucid and sounded a bit like Peterson. Then he moved on to Jolene's spiritual exercises and became much more like Pavun. He just collects rocks and piles them up, much like Jung when he was working on The Communist Manifesto. He's a charming old man, though I've only had enough contact with him over the last fifteen years to keep things from being outright rude. Basically, we talk on the phone for birthdays and holidays. He's banned from family parties because he always ends up insulting someone. He doesn't have a diagnosis because he never bothered to seek one out. He used to be a big shot in telecommunications, obsessed with the FBI and a few other fixations that I never pretended to understand. Now he's retired. My parents are still married. My mother trolls a little (I learned from the best 🙂) and tells everyone she only cheated twice in her life and has two beautiful daughters. She was also quite a powerhouse in her field, which is very similar to mine.

And once you see how successful, happy, and content venomous snakes can be... how they can spend winters in the tropics, summer in a beach house (where that Jungian rock collection is kept), and enjoy a rich spiritual life (now his brother and sister are part of some lay order 🙂), while you're stuck chasing that loan they refused to co-sign for (if they had, I could have secured it easily 😳)... well, nothing else can really get under your skin. God is just a load of crap to you. You're enlightened.

🙂

Brandon Lopez6 said:People claim you can die from a broken heart, but if you ask me, there's a huge gray area regarding whether someone "helped" the process along 😳.

If someone is being prescribed a whole handful of different pills, there really isn't much room left for debate. That said, suicide is a sin, and they were a devout Catholic family and all that. 🕺

Brandon Lopez6 said:Schizophrenia is just a heavy, miserable disease. It brings nothing but bad news and—I know this sounds harsh—pretty much zero good things.
When someone is spiraling in a psychotic episode, they aren't really aware (or at least not fully aware) of what's actually happening to them. But once the meds kick in and they finally snap back to reality—once the symptoms clear up—they're hit with the brutal realization that they're dealing with one of the worst mental health struggles out there.
Some people just can't wrap their heads around that. Especially since schizophrenia isn't something you "fix," it's genetic, and it pretty much rewrites the rest of your life.
I honestly believe that’s when a certain number of people decide they've had enough.

I'd compare it to finding out you have HIV.
Maybe it’s easier to cope if you're too far gone to process it, but trying to find a silver lining in something that negative is exhausting. Sometimes, giving up just feels like the easier path.
I don't blame them, especially those who don't have a solid support system of family, friends, or doctors behind them.

My godmother went through this. We were actually somewhat related, though we didn't see each other much because she lived halfway across the country. A few years ago, she passed away—they told me she died "of a broken heart." She wasn't even that old. She worked as a cashier after having a "nervous breakdown" while she was still in med school. After that, she lived with her parents, who had passed away a couple of years before her. I inherited a small amount of money from her, put it toward some home repairs, and felt pretty terrible for a long while afterward. I'm convinced she took her own life.

Brandon Lopez6 said:Joseph Bailey41 - Through psychological testing?

I cheat on tests. It's just muscle memory. 😳

Thomas Nelson25 said:I guess it really depends on what kind of "frequency" you're vibing with—though for anyone actually deep-diving into the whole supernatural thing, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
Once you're in that headspace, things just start "revealing" themselves to you, you know? Like, everything just clicks. 🙄

Yeah, anything you believe in strongly enough will eventually manifest itself. And that proves... what, exactly? 🤔

Brandon Lopez6 said:There actually are a few ways to get that click.
click2

From the article on scanning:

Given how much we've learned about the role of the brain in mental illness, many people are surprised to learn that we can't know what psychiatric diagnosis a person has—or even if the person has any diagnosis—by examining that person's brain.

So, that’s basically a dead end. And from what I gather, even using a single electrode is still just in the experimental stages. If that's the case, how am I even supposed to check if I'm experiencing psychosis? How does that work? 😠

Brandon Lopez6 said:Willy, technically speaking, people dealing with schizophrenia are actually at the highest risk when it comes to suicide attempts. So maybe they won't drop dead from skipping meds, but lacking that chemical balance in the brain could easily lead them to take their own life.

link

I was just reading this:

Specific periods where individuals with schizophrenia often face increased suicidal tendencies include
1) Times when they are experiencing intense psychosis and are disconnected from reality,
2) During bouts of severe depression,
3) Within the first 6 to 9 months of starting medication, once they begin to think more clearly and process the realization that they have schizophrenia (along with all the heavy stigma attached to it).

Point number three really trips me up. I mean, the idea that clearer thinking actually leads to suicide? It doesn't quite click for me. I can wrap my head around the first two points, but that third one feels strange.

Thomas Nelson25 said:I don't know all the specifics, but I'm curious—so things would just get worse, right?

Look, people who believe in Boise or aliens don't deal with stuff like this—there's your answer.

I’m honestly getting a bit lost here. Are we talking about someone being genuinely delusional if they believe in aliens—like, thinking they can actually communicate telepathically or something—or is it more of a biological thing? Like, is it just a case where someone has an excess of dopamine running through their brain when they hold those beliefs? I mean, you obviously can't measure that specific spike directly, but you could assume those elevated levels are there whenever someone starts claiming they believe in extraterrestrials.

I honestly thought putting my thoughts down on paper would make everything clearer, but it actually just made things more confusing. 😵

Brandon Lopez6 said:And it's a lifelong thing. You need treatment forever.
Just like diabetes.

So, honestly, why even ask someone who has to be on meds for the rest of their life why they shouldn't just stop taking them? 🍿

A diabetic will die if they stop taking insulin. Someone with schizophrenia won't.

Thomas Nelson25 said:True, but you’ve got two different sides here (and this goes for strong Christian believers too)—one might be a Sufi, while the other is the guy with the axe fighting holy wars.
The first type will never lash out at people; they'll just withdraw from society and leave everything in God's hands.

Of course, those folks who "hear" voices act like they're tougher. 😁

I mean, did Moses hear and see things too? Not really.

True enough. And then you have Abraham, who was prepared to sacrifice his son just because he heard those voices—voices that, thankfully, changed their minds at the very last second. And that, apparently, is how we ended up with three major world religions.☕

Brandon Lopez6 said:From what I gather, the whole point of treatment is just getting someone back to reality and grounded in the real world.
Obviously, you can't force someone into treatment unless they're a danger to themselves or others. But psychosis doesn't just vanish on its own. Someone who seems perfectly harmless today—preaching nothing but "love, God, and peace"—could decide tomorrow that the best way to spread that message is by storming a local mosque with an axe to show them the one true God.

Every psychosis gets worse if left untreated, which can lead to someone becoming dangerous, even if they aren't right out of the gate.

If all we have is love and peace, but no God involved... does that mean they'll start shooting too? 🤔

Harold Anderson3 said:Of course you don't need to run tests on every single patient, and honestly, it isn't even really possible to do so. Instead, we look at things indirectly by observing the specific symptoms a person is experiencing. That said, modern psychology has reached a consensus that pretty much every mental health condition stems from an imbalance in the brain's neurotransmitters—and there are about twenty different types to consider. This understanding comes from decades of various scientific studies and research.

I'm still a little skeptical about the direct cause-and-effect relationship here. For instance, if someone gets worked up and their blood pressure spikes (or drops because they have a phobia of needles), we wouldn't say the change in blood pressure actually caused their feelings of anger or fear.

Thomas Nelson25 said:What are the symptoms when it involves religious delusions—and why is getting help actually necessary? 😛

I’ve been wondering the exact same thing. I was just watching an interview with Pavun on YouTube, and honestly, the guy seems clearly psychotic, yet nobody thinks he needs help. So why would it be mandatory for Harold Anderson3 or anyone else?

(Just thinking out loud here—I don't want anyone to think I'm actually trying to push this kind of thing on anyone. 😳)

Harold Anderson3 said:There were definitely other symptoms involved, though I think they all stem from the same root cause: an excess of dopamine in the brain, along with some kind of imbalance—either too much or too little—of other neurotransmitters.

But how do you actually measure those neurotransmitter levels?

Harold Anderson3 said:I wouldn't exactly call myself a believer, but whenever I’ve experienced that "something" more—that mystical sensation that defies any kind of verbal description—it has invariably led me straight into a psychotic episode and a stay at the psychiatric ward. I remember reading somewhere that "healthy believers" tend to have slightly higher dopamine levels compared to atheists, and in my case, the hallmark of my illness is an extremely high surge of that specific neurotransmitter. Brandon Lopez6, you know better than anyone what I'm up against. It makes me wonder if my medication, which works by bringing those dopamine levels down, might also be dampening that "healthy" spark of faith in God, or perhaps some other subtle connection we can't quite perceive directly. Since we're discussing this from a psychological perspective, I've come to think that depending on one's brain chemistry, you essentially have atheists, healthy believers, and then the fanatics who actually require psychiatric intervention. I'm also aware of instances where various charismatic leaders have pushed people into trances that ultimately resulted in hospitalizations due to acute psychosis.

Did you deal with other issues back then, or were those mystical experiences enough on their own for them to diagnose you with psychosis?