Going Crazy and Getting Better Again
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You have my (mostly abstract, fortunately/unfortunately) sympathies for what you went through, and I’m glad for you that you sound to be doing better than you were.
Having said that: my (rough) sense, from reading this post, is that you’ve got a bunch of “stuff” going on, some of it plausibly still unsorted, and that that stuff is mixed together in a way that I feel is unhelpful. For example, the things included at the beginning of the post as “necessary background” don’t feel to me entirely separate from what you later describe occurring; they mostly feel like an eclectic, esoteric mixture of mental practices—some of which I have no issue with!—stirred together into a hodgepodge of things that, taken together, may or may not have had a contribution to your later psychosis—and the fact that it is hard to tell is, to my mind, a sort of meta-level sign for concern.
Of course, I acknowledge that you have better introspective access to your own mind than I do, and so when you say those things are separable, safe, and stable, I do put a substantial amount of credence on you being right about that. It just doesn’t feel that way to me, on reading. (Nor do I intend to try and make you explain or justify anything, obviously. It’s your life.)
On the whole, however, reading this post mostly reinforced my impression that the rationalist memeplex seems to disproportionately attract the walking wounded, psychologically speaking—which wouldn’t be as big a deal if it weren’t currently very unclear to me which direction the causality runs. I say this, even as a (relatively) big fan of the rationalist project as a whole.
I always thought that this impression I had that the rationalist memeplex was an attractor for people like that was simply survivorship bias on people reporting their experience. This impression was quite reinforced by the mental health figures on the SSC surveys once the usual confounders were controlled for.
Very interesting account, and admirably self-aware! (Though some work on the latter front remains, it seems to me.)
One thing did jump out at me. Your “rationalist origin story” has you reading the Sequences at the end (and this having a salutary effect on your understanding), and HPMOR and glowfic at the beginning (and this having… well, we can’t confidently conclude what effect, but the implication is not encouraging).
This seems to suggest that (as I have long held) one fruitful opportunity for improvement, for many “rationalists” (by which is meant: the sort of people who hang out with the sort of people who read Less Wrong and/or live in a certain cluster of Bay Area group houses), would be to… read the Sequences.
To be clear, I had already read the Sequences long before I did any of the many crazy things I ended up doing. However, I absolutely agree that going back to them is important. One read is insufficient to actually grok the material, as best as I can tell. You have to actually practice the skills - which I did not do. The sequences were cool, but implementing them in my life didn't happen.
As someone who doesn't want to go insane, I find it useful to read accounts of people going insane (especially from people who passed through madness and out the other side).
For people who are curious and want to read a more detailed account of someone's psychotic break, what delusions felt like for them from the inside, the misadventures they had during it, and the lessons they took from it, Peter Welch wrote about his here: https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1
This story is the pivotal narrative turning point that it’s easy to blame for me being the person I am instead of someone else. The summer of my twentieth year on the planet obliterated every measure of good, evil, truth, beauty, reality, and fantasy I’d had before and makes everything that’s happened since seem banal. It’s the reason I will never believe in anything again, the reason I play music, and the reason the Acadia Hospital nursing staff thinks I’m a crackhead. There are probably three or four dozen people that won’t talk to me to this day because of these events, and I am an local legend in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Thanks for writing it.
Most of my time I worry about ways in which I and everyone around me may be insane in ways we haven't noticed. Reading this, I've thought for the first time that perhaps I and most people I know are doing quite well on the sanity axis.
I... think that reading personal accounts of psychotic people is useful for understand the range of the human psyche and what insanity looks like? My guess is that on the margin it would be good for most people to have a better understanding of that, and reading this post will help, so I'm giving this a +1 for the LW review.
I object to the phrasing that you "got got" by Mastering the Core Teachings. That book is riddled with radiation warnings and, as far as I can tell, is entirely good faith.
You did not "get got." You took the demon core out of storage, placed it into the lower sphere, placed the top sphere above it, held them apart with a screwdriver, then flinched.
1Thanks for this. Not only is it interesting, it’s also quite relevant to me. I’m not psychotic, more something like depressed, but I’m wondering whether I’m going mad, and I guess it’s good to know it’s possible to be both a LW-style rationalist and quite mentally ill. And most importantly it’s great to know it’s ‘normal’ or ‘okay’ to be in rationalist circles and yet engage in self-deception regarding one’s psychological state for years.
On the other hand, a bit curious how your life is going in general, and what kind of consequences it has: I’m terribly worried my own issues will prevent me for being ‘successful’ in life (whatever that means).
I guess it’s good to know it’s possible to be both a LW-style rationalist and quite mentally ill.
Not commenting on distributions here, but it sure as fuck is possible.
Well, I knew it was very much compatible with ADHD, ASD, and a few others. I guess what I meant is closer to "Good to know it’s possible to both be a massive rationality and self-help nerd ; and never use any of that to think more clearly and escape destructive thought patterns ; and yet it’s still okay"
Personal perspective: psychotic experience truly is an enigma wrapped inside of a riddle. So much complexity involved that rookies would have no idea what was actually going on (even the insiders would largely be unaware of whatever ground truth might exist).
Interestingly, perhaps my clearest memory from that time was thinking that I was playing my most rational strategy to cope with my life as it was. My life was not making sense and escape seemed the best way out.
From the perspective of today that might seem an odd take, though given what I know now it actually was not an entirely bad strategy at all-- perhaps my optimal strategy. How could that possibly be true? It turns out that my family has coped with dominant Alzheimer's disease for centuries and this was never made clear to me when growing up. This was of interest because the parent with the dementia risk waited an especially long time to start a family. From what I understand this parent would have been cognitively comprised even while I was a teenager and this parent went onto developing profoundly severe Alzheimer's dementia. There is really no way that a parent with such hidden cognitive impairment could realistically be a competent parent to teenagers.
This was the view of our closest family. They were extremely surprised at the near complete absence of judgment demonstrated by my parent in the role of a caregiver. The family had stayed back on the farm hours and hours away on a plane and we wound up in a big city where everyone works around the clock. The rural relatives were absolutely shocked at the level of child abuse that they witnessed in our city life ways. I was equally surprised at their perspective because from what I could tell it was not so much abuse as largely normal modern urban behavior.
There are just so many layers and layers of this. People who somehow think that this can be neatly described have no understanding. It is quantum physics -- it is beyond linear description. So of course, the parent with the centuries history of dominant Alzheimer's became a respected member of the psychiatric treatment community. Thus, the power balance was clearly stacked against me. When you become embedded into the power structure you are uniquely positioned to create your own self-serving narrative.
Of course it also turns out that there was an underlying genetic risk for me that involved mental illness, though this risk was actually highly dependent upon environmental circumstances. Once I became aware of the nature of this genetic risk, I simply chose those environments that were non-triggering. No problems for me from there on out. Unfortunately, this knowledge has largely not spread to others with this genotype. There must be a world of hurt out there as people constantly reenact my trauma when it could simply be avoided by choosing the correct life path. Strangely, others in the family also have this genotype yet have never had an acute episode; this has meant that they have never fully incorporated the understanding of the genotype into their life. Ergo, while they have never acquired the crazy label they have made the problem into a chronic condition that was never recognized. For me, actually having to deal with it has allowed me to move on with my life.
And on and on. The storyline is essentially endless; I am sure that there are many many layers that I have not even imagined yet.
The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.
Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?