All my life, I have remembered my dreams, vividly. My creativity is directly tied to this active, aware dream world. The recent rashes of mass murder by people on Prozac and other SSRI uptake medicines leads me to wonder if the distruption and intensification of the dream world and bringing this world into the 'wakening' world is causing these crimes as well as other disorders?
A lonely, picked-on boy was given Prozac (or one of its chemical analogs) like Kip Kinkel in Oregon, like Eric Harris in Colorado This is not a scoop, America: Prozac causes horrible, bizarre flip-outs. It is a fact that has been known for 20 years and that Eli Lilly and the other manufacturers of "selective" serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have relentlessly denied and are still trying to suppress.On the very day after the shootings at Virginia Tech, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study challenging the "black box" warning that the Food and Drug Administration had finally attached to Prozac in October, 2004. "Antidepressants Get a Boost For Use in Teens" read the Wall St. Journal headline. "Despite Warnings on Labels, Study says Benefits Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Tendencies."
The New York Times ran its account of the new pro-Prozac study on the page facing the obituaries of students and faculty members killed at Virginia Tech! "Scales Said to Tip in Favor of Antidepressant Use in Children -A risk of suicidal thoughts is found to be more than offset." You'd think that 33 deaths would more than offset it back.
From the first day they trumpeted Prozac as a cure for all that ails us psychologically, I was very suspicious of it. Since I was born with high intelligence and then whacked by a powerful lightning bolt, my day/night world had been shattered. There was no psychiatric cure for this but I did spend a lot of energy studying whatever I could about the dream world since I was a waking person walking in that dangerous realm.
So recent confessions about how people really think while on SSRIs interests me in a hundred ways: from the Counter Punch article:
Years ago, at a meeting of the Prozac Survivors Support group, I heard Bonnie Leitsch, a flamboyant redhead from Louisville who sounded like Minnie Pearl, try to explain what Prozac did to her thinking:"It's hard for people to understand. They say 'you must know what you're doing,' but you do not. You cannot distinguish reality. I could never tell if I was awake or asleep. That was the hardest thing for me to determine. I would lay down in bed and I would think 'Now am I dreaming this or am I awake and doing this?" My mind constantly ran, it never would stop. I could be having this conversation with you and the whole time if I was drinking coffee, I could be thinking about running it on my hand and wondering what it would feel like. Thinking irrational thoughts. And yet still able to communicate at what would appear to be a rational level. That's why I think psychiatrists and psychologists and doctors who are dealing with people on Prozac are totally oblivious to what's going on.
I spent my entire life keeping conscious track of my dream life versus my waking life. Indeed, all 'psychics' who 'see' the future have this problem: the dream world is also very magical as well as having some extremely unsettling connections with the real world in ways that are very upsetting. Namely, as far as I can tell, the dream world is also where the religious world and all our creative impulses first take shape or appear in whole.
When I was child, I dealt with this by believing that Pegasus could keep me from falling into the Outer Darkness of the inner soul and so I could sleep at night because there was some way of leaving the dream world in a hurry if necessary. Namely, some dreams have to be escaped. For example, my dreams that began inside a house, it is rapidly getting dark, I try to turn on the lights and the wires are down because of the storm outside and then I see this big oak tree....oops. Entering that dream! The one that is actually my brain replaying that event! Time to exit. Nothing good to learn there!
People suffering from depression need psychological help, namely, they have to find out why they are depressed and then deal with it! Sometimes, there is nothing physical one can do, you can't escape sorrow! Indeed, all attempts at running away from pain only makes it grow worse since it is inside the brain, not outside!
The SSRIs make one feel temporarily better only because it basically pries open the door to the Magic World of Dreams and the flow of emotions from that realm cause temporary joy. But right on the heels of this comes the nightmares who are the Kings of the Realm.
Again, I pictured this as a child as Pegasus: far from being some kindly creature, he is the bearer of lightning, the hardest horse to ride, dangerous, yet if you give him a Golden Apple he will allow you to find the Muses and the Graces who are the guardians of the arts and sciences as well as the Dream Realm: Mt. Olympus. Dr. Freud was a notorious dreamer who thought he could figure out the riddle of the Dream Sphinx who also lives on that mountain and he could then cure people by revealing to them that which they hide from themselves and he thought it was all about sex, which it is in some aspects for the brain is where sex lives, not the organs below.
So human brains are awash with hormones that trigger sexual desires and thoughts which we must suppress because we no longer go into heat but are sexual all the time which is a mess because we can't go around having sex all the time, we must suppress this so we created all sorts of rules and systems controlling sexual contact and responses in the waking life and the brain deals with all this by expressing sexual desire in the sleeping world which is why it is easy having sex suddenly at night.
By Kevin WilsonFreud maintained the notion that the dream fundamentally acts as the guardian of sleep. When we go to bed, the curtains are drawn, the lights are turned off and in effect we are attempting to disconnect from our reality by extinguishing all external stimuli. During the night, the mind protects the sleeper from being disturbed by reacting to further external stimuli (noise, temperature, light, the need to urinate, numb arm/leg, pain, etc) as well as all internal stimuli (emotions, fears, dissatisfaction, desires, previous day's activity) by manufacturing dreams.
Freud's work was solely concerned with internal stimuli. Essentially, for a person to continue to sleep undisturbed strong negative emotions, forbidden thoughts and unconscious desires have to be disguised or censored in some form or another. Otherwise, confronted by these, the dreamer would become distressed and they would eventually wake up. Therefore the dream, if understood correctly, could lead to a greater understanding of the dreamer's subconscious.
Freud believed the dream to be composed of two parts. The manifest and the latent content. The manifest content can be thought of as what a person would remember as soon as they wake - what they would consciously describe to someone else when recalling the dream. Freud suggested that the manifest content possessed no meaning whatsoever because it was a disguised representation of the true thought underlying the dream.
Aside from this being a simple summary of Freud, the author of this article tells us one of his dreams:
The following is an extract from a dream I had on 16th January 2003:I am walking through a building where I reach two large doors. I push them with all my force and they open onto playing fields. On the grass is an extremely large bookcase full of encyclopaedias. I stand still and watch two women, both of which are bare breasted. They are standing on top of the bookcase attempting to thread a balloon over some telephone wires. One of them calls out to me: "Thread the balloon for me while I put some clothes on." I agree although it was more difficult than I envisaged. Therefore when she returns she orders me to start again. Instead of attempting it again I run around a running track, although I become tired extremely quickly.
My interpretation: this person is very intellectual and has the capacity to think things through very carefully. But due to this, he is also very headstrong and uncreative because he uses his mind to negate his own emotions including his desire to rape or kill (we all have these desires---it is a very important part of being the species that we are). So he is inside a 'building' which is actually his own reality, his intellect, and to escape himself and find his true feelings, he has to struggle to pry open the doors and he comes out into Mt. Olympus which exists only in the dream world.
It is verdant and full of life. But he is uninterested in this. He looks for and imagines a bookcase out of doors. It is filled with all the knowledge of mankind. Attending this structure are two naked Muses amusing themselves by doing something really strange. These Muses are History and Science. The balloon they are threading through electrical wires are his emotions which he is losing control of.
The fact that it is red means it is all about the passions concerning murder and sex. He has to attend to these feelings by threading the balloon of his desires while he sends away one of the Muses to get dressed and thus, hide herself from him. Then he runs away.
Click on the site and you can read about his further, futile adventures as he struggles to prevent himself from embracing the Graces and the Muses. He is a good writer and recognizes this is an important message dream from his inner brain to his waking self. Which is why I am furious that the entire idea of exploring the dream world has been destroyed by modern psychiatrists!
Talk about throwing the red balloon away along with the baby and the bath!
Dreams aren't merely visual images, they are feelings, and the intensity of feelings is greater than in real life because it is NAKED. And when these dreams happen, the SSRIs in the brain are at work. And if a drug causes them to flow too much, this means the emotional part of the waking mind has to constantly deal with a stream of feelings that are impossible to control or suppress. The dream world no longer has to wait until the Super Ego is asleep: it can stream information all the time!
In the dream world, there are not only no morals, there are no restrictions at all. This is why all the entities who are pictured as part of the dream world have wings, ergo; Pegasus., for example. You don't even have to be human! I write about other living creatures all the time and when I do, I 'channel' them and become one with them inside my brain so I can 'feel' what they feel. I have had amusing dreams about being killer whales, squid, bees, birds and of course many mammals as well as humans.
These are not 'other lives lived' in the sense of reincarnation (I'll admit the killer whale was fun, we hunted seals and played with each other and the sea as seen from below the water's surface is beautiful in the Arctic) but rather, my imagination using information collected from outside to transform myself so I could understand myself better and be able to write or draw things that aren't just myself but outside of myself.
Most people are so embarrassed or befuddled by their own dreams, they deliberately refuse to remember them or think about them so when the dream world collapses under medication increasing the SSRIs, they can't see what is going on since they assume they are always seeing reality.
You can't really see reality because it passes first through the brain and the brain rearranges it accordingly. For example, our eyes see everything upside down and the brain fixes this. Any time this rearrangement breaks down, people appear to be insane or if the system of inhibitions breaks down, madness can occur.
The mania for many people in America to go crazy in churches, for example, and 'speak in tongues' etc. is directly connected to the need to go insane and thus, relieve the pressure. The SSRIs do this only the people taking the drugs can actively suppress it...and sometimes fail. Most people don't like to think about themselves as a collection of ticks, assumptions and inhibitions but this is what we are and most people like to imagine they are in control but they are not, I read the news and the jarring effect of people saying the opposite of reality is amusing in a very dark way.
Just like the refusal to see obvious cause and effects because people want to live in a dream world, the inability to grasp reality is due to wishful thinking coupled with the dark inner forces, that red balloon threading the dangerous electrical wires (ah, lightning strikes again!). Namely, the dark, bloody mess that is all about sex and murder thanks to our evolution as murderous, rapacious beasts, can take over.
Clinical lore and a small number of published studies report that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) intensify dreaming. This study examines the dream effects of paroxetine and fluvoxamine in order to both increase clinical knowledge of these agents and to test an important potential method for probing the relationship between REM sleep neurobiology and dreaming in humans. Fourteen normal, paid volunteers (4 males, 10 females; mean age 27.4 year, range 22–39) free of medical or neuropsychiatric symptoms as well as of psychotropic or sleep affecting drugs completed a 31-day home-based study consisting of: 7 days drug-free baseline; 19 days on either 100 mg fluvoxamine (7 Ss) or 20 mg paroxetine (7 Ss) in divided morning and evening doses; and 5 days acute discontinuation. Upon awakening, subjects wrote dream reports, self-scored specific emotions in their reports and rated seven general dream characteristics using 5-point Likert scales. Dream reports were independently scored for bizarreness, movement and number of visual nouns by three judges. REM sleep-related measures were obtained using the Nightcap ambulatory sleep monitor. Mean dream recall frequency decreased during treatment compared with baseline. Dream report length and judge-rated bizarreness were greater during acute discontinuation compared with both baseline and treatment and this effect was a result of the fluvoxamine-treated subjects. The subjective intensity of dreaming increased during both treatment and acute discontinuation compared with baseline. Propensity to enter REM sleep was decreased during treatment compared with baseline and acute discontinuation and the intensity of REM sleep increased during acute discontinuation compared with baseline and treatment. The decrease in dream frequency during SSRI treatment may reflect serotonergic REM suppression while the augmented report length and bizarreness during acute SSRI discontinuation may reflect cholinergic rebound from serotonergic suppression.
When the chemistry of the brain was mastered somewhat, psychiatrists were reduced to handing out prescriptions, not figuring out the hidden mind. I chat often with psychiatrists because my husband was brain damaged at work so I go with him to the hospital a lot. They all admit they know the medicines are not working but it is all economical: hospitals don't want to pay for analysis, they want some medicine and then turn the insane back out into the streets again. All the psychiatrists I have known all wish they could practice their art for they understand what is going on but there is no profit margin in all this thinking and talking!
Therapists try to manually get people to function but this is limited to say the least. Namely, the Skinnerian view of humanity covers only a very small and I would say, rather less important, aspects of the human mental landscape. As far as I am concerned, many totally deranged people are running the world because we are all insane at some level. But the red balloon of our military/industrial complex and the wars we are waging and cooking up can and have killed millions, not mere dozens.
And the NASA mess: two major crimes in one year so far? The suicide/murder there yesterday is getting near zero press due to the latest mass murder but again, it was a loner who was freaking out. Bet he was on SSRI drugs too. As we explore space, we must also focus on the innermost chambers of the soul. That place where all our dreams are hatched.
Time to rewatch '2001' again. Heh.
Culture of Life News Main Page
Like I mentioned before, most of the big pharmas rely heavily on 'legitimate' drugs of (potential) abuse. You remember the 60's. LSD came from...Switzerland, Sandoz in specific. I don't know who made Quaaludes, but some outfit profited. I remember TV a show "Reading, Writing, asnd Reefer" many years ago, brought to us by three drug companies. These companies give heavily to the NIMH, which in turn helps give the thumbs up to their drugs (via the FDA). The clinical trial that OK'd Ritalin was 6 weeks in adult males. It's now given to millions of children for years. People taking these powerful drugs need monitoring, but insurance doesn't pay for many visits, so the patients are eventually left on their own. Also, some people like to go for the 'combined effect', that's why I call them drugs of (potential) abuse.
My own belief, based only on enzymology: that the same chemical intermediate (more or less) leads to seratonin in humans, and psilocybin in fungi. Both are products of a Cytochrome P-450 enzyme consortium, emanating from an indole-4,5-epoxide. I don't believe the conversion to seratonin (5-hyroxy) is 100%, and that some of the intermediate goes toward the psilocybin (4-hydroxy) analog. In other words, to a greater or lesser degree, we're all tripping our brains out.
Posted by: larry, dfh | April 21, 2007 at 02:59 PM
I have been 'treated' for my developmental condition since I was maybe 11 years old. It was 'mild', so they didn't have any idea what was wrong, basically. I'm 60 now and they have thrown an awful lot of their ammo at me, even more or less Freudian dream analysis. Virtually none of all their drugs and therapies did squat. Not only that, about half the doctors and therapists were perverted bastards. How would you like to have perverted bastards interpret your dreams?
People with developmental conditions tend to have trouble getting to sleep, I have read, and experienced. I don't remember many dreams, but the few I do have are really terrifying. I have had two complete sleep studies at behavioral neurology clinics (at Harvard), and my 'sleep structure' seems to be very complex. One very strange thing. Did you ever spend the morning writing letters or something, and then finally looked out the window and be completely flabbergasted that ten feet of snow had fallen during the night? Sometimes at odd moments during the day I suddenly 'remember' something that I have learned while asleep. Maybe like the answer to some hellaciously complex math formula, or something like that.
As far as these SSRIs... Okay, the brain has many (in the hundreds, I think) of special chemicals that are shot out of neural axons and other structures, and collected by dendrites and other structures, and these chemicals are deemed neurotransmitters. the spaces they cross between communicating neurons are called synapses. Now, not all of these substances are collected, and some are 'sent back' to be 'reuptaken' by the axons (I guess for recycling). So selective reuptake inhibitors block this reuptaking process, thus theoretically producing special effects. But maybe it would be best to just forget about all this 'SSRI theory' and just talk about so-called 'antidepressants'. There is considerable reason to believe that some percentage of people who just feel bad will feel better if they just take these chemicals every day. But there are strange risks...
For one thing, in my case, they don't make me feel a bit better. Plus they absolutely block sleep, so I may stay up for five days, which is incredibly awful. They also cause me to think about useless things that I would never begin to contemplate without them, and that's just too freaky.
Some of them are said to reduce pain, and some are vasodilators, such as Viagra, which is used for erectile dysfunction and heart failure. Some of them are notorious for causing homicidal and suicidal thoughts, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde sort of effect. I doubt whether this due to their releasing some deep, unconscious drive (I don't go along with all of Elaine's notions...). I do think there is a rather simple instinct to kill, and that this instinct was put there by thousands of generations of warrior-breeding. I think the whole reason why we have catastrophic population overshoot, into the billions and billions, is that warlords promote puritanical religions that, paradoxically, yet reliably, always end up causing the birth of surplus cannon fodder. And now we have drugs that intensify this death instinct. I'll bet Bush and all of his white house cronies pop them like candy. Great. And I would bet that all of our troops get them. Hell, the Apocalypse branch of the Fundies must eat bowls-full! A new weapon of mass destruction, for sure. With enough of these babies, I'd bet you could get people to fly planes into buildings.
But some medical chemicals are useful. Drugs like Neurontin often help people who get seizures. People with neural dysfunction generally only get better by practicing things they can hardly do. Eight years ago I could never have typed this page!
Posted by: blues | April 21, 2007 at 04:35 PM
Some people have chemical disfunctions. But to give merely depressed people these drugs is very dangerous. Evidently, some people are born anti-social. This can be caused by genetic differences.
After all, Orangatangs are very successful antisocial primates! So we do have that gene tucked in somewhere.
Thank you for everything both of you wrote. It is very interesting information. I agree with a lot of what you all say. Except for one thing that people find hard to believe: the key to our souls are in our dreams.
And even if you can't remember your dreams, if you believe that these nightly visits are good for you and are showing you things you can't face during the day, you won't be so scared of them. Namely, the monsters in the dreams are ourselves but then, hiding them in the dark only makes them grow.
Inviting them into the consciousness means being able to face yourself, myself, all of us. For they are there no matter what, they get to watch us during the day before they come out at night. They are privvy to our every impulsive thought.
This is why there is no 'cure' but there is a path: note that the Muses and Graces also live in the same realm as the Medusa monsters. Pegasus came out of Medusa's head when she was slain. Translating what we feel deep inside into art, music, dance, writing, etc. is the path out of fear!
Note how many of our greatest creative scientists, composers, artists and poets were completely crazy! Some more so than others. But there it is: we need this divine madness. It can be a gift as well as a curse.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 21, 2007 at 06:24 PM
My husband, by the way, blues, takes Neurotin because the brain damage makes his hands shake violently and he had convulsions. He is now able to pick up a glass of water and not have it go flying, for example.
We are not joking when we say, we feel your pain. It is very terrifying, having things not work the way you want it to. This is why I am not against chemicals for fixing malfunctions of the brain but chemicals for fixing PERSONALITY problems is a whole different kettle of fish.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 21, 2007 at 06:26 PM
Thanks so much for the good will and kind blessing. We have very little in common, Elaine, but in some odd ways we have lots to discuss, or even argue about. Not a bad situation, from my perspective. We both have many strange stories to tell. But I have a flue or something, and feel very tired.
When much younger, I had these very minor Jacksonian events on rare occasions. I would try to catch them quickly with my intent, and in a wordless language would tell them to go away. And they would stop.
I am two people really. There is the blues that can see or read, and there is the another side, which I have cultivated. Unlike the visible blues, it does not get entangled in love and hate and passion. Yet it is more vibrant and alive than the side that is ruled by passion and logic. It is discussed in Lao Tzu, the texts of the Sufis, the Amerinds, and, stripped of its religious skin, Buddhism, etc. I am not terribly deep into this other self, but I know of its infinite power and strangeness. There is much to indicate that this way is not compatible with the way of the psychics. But I do not really know if this last point is accurate.
¤The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.¤
Kilgore Trout, (Philip Jose Farmer), "Venus on the Half Shell"
pseud. of Philip Jose Farmer
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/486.html
Posted by: blues | April 21, 2007 at 10:06 PM
Trout fishing in America. Heh.
Yes, we can be many people and still be all the same at the same time. This is why Freud said there were three people involved, the Id, the Ego and the Superego. I see these terms have vanished. I still use them. They are quite useful still.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 22, 2007 at 11:23 PM
Dammit Elaine, the great way has nothing even slightly to do with the Id, the Ego or the Superego. It leads to the source of all that is. It accepts its toll quietly, making no demands. It is infinite.
Mark Twain:
"Sacred cows make the best hamburgers."
Posted by: blues | April 23, 2007 at 12:12 PM
I haven't gotten anything done lately. Not much on my mind recently. I just don't have much to say right now. My mind is like an empty room.
Posted by: commercial shrimp boat for sale | August 09, 2007 at 02:55 PM
People should be allowed to go naked in certain recreational areas only
Posted by: corona beer neon sign | August 10, 2007 at 10:20 PM
Life is designed by some sort of intelligence, God created life
Posted by: kelly blue book classics | August 12, 2007 at 01:12 AM
People are less moral than 30 years ago
Posted by: starburst hard candies | August 13, 2007 at 09:51 AM
I can't be bothered with anything recently. I've just been sitting around doing nothing. Today was a loss. I just don't have much to say. Nothing seems worth thinking about.
Posted by: cat suit pic | August 16, 2007 at 12:09 PM
I can't be bothered with anything recently. I've just been sitting around doing nothing. Today was a loss. I just don't have much to say. Nothing seems worth thinking about.
Posted by: cat suit pic | August 16, 2007 at 12:16 PM
I haven't been up to much recently, but whatever. I just don't have much to say lately. Basically nothing happening to speak of. So it goes. My mind is like a complete blank. Such is life.
Posted by: car hire perth | August 17, 2007 at 11:45 PM
Males should be allowed to go shirtless at home only - Or vary with places for another persuasive speech topic
Posted by: homer simpsons dad | August 21, 2007 at 08:22 AM
Males should be allowed to go shirtless at home only - Or vary with places for another persuasive speech topic
Posted by: homer simpsons dad | August 21, 2007 at 08:27 AM
Blame the parents of a murderer parents for the crime
Posted by: archive florida lottery | August 23, 2007 at 11:08 AM
Blame the parents of a murderer parents for the crime
Posted by: archive florida lottery | August 23, 2007 at 11:12 AM
Children in ... fill in the nation of your choice ... are living better
Posted by: casino gambling guide | August 24, 2007 at 01:20 PM
Children in ... fill in the nation of your choice ... are living better
Posted by: casino gambling guide | August 24, 2007 at 01:25 PM
Help the homeless down the street and persuade them to look for work
Posted by: antique auto glass | August 26, 2007 at 03:50 AM
An integrated, segregated society is better
Posted by: dealer discount tire | August 26, 2007 at 09:28 PM
I haven't gotten much done. Basically nothing noteworthy going on right now, but shrug. I can't be bothered with anything recently. I guess it doesn't bother me. Maybe tomorrow. I feel like a bunch of nothing.
Posted by: 2006 cruise europe millennium ship | August 28, 2007 at 01:48 PM
I've just been letting everything wash over me. I've pretty much been doing nothing. I've just been sitting around not getting anything done.
Posted by: average size of a condom | August 30, 2007 at 08:25 AM
Super natural activity exists, doesn't exist
Posted by: 2000 stealth duck boat | August 30, 2007 at 08:29 AM