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Трактат "Шизофрения - разновидность наркомании". | Пояснение к переводу Ю.А.Косирати. | Интервью.
What about schizophrenia?
In this short article I want to to tell about the disease schizophrenia. I have spent a great many years of my life (against my will) examining this disease. Even though I don't have a medical education I have been observing the course of this illness for many years. All these observations and reflections have led me to a conclusion that seems to be improbable to many people: schizophrenia is a variety of drug addiction. The one who suffers from schizophrenia makes his organism produce a type of drug.
To prove my conclusion I can tell about my own feelings and experiences. But I realize from my experience that a sick man's opinions are not normally trusted. Therefore I'll use some quotations from well known books. And where the quotations lack depth, I'll depend upon logical reasoning.
From the book Schizophrenia, by the famous American psychiatrist, A. Fuller Torry, I quote: "The well-known fact is that many drugs used for their influence on the psyche can cause the symptoms similar to the symptoms of schizophrenia". Even after a dose of such a weak drug as marihuana a person can experience strange somatic feelings, lose the feeling of his body periferies and show the sign of a paranoid delirium. There are people who even have given up smoking marihuana just because they experienced unpleasant paranoid conditions after each inhalation. The stronger drugs (such as LSD and the psycho-stimulators) usually cause hallucinations (though these are visual more often than acoustic), delirium and mental disorder. Sometimes these symptoms are so strong that the sick man needs to be taken to hospital and in the case that the doctors do not know, that he has got a drug addiction, they may mistake it for schizophrenia. The symptoms that are the most similar to schizophrenia are shown up after taking amphetamines (psycho-stimulators).
The outward similarity of a person suffering from schizophrenia and a drug addict is well known. There is also an inner illness. Their feelings and experiences are similar. One more quotation from the same book. " In many descriptions of the first days of schizophrenia progress there are notes about being in unusually high spirits called a feeling of exaltation. Such exaltation is also unual for the maniac-depression diseases and drug addiction". A woman patient describes such a state in the following way:
"Suddenly all my being was filled with light and love, joy, sympathy and happiness coming from deep inside of me. I was in the state of great joy and self-fulfillment". What can be said about this state? It is like a cloudless bright blue sky of knowledge (well-being), filled with warm caressing sunshine.
It is known that for a drug addict, the consequences of those states of exaltation are a sign of severe drug addiction. It is natural to suppose that those suffering from schizophrenia get an attachment to the disease after those states of being in high spirits. I must remark that according to my observations the extraordinary high states are the experience of all patients.
But in the majority of cases the disease begins with small doses of the drug and euphoria is expressed poorly. And fast developing abstention disguises the euphoric effect of the drug. Unfortunately I did not manage to find any mention about the attachment that the schizophrenia patients have to their disease. As if this phenomenon does not exist. But according to my observation it exists. I have found a confirmation that my observation is right in Chekhov's book. (I quote):
"He encircled his head strongly with his hands and uttered with melancholy, "What did you do it for, why did you treat me? Bromide preparations, idleness, warm baths, supervision, faint-hearted fear for every sip, for every step - all this will finally bring me to idiocy. I was going mad, I had megalomania, but I was gay, cheerful and even happy, I was interesting and queer, at the same time. Now I've become more reasonable and solid but I'm just the same as everybody: I'm mediocrity, I'm bored with life...Oh how cruelly you've dealt with me! I used to see hallucinations, but who was it bothering? I ask you. With whom was it interfering?"
"Nobody understands what you are saying!",Yegor Semyonych sighed. "It's even boring to listen to you".
"So don't listen". -
The presence of people, expecially of Yegor Semyonych, was now irritating Kovrin, he would answer him dryly, coldly and even rudely, and wouldn't look at him except with mocking and hate. Yegor Semyonych was embarrassed and would cough as if he were to blame, though he felt no particular guilt.
As she couldn't understand why their good and kind relationship had changed so a-bruptly, Tanya would hug her father and look anxiously up into his eyes.
"It took Kovrin's breath away, and his heart compressed with sadness, and a wonderful joy, he had forgotten long ago, rose in his breast."
Just then a tall black pillar, resembling a whirlwind or sandstorm appeared at the other side of the bay. It was moving with dreadful speed across the bay in the direction of the hotel, getting smaller and darker, and Kovrin hardly had time to step aside to let it pass... A monk, bare-headed and with black eyebrows, barefoot, his arms folded on his chest, rushed past and stopped in the middle of the room.
"Why didn't you believe me?' he asked with reproach, looking tenderly at Kovrin, "If you had believed me then, that you were a genius, you wouldn't have spent these two years so sorrowfully and scantily".
Kovrin already believed that he was God's select and a genius, he vividly recollected all his former converstions with the black monk and wanted to speak, but blood was running from his throat straight onto his chest and without understanding what to do he was moving his hands across his chest and his shirt cuffs got wet with blood. He wanted to call Varvara Nikolayevna, who slept behind the screens, so he made and effort and uttered, "Tanya!" He fell on the floor and rising on his arms he repeated, "Tanya!"
He was calling Tanya, he was calling the big garden with luxuriant flowers besprinkled with dew, he was calling the park, the pines with shaggy roots, the rye field, his wonderful science, his youth, courage, boldness, joy. He was calling the life that was so beautiful. He could see a big puddle of blood on the floor, near his face. From weakness, he could no longer utter a word, but an inexpressible, infinite happiness was filling all his being. They were playing a serenade below, under the balcony, and the black monk was whispering to him, that he Was a genius and that he was dying only because his weak human body had already lost its balance and could no longer serve as a cover for a genius." (Quotations taken from Chekhov's story, Black Monk.)
Let's compare the feelings and actions of Chekhov's character with a those of a drug addict. "When for the second time I injected myself with 2 milliliters of 1% morphine solution, the result was beyond my highest expectations. In a few seconds I felt a soft wave coming softly up from the bottom of my belly and warming my body. It was a feeling of intense pleasure, like I'd never experienced before. It was much pleasanter than becoming drunk and even pleasanter than a sexual orgasm.
Then light tender music filled up my head. Surroundings became blurs. The lightness of my body was nice. The warm wave lasted for a few seconds, but these seconds were a time of the most extraordinary pleasure I had ever felt."
Then the patient had sunk into a dream state. "My body had been weakened. 1 did not want to move or to think. Dreams ran through my head, they came into view themselves. I could not retell them, but would always like to experience those feelings again.
I was alone as if my surroundings did not exist, but I knew that my friends had been experiencing the same. They had become intimate to me and seemed dear and hearty men". This delightful state lasted for nearly 3 hours, then its intensity reduced. "I was sorry to lose the dreams, I did not want to return to the rough, real life".
"After a year of taking drugs, the patient would lose his temper when the effect of the morphine had finished." "I became irritable and was rude to my parents, I was in a temper because of any trifle." He was growing irritable, often in a bad mood, nothing could make him happy.
"He emphasizes his dignities and faculties, (ability for poetry). He explains that the drug promotes (his creative works).
Quotations taken from the monograph The Morphinism, by G. V. Morosov, N.N. Bogolepov, authorities from Moscow.
The above is not unusual. The same information may be found in books on the same subject. (For some readers this is known by their own experience).
Some more quotations. -
"Often drug addicts explain that drugs help them to not be bored".
"We attended to amphetamine - the preparation that is very similar to dopamine by chemical structure."
"The same preparations, called (anti-psychotics) or (neuroleptics) are used for the therapy of schizophrenia disease, and also relieve paranoia's symptoms for patients that had abused amphetmine".
Making post-mortem examinations, the investigators noticed that there is an abnormally high concentration of dopamine in the brains of schizophrenia sufferers. The modifications in the brain coincide with the proportional increase of sensitivity to dopamine". The quotations are taken from the book, The Brain, Intellect, and Behaviour, by the American researchers F. Bloom, A.Laiserson, and L.Hofstedter.
For many years doctors have wondered whether a drug causes the strange behaviour of schizophrenia sufferers. However nobody could assume that the drug is produced by patient's will by his own body. According to my own studies, in many cases the schizophrenia disease progresses in this way. Sometimes people feel low, suffer from indispositions or misfortunes. In trying to get over these misfortunes some people have noticed that an effort of the inner man relieves their pain. Many think that they have learned to control their bodies and subconscious and feel they have a supernatural faculty.
It is important to note that, some people can get involved easily. The effort to relieve can become almost imperceptible and can cause serious mental illness. I find a similarity of this process in learning to ride a bicycle. At the beginning it is extremely difficult to keep your balance, and special efforts are needed. But if training goes on, you will ride better and keep your balance with no effort. Your brain manages with the occupation and soon you can talk or sing while riding.
Thus the sick man too, as a rule, does not notice that his brain does self-destructive work. In many cases,. while people experience depression, some risk factors can trigger the production of a drug. Then the brain keeps up the disease's progression as part of "therapy".
I have some suggestions as to how this drug is produced and in which regions of the brain, but I am not sure they are correct. I have to think carefully before I put my conclusions into writing. Such an approach to the disease, I believe, may enable patients whc suffer from schizophrenia, to recover.
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Трактат "Шизофрения - разновидность наркомании". | Пояснение к переводу Ю.А.Косирати. | Интервью.
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