John Nash, as we all know, lived with schizophrenia but didn’t take medication. Contrary to popular belief though, he did initially experience A LOT of symptoms, as noted in the article linked. So he was definitely mad at many points.
However, how did he eventually beat it? Did his symptoms subside, or was he just very good as masking his symptoms? ie. Was he still walking around mad? Discuss…
A lot of our forum elders say the symptoms fade as you age.
So do they still take antipsychotics? It would be great if we could measure this propensity for psychosis in some way, because it’s not healthy taking the drugs (from all of my reading).
He didn’t beat it. He just learned how to cope with symptoms by applying logic to any delusions. If they didn’t make sense, he ignored them.
Yes, they do. We don’t fully understand the mechanism behind schizophrenia or the medication that treats it, but it is safe to say that people who have been med compliant longer than a decade tend to have fewer symptoms.
I don’t completely believe that. At one point he was cutting himself, and another time travelling around Europe thinking he was the Emperor of Antarctica. His symptoms must have lessened for him to be able to deal with psychosis.
From personal experience, there were points in psychosis where I had lucidity, but these were very brief in the relentless passages of paranoia and delusions. My memory was also disappearing the further into psychosis I went.
I would question how well Nash could function if his symptoms did not lessen. It’s a shame there weren’t more interviews from him.
Yes. And I still lose my insight when I stop taking them so I’m going to stay on them for the rest of my life. Age 52, onset around 23, DXed around 24.
When was the last time you went without taking them, and was the psychosis as bad as ever, or was it less (if you don’t mind my asking)?
Holy crap you were young! Poor thing. I was I think 35 or 34. It was after my son was born. I don’t know if the hormones had something to do with it but my symptoms sky rocketed immediately after Sam was born.
He said it himself, about rejecting delusions. But time did lessen symptoms so age was a major player
" Thus further time passed. Then gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again"
I think I saw in one interview that his son also has it but that his son takes meds for it.
Yeah, it’s this one:
A few years ago. Definitely as bad as before. Lost my insight and was still functioning at work, but was running up my credit cards to buy copper wiring on the sly so I could turn part of my home into a Faraday Cage and shield myself from aliens. Copper is expensive. Took some time to pay that off. Mrs. Squirrel was not happy with me and it nearly tanked my marriage. A few more weeks and I would have been hospitalized.
He also says in this, “Nowadays as the dream is ending I realise it is a dream”. Suggests to me he was still having some bouts of schizophrenia. But must be of a lesser strength.
Sugar, sorry to hear that! Like I said before, it would be great if we could somehow measure whether we are still at risk from psychosis as we age, as there must be other John Nash’s out there.
Sure, but they are statistical outliers and don’t really apply to the common schizophrenic. I’m so high functioning that I’m also considered an outlier and my situation doesn’t apply to most. Nash isn’t a good example to look to. I’m probably not, either. (Being honest.)
True. Although it would be good to find out what makes people outliers. The process must be different for some reason.
There is a reason John Nash was famous. He was an unusual case. Most of us aren’t so lucky.
He was lucky and I read that high intelligence protects from schizophrenia.
Age of onset for girls is older generally. I was diagnosed at 20 y.o.