MvB

• MvBJun 16, 2023, 8:03 PM

  3 points

  2

  on: Could in­duced and sta­bi­lized hy­po­ma­nia be a de­sir­able men­tal state?

  Thinking about the responses, I have to come to the conclusion that this is a rather bad idea. The positive symptoms which I remember very intensely just don‘t make up for the decline in critical reflection of what one is actually doing, thinking and feeling. I had suppressed that to some extent, but it is clearly a major part of what I went through. Thanks for pointing out this aspect. Personally, I will probably try to work on healthy habits, routines and stay on my medication (what I would have done anyway).

• MvBJun 12, 2023, 6:52 PM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: nim’s comment on: Could in­duced and sta­bi­lized hy­po­ma­nia be a de­sir­able men­tal state?

  I prefer to not examine this issue in a frame of pathologies. In the individual case, concrete symptoms and behaviours of course depend on the unique personality of the affected individual. Yet, when you know a person good enough, it is not that hard to recognize the changes taking place under hypomania, and from what I can tell they seem to generalize well. It is exactly not the possible impairments that interest me, but what I subjectively experienced as an improvement to my default condition.

  I should have added that I have tried several proposed methods of cognitive/​mental enhancement, none of them fully delivering the particular mixture of symptoms that hypomania did (for me):

  • Nootropics, to the extent that I‘ve noticed an effect, came with unwanted side-effects.

  • Physical exercise obviously does the trick, but only goes so far raising and stabilizing mood and clearing up thinking.

  • Meditation also regulates emotions and increases self-reflection, but I could not notice any motivational gains.

  • Achieving flow states usually is very tricky as one has to adjust the difficulty of the task to one‘s competence all the time, something that is not achieved while taking care of routine business or hard problems.

  Following your proposal, I would have to try something like perfectly dosing modafinil and nicotine while steadily keeping in a state of flow, which I had to consciously reactivate everytime after perfectly timed short workouts and meditation sessions. I doubt that even this would lead to the desired outcome. What may sound even less convincing to you, but actually is my point: mild hypomania felt „natural“. I‘m in danger here to glorify this episode, but cannot see how the first few weeks of it were unhealthy in any way—I was simply able to do more mental work in a day than I could normally do, while being happier than I usually was. If that is sustainable in any way is exactly one of the questions I would like to have answered by further research.

  Instead of tweaking numerous variables for some individual with unpredictable outcome, why not examine the condition in the population, find out more about its mechanisms and make it accessible in a controlled fashion as a full package?

[Question] Could in­duced and sta­bi­lized hy­po­ma­nia be a de­sir­able men­tal state?

• MvBJun 11, 2023, 12:46 PM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Mart_Korz’s comment on: I can see how I am Dumb

  Despite a little tear on the ego, it has some advantages not to be the smartest in the room. Having read here on LW a couple of years ago and now bit by bit picking up some of the stuff that happened back then and in the meantime, the dominant feeling for me isn‘t envy of the capability of others, but relief that there are enough minds in the world entertaining thoughts that at least partially reflect my own shallow ones on topics that I deem important, but have no one to talk about.

  Unless it involves some mathematics that I am not accustomed to, it feels as if I can follow and understand the majority of thoughts shared on this platform. That provides me with enough encouragment to delve deeper into the topics I am interested in, maybe even enough to work more actively on myself. In any case, it is more than I could hope for hanging out with the guys in the village, where most talk is about cars and gossip.

  Yet, when asking myself what I possibly could contribute, the only things that I can come up with are sharing highly subjective experiences of my mind falling apart during manic psychoses, stitching myself together in the aftermath, and making a decent living job-wise and in terms of family life in spite of receiving very pessimistic prognoses for my future when I was in the process of rehabilitation.

  I wish I could give more, but I had been spending much of my time playing video games and hanging out with people for senseless fun during my youth. Now, regardless of the degrees I‘ve received, I feel much less educated and capable than I could be.

  No one is responsible for his genetic predispositions or his upbringing, but one is responsible for how one acts relating to the values one holds. I fell short on focused self-actualization, so maybe I‘m now the dumbest among the smart.

  Now, what is the advantage that I have been talking about? I can probably learn from most of you in a mostly passive consuming style, whithout being obliged (by my morals) to contribute more than this mostly anecdotical comment.

  Regarding the issue of hard-coded algorithms determining one‘s cognitive abilities: I‘m not sure about the malleability of deep cognitive processes in general, but I find myself to have undergone significant changes in meta-cognitive abilities as a result of recovery from psychosis. It has the character of some pre-conscious feeling about different trains of subconscious processes, involving both emotions and thoughts. Sometimes it extends to over-reflection that loses hold on some concrete issue and becomes circular, sometimes it helps to steer thinking and general behaviour into a desired direction. I can not remember having said impressions before falling ill and recovering. Thinking about these abilities gives me the impression that highly automated and reinforced sub-conscious routines might not be easily changeable to the more effective or efficient by themselves, but they might be integrated into some higher-order routines, changing their eventual output. These could be more and more automated themselves, thereby achieving an increase in fluid intelligence.