Posted by pablo1 on July 20, 2004, at 2:00:23
Here's a guy who has an alternate explanation for how the brain works. Not as bizzare as he thinks it is perhaps.
http://stevenharris.com/theory/107.html
That page describes his cure for all mental disorders. Wait, hold the re-direct because this relates to medication and the cure is actually an enhanced version of ritalin withdrawl used to realign each brain cell (or any cell in the body) to get the normal healthy flow of inhibition and reward operating as it should in a healthy balance. Of course the conclusion is anti-medication but hear it out... pretty intereting perspective....The theory applies to the psychiatric med business in this way: Psychiatric Meds (PM's) only work by blocking some function or another in the brain. That can be a big relief to have anxiety or sadness removed when the feeling was not operating in a productive way. I personally think there is a lot of benefit in manipulating moods with medications because folks get stuck in ruts and dont know there are other ways to feel.
SO anyways his theory (which is revealed excruciatingly slowly) is that each brain cell acts on the principal of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. It's a natural balance kind of thing and the cells communicate with each other to make group descisions. This process is what we know as 'thinking' and sometimes it gets less logical with too much stress so you start to see self destructive tendencies (illogical operation of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance). All psychiatric problems can be explained by this simple principle.
The solution, bizarre as it sounds is actually a very traditional perspective. Though the logic is hard to follow: Too much pleasure becomes pain, and at that point, the switching from pleasure to pain becomes a learning trigger. It's enough of an impulse to lock in a real memory. I find in my neurosis, that I get into trouble when I try to avoid that critical flipping-point memory-creating moment and I internalize/repress what should have been a healthy (if painful) opportunity to learn, into a bottled up neurosis. It's understandable, I had a tough time as a kid, was exposed to who knows what sort of toxic chemicals and, well, I did what I was able to survive given the whole disfunctional family thing and my particular inborn abilities.
As we all know having seen shrinks over the years, the thing they are all keen about is uncovering and resolving past hidden traumas. I got sick of that a long time ago, it's really not easy to make progress in talk therapy working on that old crap. Possible perhaps but incredibly tedious and painful. IMO the only way to approach that is with some creatively expressive way to heal and make sense of it. I hate the idea of just going back to dwell on it for a good cry. And get more depressed. Anyways...
This guy's theory is that you can take advantage of the ability of too much good becoming pain by 'overdosing' on an hourly stream of a little bit of ritalin (normal daily dose actually) but taken day and night every hour. Within about a week, this creates a 'too much' scenario for the brain and becomes a withdrawl syndrome. That is the trigger to burn through all that old dysfunctional crap with a new memory that recognizes what is healthy or not. The treatment is supposed to bring up emotional issues and supposed to be very very uncomfortable but that's the pain that was avoided in the past so it's got to be felt if it's to be cleaned out.
Part of the treatment program is to have a month or at least a few weeks to go through this with supervision, a healthy diet and no coffee, cigs, etc. Sleep a lot and just absorb it without running away. It might need to be repeated in a year or more if the withdrawal didn't go into full effect. YMMV.
Now, my reason for keeping this in the med section is because I think i t'd be cool to do this preceeded by several months of psychiatric med roller-coaster riding. Actually this is what he went through: he had some problems, they gave him a pill, that caused other problems, the diagnosis multiplied to psychotic, institutionalized then he broke out of the system, went off on his own and fiigured this out.
But I think that'd actually help with this treatment plan to be twisted to all directions then eased into withdrawal and work through everything.
If nothing else it's a testament to the human mind, coming up with such nutty ideas that actually work (sometimes). I"m sure you all can relate to that situation!
neurogenesis
poster:pablo1
thread:368088
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040719/msgs/368088.html