Schizoaffective

 Strange insights can come up when you meditate, and I meditate a fair amount: 50 minutes twice a day. Over the last four or five months, a series of insights has revealed to me that I, and probably all people, hold deep, subconscious beliefs that our conscious self would never agree with. For instance, I was recently sitting when I heard some people talking in the parking lot outside my apartment windows. These people talk out there a lot. It hit me quite suddenly that "this is my life, to sit in this apartment overhearing the same people talking in the parking lot." It washed over me that this here, now existence is all I have. Even if I moved from this apartment, my life would not be substantively different. I would just overhear different people outside my apartment. The insight continued. I realized in this flash that I harbored a fundamental belief/feeling/hope that was quite delusional. I believed that somehow, somewhere, my problems would be solved and I would live in

It occurred to me that I may have appeared to contradict myself in the course of the last several postings on this blog. On August 13, in a post entitled "Skin," I explained how the skin does not have to be viewed as the boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In fact, skin is one of the ways we reach out into the world, connecting with it, being in relationship with it. I went on to say that consciousness is not inside us, especially not in the neural workings of the brain, but all over the place, both inside and outside. The things of the world we are conscious of, such as birds and piles of sand, are also conscious, though not to the extent a human being is. After arguing for this perspective, I proceeded to write several posts that detailed my recent experiences with antipsychotics. I related how getting off risperidone caused withdrawal symptoms that included anxiety. Anxiety is a mood that, like all moods, affects consciousness by causing us to focus on som

by Jay Paul I have posted here for the last several weeks about my recent struggles with medication. I am happy to say that, for now, things are resolved. I am on a low dose of olanzapine that does not play havoc with my blood and does not make me feel woozy. Unfortunately, I am having some minor problems with weight gain and sleepiness. I hope they get better as time goes on. But for now, my serious problems are behind me. Now on to this week's essay. _________________________________________________ In his essay “Moral Luck” Thomas Nagel notes that we blame a drunk driver for recklessly driving up onto a curb and hurting a pedestrian much more so than we blame her if she just went up on the curb and nobody was there. This is a case of moral luck. If nobody was there, the drunk driver’s moral, and legal, standing results from her being lucky that the sidewalk was empty.   Nagel’s point seems irrefutable. Much of our moral standing in our own and in other people’s eyes results from

by Jay Paul Last week on this blog, I gave a rundown of what has been ailing me for the past five weeks—namely, wooziness. We still don't know what was causing it. A celiacs test came up negative. But in the course of investigating it, we found that my prolactin levels were twice as high as they should be. Prolactin is the hormone that in women causes them to lactate when pregnant. Risperidone, which I was on a low dose of, can cause prolactin build up because of its effect on the pituitary gland. So I am now off risperidone and on a low dose of olanzapine. Olanzapine causes you to gain weight more so than other antipsychotics. I have had problems with that for the last 25 years. I have recently been losing weight. So far, I am two days into the olanzapine, and I have lost some weight. My strategy is to eat set amounts only at mealtimes and not eat according to hunger. This is not easy. We'll see if I succeed. Two things concern me: olanzapine can raise prolactin as well, altho