A Look at Cluster A Personality Disorders

Cluster A are the odd personality disorders. They’re not so much awful people as they are simply so odd and strange that you can’t have much of a human relationship with them. Their general theme is to drive people away from them in some way or another. Schizoids are ok, but they are very annoying. It’s generally impossible to have any decent human relationship with someone like this because…well…they don’t do human relationships. I’ve talked to Schizoids but I have never really known one in real life. You are unlikely to run across a Schizoid in life because they are such extreme loners that they simply don’t get involved with other humans at all. Schizotypals simply have a mild form of schizophrenia and are more or less impossible to deal with in ways that are similar to how schizophrenics can’t be dealt with but on a lesser scale. They are also quite suspicious and paranoid. They have awful social skills and conversations with them degenerate and start getting tangential and strange pretty quickly. They will give off a feeling of alienation and weirdness that would probably make you want to get away from them. I had a girlfriend who had Schizotypal traits, but she was mostly just a Borderline. When she was off into her schizotypal strangeness, it was like talking to someone from another planet. She would be saying weird and odd things that didn’t make a lot of sense and the conversation had the creepy feel of someone who is way out there and is not really with the rest of us at all. I eventually broke up with her on the grounds that she was too crazy for me. It was like dating a Martian. I’ve never met or talked to an actual full-blown Schizotypal, so I don’t know much about them. I don’t see how you can have a decent relationship with someone like this. They’re too crazy for that. You usually won’t meet schizotypals because they are extreme loners who don’t do human relationships. They are suspicious, withdrawn and don’t talk much. They give off vibes of trying to drive you away. When at home, they often get quite shut-in and don’t want to go outside. Paranoids I do not understand very well, but I hear they are hard to deal with too. They can also often be angry. Their constant suspicion drives you crazy and relationships with these people must be hard to deal with. You often won’t meet Paranoids either because, well, they’re too paranoid! They shy away from most relationships too and even if you work with them, they probably won’t reveal much of their disorder. They also give off serious “get away from me” vibes. None of these people are easy to get along with. It’s going to be hard to have a decent human relationship with any of these people. Of course Cluster B’s are awful human beings. I’ve gone into them before on this site.    

How Can I Tell If I Have Paranoid Schizophrenia or Schizotypal Personality Disorder?

Answered on Quora. Simple. If you had either one, you would probably not be asking this question right now. If you had paranoid schizophrenia, you would not be asking this question because people with this illness do not recognize that they are ill, typically refuse to seek help, and also refuse to take medication. If you tell them they are ill, they will not agree. If you had Schizotypal Personality Disorder (really mild schizophrenia) you would probably not be asking this either. These people probably do not believe there is anything wrong with themselves either, and they are typically too paranoid to go in for treatment. There is a forum for Schizotypals on the Net, and many of them are on there saying that they are too paranoid and distrustful to go to therapy.

Schizophrenia and Autism: Similarities and Differences

JohnnyHG writes: There is evidence schizophrenia is developmental like Autism. I would exclude the cases of diagnosis of someone with a history of drug use or brief psychotic hallucinations from environment. The fuck up just gets delayed – it’s latent, which is why it happens in one’s teens/early 20s rather than toddlerhood. But there are signs lasting years leading up to it if I am correct, prodromal? It doesn’t happen overnight. Experts have watched videos of children who later went on to develop the condition and could pick them out after a while. Often poorer school grades, abnormal movements, and irritable behavior could be found. Plus the negative and cognitive symptoms overlap heavily with Asperger’s/ASD or just Autism Disorder. I believe they bundled it all up because there is too much heterogeneity, hence the distinction between AS and Autism was a bit artificial. Some things seem to be opposites: clumsiness in autism vs. stupor/stiffness in SCZ, repetitive literal speech or no speech in autism vs alogia or garbled speech in SCZ, obsessiveness with one topic in autism vs apathy in SCZ, but stereotypies are shared and so are bizarre habits. However, there is a different flavor to them, hard to describe. Do you believe it is neurodevelopmental or stick with the old belief it’s degenerative?

Thanks for the excellent comment. I share your views. I have long believed that schizophrenia is developmental. Really they are born with it or born with the tendency. With enough stress or genetic loading, they get schizophrenia, and if they have little stress or low genetic loading, they either get schizotypal personality disorder (really just mild schizophrenia) or they may get schizophrenia with a later onset. There really are two things they are seeing in the early symptoms. The first are the early symptoms – clumsiness, oddness, poor grades, irritability, etc. Those are childhood symptoms. Then there is the prodrome which hits in adolescence at some point. This causes a slow deterioration over a few years’ period leading to the classic onset from 16-24. I was best friends with a man with paranoid schizophrenia for a year. I hung out with him every day that year. It was a most interesting experience! At the time, he was 27 years old and he was in the prodromal phase of paranoid schizophrenia. It had been going on maybe since age ~22, so five years. A long slow prodrome is common in paranoid schizophrenia. He was hearing voices the whole time, but his charming personality was quite intact. He was half-Black, very good-looking, and very charming, and he attracted White women everywhere we went together. He later got slowly worse and worse, and after a while, he was not even talking much. I haven’t heard much about him since, as my relatives are telling me to avoid him.

Psychopathology of Serial Murderers

The primary problem with almost all serial killers is simply ASPD, Antisocial Personality Disorder, (derived) sociopathy or (primary) psychopathy. It is present in almost 10

Very rare is the serial killer without this disorder, although there have been a few. I remember a long-distance trucker who turned himself when he walked into a Northern California police station with a woman’s breast in his top shirt pocket. He had camped out in forests while trucking and had picked up women and killed them. He kept the body of one in the truck for three or four days and drove around with it.

Experts said he was quite unusual in that they said he actually felt bad about what he had done. I wonder how bad he really felt though. You could not get me to drive around in a truck with a dead woman in the back for very long. I would go into severe panic pretty fast, stop the truck, and get out, and start walking or probably running away.

I would not be able to walk around with a woman’s breast in my shirt for long either. I would completely panic almost right away, take the shirt off, throw it on the ground, and start running. But then I am a pretty guilty type person with a strong conscience.

Based on that, while I am sure he may have felt some guilt for his killings, the fact that he was able to drive around in a truck with a dead woman in the back for 3-4 days shows without completely flipping out shows to me that he didn’t feel that much guilt, certainly not on the level that most of us would.

And the fact that he could rather calmly walk into a police station with a cut-off breast in his pocket without flying into total panic shows to me that he didn’t feel that bad about it. So guilt, even when it is present, is not as strong as in most of us, otherwise they would not have even done such horrible things in the first place.

Sexual sadism is also often present, and I have heard that Sadistic Personality Disorder is very common. Juvenile delinquency, voyeurism, exhibitionism, burglary, prowling, petty thievery, etc. typically precede the serial killings. When the serial killer starts killing, he usually has a fairly long rap sheet of more minor offenses. The murders are best seen as an escalation of a chronic criminal character type.

The ones who kill children are typically though not always preferential or fixated pedophiles. Certainly the ones who kill only children are preferential pedophiles. There is a type of pedophile called a mysoped, which is a sadistic pedophile. They are not very common. I doubt if

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The rage rapist is dangerous, but he generally does not intend to kill his victim although he assaults her. If she fights back or gets difficult, he can fly into a rage and beat her so badly that she dies, but again he usually does not intend to kill. I doubt if these types go serial much if at all. Serial killers intend to kill; rage rapists do not.

Malignant narcissism, the disorder, believe it or not, of our wonderful President, is also present sometimes. Ted Bundy was a malignant narcissist. Yes, our wonderful President has the same mental illness as Ted Bundy! Comforting thought.

A few have Schizoid Personality Disorder, and some of the more disturbed ones have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Schizotypal, Paranoid, and Narcissistic Personality Disorders are rarely if ever seen in serial killers. Schizotypals are probably too disorganized and decompensated and just out and out strange to commit such crimes. The serial killer must blend in, and schizotypals do not do that. A few schizotypals have committed mass murders. James Holmes the Aurora Batman Theater Shooter, was a notable case. But note that he was caught immediately.

Paranoid PD is rarely if ever seen. These people tend to be rather retiring and like to hide away from a hostile world. They also do not like to call attention to themselves from a hostile world. They are suspicious and distrustful by nature, and this makes it hard for them to blend in well with ordinary society as serial killers often do.

Narcissists are usually too self-centered to kill. While narcissists are often very mean, the disorder is usually well-controlled in that the rage rarely escalates to homicide. There have been a few cases of NPD’s committing mass murder, usually of their families. The case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the mass murdering physician of Fatal Vision, seems to be such a case. This is a superb true crime book by the way.

Also narcissists think that if they kill, they will get caught, and if they are in prison or jail they will not be able to live this wonderful life they are supposed to be killing. They are “too cool to kill.”

Killing would mess up all their wonderful plans to exploit others and hold them up to contempt by millions of people, which the narcissist would have a hard time taking. The narcissist is “too good for prison.” Prison would be such a crushing blow to their self-image that it would very hard to take.

However, malignant narcissists can be very dangerous because this is a combination of psychopathy, sadism, Paranoid PD and Narcissistic PD. When you weaponize NPD with paranoia, sadism and particularly psychopathy, you create a dangerous illness.

Cluster C Personality Disorders like Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder, Self-Defeating Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are rarely if ever present in these types. These are PD’s where aggression is mostly displayed passively, and serial killers display aggression actively, not passively.

Mood disorders do not seem to be common. Bipolar Disorder is not common, and serial killers are rarely if ever depressed. They displace guilt and loathing outwards instead of pushing it inside of themselves as depressives do.

Depressives are passive, and depression acts as sort of a freezing agent in that it tends to immobilize people by its nature.

Men in general tend to either experience less depression than women or mask it with other things such as anger and rage, drinking, drugs, gambling, promiscuity, or even workaholism. It is simply not acceptable as a man to be depressed, so depressed men simply channel their depression into other things and say they are not depressed, they are just drunks or workaholics, for instance.

Substance and alcohol abuse issues are quite common with serial killers, but the better ones are more sober, as drinkers and dopers tend to be scattered and unreliable, and serial killers must be on the ball  24-7.

Only a few are psychotic.

They are motivated by many things, but your typical rape-murders or murders of attractive young women almost always have a sexual component. I would call these serial killings lust murders. The Germans coined the term.

Even among the lust-murders, there are a number of different types. Some are motivated by purely sexual desires, others get off specifically on killing and the power gained from it, others are hunter types who get pleasure from the hunt and chase as if they were hunting an animal, which they are of course, but when we refer to hunters, we are always talking about hunters of non-human animals.

OCD and Social Anxiety Disorder: Differential Diagnosis

A new commenter confuses OCD with social anxiety disorder. Though I don’t know SA very well, they are clearly different illnesses. The problem is that there is overlap in all of the anxiety disorders, and in some cases, SA and OCD are both present.

You’re right about OCD including unwanted thoughts, but the shyness, nervousness, and anxiety sound more like social anxiety disorder or avoidant personality disorder.

No, nervousness and anxiety are prominent in all anxiety disorders. As far as shyness, this is just the kind of person that gets OCD. Social anxiety is a tough one, but OCDers don’t usually have this too bad. Most of the ones I deal with are more or less social on a regular basis. They’re hanging around people, but they are nervous.

It depends why they are avoiding people.

According to the DSM, if you are avoiding people due to one of the other Axis I disorders, then rule out SA. Keep in mind that people with schizophrenia and folks with some personality disorders like schizoid, schizotypal and paranoid personality disorders may also avoid people.

SA people avoid people due to massive anxiety relating to being around others. The anxiety is related to embarassment over doing something stupid or humiliating.

OCDers might avoid people due to the obsessions and the way that people react to them – heavy duty rejection. SA people are afraid they are going to be rejected in social situations, and social anxiety is pretty prominent.

Social anxiety is not necessarily so prominent in OCDers, but some have obsessions that tend to come out when they are around others. I dealt with this woman once who was afraid that when she talked to other women, she secretly made lesbian remarks to them. So she was nervous when speaking to women.

OCDers tend to be pretty nervous all the time. It’s not something that peaks when they get around others.

Harm OCD is a bad one, because they are afraid that they will hurt someone. It leads to a lot of avoidance.

If OCDers are treated well and treated as if they are normal people and not rejected or treated like shit, they will often hang around people a lot. And if you get rid of the obsessions, some will actually become social butterflies, since the obsessions might be the only reason for the introversion.

It’s true that extroverted obsessionals are quite rare, but that’s due to the nature of the illness. It only hits people with a certain personality, and that person is an introvert.

Sexmaniacman On Borderline and Schizotypal PD

Repost from the old site.

A commenter notes:

Schizotypal was always the odd-man-out personality disorder — both literally and figuratively.

Sexmaniacman thinks he had a gf once who was both a Borderline and a Schizotypal:

Hi Bob, this chick was so nuts, man, oh man oh man. She had a dx of “Borderline Schizophrenia” and was a serious acidhead.

She proudly said, “I’ve always been crazy.” Her Mom was schizophrenic and had tried to stab her in the back and kill her when she was 4 years old. Her life was desolate, and she would move back and forth between all these different personalities that you could not keep track of.

She lived in Hollywood, was a fag hag and was always getting picked up by guys and abused. She let groups of guys gangbang her and all sorts of crazy shit. She was always telling stories about guys or groups of guys picking her up, tying her up, torturing her, having sex with her, and threatening to murder her.

The stories seemed almost too weird to be true, but she was an extreme submissive who obviously was giving off “hurt me” vibes that a lot of sicko dudes might have picked up on and acted on.

She was also a bit bi and had sex with women sometimes. But she liked young girls, like 14 years old! Whoa! She also liked young boys, like 13 years old, and she loved to entertain me with stories about breaking in 8th graders. She was an old pro at this. I thought it was just plain weird.

We were going to go a lesbian bar in Hollywood and try to pick up a girl to take home with us (that was real easy to do in LA, which is full of all kinds of gays, bis and swingers), but she was so weird, I figured we would never be able to pick up any decent women.

Her idea of a good time was going to a gay bar and hanging out there all nite. I said pass.

She literally ate acid by the handful, five or eight hits at a time.

I took her to a Cure concert and for some weird reason, all these Goth chicks were grabbing me and trying to molest me the whole time at the concert, even when I was with her. While we were walking around, while we were sitting at the concert, the women just wouldn’t leave me alone. The whole thing seems like a hallucination now. It was 1983. She was flying on a handful of acid.

I took her to see Pink Flamingos, we watched Divine eat dog shit off sidewalk, and she thought that was hilarious. We went to see The Story of O, which I thought was weird, but she insisted was the story of her life.

She kept wanting me to inflict pain on her in all these different ways (A LOT of women are into pain! Is that weird or what?) but I wasn’t really into being a sadist too much. I did inflict some pain on her, but I didn’t really enjoy it. She sure did! Damn right! But it was the weirdest joy, a joy in a bottomless sadness. I couldn’t relate.

We went at forever, and she was a real screamer. One night she turned me in the middle and said, “You know what, Sexman?”

“What?”

“You’re a good fuck.” She repeated that a few times.

I’d just been turned into a complete sex object by a woman, and I didn’t even care.

I’d leave her place at the end of the weekend. Her Hollywood apartment complex was full of all these Guatemalan and Mexican illegal aliens. It was 1984 and the invasion was well under way. I guess the guys had been listening to her sexual opera performance all weekend because as I walked out, the Hispanic guys would all stand up and start clapping for me and raising their beers.

Cheers to the Master Fucker! She would drink, take acid, smoke pot, do speed, and then grab a bottle of antidepressants and start taking pills and downing them with a glass of booze.

“Whoa!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing!”

“You don’t know the pain I’m in Sexguy,” she whimpered and started crying. “You have no idea what it’s like. I need this, Sexdude.”

I shrugged and hoped she didn’t die on my watch. Who wants to deal with a dead chick and cops?

She was schizotypal in that she used language in really weird ways, and even though she insisted she had all these friends, she seemed really isolated. Plus she was just flat-out fucking weird in a way that Borderlines simply are not. Like she was on another planet, an alien. Invariably, she accused me of being a fag too for some reason like all of her faggot friends, and that pissed me off.

I will say she had more insight into my personality at the time than most other women have ever had.

She used to regale me with stories about her gay friends. Her gay friends were all these seriously weird masochist dudes into the leather scene.

Her eyes got really wide.

“My friend Jim, he’s not satisfied until the welts are this big.”

That’s one of her sicko masochist gay friends. Every time she talked about them, I told her to shut up as she was grossing me out.

She stretched her fingers to make about a one inch measurement. In her eyes, she was trying to shock me and I know it turns her on. She wanted one-inch welts too. Obviously. Like Hell you’re getting ’em from me, you sick bitch, I thought.

She called me one time but I wasn’t home. A woman I knew was over at my place in my absence and answered the phone. “Tell Sexman it’s just me,” she sighed wearily into the phone. “It’s just me. Just V.” Her self-esteem was 80,000 leagues under the sea under an anchor. The woman hung up the phone.

Later the woman said: “That’s the woman you’re dating, Sexguy?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“Wow, she seems like she thinks she’s the biggest zero on the face of the Earth. How sad.” The woman shook her head, and an incredible sadness came over her face too, a hundred years’ worth.

“I know.”

I broke up with her.

“Can…you…at least…give me a reason, Sexcat?” V. whimpered into the phone.

“You’re just too nuts for me. I mean, I’m nuts, but I’m neurotic. You’re way more crazy than I am, and I just can’t deal with you. It’s like dealing with someone from another planet. I can’t handle you. Good luck in the rest of your life.”

She called me a few days later, crying.

“After you broke up with me, Sexbro, I put my fist through a wall, I was so mad. Now I have a hole in my wall.”

“Over me? You did this over me? Why? Don’t bother, V. Don’t smash walls over me. I’m not worth it. Smash walls over someone else…Look, I can’t handle this, this is way too nuts.”

I got a new girlfriend, K., pretty soon, and V. had given me VD like most sluts do, something called Trichomonas with no symptoms in the male. I immediately gave it to the new girl, and it causes four days of misery in the female. The new woman was pissed.

I said the only thing you can say when you give your girlfriend VD.

“Hey, don’t ever say I never gave you anything.”

I thought that was pretty funny.

She sure didn’t. Icy eyes shone at my across the room.

“That’s not funny, Sexman.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

I saw V. again two years later. She came down to visit me, an hour’s drive. I saw her on my porch like a lost poppy, the most forlorn thing you ever saw. We went inside and had some wild sex for a couple of hours. She got pissed at the way it ended and left in a huff.

I never saw her again.

I assume she’s dead, probably long ago. The way she was, she couldn’t have lasted long.

Sexmaniacman On Borderline and Schizotypal PD

Repost from the old site. The following posts will figure a fellow named Sexmaniacman, who is a friend of mine. He either wrote these posts himself and sent them to me via emails or else I am transcribing them based on conversations he had with me.

A commenter notes on the Personality Disorders

Schizotypal was always the odd-man-out personality disorder — both literally and figuratively.

Sexmaniacman thinks he had a gf once who was both a Borderline and a Schizotypal:

Hi Bob, this chick was so nuts, man, oh man oh man. She had a dx of “Borderline Schizophrenia” and was a serious acidhead.

She proudly said, “I’ve always been crazy.” Her Mom was schizophrenic and had tried to stab her in the back and kill her when she was 4 years old. Her life was desolate, and she would move back and forth between all these different personalities that you could not keep track of.

She lived in Hollywood, was a fag hag and was always getting picked up by guys and abused. She let groups of guys gangbang her and all sorts of crazy shit. She was always telling stories about guys or groups of guys picking her up, tying her up, torturing her, having sex with her, and threatening to murder her.

The stories seemed almost too weird to be true, but she was an extreme submissive who obviously was giving off “hurt me” vibes that a lot of sicko dudes might have picked up on and acted on.

She was also a bit bi and had sex with women sometimes. But she liked young girls, like 14 years old! Whoa! She also liked young boys, like 13 years old, and she loved to entertain me with stories about breaking in 8th graders. She was an old pro at this. I thought it was just plain weird.

We were going to go a lesbian bar in Hollywood and try to pick up a girl to take home with us (that was real easy to do in LA, which is full of all kinds of gays, bis and swingers), but she was so weird, I figured we would never be able to pick up any decent women.

Her idea of a good time was going to a gay bar and hanging out there all nite. I said pass.

She literally ate acid by the handful, five or eight hits at a time.

I took her to a Cure concert and for some weird reason, all these Goth chicks were grabbing me and trying to molest me the whole time at the concert, even when I was with her. While we were walking around, while we were sitting at the concert, the women just wouldn’t leave me alone. The whole thing seems like a hallucination now. It was 1983. She was flying on a handful of acid.

I took her to see Pink Flamingos, we watched Divine eat dog shit off sidewalk, and she thought that was hilarious. We went to see The Story of O, which I thought was weird, but she insisted was the story of her life.

She kept wanting me to inflict pain on her in all these different ways (A LOT of women are into pain! Is that weird or what?) but I wasn’t really into being a sadist too much. I did inflict some pain on her, but I didn’t really enjoy it. She sure did! Damn right! But it was the weirdest joy, a joy in a bottomless sadness. I couldn’t relate.

We went at forever, and she was a real screamer. One night she turned me in the middle and said, “You know what, Sexman?”

“What?”

“You’re a good fuck.” She repeated that a few times.

I’d just been turned into a complete sex object by a woman, and I didn’t even care.

I’d leave her place at the end of the weekend. Her Hollywood apartment complex was full of all these Guatemalan and Mexican illegal aliens. It was 1984 and the invasion was well under way. I guess the guys had been listening to her sexual opera performance all weekend because as I walked out, the Hispanic guys would all stand up and start clapping for me and raising their beers.

Cheers to the Master Fucker! She would drink, take acid, smoke pot, do speed, and then grab a bottle of antidepressants and start taking pills and downing them with a glass of booze.

“Whoa!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing!”

“You don’t know the pain I’m in Sexguy,” she whimpered and started crying. “You have no idea what it’s like. I need this, Sexdude.”

I shrugged and hoped she didn’t die on my watch. Who wants to deal with a dead chick and cops?

She was schizotypal in that she used language in really weird ways, and even though she insisted she had all these friends, she seemed really isolated. Plus she was just flat-out fucking weird in a way that Borderlines simply are not. Like she was on another planet, an alien. Invariably, she accused me of being a fag too for some reason like all of her faggot friends, and that pissed me off.

I will say she had more insight into my personality at the time than most other women have ever had.

She used to regale me with stories about her gay friends. Her gay friends were all these seriously weird masochist dudes into the leather scene.

Her eyes got really wide.

“My friend Jim, he’s not satisfied until the welts are this big.”

That’s one of her sicko masochist gay friends. Every time she talked about them, I told her to shut up as she was grossing me out.

She stretched her fingers to make about a one inch measurement. In her eyes, she was trying to shock me and I know it turns her on. She wanted one-inch welts too. Obviously. Like Hell you’re getting ’em from me, you sick bitch, I thought.

She called me one time but I wasn’t home. A woman I knew was over at my place in my absence and answered the phone. “Tell Sexman it’s just me,” she sighed wearily into the phone. “It’s just me. Just V.” Her self-esteem was 80,000 leagues under the sea under an anchor. The woman hung up the phone.

Later the woman said: “That’s the woman you’re dating, Sexguy?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“Wow, she seems like she thinks she’s the biggest zero on the face of the Earth. How sad.” The woman shook her head, and an incredible sadness came over her face too, a hundred years’ worth.

“I know.”

I broke up with her.

“Can…you…at least…give me a reason, Sexcat?” V. whimpered into the phone.

“You’re just too nuts for me. I mean, I’m nuts, but I’m neurotic. You’re way more crazy than I am, and I just can’t deal with you. It’s like dealing with someone from another planet. I can’t handle you. Good luck in the rest of your life.”

She called me a few days later, crying.

“After you broke up with me, Sexbro, I put my fist through a wall, I was so mad. Now I have a hole in my wall.”

“Over me? You did this over me? Why? Don’t bother, V. Don’t smash walls over me. I’m not worth it. Smash walls over someone else…Look, I can’t handle this, this is way too nuts.”

I got a new girlfriend, K., pretty soon, and V. had given me VD like most sluts do, something called Trichomonas with no symptoms in the male. I immediately gave it to the new girl, and it causes four days of misery in the female. The new woman was pissed.

I said the only thing you can say when you give your girlfriend VD.

“Hey, don’t ever say I never gave you anything.”

I thought that was pretty funny.

She sure didn’t. Icy eyes shone at my across the room.

“That’s not funny, Sexman.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

I saw V. again two years later. She came down to visit me, an hour’s drive. I saw her on my porch like a lost poppy, the most forlorn thing you ever saw. We went inside and had some wild sex for a couple of hours. She got pissed at the way it ended and left in a huff.

I never saw her again.

I assume she’s dead, probably long ago. The way she was, she couldn’t have lasted long.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Psychological Damage

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. A common accusation of those who oppose the use of cannabis is that it causes schizophrenia. We deal with that notion in this post. Along the same lines, cannabis is said to cause schizotypal symptoms in users. Schizotypal symptoms are best seen as a subset of schizophrenic symptoms, or like subsyndromal schizophrenia. I would argue against this notion just on impressionistic grounds: I have known hundreds or thousands of cannabis users over the years, and only a few of them were schizotypal in any way. Of the cannabis users I know now, none of them seem to be schizotypal in any way. I had a former girlfriend who I was convinced was schizotypal. Other than that, I’m not sure if I’ve met any. But anyway, enough of my impressionistic stuff, on to the studies. Cannabis users have shown elevated scores on schizotypy scales in six different studies. These scales have some serious problems, in my opinion (here is an studies continue with rats. Giving rats cannabis in utero, in adolescence and in early adulthood led to long-lasting memory problems, increased social anxiety and steady-state anxiety and decreased social interaction. Once again, this is interesting, but over a lifetime, I have not noticed a tendency for regular cannabis users to become increasingly socially avoidant or nervous. It is a common sequence that after years of good effects, people start reporting that pot makes them anxious. They usually phrase this as, “It makes me paranoid.” In general, these people tend to stop using the drug.

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