Paranoia.

luka

luka

Well-known member
it can be a very useful corrective. These fears that emerge, details fit together to create a picture of the future very different to the one you had complacently anticipated.

How your acts can be interpreted very differently as soon as your ID card and clearance is revoked. If you're not assumed from the offset to be innately decent, kind, honest, but instead as an enemy who hasn't revealed himself yet.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I'm good at distinguishing what is paranoid thinking without dismissing the emotional truth at the heart of the paranoid vision, that is what I tell myself.

Obviously it's weed that is the prime driver of severe paranoia for me but also sustained binge drinking tips you into this space, but more insidiously, gradually. The hangovers, the compounded guilt and shame. The repressed memories.
 
pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Used to play a huge role in my life. All kinds of things can trigger it. Sleep depravation was a major one for me. But over time as I get older it's way easier to spot it for what it is as you say, while still utilizing the moment and realizing why it happened.

Weed used to do it. These days I'm sensible with intake which makes a huge difference. Keep your tolerance low is my trick. Smoke small amounts. You won't look cool at all but you'll have your head way more together. And smoking it with tobacco changes what happens to your brain. Hits you harder and often darker.

Laying awake for hours waiting for stims to wear off can also be an interesting ride. I try to have some kind of benzo around because no matter how many beers, fags n spliffs you smoke to fend off the demons. They comin. I also found out that eating, even if its the last thing you want to do can settle things down a bit.
 
yyaldrin

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
for me substance abuse often leads to blackouts, where upon waking up my memories only go back upon a certain time from the previous night. what i noticed is that for me this creates a certain kind of paranoia where even an innocent smile from someone on the street leads me to think all sorts of fucked up scenario's. in berlin, people somehow have the tendency to stare you in the eyes for a longer time and it is freaking me out very often. maybe they met me in a different state? maybe i've said things to them, maybe they know things about me?
 
yyaldrin

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
yeh whenever i'm back in holland or any other country for that matter i'm reminded that it's not me but the city. this is a fun read: https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/132584-why-do-people-keep-staring-at-me-in-berlin/

i'm in berlin yeh, are you living there now as well since you returned from the rain forrest?

Staring can be dangerous for Germans when they go abroad - there were some gunned down in the USA a couple of years ago by drug dealers because the German woman stared at them when they drove by the dealers. It was a very interesting radio interview and they asked one of the guys involved what happened and he said - they wouldn't stop staring and "shots were fired", he kept repeating that expression- shots were fired. In the UK if you stare at people it can be construed as a very aggressive thing and get your nose broken for you.
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lol
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
yyaldrin said:
for me substance abuse often leads to blackouts, where upon waking up my memories only go back upon a certain time from the previous night. what i noticed is that for me this creates a certain kind of paranoia where even an innocent smile from someone on the street leads me to think all sorts of fucked up scenario's. in berlin, people somehow have the tendency to stare you in the eyes for a longer time and it is freaking me out very often. maybe they met me in a different state? maybe i've said things to them, maybe they know things about me?
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Yes for me drink leads inevitably to blackouts. Lots of very real seeming paranoid realities try and impose themself in which I have committed some terrible crime or gross indecency, walk out into a world in which wanted posters with my face on are pasted to every telegraph pole in town
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
With so many deeply paranoid souls on here I'm surprised this never got off the ground.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I can remember teenage times, so stoned my own voice would be foregrounded in a very uncomfortable way and all the naturalism sucked out of it so that it seemed both unbearably artificial and intimately revealing. The stark vulnerability of your voice out there in space, daring to be heard. Very very difficult. Perhaps this is a kind of depersonalisation effect. I would have analogous experiences with regard to my clothes and to my physical bearing. How I was standing or sitting or walking.

I would hate the way my trousers bunched and folded and sagged or the way a jumper would hang off me. The materials seemed so cheap and ugly. I always seemed to be so much more badly dressed than everyone else.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
For a long time I was terrified of the mask slipping. I was a very long way away from being able to square the private self with the public self. What I was presenting was a long way from how I felt. That's why RD Laing's book on the divided self was important to me.
 
vershy versh

vershy versh

Well-known member
That comment was tongue-in-cheek, but there's definitely a part of me which is incredibly wary of offering up any sort of personal information online and I can be suspicious and skeptical of more or less anything. I took seriously the prospect that a mate who was once a bit off when I arranged to meet him could be plotting to kill me.
 
vershy versh

vershy versh

Well-known member
It can be a very self-centered way to view the world, to assume that you of all the billions of people on the planet are receiving special attention.
 
vershy versh

vershy versh

Well-known member
The 'seen' feature in Facebook chat seemed to trigger it in plenty of people, being able to see that someone had looked at your message hours ago and decided not to reply.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Although a tweet I saw recently said that the funny thing about becoming an adult is realising that all those adults in the corner shop when you were a teenager really could tell you were stoned.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
version said:
The 'seen' feature in Facebook chat seemed to trigger it in plenty of people, being able to see that someone had looked at your message hours ago and decided not to reply.
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That's not really paranoia is it? It's just the sting of rejection!
 
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