Speaking of nurses being crazy (which I did earlier), I recall one study I saw back in uni that showed the mental-illness rate among medical students increased significantly with each year of school. The researchers were unable to conclude whether medical school drove one crazy or the sane students dropped out as time went on.
" Ever been around any crazy people?" - Yeah, I annoy myself all the time.
In college I was friends with a group of misfits and ne’er-do-wells. Most of them weren’t students, just the kind of eccentrics that like to hang around college campuses. Anyway–
One of them was homeless. He would sleep in campus buildings, steal paper towels from the bathrooms, that kind of thing. Apparently it was known that he had an apartment of his own, but chose not to live in it.
After knowing him about a year, he started to tell me about internet research he was doing on a MegaTroll. He was convinced that one single person was trolling twenty or thirty of the internet’s biggest message boards, creating multiple personas on each. He had long lists of the identities, could compare the style of rhetoric, all of that.
One evening while several of us were sitting in the coffee house listening to him go on about it, he started scratching his foot. He kept scratching and kind of pulled his sneaker halfway off. A terrible–truly terrible–smell came out of it. That was when it occurred to me that he might be genuinely crazy.
I was young and clueless at the time. Of course he was crazy. Probably some variety of schizophrenia; paranoid maybe? It took me a long time to realize because he was a smart and sweet guy and a pleasure to talk to–also an organizing force in our group.
I got a job at a state mental hospital. I lasted 3 days. I feared for my life and sanity.
What I’ve seen sometimes is people who basically are doing a kind of slow motion suicide by not taking care of themselves and their bodies slowly going downhill. This can involve overeating, not eating healthy, not bathing, or not getting treated for illnesses.
Well, there was the time my roommate called me into his room in the middle of the night to tell me that I don’t have to be afraid of death (he had figured it out), that the universe is run by magic (his choice of word), that he is the reincarnation of John Lennon and (the still living) Mark David Chapman, and that he expected to die soon (because it would be poetic) so I should spread his message to the world in his stead.
There was a guy staying next door a few weeks ago who appeared to have voices in his head, which he argued with so much that he started to smash things.
According to the Police, apparently that behaviour, including his threats against other people in the house, and the wilful damage he caused to the house and yard, wasn’t enough to get him arrested.
One of my exes. She was all kinds of crazy. It’s cool though, she’s a female version of the Richard. I’m actually in town to see her and some mutual friends.
Let’s see. She had very bad OCD issues. Worse than me. If someone gave her a dirty dollar bill or change back at a store, she would just drop it in the parking lot or give it to a hobo.
She had a fascination with pooping in inappropriate places. She has never acted out on it that I know of, but she always joked about it. Like she would like to shit in a brown lunch bag, light it on fire, and throw it into my car.
Speaking of fire, if someone flicked a cigarette out the car in front of her, she would swerve. Sometimes dangerously. She thought if she drove over it her car would explode.
She once had a newspaper delivery gig. Her shift was overnight. When I used to live in the same town as her, around 3 a.m. she would drive over to my house, scoot her tires leaving marks, and flash her high beams at my windows. Threw newspapers at the garage or front door as hard as she could. In those newspapers were nasty notes.
She now identifies as lesbian, and claims that I’m the reason why she would never date another man.
Normal people like us have normal hobbies. We do stuff like quilt, lift weights, or like my lazy ass roommate, take naps. But sheeeeee would troll on the internet. G-d knows how many sites. It was a lot. She trolled here too, that’s how I found out about this board. I don’t think she’s still around, she said she left and left under good circumstances. The SDMB didn’t interest me at first, but since I got older I appreciate certain topics.
Her dad was crazy too. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He was especially crazy in the OCD way too. He didn’t like overweight people or African American women with long hair to sit on his living room couches. He took them to the family room. He was scared that fat people would leave ass prints behind, and that black women with long hair would leave grease spots on the back pillows.
He was one of those people who park their midlife crisis cars at the back of the lot, taking up two spaces. He inspected the car for dents before he hopped in, everytime.
They’re fascinating aren’t they? Except when you have to live with them.
I’m beginning to think I have a Crazy Magnet or at least a Brain Tumor Seeking Device implanted somewhere on my person (no not really) since 2 of my ex’s have been diagnosed with brain dysfunctions of one magnitude or another.
#1 actually did have an inoperable brain tumor after becoming more and more bizarre over the course of several years of our marriage. He went from str8 arrow valedictorian/senior class prez etc to raving drug addict/scrounging for a fix in 6 years. Unfortunately it was too late when he was diagnosed. It was a nightmare seeing the personality changes.
#2 became paranoid schiz rather suddenly and violently. Could have been his drinking catching up with him, or who knows. His SIL dropped the little tidbit to me that he had been hospitalized in the rubber ranch before we had met. :smack: Thanks for full disclosure, buddy.
I’ve worked in State Hospitals (when Thorazine was the treatment du jour for just about everything) and so this wasn’t really a shock, but a job you go home at night from is different than living with it. There’s no reasoning with them.
The nurse I used to date back Stateside had so many little nutso oddities. Examples: If she ate milk and cookies, the last swallow of milk had to coincide with the last bite of cookie; if it didn’t, heaven help anyone who crossed her path for the rest of the day. If you knew what lithium was, that alone was proof positive a psychiatrist had prescribed it for you, probably in forced treatment against your will, and that you were still mentally ill. She saw government conspiracies at every turn – for just one example, one time we walked past an ice-cream factory, and in the window we could see the conveyor belt that the cartons traveled along. But the factory was closed for Sunday, and there was no activity going on. She decided on the spot that it was a secret munitions factory run by government spies, because why would an “ice-cream shop” have a conveyor belt?
Those all may seem minor individually, but those are only three of many, many examples, and put all together they added up to Super Wacko. I stayed with her because she was damned good at sex, but she finally got to be too much. Still in Texas, I would guess, and they’re welcome to her. No, living with crazy people is no fun at all.
Taking lithium is proof you’re nuts? Its the UNmedicated ones that are more dangerous, isnt it? 
To her mind, unless you were a doctor or nurse yourself, there was simply no possible other explanation for knowing what lithium was.
Yeeeeeeehhhhhhh :dubious: … Crazy Logic at Work. Living with that makes you wonder if you’re even sane yourself doesnt it? Getting away from it is the best thing you can do, you cannot fix them.
I never admitted I knew what lithium was before I met her.
Thats goofy isnt it (and a bit narrow-minded of her). Doesnt EVERYONE over the age of 8 know what lithium is for? They even write songs about it FFS!
Sure. I’ve been in Social Services for most of my career. I run into all kinds of crazy on a daily basis.
Schizophrenia is a bitch. I’ve worked with dozens of schizophrenics, and hoo-boy, they can be a trip.
There was the guy who would greet me every morning at work (when I worked at the clinic where he got treatment); depending on what the voices in his head were telling him that day, he would either greet me with a hearty handshake and a friendly “Hello!,” or with a withering glare and a threat to kill me.
There was the guy (lots of guys, and women too, actually), who would have a line of neighborhood thugs outside their door on Social Security check day, because they weren’t assertive enough to say “No” whenever someone (friend, stranger, or otherwise) asked them for (or demanded) money.
There was the guy who saved up money for bus fare, got on the bus from Springfield to Chicago (this was in October or November), and started walking out, fully clothed, into Lake Michigan to look for the suitcases full of money that he knew were out there. Fortunately the police stopped him.
I could bore you with similar stories all day long.
Crazy Friend Drama thread in IMHO reminded me of another guy.
He was a good friend of my SO until he went to live with his brother’s family, who apparently urged him to stop taking his lithium then kicked him out. He’s been living with another friend, off his lithium, and going downhill ever since. She’s returned home to find things missing* or not missing but broken** or had been missing then spontaneously appearing out of nowhere***. Then he started retaliating for the ending of a near 30-year friendship.****
*Small, easily transportable things. Like DVDs.
**Which he blames on his cat. Really? The little kitty’s responsible for knocking an entire panel off the fridge?
***After she went to the police for the umteenth time.
****He practically admitted to calling Animal Control and saying we’re abusing our pets. That’s rich, given the history of pets he’s responsible for. Overfeeding them, when he’s not starving them to death, and not taking them to the vet.
Well there’s me, my wife, some of her siblings and friends, other people when I stayed in mental wards and supervised housing… so I guess so.
To be clear, “she” is our friend who crazy dude is staying with. Supposedly until the end of the month.