Smoking Schizophrenics
It is a curious fact that a high percentage of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes to alleviate their symptoms. And though researchers believe that cigarettes are a poor fix, causing more long-term harm than short-term help, research is being done to investigate other compounds that could bind to the same receptors in the brain.
One hypothesis about nicotine use is that it enhances the focus of the brain and its ability to filter out unwanted external stimuli. Scientists are conducting such research in the hopes of finding specialized treatments for particular symptoms of schizophrenia.
What is especially curious is the way in which schizophrenics and shamans alike seem to use nicotine as an ally. Both deal with voices, spirits, and visions. And while it may be naïve to draw too many fast comparisons between shamans and schizophrenics, could the use of tobacco as a control mechanism for spirits factor into the research that is being done?
Tweet- 1-16-08
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Naive? NAY!
Naive? Perhaps...
Care should be applied here. first up, the use of the single term 'schizophrenic' to apply to a suite of varying symptoms is fast becoming a controversial and debated issue in psychology. Granted, some schizophrenic forms are visionary and deal with, as the article states 'voices, spirits and visions'.
However a more fundamental definition of schizophrenic symptoms would refer to the relationship one has with one's own thought processes. There needn't be voices, visions or spirits for schizophrenia and in fact a majority of schizophrenics never experience these. Shamans do however deal with these phenomena every day
Far more common with schizophrenics are phenomena of thought insertion or deletion, external thought control, catatonia or difficulty in moving. Visions and voices are often something of an unusual, although admittedly more famous aspect.
Those who work with schizophrenics (experience versus opinion, in other words) will quickly realise that equating or relating schizophrenia with shamanism is filled with pitfalls, and personally I think it offers little help to schizophrenics as it characterises their experience according to stereotype (visions & voices) and not to expertise (thought-relationships)...
Bruce
Hm
McKenna did discuss both...
As a devotee of McKenna's talks, first in person, lately in audio format, I can attest to his discussing schizophenia, particularly in reference to his adventures at La Chorrera with his brother, Dennis.
Both of them "went bonkers" subsequent to experimentation with vocal driving of psychedelic states, intended to "lock in" the state by permanent intercalation of psychoactive molecules into endogenous neurology.
Terence self-diagnosed as schizophenic, but asserted his belief that this condition needed to "work itself out" free of interference from medical do-gooders.
Both he and Dennis apparently recovered spontaneously, though Terence often remarked that part of him was "still down there, rising at dawn, to walk the mist-filled meadows near the river", and that the voice of the LOGOS still spoke to him in meditation.
These exploits are covered in The Invisible Landscape and True Hallucinations.
To the best of my knowledge, Terence was not a devotee of tobacco, though quite the fan of cannabis.
JED
I want to be sensitive
Poisoning the Pure Smoke?
" ... those that wish to control our minds have realised tobacco interferes with their schemes?"
It's interesting in this regard that commercial industrial tobacco is laden with additives. I wonder if this limits the efficacy of the plant? Do Amazonian shamans reach for the Marlboro when the mapacho has all gone?
newports
That certainly seemed to be the case during my last diet. I think he used a Newport?
Haha.
Adam Elenbaas
funny
That's a great point, Eco.
I also wonder about the additives. Funny though. To break my last diet in Peru a shaman used a cigarette from Iquitos. I was kind of like....ummm....?
Adam Elenbaas
On second thoughts...
Shamans are not schizophrenic
In my research on shamanism (I had a class on East Asian shamanism last semester in school) I recall that there was a big debate about this in the fifties.
In the initial anthropological reports of shamanism in Siberia and other places, many of the researchers were completely bewildered and confused by the shamanic paradigm, and in fact labeled them rather derogatorily as schizophrenic. But after a few decades this position began to change, and was eventually recognized as a kind of exoticized orientalism that was popular in the time of the thirties and forties and earlier when this first research was being done.
Its true that shamans share some of the same behavioral characteristics of schizophrenics, perhaps on a superficial level. The two main reasons for this, I think, is the fact that shamans communicate with spirits of the dead that normal people cannot see, and they also go into convulsive ecstatic states which are very difficult for your everyday scholarly researcher to understand.
However, I don't think that shamans create and live in their own perceptual world the way that schizophrenics do. The spirits that shamans interact with are very real, and their techniques of ecstasy are used in what can be thought of more or less as a professional religious context.
Shamans, unlike schizophrenics, are always socially engaged in the secular world to some degree as part of their shamanic practice, in terms of guiding their tribe, doing healing ceremonies for people, finding lost objects, casting spells to increase luck with hunting, etc. They deal with very real, day to day issues for the people they serve. At the point when someone is classified as schizophrenic in our society, they have often lost the ability to relate to our consensus reality, and therefore are not engaged in the world. I think this is a major distinction when thinking about this relationship between shamanism and schizophrenia
But the degree to which the
But the degree to which the social world a shaman lives in is already shamanic may play a large role in the earliest stages of the developing vocation.
The presence of a lineage could also be capable of spotting an apprentice and guiding them into mastery of the spirit realm so that it does not take control over the material.
Also, as Mircea Eliade noted, shamans were not necessarily secular. They often lived outside of the village, in the hut on the hill and were called upon in times of great fear or dire need only.
When you talk about a consensus reality today and a consensus reality in the jungle, say 300 years ago, you're talking about two totally different realms.
I'm totally with you that it is very complex, though. We can't just assume that because someone hallucinates or sees spirits that they are a schizoprhenic OR a shaman.
Still, tobacco use seems relevant. Maybe further neurological research of the simliarities between shamans and schizophrenics could show us amazing things!
Watch for my next article on Schizophrenia. Kind of synchronistic that I found two amazingly interesting articles on schizophrenia that "could" correlate to an understanding of shamans.
Adam Elenbaas
Nuts on Fire....
Here's the deal (my perspective)
What an interesting article.
Shamans and schizophrenics are definitely similar. Both schizophrenics and shamans are open to the otherworldly realm. The difference between the two is that shamans know "how to swim," whereas schizophrenics have no framework into which they can channel their otherworldy experiences.
Shamans must also work from the highest intentions of love and healing. Schizophrenics are typically consumed by many dark imaginings. It's a very slippery slope, but one which the shaman must walk. I read once that the shaman looks over the edge but does not jump. The shaman must acquaint him or herself with madness in order to heal those who are afflicted with their own madness.
As for the tobacco, in shamanic ceremony tobacco is not inhaled. Tobacco is a holy plant used for healing purposes. Many tribes and shamanic practitioners believe that inhaling smoke traps spirits in the body. Yet another difference between schizophrenics and shamans.
Anyway hope that helps! It's definitely interesting, and there are many similarities between shamans and schizophrenics, but they differ in their use of intention and structure.
R