Fanciful (Downright Crazy) Delusions

There is a Biological Basis for the Generation of Delusions in Schizophrenics

• Being surrounded by spies at Target—or nearly everywhere.

• The belief that cameras and sensors in my car were watching my every move.

• The certainty that drugs like LSD and meth were being rubbed onto my car door to make me lose my mind.

• Believing that every sign on the interstate had been switched with its opposite.

The above are all delusions I have held. I have had worse. At my lowest points, I made pivotal life decisions based entirely on these false premises. I would conjure the most elaborate notions during my “windshield time” on the highway.

I was so certain I was being followed that I schemed to drive across the entire country, nearly bankrupting myself in the process. My logic was that constant travel would make it exorbitantly expensive for “them” to track me. In a vacuum, the logic holds up: following someone coast-to-coast is expensive. But the basic premise was a lie. No one was following me.

At one point, I covered the interior of my car in aluminum foil and wore a necklace of small, running electric motors powered by the cigarette lighter. I was certain someone could hear my thoughts, and I believed this setup would make it impossible for them to listen in.

To an outsider, these beliefs are “crazy.” But when I explain that I have lived with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder since the late 2000s, they begin to make a different kind of sense.

These bizarre beliefs are symptoms of a biological disease. In Malady of the Mind, Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman explains that people with schizophrenia develop these delusions due to an excess of dopamine. A healthy mind would disregard random information as irrelevant. However, in an unhealthy mind, that information takes on salience—it becomes profoundly noteworthy. As AI says, it’s basically “turning up the volume” on random data.

I go into greater detail about the salience of the unnoteworthy in the post Living Without Delusion.

Take my delusion about the switched road signs. It began with the conviction that nearly every car on the highway was sent to stalk and harass me. Because of the dopamine surge in my brain, every passing car felt “noteworthy.” To explain why this was happening, my mind created a story: The FBI was helping me by documenting every vehicle, and they had switched the signs as part of that process.

As I write this now, the logic feels muddy. But at the time, it made perfect sense.

My point in sharing these details is to offer a fair warning: When someone has a disease like mine, they may not be on the same page as you at all. They are living in a world that is fundamentally skewed. Best-intentioned efforts to “reason” with them may not bear fruit because their reality has shifted.

People with my illness are not living in your reality; we are living in a biological storm. We need care and treatment for our brains. I am heartened by the fact that I can be treated today. I have a good life now, stabilized by my medications, and I hope for that same stability for anyone else impacted by this disease.

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As an extra note, I have documented my life with schizo-spectrum disorders in my memoir - “Torn Bindings” by Mathew Poehler - found on Amazon here - I would love to have a positive review.