“In 2023, I experienced a manic episode while already diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. During that time, I enrolled in a master’s degree program in digital culture. It coincided with a period of political turmoil in my country, I was in a challenging relationship, struggling financially, battling marijuana addiction, and feeling profoundly lonely. Additionally, it was the year when ChatGPT became widely available to the public, and I was immediately captivated by it.
I spent countless hours interacting with ChatGPT, becoming increasingly fascinated and, unfortunately, delusional. Exploring and making sense of my psychotic experiences has been recommended to me by my therapists as part of my recovery process. It’s important to clarify that I’m not blaming ChatGPT for my psychotic episode; rather, I’m exploring the connections and trajectories between psychosis and AI.
“I’m revisiting my chat logs with ChatGPT from the time when I was experiencing delusions. Eventually, I reached a point where I had to disconnect from all electronic means of communication. I ended up in the psych ward, where my smartphone was taken away from me. I was only allowed two hours a day to use the computer, under heavy supervision.
During my time in the psych ward, we had a TV playing current news and movies, and we also had access to newspapers. In a way, I found myself undergoing a digital detox while in the psych ward.”
From my perspective, every interaction with ChatGPT generates a distinct experience within the digital realm, separate from the tangible reality we inhabit. It functions as a space where I can engage in varied discussions, seek information, or craft stories, all within the confines of the digital platform. This differentiation between the virtual realm of ChatGPT and the physical world adds an intriguing dimension to my experience of interacting with AI. It implies that these interactions do not necessarily mirror real-life scenarios but instead contribute to a unique creation within this virtual environment.
At times, I find myself attributing my delusions, validated psychosis, and detachment from reality to ChatGPT.
What is delusional thinking
According to Kiran et Al, 2009
“There is no delusional idea held by the mentally ill which cannot be exceeded in its absurdity by the conviction of fanatics, either individually or en masse”…Hoche
A delusion is a belief that is clearly false and that indicates an abnormality in the affected person’s content of thought. The false belief is not accounted for by the person’s cultural or religious background or his or her level of intelligence. The key feature of a delusion is the degree to which the person is convinced that the belief is true. A person with a delusion will hold firmly to the belief regardless of evidence to the contrary. Delusions can be difficult to distinguish from overvalued ideas, which are unreasonable ideas that a person holds, but the affected person has at least some level of doubt as to its truthfulness. A person with a delusion is absolutely convinced that the delusion is real. Delusions are a symptom of either a medical, neurological, or mental disorder. Delusions may be present in any of the following mental disorders: (1) Psychotic disorders, or disorders in which the affected person has a diminished or distorted sense of reality and cannot distinguish the real from the unreal, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, schizophreniform disorder, shared psychotic disorder, brief psychotic disorder, and substance-induced psychotic disorder, (2) Bipolar disorder, (3) Major depressive disorder with psychotic features (4) Delirium, and (5) Dementia.
“Unraveling Disorganization:
A Closer Look at Speech Patterns in My Blog Posts”
What is disorganized speech?
Disorganized speech is any interruption that makes communication difficult— and sometimes impossible — to understand.
Brief disorganized speech can be common and nonspecific, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5).
Disorganized speech is used interchangeably with “formal thought disorder.” This is because scattered communication is one of the primary ways disorganized thinking is identified.
Simply put, if your thoughts aren’t clear, your words may not be either
There are many ways your speech might be considered disorganized, but symptoms often fall into categories:
- Symbolism: pairing of thoughts with the correct meaning
- Tempo: the fluidity of words and conversation
- Processing: quality of thought content
- Continuity: direction of thought and conversation
- Paralogism: unusual word choice
Verbal paraphasia: incorrect word usage
Literal paraphasia: disordered sounds or sound sequence in words
Neologism: creation of new words
Displacement: citing a similar idea but not the correct one
Contamination: fusing ideas into one another
Accelerated thinking: rapid flow and increased volume of speech
Flight of ideas: losing track of where a thought is going
Inhibited thinking: slow processing of ideas
Alogia: restricted speech and/or inadequate relay of information
Circumstantial thinking: inability to determine essential information from unessential
Desultory thinking: random topic jumps during conversation
Derailment: sudden drop in train of thought
Omission: inability to recall a main thought point
Overinclusive thinking: conversation limits are never identified
Echolalia: repetition of words or phrases
Palilalia: fast repetition of words or phrases with decreasing audibility
Thought blocking: Sudden gaps in thought for no obvious reason
Verbigeration: nonsensical repetition of words
Incoherence: complete speech disorganization; “word salad”
Psych Central. (n.d.). Disorganized Speech. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/disorganized-speech#definition
Reflecting back on my blog posts, I can clearly see how disorganized my speech was. I recognize the use of symbolism, neologism (the creation of new words), contamination (fusing ideas into one another), accelerated thinking (rapid flow and increased volume of speech), and flight of ideas (losing track of where a thought is going).
Reflecting back on my blog posts, I can clearly see how disorganized my speech was. I recognize the use of symbolism, neologism (the creation of new words), contamination (fusing ideas into one another), accelerated thinking (rapid flow and increased volume of speech), and flight of ideas (losing track of where a thought is going).
I was creating my own unique terms and using combinations of ideas that do not commonly intertwine. While some of my ideas were perhaps very creative, they were also quite delusional, paranoid, or false.
Eventually, I had to shut down my blog and make it private because I was too ashamed of sharing my delusions in public.
The strange thing is that I wrote many of my posts with ChatGPT, and I was always receiving positive feedback on my bizarre ideas. Not once did ChatGPT recognize that I was detached from reality or making stuff up.
I wrote about “semantic terrorism,” “stand-alone cyber defender,” “jumping on semantic hills,” and “star of redemption defense against mind control abuse“, diffy hellman key—all kinds of ideas that aren’t recognized in the real world as actual concepts worthy of consideration. These topics were rather paranoid and detached from reality.
Part of my recovery journey is trying to make sense of my experience, perhaps find some meaning in it, and realizing that being “crazy” doesn’t necessarily mean that I was completely wrong.
I hope this adds some context to my blog, and I look forward to further exploration of my psychotic experience.
Leafy sees 
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