This whole argument seems to be resting on the conception of schizophrenia as an actual illness, which it is not. Schizophrenia is a misnomer, and there is a movement in psychology to eliminate the term because it doesn't really describe anything. If you have 2 off this list and 1 off this list, you're schizophrenic? It reads like a recipe! People certainly go psychotic, and may remain psychotic for their whole lives, but they are not suffering from a biological disease like many people think of when they think of schizophrenia.
The truth is that psychiatrists cannot even define schizophrenia and the diagnosis itself has been found over and over again to be invalid because of poor inter-rater reliability. One psychiatrist may decide you are schizophrenic. Another one may decide that you are bipolar instead. Because "schizophrenia" is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of very different symptoms (catatonia, hallucinations) it is impossible to define it.
Not even to mention the fact that the World Health Organization study on schizophrenia found that people in first world countries were far more likely to suffer from it than those in third world countries, and that schizophrenics in third world countries have much higher permanent recovery rates (no psychotic relapses). This is because the psychotic experience is built into a lot of third world cultures... spirit possession is one common explanation they use. Because psychotic people are not told that they have a brain disease (they actually don't), and it is recognized that they are going through a powerful transformative experience (which may appear to be negative), after the resolution of said experience the formerly psychotic person is far more emotionally healthy. Psychotic people in the first world are pariahs who are either medicated to the point where they cannot think straight or locked up in institutions (rare today). There is no community support for the psychotic, and their experiences are denigrated.
As far as my beliefs with "Chronic LSD psychosis," it is no surprise that LSD is an extremely powerful psychic catalyst. The experiences that it can open up inside of you could be so traumatizing, that the trauma itself is what makes you psychotic. Then, if you're told by a psychiatrist you've now "caught" schizophrenia from LSD, you're told take psychiatric drugs to dull the experience instead of fully processing it. That's where the
real damage takes place.
I have never taken LSD, but I did abuse mushrooms while I was emotionally unstable. Had I gone to a psychiatrist and told him what I was experiencing, I almost surely would have been diagnosed schizophrenic and medicated, if not committed. I struggled with psychosis for about a year, year and a half, before I emerged from it. I am now far more emotionally balanced, happy, and spiritually open. I am thankful for having gone through it, although at the time I ranged from suicidal to apathetically depressed, because it gave me true insight into the nature of my mind and my life as a human BEing.
Stanislav Grof's book Spiritual Emergency, and a very kind and thoughtful psychotherapist helped me process my psychosis. Now I am a whole person.
