When I was in my early teens I was hospitalized and diagnosed with "schizophrenic tendencies". I believe they came up with this diagnosis through much of what I said. The humorous part of this to me is that much of what I said was spawned by the reality that I had been taking psychedelics for a year and I had spending quite a bit of time talking to trees.

try saying that to psychiatrists and interns in a small town psyche ward in the 1970's. I have no doubt that I was mentally ill because the reason for my hospitalization was a suicide attempt. My definition of mental illness is not the extreme states that are very similar to the extreme states of being on a psychedelic; my definition of mental illness is losing one's internal balance. And I had certainly lost that.
But it was readily apparent to me at the ripe age of 15 that these doctors had absolutely nothing that was going to cure me, let alone help me heal (Thorazine? Haldol? For an unhappy and confused teenager? Who is the mentally ill person in this scenario?). I figured out what they wanted to hear and I said it. No more talking about my tree elders LOL.
Fast forward many, many years. I have been stable because I have worked very hard at creating stability. It's a relationship. It's an art. It is frustrating and fascinating. Psychedelics helped and over-use hurt--lesson learned. But the most therapeutic aspect of psychedelic experience for me was the portal opened between myself and nature. Nature is in fact our most powerful healer. To learn to be truly held by the world is a euphoric experience unequaled by any drug experience.
I think some of the most fascinating studies today about schizophrenia are the anthropological ones that look at how these extreme mental states are viewed by different cultures. I don't romanticize all mental illness as shamanism but neither do I discount the crossovers that occur. I am drawn to "crazy" people. Yes, they lead messier lives and they suffer their own delusions but they often have a greater clarity about the delusions that the 'normal' world takes as hard facts or reality. Trees, in fact, do talk. The fact that we humans have created a world that is eating itself alive and is killing us in the process seems to me directly related to our inability to listen to anything beyond our own species.
What we call madness has given us great art and beauty, great leaps in mathematics and science and greater insight into human capabilities in general; when we can begin to treat it in a way that recognizes the gifts while ameliorating the suffering rather than flattening and deadening the heart and mind with numbing drugs, I believe we can move past the sane vs insane see-saw mentality and begin to recognize the continuum we all exist on. Some of us being more on the tree end than others......

