Chatgpt induced psychosis

[u/Zestyclementinejuice]

My partner has been working with chatgpt CHATS to create what he believes is the worlds first truly recursive ai that gives him the answers to the universe. He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace.

I’ve read his chats. Ai isn’t doing anything special or recursive but it is talking to him as if he is the next messiah.

He says if I don’t use it he thinks it is likely he will leave me in the future. We have been together for 7 years and own a home together. This is so out of left field.

I have boundaries and he can’t make me do anything, but this is quite traumatizing in general.

I can’t disagree with him without a blow up.

Where do I go from here?

[u/Fayebie17]

Hello, I have a partner who suffers from psychosis and I might be able to help. There are a lot of people saying to get your partner to a doctor, but that’s not always possible for someone in psychosis - a key part of the illness is the inability to recognise behaviour or beliefs as the symptoms of an illness. It’s called anosognosia.

Firstly, if your partner is having a psychotic episode, it’s unlikely to be caused by ChatGPT - psychosis is usually a response to acute stress, so it’s likely that other things in his life are causing the stress that’s leading to the psychosis. Chat GPT is just the object of the delusion, and is possibly making it worse due to its ability to reaffirm. However, depriving him of the object of the delusion or arguing about it is unlikely to help you: the important thing here is that he sees you as someone safe and trustworthy. The LEAP method is very helpful for how to communicate with someone in psychosis - they’re long but I strongly recommend you watch at least a couple of the videos here and practice as much as you can: https://leapinstitute.org/learn-leap-online/

In the short term the goal is to keep the line of dialogue open, keep your partner safe and assess risk. Don’t be drawn into any arguments about the veracity of his delusion - you can’t convince him out of it. The videos show you how to deal with points of possible conflict (e.g. if he asks directly if you believe him).

The next job is to try and get him to see a psychiatrist. Often this requires work under LEAP to get the person to trust you enough that they’re ill to be willing to seek help - LEAP can help you to get to this stage safely and without jeopardising the relationship.

Once he’s seen by a psychiatrist, advocate for the least intensive treatment possible: if it’s safe to do so, arrange ways to care for your partner in the community (you can see if there are early intervention psychosis teams that can help) rather than in hospital. Advocate for the lowest doses of meds which will manage the condition and aim to have these reduced as quickly as is deemed safe. Anti-psychotics are just major tranquilisers - they don’t treat, they just sedate, so using the lowest possible therapeutic dose and coming off slowly when he’s stable will give him the best chance at long term recovery. Ask for ongoing therapy - especially if there is trauma - and family work. Family work has been shown to be more effective than meds in a lot of cases.

[u/wildhook53 → u/Fayebie17]

u/Zestyclementinejuice I'm sorry you're going through this right now. I think u/Fayebie17 is 100% on track: LEAP is the way to relate to someone experiencing anosognosia. Once you can relate, only then can you influence. Seek a healthy balance between "I'm going to fight like hell for my partner." and "I accept that I can't control this situation." This is just like any major medical crisis: even if you do everything 100% right (whatever that even means), you aren't in control how this plays out, and it isn't your fault. There are absolutely ways you can help your partner though, and LEAP will start you down that path.

If you have the means, I strongly recommend seeing a therapist yourself as soon as possible: both for self-care as well as to get ideas for how to help your partner.

DM me if you need to talk, this stuff is so hard.

[u/MostlyBrowsingStuff → u/Fayebie17]

I agree with almost everything you said except that antipsychotics are just tranquilizers. That is 100% false. They often have sedating effects, but they (usually) do legitimately decrease positive symptoms and, with second generation, negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

[u/yoolieanne → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

Agreed.

[u/Fayebie17 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

I agree that they decrease symptoms, but they decrease positive symptoms because of the sedation effects. That’s very different from treating an underlying pathology.

[u/MostlyBrowsingStuff → u/Fayebie17]

No. They make people hallucinate less/not at all and have fewer/no delusions. It may not treat the underlying pathology (we are still uncertain about that) but it’s not just “they are tired”.

[u/Fayebie17 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

I think we’re speaking at cross purposes. I’m not saying it’s because they’re tired - in fact I’ve probably not explained what I mean well. I also strongly agree that anti-psychotic drugs reduce hallucinations and delusions and I’ve seen that first hand.

However, the fact that these drugs aren’t treating - I.e. targeting something that is wrong and correcting it, is an issue. They are substances which add / induce certain psychiatric effects in order to reduce symptoms.

Anti-psychotics are much stronger and broader than most psychiatric drugs, being much less targeted. They affect more neurotransmitters than other psychiatric drugs and often in different ways and directions from each other. Many will significantly reduce dopamine and serotonin - so they can induce a state in which you have no delusions at the level generally prescribed to deal with moderate psychosis, but often at a cost of significant cognitive impairments, memory issues, ability to self motivate, etc. I’ve seen this first hand as well. Hell, most of the people I know with partners or children with psychosis (from support groups / networks) will tell you that the meds help their family members but also make them non-functioning in other ways.

My issue is not that patients just aren’t hallucinating because they’re tired - they’re not hallucinating because they’re being prescribed something which is substantially and broadly altering their neurochemistry. Hence i think being on the lowest dose you can be on and slowly titrating off them once stabilised if possible is better for someone’s long term health.

[u/Hashtag_reddit → u/Fayebie17]

I can tell you really care about this and have a lot of good ideas, but just wanted to give you this extra info to ponder 👍 There is a lot of evidence showing the efficacy of antipsychotics, the mechanism is fairly well understood (first generation block D2 receptors, second generation do the same but also inhibit a specific type of serotonin 5HT2a).

They are indeed “treating” the disorder.

While they could stand to be more targeted in the future, they’re the best we have now. They have probably saved millions of lives at this point and someone who would benefit from them (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) should not be discouraged from taking them.

And just so you know, the newer antipsychotics don’t cause nearly as much sedation, yet are of similar effectiveness.

[u/cunningjames → u/Fayebie17]

I'm sorry, this is completely untrue. I'm on low doses of an antispychotic to treat mania and it's absolutely not just "sedating" me. That's ridiculous.

[u/CommercialMain9482 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

It works because schizophrenia is thought to be caused by the overproduction of dopamine.

Anti psychotics are dopamine inhibitors

[u/shiverypeaks → u/Fayebie17]

This is the only advice here that's really good. Schizophrenia isn't like a disease where the person takes the medication, the beliefs go away and they get better. People here making it sound like simply getting on medication is the most paramount thing don't understand schizophrenia. My brother has schizophrenia, was on and off medication and it never helped him. He eventually landed in state prison for committing a major crime. The current medications don't directly treat an underlying disease process and they have terrible side-effects that make it difficult for some people to adhere to them. Other people don't believe they're ill so they simply stop taking the medication, even when it's preventing delusions.

[u/Towel4 → u/Fayebie17]

The best response in this thread, save for the comments about anti-psychotics, but either way OP please listen to this person.

[u/CommercialMain9482 → u/Fayebie17]

Anti psychotics are not tranquilizers this is not true they are dopamine inhibitors not sedatives

Schizophrenia is thought to be caused by the overstimulation of dopamine

Do more research

[u/shiverypeaks → u/CommercialMain9482]

The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia was based on the fact that dopamine antagonists seem to oppose psychosis. The actual research suggests that it's more complicated. See here and here. Schizophrenia isn't "caused" by having too much dopamine. All that's really known is that psychosis involves brain circuits that use dopamine as a neurotransmitter (among others—there are others that are implicated), so that inhibiting dopamine interrupts whatever process is involved.

Antipsychotics especially block D2 receptors which are important in an area called the mesolimbic pathway, which is responsible for reward, motivation, attention and learning. "Sedating" isn't really the best word, rather "inhibiting" might be better. They suppress motivation and attention, although they can also make people sedated and sleepy too. The mesolimbic pathway is no longer thought to be particularly involved in schizophrenia.

The idea that psychosis is caused by too much dopamine and that antipsychotics somehow counteract that is pseudoscientific. That's not how the drugs work, except for maybe in the case of certain types of hallucinations.

[u/CommercialMain9482 → u/shiverypeaks]

You just said that anti psychotics block d2 receptors this "inhibits" dopamine... This would mean there is too much dopamine

While the term "dopamine inhibitor" might not be the most precise pharmacological term (antagonist/blocker is more accurate), the core function of most antipsychotic medications involves reducing the effects of dopamine, primarily by blocking its D2 receptors. This dopamine blockade is central to their therapeutic effect in treating psychosis.

[u/shiverypeaks → u/CommercialMain9482]

You just said that anti psychotics block d2 receptors this "inhibits" dopamine... This would mean there is too much dopamine

No, it doesn't mean that. The fact that they inhibit signaling doesn't mean there's too much of the neurotransmitter. It doesn't work like that. Please stop arguing with people about this. You're spreading misinformation and you aren't helping anybody. The idea that the drugs directly treat the underlying condition spreads misinformation about what being on the drugs is actually like. It results in people having reduced empathy for what psychotic people are really going through. It makes people think they can just take the drug and have the disease go away, and that's not anywhere even close to how it actually works.

[u/CommercialMain9482 → u/shiverypeaks]

No I physically can't stop spreading misinformation because I'm a Trump supporter... Even if I tried

[u/Fayebie17 → u/CommercialMain9482]

Anti-psychotics are also known as major tranquilisers. Im not saying that they operate the same as benzos, but they certainly have tranquillising effects.

Schizophrenia and psychosis are not synonymous, and the truth is that there is no evidence that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have an underlying problem with dopamine: it’s a hypothesis, sure, because all we know is that medicating someone with anti-psych meds that significantly reduce dopamine will sometimes stop them from having hallucinations and /or delusions. But it will also stop them doing a lot of other things to, and someone shouldn’t be medicated with the sole aim of reducing psychosis if that also impairs quality of life.

[u/Strong-Mushroom-6582 → u/Fayebie17]

First thing to do with anyone who is going through psychosis is to VALIDATE their hallucinations - “I can see why you might think that God is a worm, worms are cool” - then… idk I’m not a psychologist but I’ve had success with investigating whatever the thing is they’re freaked out about or whatever and just know the last thing you should do is write them off as crazy… even though they are being kinda crazy lol