Syd Barrett | Are Psychedelics Dangerous? Do They Cause Schizophrenia?

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the life and death of sid barrett just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background of sid barrett and then i'll move to my analysis roger keith barrett was born in cambridge england on january 6 1946 he took an interest in music from a young age and learned to play several different instruments like the banjo and the acoustic guitar sometime around the age of 13 or 14 he started using the name sid there are multiple stories about how this happened for example it was a nickname given to him by classmates or it was the name of a local jazz musician when barrett was 15 years old his father died of cancer this loss was devastating for barrett at that time barrett was a member of a band his mother encouraged him in that endeavor to help him deal with his grief he played with that band for a while but they would break up in 1962 his interest in music however would continue he started writing songs and went to college he was influenced by the beatles the rolling stones and bob dylan in 1965 barrett joined a band that would soon become pink floyd he selected the band's name not long after this barrett started using lsd there's often an emphasis of his use of psychedelics but he also used a great deal of cannabis in 1966 barrett wrote the majority of the songs featured in pink floyd's first album barrett did well with the band for a while but in 1968 he was heavily using lsd and was exhibiting a number of mental health symptoms including catatonia intense mood swings hallucinations disorganized speech difficulties with memory odd thoughts and behavior depression withdrawing socially and paranoia even though his behavior did change gradually over time at one point he went missing over a long weekend and upon his return his friends described him as a completely different person he did not recognize them all the time he didn't always know where he was he developed this blank stare like he was looking off into space looking through people during performances he would do little or nothing after one performance he failed to reply to the questions of an interviewer and said he just offered a blank stare because barrett wrote many of the songs for pink floyd they initially decided to keep him in the band but not allow him to go on tour but that arrangement was difficult to manage his band mates had trouble firing barrett nobody wanted to be the one responsible for that decision or for telling him but on april 6 1968 the group announced that barrett was no longer a member of pink floyd barrett would return to recording music he released two solo albums but then he drastically reduced his involvement in the music industry by 1974. he moved to a hotel in london but ran out of money and moved in with his mother in cambridge in 1978 he gave up the name sid and started using roger again he continued receiving royalties from his work with pink floyd bear was engaged for a brief time but it didn't work out he never married and he never had children after his mother passed away his only real contact with the outside world was his sister rosemary in addition to mental health problems he developed diabetes and stomach ulcers sid barrett would die from pancreatic cancer on july 7 2006 at his home in cambridge he was 60 years old now moving to my analysis some family members of barrett have said that he did not have any mental disorder he saw a psychiatrist for a few sessions but no medication was prescribed and psychotherapy was not necessary they claimed he was self-absorbed he wanted to be alone and that fully explained his unusual behavior other people who knew barrett strongly disagreed suggesting that his use of psychedelics was highly problematic and he had schizophrenia i'm going to run under the assumption that he did have schizophrenia but of course there is no way to know for sure what we see here with sid barrett as an individual who during his younger years was a little unusual but not in any dysfunctional way when he started working with pink floyd he was described as charismatic outgoing friendly happy and insecure he was an incredible songwriter and musician he was considered expressive idiosyncratic adventurous distinctive and brilliant his work on the guitar was unpredictable and innovative his singing was stylized almost like somebody who was letting their mind run off without any direction his work was described as surreal and obscure it seems as though the symptoms of schizophrenia initially appear to be an extension of his already odd and unusual personality but eventually we see the symptoms became destructive there was no hint of true creativity or genius contained in the expression of those symptoms the symptoms detracted from his abilities rather than enhance them it's understandable that some people did not understand what was going on with barrett's condition they looked at him and thought he's just a creative artist they're all a bit unusual what i find interesting though is that many people around him did realize something was quite wrong even taking into consideration his heavy drug use they figured out that there was some other condition behind his behavior so they realized the drug use didn't really explain all the changes they were seeing one could argue that there is a fine line between genius and insanity in the world of music and in other artistic endeavors at some point barrett crossed that line he became difficult to follow or understand toward the end of his time with pink floyd when he was writing music he was always rephrasing rewriting his anxiety was increasing and he was worried about becoming redundant on stage he would freeze or play something simple for the entire time like the same note after his career with pink floyd had concluded he would get depressed for weeks when he was reminded of his time with the group so for him being rejected by pink floyd was a catastrophic loss something that affected him for quite some time even though he did seem to bounce back with the two solo albums he really struggled to put those together and many of the songs on those albums have a melancholy tone somewhat heavy and disturbing which may have reflected his mood at the time the question often comes up in relation to sid barrett is this what role did psychedelics play in his behavioral change there are three major theories here one the psychedelics worsened or caused is schizophrenia two he had symptoms of schizophrenia and try to treat them with psychedelics or three there is no connection between the psychedelics and the schizophrenia of course there's no way to know for sure what the answer here would be but what would be the most reasonable conclusion based on the scientific research to answer this question we have to go back in time a little bit and look at the history of psychedelics in the research literature for many years both in the popular culture and in the world of mental health research it was believed that psychedelics led to illnesses like schizophrenia depression and anxiety disorders someone would use a drug like lsd and sometime in the future they would develop a serious mental disorder that they would not have developed if they had avoided drug use early research showed a variety of symptoms from the short-term symptoms like acute panic that may resolve spontaneously in a day to long-term treatment resistant psychotic disorders one particularly popular finding was that 50 percent of lsd users had flashbacks those of course are incredibly distressing so if that finding was true the drug is dangerous and should be avoided the conclusion was that psychedelics caused both short and long-term problems and this conclusion remained for many years this was the prevailing wisdom this model of causation is similar to what we see with many illegal substances we know that heroin cocaine and alcohol use for example not only lead to mental health problems like addiction but other conditions so it's understandable why researchers and others reach these conclusions about psychedelics more recent research seems to tell a different story it indicates that there are some negative outcomes associated with psychedelic use but for most people they are restricted to the short term the use of psychedelics is not strongly associated with long-term serious mental illness the difficulty is that the older research had some methodological problems and was influenced by interpretations of anecdotal evidence more so than actual experimentation another problem was that the causal inference was quite easy to make if we look at schizophrenia for example when somebody is going through the onset of that disorder the symptoms are alarming and distressing it's not unusual for a person in that situation to turn to drugs including potentially psychedelics this would explain why the symptoms of schizophrenia and psychedelic use tend to occur at the same time it wasn't just a misunderstanding of psychedelics that led to these erroneous findings in older research but a misunderstanding of schizophrenia schizophrenia is unlike many mental disorders in the diagnostic and statistical manual the dsm if we look at a variety of disorders in the dsm we often find that environmentability and heritability that is the ideological contribution of stress and genetics tend to be thought of as relatively equal so for many disorders it's 50 50. 50 caused by stress and 50 caused by genetics the heritability of schizophrenia is estimated to be between 73 and 90 so it's much more weighted toward genetics than most disorders so moving back to that question what happened in the case of sid barrett did psychedelics cause the schizophrenia did schizophrenia symptoms cause psychedelic usage based on the information available i think the theory that makes the most sense is that barrett developed schizophrenia and due to the access to drugs afforded by his celebrity lifestyle he was able to use psychedelics and cannabis as much as he wanted to in order to manage those symptoms as the schizophrenia symptoms grew worse over time his use of psychedelics and cannabis had a corresponding increase as well the schizophrenia came first then the psychedelics it could also be that the two were unrelated so could have been that he just started using psychedelics and happened to develop schizophrenia perhaps the psychedelics were just part again of that lifestyle where he had access to all the drugs he could possibly want so this is just my theory again there's no way to know for sure what actually happened it may have been that sid barrett did not have schizophrenia at all it's important to note here that even though psychedelics are not strongly associated with long-term serious mental health disorders or addiction they are certainly not considered safe the short-term consequences can be devastating to functioning they are responsible for many accidents and dui offenses specifically they are implicated in instances where people jump off of objects like out of second story windows off of balconies off of stair steps people on psychedelics may believe they are capable of flight and not in an airplane like on their own like superman style flight that misconception is usually clarified upon making contact with the ground even though psychedelics are not as dangerous as we once thought there is a difference between safe and not as dangerous if somebody was in a combat situation like in a building and enemy soldiers were throwing hand grenades into the building if that individual saw three hand grenades roll into one room and one hand grenade roll into another room they wouldn't look at the room with one hand grenade and say that looks safe what are the lessons learned from this case schizophrenia is a devastating illness that is mostly caused by genetic predispositions drug use can sometimes disguise the onset of symptoms both psychedelics and the symptoms of schizophrenia can decrease creativity and productivity they do not enhance or improve performance so they are not responsible for brilliance or genius they always take away from that again devastating illnesses that necessitate treatment those are my thoughts in the case of sid barrett please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 193,685

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Id: gGSW-lhv-og

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021