~ 2 ~

ParanoidHuman.Com

EmpressIsDying.com for more info about Bryan Basamanowicz

Twitter @BJBasamanowicz

Have a nice day!

~ 3 ~

The Social Imagination Project – TSIP.org

Handbook for the High-Functioning Paranoiac © 2012 by Bryan Basamanowicz

All rights reserved. Printed and bound in Canada. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

~ 4 ~

Featured Excerpts

Hello,

This document was created as a free upload for Scribd. I will be sharing two chapters from my book, Handbook for the High Functioning Paranoiac.

The two chapters shared here are:

What Extreme Paranoia Looks Like

&

The Science of Paranoia

For more information about this book and to purchase the complete edition, please visit www.ParanoidHuman.com.

The contents of the complete edition are posted at the end of this document.

Thanks for reading and enjoy.

Bryan

~ 5 ~

What Extreme Paranoia Looks Like

That’s Bubba in the back with me, Barbara is driving, and

Johnny-Mac’s sitting up front. We’re heading to the Tower

Records store in Macon, Georgia, all of us stoned out of our

minds. I don’t get out as much as my friends do, hence, I don’t

smoke pot as much. I don’t usually enjoy smoking. Too

intense. The depths of my paranoia know no limits. Yet,

ironically, I find it hard to turn down an offer to smoke, even

when I know I’m

in for a rough

time. The smell of

marijuana—it’s so

complex and

penetrating, like I

can smell it in my

bones—triggers some kind of psycho-masochistic craving. I want

it, like a young soldier wants the battlefield. To be tested by

it, to have it—in a way terrifying and all its own— reveal more

of me to myself. Perhaps a bit of peer pressure goes into the

The smell of marijuana—it’s so complex and penetrating, like I can smell it in my bones—triggers a kind of psycho-masochistic craving. I want it like a young soldier wants the battlefield...

~ 6 ~

equation as well. Not that my friends would think less of me if I

declined, but, as any smoker will tell you, paranoiac or not,

marijuana unlocks a communal, tribal kind of group spirit. I

don’t want to be left out.

I feel left out. The backseat of Barbara’s car is hot and

cramped, moist with the nagging scent of pot. Barbara’s telling

Johnny-Mac about her recent report card. “Straight A’s… And I

smoke weed! How badass is that?” She seems so happy about it,

so prideful, and stoned, and driving. Gotta be dangerous. No

way would I ever want to drive right now, my mind squirming

like it is. I wonder if Barbara is experiencing the same thing.

Maybe she’s only driving because she doesn’t want to look like

she’s afraid, like I am. Maybe she doesn’t want me and

Johnny-Mac and Bubba to think she’s afraid, so she’s going to

stay driving even though she doesn’t want to be. Is it my fault

she’s driving? Do I have a responsibility here? Should I be the

one to tell her to pull the car over? I really want out of the car.

Maybe this situation, this moment, is exactly what my mom and

my step dad have been trying to protect me from.

~ 7 ~

I stay silent. Barbara turns her stereo up. Gangster-

rap. It’s vengeful and threatening, its message aimed at me,

point-blank. You should have known this was going to happen,

that your time would come and you’d go down. I glance over at

Bubba. Like me, he hasn’t been saying much as of late. His

eyes are animated though, darting, assimilating, puzzle-

solving. Out of nowhere he says, “Ahhh, hah!” I want to ask

him what the hell he’s talking about. But my mouth won’t

move. My vocal

chords won’t

vibrate. No need to

ask anyhow. I

already know. He’s

figured out what I’ve

already figured out,

that we’re all

fucked. Barbara and Johnny-Mac take no notice.

You see, I’m what you might call a pop-media, plug-and-

play type of paranoiac. I relate my stoned circumstances to

myths, movie plots, books, song lyrics, and, at the moment,

Gangster rap. It’s vengeful and threatening, its message aimed at me, point-blank. You should have known this was going to happen, that your time would come and you’d go down.

~ 8 ~

Partnership for A Drug Free America commercials. I speak,

softly, “Barbara, are you good to drive?” I can’t just…

“Relax, man,” Johnny-Mac says to me. “She’s going, like,

30, miles per hour.”

Barbara glowers in Johnny Mac’s direction, angling her

eyes towards the back seat. “Your friend, is he ok?”

“He’s just,” Johnny-Mac sighs. “…being Joey.”

Johnny-Mac. He must not know. Bubba though, sitting in

the back seat with me—we’re back seaters—I think

he does know. Bubba’s got his knuckles propped under his chin.

Rodin’s The Thinker. The pose, part simian, part self-aware

(but of recognized partialness). I understand now. Bubba is

Rodin’s message to me, a bridging between lower and higher

consciousness. This is why it’s called “getting high.” But this is

too much. I’ve never been this high before.

Not good.

~ 9 ~

And this is what makes the world go round, the gangster

rap says, but you’re the odd man out, always the clown. No

one but you Momma care about you now.

Of course! My mother. She’s the key, my only way out of

this mess. I’ve let her down. And now, until I honor her, until I

crawl back into her womb and ask for a redo, I’ll always be the

odd man out. The loner. Just like… Bastion from The

Neverending Story.

So sai’th the Child-like Empress: Just as he is sharing your

adventures, others are sharing his.

And just as Bastion at first refused to believe

that They could possibly be talking about him, I was now

charged with conquering my own doubt, and saving my dreams.

Was my mom’s playing of that movie when I was kid, like, some

kind of boot camp, preparing me for this moment.

He’s the only one who can save our world.

~ 10 ~

“What do I have to do?” I say aloud, recognizing my words

as Bastion’s, straight off the movie script, feeling straight off

the movie script.

Johnny-Mac turns around and looks at me, a dopey grin on

his face. “Wha… what? You ok?”

Call my name!

It’s irrefutable now. My choice is the same as Bastion’s—

murderous negligence or behavioral insanity.

Hurry, Bastion. Please. Save us!

I will save them. I must. I will believe in myself.

“ROSEMARY!!!” My mother’s name. I scream it out at the

top of my lungs. Barbara turns off the stereo and slows the

vehicle.

I don’t know what exactly I expected to happen, perhaps

that the world would soon dissolve away, that I’d live out the

rest of my days cruising around Fantasia on the pink back of

~ 11 ~

Falcor, the luck dragon. But all that happens is I hear Barbara

tell Johnny-Mac that she thinks I’m suffering from

schizophrenia.

~ 12 ~

The Science of Paranoia

The active ingredients in cannabis, THC and CBD, give the drug

both “stimulant” and “depressant” properties. But Cannabis may also

be fairly classified as an hallucinogen due to its effect on memory and

time perception. These distortions may at times precipitate

experiences that are more similar in nature to those of LSD or

psilocybin (mushrooms)1.

While in India, I made a series of video documentaries of myself

under the influence of cannabis. The purpose was to provide myself an

opportunity to review and contextualize my paranoia with the benefit

of a sober mind, a kind of self consultation. One thing I noticed was

that certain synchronistic (coincidental) events or experiences— small

pockets of order that manifested as highly fated phenomena while

stoned, as if they were being intentionally sequenced by some inter-

dimensional architect—didn’t seem as seamless and razor sharp under

the light of sobriety. For instance, I took some video footage of myself 1 McKim, William A. Drugs and Behavior: An introduction to Behavioral Pharmacology (5th Edition). Prentice Hall. p. 400.

~ 13 ~

brain-numbingly high in a dance club in Goa. I would come up with

some bizarre thought and would take out my camera and comment on

it for posterity. I had to shout over the music, but that was fine. I was

there with my friends and working on an important project. I didn’t

care if it looked a bit

odd. What was odd

was the fact that every

time I took out my

camera and began to

talk, the music

drastically changed. On

cue, it got dramatically

faster, or slower, its

texture would transform suddenly into a completely different sound,

as if I was directing it somehow. For a time I thought the DJ was

amusing herself by fucking with me, initiating these alterations every

time she saw me take my camera out and begin to talk. Maybe she

knew I was high (everyone always knows, right?). But the next day,

when I reviewed the footage, the synchronicity, though perceptible,

didn’t appear as uncannily sharp.. There may have been a tenuous

I didn’t care if it looked a bit odd. What was odd was the fact that every time I took out my camera and began to talk, the music drastically changed. On cue, it got dramatically faster, or slower, its texture would transform suddenly into a completely different sound, as if I was directing it somehow.

~ 14 ~

relationship between my behavior and that of the music, but it was

much more of a hazy relationship than the on-cue and seamless

action-response link I’d discerned in the heat and intoxication of the

moment.

The science of such perceptual distortions can be explained by an

overstimulation of a part of the brain called the basolateral amygdala2.

2 "Why Pot Smokers Are Paranoid.” Time Healthland, April 6, 2011. Retrieved July 14, 2012

~ 15 ~

Located just to the front of the hippocampus, the basolateral

amygdala regulates fear and learning. In a rat study in the University

of Western Ontario in London, it was found that THC’s interaction with

this part of the brain was largely responsible for the cannabis user’s

experience of acute paranoia3. Think of the basolateral amygdala as a

bridge-building tool connecting experience to emotional responses.

I.e., this is the part of the brain that governs how one learns to fear

certain things. A hot stove for instance, once it burns your hand, your

basolateral amygdala builds a bridge, an aversive association that will

discourage repetition of such behavior. Marijuana is said to heighten

perceptual sensitivity; it’s one of the features of the drug that non-

paranoid smokers enjoy. But heightened sensitivity in the brain’s fear-

response mechanism, for the paranoid smoker, means they encounter

a new susceptibility to fear. Hence, they learn how to become afraid

of things that wouldn’t trigger fear in the normal mind4. An ambulance

siren for example, for the paranoid smoker, may take on an ominous

quality. The paranoiac may wax philosophical and make various

skewed associations, perhaps recalling a television drama they’d

3 See note 6 4 See note 6

~ 16 ~

watched the previous night, or, if they’re of literary persuasion, they

may recall the John Donne poem, For Whom the Bell Tolls, where

Donne argues that man is never an island unto himself but always

piece to a larger “continent.” The ambulance siren may thus become a

frightening symbol of the metaphysical truth of shared destiny—

Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee

…and to a tripped-out basolateral amygdala, a philosophical truth can

land in the mind with visceral impact.

17th century poems, movies, television, shows, lyrics from a song,

a wayward glance from a stranger, any variety of events may set into

motion the gears of paranoia. The human imagination, when it

becomes unbound, needs little in the way of raw material to construct

complex fantasies and delusions. For the true paranoiac, virtually any

imaginative thread may bind together an otherwise improbable fear-

stimulus with the immediate circumstances or thoughts of the

paranoiac. In a larger scope, it can be said that this perceived limitless

~ 17 ~

of associative potential is what proves so discomfiting. As the writer

Norman Mailer put it:

“One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness -- the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.”

In a recent human study conducted in London, there seems to be

evidence of a type of zero-sum trade-off between normal perceptions

and paranoid ones. As summarized in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Ingesting THC brought about irregular activity in two regions of the brain (the striatum and the lateral prefrontal cortex) that are key to the way people perceive their surroundings. THC seemed to boost the brain's responses to otherwise insignificant stimuli while reducing response to

~ 18 ~

what would typically be seen as significant or salient5.

Scientists have thus far been able to identify several of the

component parts of the paranoid high— THC , the basolateral

amygdala, the striatum, and the

lateral pre-frontal cortex— but

the puzzle remains incomplete.

We know that THC can expand

the range by which the brain

cognizes fears. But why is it that

some cannabis users vividly

experience and psychologically

react to these fears while others

seem completely unaffected by

them? Are people who “get paranoid” suffering from various deep-

seated traumas, or are they, in fact, gifted in a way, with a unique

intellectual and imaginative capacity? Can cannabis-induced anxieties

be confronted and overcome in a productive manner? Should they be

5 “Paranoid or Placid.” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 6, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2012

We know that THC can expand the range by which the brain may cognize fears. But why is it that some cannabis users vividly experience and psychologically react to these fears while others seem completely unaffected by them?

~ 19 ~

confronted and overcome? Can their productive exploration in a

therapeutic setting precipitate an improvement in self-confidence,

awareness, and overall quality of life? Hard science, as of yet, has no

conclusive answer for these questions6.

The pursuit of mental

health often involves calibrating

one’s fears to suit one’s need

for survival and the pursuit of

one’s goals. But if we are visited

by strange fears, in whatever

form or fashion, there must be

some semiotic root, something

that we’d, perhaps, prefer not to look at directly, choosing instead to

image such fears by way of elaborately rendered imaginative

sensations or narratives. If birds make you paranoid, dogs barking,

strangers whispering in the subway, television shows or movies that

seem to be built around your life, the bible… whatever it is that

triggers the paranoid reaction, I believe we might do well to 6 “Scientists Are Learning How Weed Causes Paranoia.” Wired Science, January 16, 2008. Retrieved July 14, 2012

…whatever it is that sets your paranoid gears into motion, I believe we might do well to confront and

learn from, rather than flee, such phenomena

~ 20 ~

acknowledge, explore, and learn from, rather than flee, such

phenomena7. The argument I’m posing is that it may prove a worthy

exercise to creatively and carefully explore our distended, cannabis-

induced fears. We may, by reverse-engineering certain fears, discover

new insights into the self and the world we live in. In the following

chapters I will provide a rough outline for how this may be achieved.

Why do I think I’m going to have a heart attack?

Before concluding our brief abstract on the science behind

paranoia, I want to address one of the most frequently cited traumas I

encounter—the racing heart-rate. While the empirical data on the

subject couldn’t be more clear—no one has ever suffered any kind of

cardiac trauma as a result of ingesting cannabis at any dosage-level8—

so many people report the traumatic perceptual experience of the

heart racing, seemingly beyond control.

7 This of course comes with the caveat that one should learn to separate actionable paranoias from chemically-induced ones. Most otherwise mentally healthy paranoiacs have no problem doing this. 8 “Marijuana Smoking Doesn’t Kill You.” WebMD Health News, September 18, 2003. Retrieved July 14, 2012

~ 21 ~

While the inner-workings of psychological paranoia may continue

to elude science, the increase of heart rate is easy to explain. THC

smoothes out and relaxes the muscles in the arteries that drive the

flow of blood. This relaxation creates an increase in the diameter of

the arteries (vasodilatation). Blood pressure, in turn, decreases, and

the heart naturally compensates by beating faster. Vasodilatation is

why the eyes redden. Blood is flowing through more channels and

becomes more widely distributed throughout the body9. This is not a

bad or dangerous phenomenon in itself, but when one’s inner

anxieties are running amok, it’s quite easy for the hyper-stimulated

basolateral-amygdala to use this somatic anomaly to render fear-

response. In reality, this increase in heart rate is natural and poses no

threat to your health or well-being.

9 Iverson, Leslie. The Science of Marijuana. London: Oxford University Press, 2000.

~ 22 ~

Contents ( Complete Edition)

Foreword/About the Author:……………………………………………

What Extreme Paranoia Looks Like ……………………………….

The Science of Paranoia………………………………………………….

Why do I think I’m going to have a heart attack?.........

It Makes Me Paranoid, So Why Bother?............................

Greater comfort and enjoyment in social environments where cannabis is present………………………………………………..

Ability to consider cannabis as an alternative medicine to treat mental and physical illness………………………………………

Ability to access, learn from, and creatively apply new dimensions of consciousness..………………………………………….Error! Bookmark not defined.

Ability to use cannabis as a safer and less expensive alternative to alcohol and other drugs……………………………..

The Social Taboo and Stigma of Paranoia……………………….

Paranoia Management Coaching: Critical Operating Principals

What Makes a Good Paranoia Management Coach? ...........

~ 23 ~

How it Works: Some Nuts and Bolts of Paranoia Management Coaching ...............................................................................

Strategy #1 - Understand, internalize, and accept that one’s experience using cannabis, just like any other experience in life, is temporary..………………………………….……Error! Bookmark not defined.

Strategy #2 – Cultivate a “Non-Adversarial” mindset towards paranoia…………………………………………………………….

Strategy #3 - Maintain control over your dosage …………

Strategy #4 – Embrace the opportunity for unique thinking and insight into the self……………………………………………………

Strategy #5 – Quietly but sincerely credit yourself for confronting your fears..……………………………………………………

Limits and Precautions.…………………………………………………..

Legal……………………………………………………………………………..

Age……………………………………………………………………………….

Cannabis use and schizophrenia, psychosis etc……………….

Appendix A— Tongue-in-Cheek Listing of the Top 13 Paranoia Triggers ................................................................................

Appendix B— Two Adventures in Paranoia ..........................

~ 24 ~

An Adventure in Negative Paranoia—“Sneezing Paralysis and Yawning Dysmorphia”………………………………………………

An Adventure in Positive Paranoia—“I *heart* Italians”.

Appendix C — The Extremes (Why Adolescents Should Abstain From Cannabis Use)…………………………………..........

For more information about this book and to purchase the complete edition, please visit www.ParanoidHuman.com