5 years ago: I grow psychedelic mushrooms and eat them, alone and in small groups, along with several other psychedelic drugs. During one mushroom trip, an overdose, I frighten my friends by behaving as though we could share thoughts; I fall on the floor, take a sharp crack to the back of my head, and have a several-hour partial blackout in which I become aware of fundamental functioning of my mind. Hours later, the trip ends 'like a light switch,' and my cadre of admirers and supporters is now a group of very-upset former friends. The love of my life leaves me.

3 years ago: I have continued to take psychedelics as time permitted, finishing school with honors. During a nitrous oxide balloon trip, I stand up head-first into a tree branch, splitting a several inch gash in my skull and causing a prolonged dissociation and the continuing fragmentation of my identity. An extremely powerful trip with another legal drug, salvia divinorum, nearly destroys me but opens me still deeper to the mysteries of creation. I have lost many friends, made some new ones, and become very spiritual, meditating, fasting, doing yoga and reading from many religions.

1 year ago: A number of psychedelic drug trips (mostly mescaline and lsd) have all but shattered my ego. I rarely speak unless spoken to, have a difficult time making friends, and can only stay focused on the topic of spiritual development. I put enormous energies into this pursuit and have a series of extremely major breakthroughs that form a quasi-messianic picture in my mind of what I want to accomplish.

6 months ago: I have moved in a big way to accomplish these insane-sounding goals. I am creatively and personally fulfilled and in love with life as I rarely have been. I am already experiencing what I know to be the symptoms of full schizophrenia, but I am enjoying it; I believe I am living the next wave of human consciousness. I tell many people how to share my experience.

The Present: I am a trembling wreck. I cannot turn off the experience; the trip will never end. A switch has flipped in my life; I figured something out I wish I could forget. I am guilty beyond measure; I have caused schizophrenia to spread, suicides, I'm sure. I have lost 7 jobs this year. My mind is sharply critical and cold; I cannot stand the company of others and find myself dissecting them, staring at them in cold disapproval, against my own will. I work at a night job and try desparately to avoid psychic overload, to be pleasant, to avoid getting fired. I am back in school and doing well, but am haunted by the thought that the world would be better and safer if I committed suicide. I am frightened to live out my life, I have little interest in it. My prospects socially and romantically have vanished.

That's how you intentionally get schizophrenia, and why it's a bad idea. There's one thing that you're missing if you think schizophrenia is the artist's or genius' mentality, and if I tell you what it is you'll be schizophrenic. It's like being enlightened, but without the optimism.