Have you ever known a crazy person?

[ZERO THEORY]

A few, yeah. My grandmother was renting a room to this really lonely 'smithing student from Florida. Gunsmith school had been put on hold. The guy was working two jobs and had long been complaining about how he didn't get more than a few hours of sleep on any given day. He spent any free time he managed to find couped up in the room not speaking a word to anyone. No girlfriend, no friends to go grab beers with, no hobbies, no exercise.

After a couple of years of this, he started telling my grandmother that my uncle (who took out the basement studio) was taking metal coat hangers, straightening them out, and pushing them through the floor and poking him in his bed at night. He even said, "I know you'll think I'm crazy, but..." He was always a pretty weird guy; he had this listless, spacey stare when he talked. Decent enough bloke, but he really cracked his eggs. Him and my uncle didn't get along as it was, and my grandmother decided she didn't want to risk this loon emptying my uncle's guts out with a .30 caliber.

[spyder]

Crazy? Eh... maybe not, but extreme bipolar disorder... you need to meet my X-wife. That can seem like bat shit crazy at times. It did make for fun random "exercise" sometimes though. The Buck Cherry song crazy bitch, yep, pretty much sums it up.

[Mtn.man]

Wife's sister is bipolar.

[Irving]

Define Crazy as your baseline for the thread

Someone that you, with no experience in the field, feel confident would be labed with a specific disorder if they ever found themselves under the focus of a mental health professional. Or, anyone that you feel is worth telling a story about. ZeroTheory had a good example.

The lady I worked with thought that one of the other delivery girls was renting the room next door, and at night, would drill small holes in the wall, put a straw through, and blow bugs into the room that would then bite her.
Very similar to the coathanger thing.

Once I found a cell phone laying in the snow outside and picked it up to look through it, and it was full of pictures of bugs on the wall and bruises on body parts. Didn't take long to figure out whose it was. This lady would call the regional manager and leave messages complaining about random employees messing with her head with their class 4 laser pointers. We'd always have to warn the new management to expect that stuff.

[Ah Pook]

You come to this board every day, Irving. Surely some stand out more tan others.

I have met several mentally deficient people that I would not want to be alone in a room with.

There are a few people in town that go off their meds and hit the bar. They usually get a free ride to Boulder.

I once knew a pathological liar that could not tell the truth to save his life. Sat in his basement and drank non stop. Does that count?

[cstone]

No one is sane all of the time. Some of us have better control of our demons than others. Some demons cannot be controlled.

I believe I have a fair amount of experience dealing with Emotionally Disturbed People. While on the mid-night shift I used to routinely deal with a man named Paul. He was schizophrenic and had extremely complex delusions. I remember how we would routinely track his ups and downs over the weeks. At some defined point in Paul's physical state, we would contact his family and they would come pick him up to get him help and have him clean up. Once medically "adjusted" Paul would function semi-normally until the side affects of the meds would overwhelm him. He just had to stop taking his meds (according to him). He would go back out onto the streets and we would note his reappearance in all of his usual areas. The cycle would repeat itself again and again. Years later, after Paul didn't reappear, I contacted his family and was advised that Paul was dead. I know how much of a mixed emotion that was for his family.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Be safe.

[BREATHER]

Trot, aren't you the one with that terrible trouble about a horse and girlfriend/wifes mother ???? What you classify the mother as being ??? Some people are just plain mean. Just asking, sounds like you may have some knowledge.

Funny stuff abut the DSM. Homosexuality was a mental illness, then back in the early seventies all of a sudden it was not...Many if not most in the "field" are gay. Just an example of how the DSM gets changes.

There are way to many fancy names in the DSM for just plain stupid......

By the way, how is the horse debacle going ????

[gnihcraes]

See crazy everyday at work. Scary of what is walking around freely on the streets.

[wctriumph]

I have made the acquaintance of a few weirdos in my life but I don't think I ever really knew anyone that was certifiable as insane.

[GilpinGuy]

I had an economics professor in college who went ape shit during finals and was hauled off by the police. During the exam he was going around the room (it was more of an auditorium, maybe 100 people in there) and screaming at students, asking them questions, etc. He started to physically grab and shake a few. We were all pretty freaked out by the guy. Police ended up coming in and dragging him away, kicking and screaming all the way out the door.

Over the summer we got a letter saying that we could either take a pass/fail grade based on our test results throughout the semester, or we could take another final exam and have our grade based on that.