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whether or not someone is biopsy positive, if they do better on a gluten
free diet then they need to avoid gluten.

Reichelt and some others found that schizophrenics and autistics could be
cured or helped a lot (or a lot of them could) with a gluten-dairy free
diet - but they did not find that they were celiacs, that has been
checked.  So there are other kinds of gluten intolerance besides celiac
disease.

I used to know someone - who at first i thought of as a
colorful personality, but I realized after a while that she was
schizophrenic sort of - there are a lot of people who seem to have long-
term chronic delusions but they are able enough to get along that they
escape being incarcerated as mentally ill.  i realized a lot of the
stories she told were fantasy (well, she's
still a colorful personality).  I tried desperately for a long time to
persuade her to find out about the gluten intolerance, to try a
gluten/dairy free diet, to find out if she has food intolerances.  She
would deflect all this with transparently BS arguments (a contradiction
in terms, but never mind :) ) that were red herrings, basically - so
transparently false that it was difficult to resist refuting them.  I
spent a lot of time answering these things, until i realized that what
they were, was red herrings, and the real problem seemed to be more like,
she's addicted to gluten/dairy and she can't face withdrawal/is in denial
about her psychotic tendencies.  She made a comment once that seemed to
reveal the underlying reality.  That she'd tried to quit gluten and dairy
but she got very ill when she did.  She "explained" this as gluten/dairy
having "nutrients" she needed, and she thought she would get sick because
of "nutrient deficiencies".  But it sounds like addiction and that she
was protecting her addiction with all the red herrings.

And, that the brain damage from the gluten/dairy, etc., *helps people to
maintain the addiction* - like they don't do rational thinking to examine
what they're doing.  People who aren't slightly psychotic also get
irrational to protect their addictions, but being a little psychotic
helps!

It is so hard to deal with.  I am mildly that way.  Gluten/dairy and maybe
the other foods I was intolerant to had mildly psychedelic effects on me,
and it is still something i am trying to adjust to, not having that self-
generating colorfulness to my inner life.  I've been too sick to go
through a lot of adjustment.  This person, I think is like this only very
much more so.  The psychotic effects of food intolerance get *woven into*
the person's personality.  It becomes *part of their identity*, and they
would lose something drastic with quitting psychosis-causing foods.  I think
of it as an adventure to go through a change of identity, but for some it
is too much of a shock.

One feels like grabbing hold of such people, *pushing* them through the
whole process, then saying "Look, see, this is what life is like without
your food addictions.  Now you make the choice, do you want the food-
generated psychotic states or to try sanity?"  You really understand those
people who want to force schizophrenics into treatment, although I don't
think much of the treatments that the mainstream wants to force on them -
heavy antipsychotic drugs.

Gluten/dairy free diets for autistic children are a lot more mainstream
than they are for schizophrenics, and part of why may be that parents
*can* control what their children eat.  While the schizophrenics are left
to face things that are nearly unfaceable, with psyches that are wasted -
maybe largely by food intolerance.  One wants these people to summon
strength from deep inside, to face these things - but maybe they just
don't have it.

Laura :(

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