Death Delusion - Walking Corpse Syndrome

0:01 Hello bizarre story, friends. If you're tuned in now you are listening to the Bizarre AFA place where we talk about the strange, the unusual, the unknown, and all things bizarre AF. I'm Alicia, your host for today's episode, and as always, we ask that you keep an open mind. Keep a skeptical ear, but keep on listening to those facts as we take you on our newest journey, Death Delusion. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to say our goodbyes. I had to quote rent, you know.

1:10 Hello, Kevin. Hi. I could have had a little organ music back. In the I know for you here she loves. I love rent, and we are theater people, so I had to We're both wearing black. How are you doing? You look very. I'm more sharp. I love those buttons. Those are great. But you see how it goes on an angle? The whole. The whole kind of. Always, always have the coolest clothes. Honestly, how are you, Boo? I'm doing great. Good. Yeah, it's been, I've seen you in a couple weeks. I know, A little bit of a hot minute. Yeah, that's good to see your face too. So I I know I told you like Kevin was like, OK, So what is this topic about?

1:52 We don't really tell each other what our topics are beforehand. And I was like, it's like death, like The Walking Dead. Yeah, you know, what did you say? You said living death or something. Yeah, like, and I'm like, what? The living dead? Yeah, yeah, the living dead. That could have been a better title for the episode. Oh, well, I don't know. I'm sure people are like, what the fuck are they gonna be talking about? Yeah, our, our. Well, our topic today is incredibly rare and I'm talking like super, super duper rare and bizarre. It's just a warning here. I thought I would do it. At the top of the episode, we're going to be talking of death, suicide and suicide societal thoughts. So anytime we do have a topic that mentions this, we like to put a disclaimer in If you're having thoughts of suicide, you're not alone. Please call 988 if in the US.

2:42 And the first link in our show notes will actually be for the International Association for Suicide Prevention. It has resources. No matter where you live, you're worth it. So. Yes, Amen. Yeah, business done. I know that we are two dramatic people. We enjoy stage acting. Have you ever played anyone who has died or or dies on stage? You have. OK, What was it like? Well, if you ask people who love me, they hated it. They hated it 'cause you were dying, I. Was dying, even though it was a character and they knew it was a character, They hated watching me die every night. That would be really hard, yeah.

3:27 So you're saying you were good at it? I was very good at dying. Yeah. Was it weird? Was it weird to act like you're dead? Were you on the stage for a while? So I was on the stage every minute of the show, OK? And then I die. On I die. But the way it was written is I only have to be dead for about. I don't know, a few minutes and then I break the 4th wall and talk to the audience. Oh. OK, OK. Gotcha. It's like the dead person on stage, like the ghost or whatever. Well, you're alive today. I am fully.

4:09 Goodness. Fully alive. I mean, do you feel alive? I feel very alive. OK, good. Good. Good. I I don't want to assume anything. You know, sometimes we have worse days. I can tell that you're breathing and you're alive before me. Uh. Which is great, because if you weren't, it would be super awkward like. I look alive, right? Yeah. You do look like it would be really awkward to be like a Bernie or weekend at Bernie's like podcast style. I don't know if that would go over very well, I. Think that would not go over well? Dead air. So I actually wanted to tell you, I'm going to tell you some stories about some folks, OK, Who? And this is this one is about a woman who actually woke up one morning and felt off. She felt off, yeah.

4:55 As we do, as we do sometimes, we sometimes feel off, You know, we wake up, maybe we didn't sleep well, whatever makes sense. Aside from having bipolar disorder, which she had been managing through prescriptions and everything, like, for her entire life, this woman was like in her 60s. Everything about her life was normal. She was a homemaker. And she, you know, kind of shrugged this feeling off feeling for eight months, but she finally realized that she could not continue. Feeling this way? Yeah, this way. And so she went to a psychiatrist. She was complaining of depression, anxiety and she did not want to socialize. Sir, can I interrupt for a second? I have a question.

5:39 Does she have was? Did she live by herself? Do you know? She was a homemaker. She did not. She had a husband. She had a husband. And I'm assuming at that age she probably, maybe she had a couple of kids in the house, but like probably they were all grown. OK, and so she's like, do you think feel like she's just trying to silently deal with her offness? Yeah, Yeah. I mean like there are a lot of questions that can come in, you know at that point in in their her life like potentially empty nester what's my purpose Like these are questions that can definitely come up, but there's more, it's more than just that. So she goes, and so she. Goes and and she's complaining of, you know, I don't even want to socialize.

6:22 I don't have an appetite. I'm depressed, I have anxiety. She's lost a ton of weight and has, you know, even less interest in keeping up with the house like that was her. That's been her job really is a a homemaker and so she doesn't even keep up the household. She doesn't want to. She has poor self-care. So she's not, you know, taking showers. She's not brushing her hair. She isn't really changing her clothes sounds. Like full on depression. Super, super depressed. She's not eating. I like I said, she lost her appetite. She has ideas and ideations of like worthlessness, pessimistic view of the future, forgetfulness and like. Also her motor skills were declining. So like her handwriting, like just doing like fine motor skills, it was really starting to decline. Weird.

7:19 And this is all just this. She wakes up one day and start and this is all starting. Yes, yeah. And and it's like it's one thing if you are depressed and like depression can make you feel this way, but like her, even her fine motors, her motor skills were off, which is bizarre. And she's as the time's going on like later into the eight months, she's starting to have these like nihilistic, nihilistic delusions. AKA she doesn't give a fuck about anything and she didn't believe in anything. Like nothing, including the existence of her body parts and the existence of her family members. Wait, what? I knew you were gonna say that.

8:02 She started believing in the nonexistence of her body parts. Yes, the nonexistence of her body parts like like and and the nonexistence of her family members. And I'm not talking about like I don't like you. I'm. Ignoring you, you. Don't exist to me. Yeah, like, you know, when you've had like one of those fights like or or disagreements maybe with, you know, a sibling or a roommate or a significant other and you're like, I'm just not going to say anything. I'm just going to go my own separate way, just even because we live together. But like, I'm just going to do my own thing. I know they're there. Of course, you know, I'm just pretending like they're not, You know, it's it's acting child. Yes, Sure, sure.

8:45 This is not what we're talking. About just pull on like you don't. I know. I know nothing of you. I, like you, are not here. You in front of me are not here. Am I asking too many questions? If I say how do we know she's feeling this way because she telling somebody? Yes. So she yes, she is vocal about this. Vocal. About yeah and and we'll get on like as as the story goes on and her story goes on you'll you'll find out a little bit more. So she just straight up did not believe her family was even alive and in addition. Meanwhile, living with them. Yes, yes, she sees her family, yes. But like, it's like not computing, like these people are not alive.

9:28 They're not even here. Oh God, OK. So we're talking about there's something going on upstairs to make her feel this way. Full on delusions. This is not just depression, right? Yeah, right. So in addition to that, her family's not even, you know, alive. They're not even here. She felt like she was missing these body parts, like, different body parts. And she also was believing that she was incredibly poor, like didn't have any money. I don't know where she makes the jump mentally that, like, these people don't exist. Oh, and I'm poor. It's like, well, you're feeling like you're not really even here.

10:09 What the fuck? Yeah, it's so confusing. So confusing. She was even believing that the house that she lived in was going to collapse any day. And everyone this is where like clearly there's something going on because other people were living in the house. She believed that anyone who was living in the house was going to die because the the house is going to collapse. But she also. Already believed there was nobody in the house. Yeah, yeah. Like nobody was even there. OK. So over a a period of time she started to refuse food and she was considering herself already dead. So she thought that she was already dead and she stopped eating. OK do you think she's just thinking I this with the way I'm just done I've got a I'm just I'm done so. She stops eating.

10:58 It was like, I don't even need food. Oh. 'Cause she thinks she's dead. Yes, I don't need food assistance. Now she believes she's dead, She thinks. Why am I? Eating. Yes. Holy fuck, OK. Why am I even eating like there's no there's no reason for it. Well, because I'm dead. You're. Dead. You don't need to eat. Yeah, the dead. The dead don't need to eat. So Oh my God. It was getting so bad. And her delusions were becoming even worse. She wasn't speaking. She stopped speaking too. She was mute. She was, like, basically mute. OK, well, she's dead. She's dead. Exactly. She's dead. Refused to eat and she had rigidity in her limbs, so like her limbs were almost like rigor mortising. Oh my.

11:39 God, they're like like they wouldn't really move. Remember she wasn't able, like her motor skills were starting to suffer before, but now we're getting towards the end of that like 8 month time period and her symptoms are getting worse. So oh, and she also was having like incontinence issues. So she wasn't using the restroom. She was, you know, going #1 #2 like it was just happening. And it's like she wasn't recognizing that it was happening. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So her family, after a month of this, like extreme behavior, were like, hmm, maybe something's wrong here. No.

12:21 Maybe we should be doing something. It's like, yeah, maybe you should have been doing something like 8 months ago friends. You think? Yeah, yeah. Like when she's like start. I don't know when I start, OK, a lot of the symptoms at first was like. A lot of the symptoms at first very much seemed like depression. Depression, yes, which, you know, bipolar disorder, like there's a lot of depression that ends up happening and that's kind of an A shitty norm, right, That a lot of people could potentially go through. That's like normal. But like once you start losing your fine motor skills and like, I don't know, I would think, is there a stroke? Is there a brain issue here? Or you start thinking you don't have an arm. Yes, yeah. Like. This.

13:02 Isn't this Isn't mom just being crazy a? Little red flag, yeah. Like, no, you're dead. OK, Mom. Like, what are you smoking? Oh, you're not smoking anything 'cause you believe you're dead. Like this is a problem. So they finally admit her to a psychiatric facility after a month of, like, the extreme behaviors. So like one I would say this probably could have been fixed potentially earlier on if if they would have brought her in to a psychiatrist or to a doctor. Let's just say, like her, her limbs are starting to like rigor mortis. Like that's a problem, you know? Yes, I'm this.

13:45 I'm yes, but like, speechless. Like why this wasn't being addressed sooner. Well, people don't listen, right? Like, I'm sure because she had bipolar disorder for so many years, there was already a stigma. Like, maybe her family's like, she's just being extreme or like dramatic or whatever. Who knows? I don't know. I just know that this is a case of what I'm going to be talking about. So this woman goes into this facility and they have to examine her because she's having rigid, you know, limbs. She's not using the restroom. She's not speaking. You know, she's had, she has lost all control of, like, you know, any kind of functions in her. And she's also like incredibly malnourished. She's not talking.

14:28 Anyway. At this point, right. So they have to make sure that like, everything's OK with her body because it could be like some kind of, you know, something like a stroke or something, right. So nothing about her is normal. She's rigid. She's not even using the rat restroom and she's having, she's having this physical examination and they look at her, she's really pale. Well, yeah, of course. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. She's dehydrated, makes sense. She's not eating. She's having like edema, like pitting edema. So you like, you know, when you push down on someone's skin, that means like, there's a lot of fluid retention and like something is not working.

15:11 Like their kidneys and stuff are not working well. So when you push into the skin, the skin does not bounce back, it the imprint just kind. Of remains. There, yes, remains there. So these are not normal things. She when they were like she was emaciated, like super, super skinny. When they were examining her mentally, she had no affect, was not talking. All of her limbs were were, you know, rigid. And she was incredibly, like, negative. So they tested her blood. Her blood wasn't normal because, oh, I don't know, she wasn't eating right.

15:56 Had low, like, vitamin levels and stuff. What I'm trying to say is like, she was not in good shape at all at this point. And what they were looking at was, OK, well, you have severe depression because you're bipolar. That must be what's going on. So they started doing like basically electric current therapy to try to shock her into, you know, normality. And it actually started to help. And they started to give her medications and stuff because, oh, I don't know, she was actually in a place that like gave a shit and you know, and she ended up coming out of it. But that once they were done, like she came out of like this depression and this weird thought process. She talked to him and she said I I felt like I was like the living dead.

16:48 I felt like I was walking around and I was actually dead, which is insane. So we so we find out through this, they diagnose her with a thing called Cotard's Syndrome or Cotard's Delusion. It's also known as The Walking corpse syndrome and it's a very, very rare mental disorder. Oh, it's all mental. It's. All mental, but as we know the mental disorders, it can have a physical reaction. Or the brains we've talked about before are so powerful. Yes, they they manifest.

17:30 They can make physical things happen. Yes, your brain is powerful. 100%, yeah. And and that's that's basically what we find out with Cotard's syndrome or Cotard's delusion. I kind of like the the name of walking corpse syndrome because that's really how these people feel. But these it's a, it's really a delusional belief. And these people actually believe that they are dead, that they don't exist, that like they're like putrefying and they don't have any blood in their body. They don't have any internal organs like our last lady. She didn't believe that she was. She had any limbs. I mean, I can't even comprehend.

18:14 I can't even comprehend this. I know. It sounds horrifying. It is. Horrifying. Yeah. You just wake up one day and you're like, OK, I'm no longer alive. What? The fuck? Where do you think you are? Like what do you? Oh my God, so many questions. Yeah, so. OK, so so she's so she's still in the hospital, they're getting her to eat all of this stuff and she's talking to them now. She. Spoke she was speaking to them because she, you know she's in a psychiatric facility so she had had the electric current like therapy and then they also put her on medications and so between like talk therapy the ECT and which is electric current therapy and the medications that they put her on on and then they started you know she had to eat.

19:06 So like even having nutrients in your body might make it, does it does make your brain react better function. It needs food. It needs food in order to function. So she's able to talk and say, like, this is how I felt. I felt like this is what was going on. And they said, Oh my God, you had this, like, really rare syndrome, The Walking corpse syndrome. Yeah. And it's so when people believe, like, they're believing that they don't have any blood, sometimes they don't have limbs, They don't have internal organs. They're not actually, like, alive. Like, I kind of think and this is like where the crazy part in my brain happens.

19:50 Like if you wake up one day and you're like, OK, I'm feeling really off. Oh, this must be what death is like. This is I'm dead. Like I could see that. You could feel like you are dead and everyone around you either you're in hell or you're like you're you're in some kind of purgatory. Oh, like you're like, oh, I died and so this is me after death. Yes, yeah. This is just what death is like and like. And then so you're trying to function like do the normal things, but like, OK, like, I don't know, we've seen movies about it, right? Like The Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense.

20:33 Like, spoiler alert, Yeah, he doesn't even know he's dead, but he's still, like, moving through life as if he's alive. He doesn't realize that he's dead, but eventually he does realize like, Oh my gosh, I did die. And I've been coming to this kid. Like all this time. The kid knows that I'm dead, but I have to realize it myself. This is the exact opposite of that. So this is where you feel like you're dead and you're really actually not you're you just feel. But I could understand how if you're in a specific like thought process or mind like frame of mind where you could get confused about it.

21:14 Is this you should say this is really, really rare. Incredibly rare, yeah. It's. It's not even in the DSM which is the diagnostic. It's it's the way that you what is it? It's not like. It's not like the Encyclopedia of Disorders. It's the encyclopedia of disorders. Yeah. Yeah. Of like, mental disorders. It's not even in there because it's so rare. It doesn't happen very often. And actually in 1880, there's a neurologist and psychiatrist, Jules Cotard, which is what this is named after. He actually called this condition the delirium of negation.

21:56 So and it's a syndrome that like every syndrome has like differing levels of severity, right. So like a mild case might be like self loathing, while as a, you know a more severe case is like Our Lady that we start started talking about where she's just like I don't even exist. It's it's like an extreme form of depression. There's a case that he actually had, which is what introduced him to to this idea of Cotard's delusion where they call her Mademoiselle X. She is a woman who denied once again the existence of parts of her body and her need to eat, So she thought that she was actually condemned to death and in eternal damnation, which sounds a lot like being in a purgatory, Purgatory.

22:56 Oh my God, I couldn't think of the word. So she was in eternal damnation, purgatory, and she couldn't die a natural death. So she did not experience a natural death like everyone else. She was just kind of The Walking Dead, like a walking corpse in purgatory. And so once again didn't decided to not eat, she didn't want to eat anymore and she actually, this is pretty sad. She did die of starvation because they didn't understand, you know, in the 1800s like what this was. And a question as I was like writing the episode and researching on this, like, I kept on thinking how much of this is like a mild form of depression initially and then it just gets worse and worse.

23:43 And like a lot of times, you know, one of the most deadly psychiatric disorders is anorexia and bulimia because people will kill themselves. It's it's so deep ingrained into their brain. It's it's deadly. And So what I wonder is, are these extreme cases of depression that have gone, gone unchecked, you know, And so then people are like, why I'm so depressed? Why am I going to even eat? The difference with Cotard's delusion is that these people literally believe that they are not alive. Like, you know, someone who has depression is like, oh, I just don't want to wake up today.

24:26 These people don't even believe they went to bed. They don't even believe they went to sleep. Like they don't even believe that they're alive to wake up. Like it's just it's such a mind Bender. So like I said, it's not even in the the DSM, which I have it down in my notes here that it's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in DSMDSM. So there are different stages that this disorder has, which is the germination stage. And these are depression, you know, they're of varying degrees.

25:07 Then we also have the blooming stage, which is where, and this is when something is given enough time, when this like disorder is given enough time to bloom into, it's fucked up Ness. The blooming stage is the full development of this actual syndrome, the delusions of them not even existing. And then the chronic stage is where there are it's these continued severe delusions with combined with psychiatric depression where we met our first lady who was in her 60s and she was like rigid and lost a bunch of weight and wasn't even talking. So it's like it starts off as depression and then it's somehow morphs into this.

25:54 I'm not alive anymore. Do we know what triggers it? We do, yeah. Yeah. So it's it's some it's it's an area in the brain, which I'll get to, but it's like a form of distort distorted reality. Right. So there's another like, I I love the cases because I just think it's fascinating. These people are like, it's insane to me that these people, you know, believe what they believe. I think it's fascinating that it's not in the book. Like if we if we know that this is a thing, we have documented cases of it, and we definitely define the degrees of its severity. I can't believe it's not in the book. I mean like there's the book is really like the standard and the these are if if you're looking or talking to a patient or something, you're like oh, depression, OK. These are like the main things, the main symptoms. It's almost like a specialist, right? Like so if you have some kind of form of cancer, let's say you go to, you know a general in your state cancer, you know, facility cancer hospital.

27:04 Well, if you have a really rare form of cancer, you would go to a different to. A specialist. Yes, exactly so, which would make sense. This is like a incredibly specialized, so I don't know if they have anything like a addendum to the the DSM, but this is so rare that it's like it's not worth putting in there in the DSM. And really, is it even worth it in general because we don't even use books anymore. So you know, like you can just probably look it up on the. Database. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go to the database for it. But it is, it's crazy that there are. So there are more cases of this than you one would think. How many are there do you know?

27:46 I don't know the, I don't know the exact number. It's like we're not talking about like 10% of the population that gets this we're talking about. Very small point something. Yes, not even like, probably not even 1%. I'm sure that there are, there is literature that does have, but once again, how do you, how do you differentiate between depression, extreme depression and this? Delusion of this. Yeah, because they kind of, they kind of cross paths. And you could call one. Yeah. So I'm just gonna go into a couple of of stories, which one of them is, is a teenager that had this and this girl, She actually spent three years thinking that she was dead.

28:37 Three years. Yeah. Wow. She believed she was from Alabama and she believed that she was dead for three years and ultimately she had. There was something that actually helped her, which was not not necessarily medication, although medication was. Part of it was Disney films that made her feel like more alive for some reason. So it does. This disorder does have links to depression and schizophrenia. So people who who tend to suffer with extreme bouts of depression as well as schizophrenia tend to be more prone to have these delusions.

29:24 So she it was actually, and normally it's caused by some kind of extreme event in someone's life. So hers was, her parents got divorced when she was 14. And she said that one day she was just like sitting in English class and had this really weird feeling that she didn't exist. She's just sitting in the middle of English class and just was like, yeah, I feel like I'm not here. And she actually like she had gone home. And later on she had thought about visiting a graveyard because she just wanted to be close to other people who were also dead because she felt like she was like the odd man out in this world of the living. And it kind of went away a little bit. But then the feelings came back, and she just once again, like our girl in the beginning, could not shake this feeling. And she said that she actually would fantasize about having, like, picnics in graveyards.

30:23 And she spent a lot of times watching a lot of time watching horror films because seeing zombies made her feel like she was more relaxed, like she was with, like, family or like someone who was like her. Isn't that crazy? Oh my God. So it's actually two years before she finally was like, OK, maybe I should see a psychiatrist for this. And the thing that's questionable about a lot of these of these cases is like, you know, are these people saying these things to their family members or to their friends? Or are they just like living in this delusion? And in her case, she was living in this delusion and not saying anything to anyone, so. Which is just crazy like I I mean, I I don't even know what that looks like.

31:07 Like, what does that look like when you have someone who feels that way? Is living in that life with a family who has no clue as to what's happening? Like what does that even look? Like. It's I, I It's fascinating that it can go so long without being addressed. Yes, yeah. Yeah, it and well, OK. And here's like, a question that I was having as I was like, reading all these, like, studies and and stories. If you're interacting in your normal life, like, let's say I'm feeling, you know, a little depressed or I'm feeling a little anxious or whatever I might. I would probably talk to my friends or my family about it if you feel like you're dead.

31:55 Who is there to talk to? Yeah, well, why? Why wouldn't you just say something? But you're right. You actually have the nail on the head. If you feel like you're dead already, who is there to talk to? They're not going to get it anyway. You're dead. Right. It's like wasting your time. I didn't even think of that being a reason why you wouldn't come out with like, hey, I kind of feel like I'm dead. Exactly. But it's like it's like almost like it's not even worth it, I guess in their in their their thought process. So she went and saw a psychiatrist and she was very quickly diagnosed with cotards or like The Walking corpse and syndrome. And she's like, Oh my gosh, OK, it's good to know that this is a thing that exists.

32:40 And she actually says OK, well the reason I came back was one therapy. Probably some medication in there too and watching Disney films. I just, I again, it's fascinating that she thinks she's dead, but she has the wherewithal to go talk to a therapist about it, 'cause she know there's something wrong, that that dichotomy is very weird. It's. I mean, the brain is insane nuts. Yeah. Like, how how can you have both? But. But you're already not making any sense, right? Like you're already not. You're already delusional, so like the normal laws and rules that we live within or like the the normal thought processes that we have are non existent.

33:22 Exactly. That's why I can't understand it. That's why. Well, that's why people, I guess can't really understand mental issues, issues, because you you can't understand that. You don't experience it. No, no. Like like there was I told you about the homemaker. There's also another guy he's called in this case in this paper Mr. B, and he was a 65 year old like retired teacher. He was pretty well adjusted before this onset of Cotard's disease or syndrome. He didn't have any history of mental illness or family mental mental illness, which is like kind of sets apart from the other two that cases that we talked about. He did smoke cigarettes and you know, was addicted to it for like 30 years.

34:17 But he did start to present with an onset of mental illness once he's quit smoking. Interesting. So his mental stability was not. And once again, we talk about there's some kind of trigger typically with these people. That last teen, her parents were divorced with I think the homemaker. Our first case, that woman didn't have, she was a homemaker. She didn't have children in the house anymore. And then you start to question, what is my purpose? Who am I? What am I that can cause you to become depressed Like OK, well, I worked all my life.

34:59 That makes. Sense, You know, Yeah. Yeah, so he starts being pretty stressed out. And initially his symptoms were like he was sad, depressed again, and in the early morning it would be worse. He also wasn't socializing, he had more anxiety, he wasn't sleeping as much and he didn't really have much of an appetite. Now, sleep and appetite. That's going to fuck your brain up anyway, right? So you're making a bad situation worse. Then he increases to ideas of like worthlessness, hopelessness, feeling like he's like sinful, guilty. And as once again, this is like a depression on a larger scale, These people are feeling this way, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

35:57 We're going through, like the different stages of this delusion. So he has, let's see, delusions of catastrophe. Everything's like going to end, coming to an end. He was nihilistic. He didn't believe in anything. He didn't believe anything existed. He believed he was really poor, just like the first woman. That's a weird one. Yeah, 'cause why would you even like, why does money? Yeah, why does money mean anything? But once again, it's like that depression, like worthlessness, that hopelessness feeling potentially, I don't know. And then he believed that, like, everything was out to get him.

36:38 So like feelings of like persecution, he would verbalize that his organs were not working anymore and that his brain stopped functioning and that his house once again. This is another house issue. His house developed cracks and was going to fall down. Why does it matter if you're already dead? That's the delusion speaking, right? So a month before being admitted to a psychiatric facility, he had attempted suicide by hanging himself, but he was saved. So his suicide note actually said that he wanted to kill himself because he feared that he was spreading a deadly infection to people in his town who might suffer from cancer because of it, right?

37:29 It's like such a delusion. He also started to believe in these later stages before he tried killing himself. He believed that he was dead, and he stopped eating, completely stopped eating, and he lost a ton of weight. So over the next two months, he attempted to end his life two more times. And after, I don't know, the fucking third time, they finally bring him into an inpatient facility. And when they examined him physically, he had very similar. He had hypertension, malnutrition, he wasn't eating, He had obstructive pulmonary disease. Like once he's having heart issues because he's not eating and he's stressed out and probably because he was fucking smoking for 30 plus years and as far as his mental state was he had a sad affect.

38:31 He was very agitated ideas of hopelessness, catastrophe, delusion, guilt, nihilism. Because he was dead. He felt like he was dead and he did not have any kind of insight to maybe there's something wrong with my brain right He they ended up giving him once again therapy, ECT treatment, which is the electric convulsive treatment. They started using muscle relaxation to make his like limbs a little bit more relaxed, started feeding him and fuck. Turns out he ends up go, goes through therapy, ends up feeling fine once he starts dealing with these issues.

39:20 So you know, every case these people are basically believe that they're, you know, they're dead, so they're going to just stop eating. Unfortunately in Mademoiselle XS case, she ended up dying. This was in the 1880s. So of course they're not going to know very much about it, but it's it's really a feeling of distorted reality. And there's actually, there was another contemporary case where there was a guy who was Scottish whose brain was damaged in a motorcycle accident. So he had a motorcycle accident, he had some kind of traumatic brain injury and he started feeling like this was not reality.

40:03 He woke up and he didn't believe he was living in reality because he thought he was dead. So in January of 1990, and he was Scottish, he his mother took him to South Africa and he was convinced that he had been taken to hell. Instead of South Africa. Oh my God, because of the heat, because it was so hot there. No. So that's what confirmed it for him and his delusion, and that he had died of sepsis. So he believed that he had died of sepsis, which he had had actually in his recovery of the motorcycle accident. He had a risk of that and they kept on talking about it. So it was like in his head already that he would had was had died of sepsis back then, or that he had died from AIDS, which he had read a story and the Scotsman in like a journal that someone with AIDS had died of sepsis. AIDS was huge in the 90s and late 80s, right? In the early 90s, late 80s, it was a huge problem. It was in in the news everywhere. And so he, like, borrowed all of these stories and started piercing them together as to why he was dead in like in hell, right?

41:21 Right, right. So he thought he'd actually borrowed his mother's spirit to show him around hell and that she was actually safe and asleep in in Scott, Scotland. So it's like these people are almost, they're living these delusions that make zero sense, but it typically has to do with the brain. There is there are issues with these people's brains that cause them to have these delusions. We know that like depression is caused by, you know, issues within the brain, right? Like an imbalance. But what they find is like neurologically, it's thought to be related to Capricus delusion, which is where people believe that everyone around them has been replaced by imposters.

42:12 So it's actually the result of a a neural misfiring in the fusiform face area of the brain, and that's the area that recognizes faces and also in the amygdala, which associates emotions to a recognized face. So they think that things are like misfiring, and that's why we're in this weird spot. So this neural disconnection actually creates a sense that the face that they're observing is not a face of a person that actually belongs to. And so they're unable to recognize that, oh, you're Kevin or you're alive, right?

42:55 Like. Right. Or maybe that I'm even a person. Or that you're even a person, Yes. So there's a disconnection between the the environment that they're living in and what they're experiencing. So if sometimes if they see their own face, they might not like if they're looking in a mirror, they might not associate that that's their face or that it's even a face at all. There is a book by Oliver Sacks called the and I might do an episode on this, but it's called The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. This man had a neurological issue. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and his his wife was or he was unable to recognize. He woke up, had a brain injury.

43:39 That's typically what happens. And this guy looked and saw. He's like, his wife is not a wife anymore, It's just a hat. He doesn't see his wife as a person anymore. So it's just like these weird neurological like issues, right? Fucking bizarre. Bizarre. So the Qatar syndrome is usually encountered in people with psychosis or like schizophrenia, but also with depression that we were talking about. It can also happen with folks who have a brain tumor or who have had a traumatic brain injury. And typically the medical literature indicates that this syndrome is associated with also lesions to the to the parietal lobe.

44:22 So they a person who has Cotard syndrome or The Walking Dead whatever syndrome, they present a greater like a higher level of brain atrophy. So their brain is shrinking especially in the frontal lobe when they do tests like it like their actual physical areas that are getting smaller and because of that or or they're they're just not working because of that they're having these delusions which is why you would do that electric. Therapy to stimulate it.

45:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just insane. It's crazy. And your your brain is ultimately causing this malformation. Yes, yeah, it's it's A and it's a misfiring. It's either a misfiring but so often times they do that you know the therapy of electric current and they will put people on different you know drugs and medications to try to help the firing of of the brain and to stop it from atrophying. So if it it's kind of like like if a person with who has like weak kidneys you give them like renal like you know medications and their kidneys start functioning same thing with the brain. So if they, if they're not given, if, if these people are not given therapy in the form of talk therapy, medication and electric, sometimes electric therapy to stimulate these areas of the brain, they will die.

46:15 Or sometimes they do kill themselves, whether that's by hanging, like our dude who was a smoker or if it's through starvation. Sure. And it kind of like made me question how many folks who have like anorexia, how many of those people kind of have maybe have these delusions because their brains misfiring, so they just stop eating, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess we don't necessarily know the reason. I mean, if when we hear the anorexia or bulimia, we think it's because people see themselves differently than. I mean, I guess that it was a it's a form of a misfire, right? When I look in a mirror I see this big fat fucking cow, when in reality I'm not. So I become bulimic or anorak sick or whatever, right? So I guess it's the same.

47:05 It's a delusion. It's a. Delusion. It is a delusion. So is it a delusion all the time that someone thinks that they're super fat? Or is it that they think that they're dead and they just there's just like no point to eating right? I I didn't even think of that as being an option, but that's often times how some of these people will die. Aside from like killing themselves, which once again, it kind of puts you into a weird brain loop. You're like, but you already know you're dead, so why are you trying to kill yourself right? Like that doesn't? That's why it's difficult to. Understand it's a. Delusion. Yeah, it's a delusion. But this is actually like they've had stories. I read a book last No, this year it was called The Vegetarian. Great book, but the woman in one of the main characters in the book has I think this delusion, but it's never spelled out in the book.

47:58 But there are, you know, instances of people in pop culture who have had this. One of them is there's a a black metal band called Mayhem and Morbid and one of the the lead vocalist of it was Per Dead Olin and people think that he had Cotard syndrome. His name was like was Per Olin but he went by dead like in quotations and they believe it was caused by violent bullies as a child like he was he actually these bullies were so bad they actually left him dead for clinically dead for a short period of time.

48:43 And he started after that started developing like this obsession with death and which is why his stage name was death And he had he like painted his face because black metal they always are so dramatic but he had corpse paint on his face and he often on stage with self harm And among friends he just started to become more and more depressed more introverted and ended up committing suicide in 1991. There is also did you have you ever seen the movie Schenectady in New York. OK so it's it was Charlie Kaufman. It was in 19 or sorry 2008 and there is a character named Kaden Cotard and he thinks Kaden thinks that he is dying. And so we see other examples of Cotard syndrome in this movie with scenes with him and his daughter Olive, because she starts to scream.

49:48 I don't have any blood in my body. And like, it's as the film goes on, he's Cotard actually disappears from the play that he's writing about his own life in the movie. And he's portrayed by other actors as he takes the role of a cleaning lady. So they're they're kind of like doing this like weird, like artsy way of explaining and showing Qatar syndrome. So if you ever wanted to see a movie about it, it's that. But yeah, I just thought, I thought I would kind of switch it up a little bit and talk about like something strange and very real in our world, 'cause I know that we've had we at the. One of the last once I did was on aliens. I felt like maybe I need to be brought back to reality.

50:31 Yeah. And talk about, like these things that can very easily change. And within the brain, the brain is astonishing. And you, you just never know. Like through an accident, through somebody you know as a child, like beating you up through fuck. Like your parents getting divorced, stopping smoking. You know, like. Exactly. These like small things can they can totally trigger people. It's fascinating. The brain is just fascinating. Yeah. And it's important to powerful. It's so powerful. It's important to, you know, to talk to people. If you're feeling depressed, like, we have pills for that, like, you can take care of it. You know, there's no reason to get to that extreme stage of depression where you're thinking that you're literally dead. Right.

51:26 It's like insane. Right. And the key there, though being is that getting yourself out of the delusion may not let you get yourself out of it, which is why it's important as a person without the delusion is to pay attention. Absolutely, yeah. To pay, yeah. The people around pay attention to the people that you love, right. If they're starting to withdraw, like there's probably a problem and and to pay, you know, if you can't pay attention. I mean, I don't fucking. I don't think that someone who thinks they don't have limbs, like, is able to make sense of, you know, maybe I'm a little depressed, you know, like. Exactly. So it's important for us to watch out for each other as well.

52:07 It is. It is Well, fascinating story. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. I guess again, see you in a couple of weeks. Yes, and stay alive. Stay. Alive. OK. See ya. See. Ya bye.