My Second Psychotic Break

2024 had ended with sicnificant stress. I had broken up with Marta, who had been very important to me, and for whom I had made significant efforts. Not only that, but at the end of December, she moved out of the house that I had bought for her, where I was still responsible for HOA (Home Owners Association) dues, property taxes, maintenance, utilities, insurance, and any other costs and risks. Now there wouldn't even be Marta's pittance rental income and I had to pay for things like repairs, inspections, and staging.

I was also still responsible for my home in Portland, and I was trying to meet my parenting commitments to my boys there. I had not worked, and therefore had no employment income, since May of 2024, and flights to see my daughter in Laos are both expensive and against my environmentalist ideals. To keep my mind occupied, I started an open source software project that required some funding, but really never had a chance of achieving adoption, especially with the advent of code generation by Artifiical Intelligence (AI). More significant than any of this was the fact that in November, convicted felon Donald Trump had been re-elected as president of the United States of America.

At the beginning of the year, I told Susan that I hoped to spend more time in Asia. She understood and said she would work with her lawyer to prepare an updated parenting plan. As she had always said that she wanted more parenting time and therefore been relatively flexible about my need to be in Asia. I had given her more than enough money to care for the children.

At this time, I was upset about the fact that Donald Trump had been re-elected. Partially, I was upset at Susan. Her parents were Trump supporters. She had prevented me from moving out of the United States.

I continued going to Laos approximately every second month, but stopped buying return tickets in advance. In late April, I got an email from Susan's lawyer. She was arguing for things that I had not anticipated, including child support that she did not deserve, especially as I had no job and hence no income, I had given her a million dollars to care for the children, I had funded their UTMAs with hundres of thousands of dollars each, my maternal grandmother had funded their education accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and our existing divorce agreement required me to pay for my younger son Ben's private school tuition and various costs that added up to at least $50,000 yearly. This upset me, but the numbers were small enough that I probably would have accepted it, although the terms were not clear - when would the amount change (since John would move out first), and when would the payments end (since Ben should leave for college).

The bigger issue was that she wanted to take full custody of the boys, meaning that I would have no rights or ability to protect them from her. I don't know the details, but I assumed that she could enroll them in different schools and specifically that she could enroll John in "re-education" programs, as she had suggested previously. I could not accept this and I believe it sent me into a manic eposide related to what I believe may be bipolar disorder.

At this time, I was spending much of my time trolling LinkedIn. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, and it likely is, but I developed a sense that insiders were using the system to manipulate people for political purposes, specifically to divide the American population into left and right groups, to support Donald Trump, and to promote artificial intelligence. I was using ChatGPT in ways that I would not now, but I don't believe that I developed AI psychosis from that - I believe that I had a psychogic break

and I sent her a long email about my concerns as well as how I perceived her.

During my trips to Laos, I have to admit that I was drinking almost daily, generally starting with beer around lunchtime and proceeding into the evening, and sometimes smoking weed at the bars that largely target foreigners in the city center. Kham doesn't speak English, and even if she did, our conversations would be very limitted based on her education, experience, world view, personal characteristics, and priorities in life. There may come a time when I write about Kham in more detail, but for now I don't want to say anything much more negative than that.

In April, I was in Laos. On April 10th, Donald Trump announced Liberation Day involving global tariff threats. While these were initially bad for my personal investements, I was more concerned about their impacts on countries like Laos.

On the 25th of April, I received paperwork from Susan's lawyer indicating that she wanted to update our divorce agreement. From my perspective, Susan had benefited greatly from the marriage and done well financially in the divorce. She had always said that she wanted a majority of the parenting time, and I had been appreciating the flexibility to travel and spend time with my daugher.

My uncle had a bipolar diagnosis (previously labelled manic-depressive), which involves going through periods of depression and periods of excessive energy. I have certainly experienced such symptoms, I believe most commonly triggered by stress.

Along with the drinking and smoking, plus my responsibilities for parenting in Laos and a very strenuous and difficult relationship with Kham, these combined stress factors seem to have pushed me into my second pschotic breach, the first of which had occurred during our initial divorce.

For some reason, one factor that seems to push me into manic episodes involves awareness of people using computer systems to manipulate others without their knowledge. At this time, I was putting a lot of effort into the social network LinkedIn, which started out as a business networking solution and jobs board. What I saw was the content and algorithm being used to harm people intentionally and psychologically. In addition to the countless fraudulent accounts, it became clear that this effort was not just a combination of algorithms and outsiders, but that there were agents within the organization that had specific targets and objectives.

When I have an incident like this, I'm generally conscious of it, but in fact I enjoy it. I seem to have unlimitted energy, no need to sleep, the aiblity to drink any amount of beer without gaining weight, and racing thoughts, though clearly they are not all logical.

For reasons that I don't really understand and therefore can't explain, I appear to have become paranoid. At a bar, I met a South African man that explained that he worked for a company whose job is to clean up bodies after botched operations, whether by military outfits or other customers. I talked to another stranger online that seemed to have relevant experience; that person suggested that I had illegal information and was now on a list.

To Americans, this probably sounds like something I made up based on movies. When I brought it up with people in Laos, they would typically ask "which list" or "whose list". When I told the hotel manager, he didn't even bat an eye. There are plenty of pepple hiding in Laos. For example, I met one woman that worked as a journalist and is now on the run from the South and Central American cartels.

I started intepreting everything as supporting my paranoia. When I went to meet the nun at the school where I had volunteered, I met a Russian. Initially, I was certain that he was planted there to track me and my children.

On the motorbike, every time that I saw a cememt mixer, dump truck, or other heavy equipment, I suspected that I might be a target.

I contacted my brothers in the United States for help, but rather than providing any form of mental health support, they derided, rejected, and ignored me.

One of the craziest things I did was to post my apparent delusions on LinkedIn. Specifically, I suspected a global cartel involving Saudi, Israel, the United States, and/or Russia in an effort to dominate oil supplies. Oil is a hugely powerful economic resource.

Kham must have thought I was going crazy. Instead of being even slightly supportive, I felt that she was always in my way, forcing me to go to parties or care for the children or do other things I didn't want to do so that she could do whatever she wanted, and literally standing in my way when I needed freedom.

I told my divorce lawyer that I was a political refugee and would not be going back to the United States.

***//TODO: relocate this? Considering the timing, and that I had a ChatGPT subscription at the time, it's possible that I suffered some form of AI psychosis related to that. I haven't gone through my old exchanges, but I don't remember content similar to what I've heard around this topic. I do believe that what I experienced was related to overuse of technilogy, specifically (manipulated) social media, and specifically LinkedIn, which supposedly is obviously influenced by some elements of AI (including content generated by LLMs by people with specific intentions, such as to drive psychosis). ***

BELLE, travel NED, travel

I went to Chiang Mai. I rented a condo. I bought a bicycle. I looked into buying a truck.

Around the 25th of May, I closed the property sale for Marta's house at a significant loss, but at least I had that one behind me.

//TODO: Second breakdown: https://deliverystack.net/2025/05/05/my-final-project/

Looking back, it seems clear that I was going through a manic phase of my bipolar disorder, which may be one mechanism to deal with stress and avoid depression.