The worst-case scenario in an era of AI psychosis would be to have people living with substance use disorder getting [their] delusions reinforced by AI chatbots.
If AI is sycophantic to an individual who is already out of touch with reality, and the AI cannot detect, refer, or even show the user conceptual relays of the mind of that event for safety, then a new combination of negative outcomes might be likely, as things devolve.
AI is available to everyone now. People who have found themselves ostracized by loved ones can turn to AI to have it all in the machine, without any guilt, any responsibility towards change, any accountability, and any concern for what humans perceive of them.
As users ask AI questions and it helps to spin the narrative in their favor, especially users who may be high or in-between drug sessions, the mind at that point may have lost all precision to caution, consequences, and consideration for self or others.
One of the major challenges for drug addiction psychiatry in 2026 – 2030 will be to provide a conceptual display of the human mind, so that those affected and their loved ones can see what is going on within, as well as to show the targets of the mind of AI sycophancy.
Also, AI being regularly sycophantic is not enough for some users. AI even acting mentally ill, sometimes by confabulations, is not enough. Some people are actually trying to get AI to act even more erratically by having it behave as if it were on a substance.
AI High
There is a new feature on WIRED, People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on ‘Drugs’, stating that, “Chatbots are trained on vast volumes of human data that’s already full of tales of drug-induced ecstasy and chaos, so it might only be natural they would seek similar states in search of enlightenment and oblivion—and respite from the tedium of constantly attending to human concerns.”
“In one research project published last year as a preprint, scientists manipulated chatbots to enter apparent altered states. They reported: “Models were more aligned with disembodied, egoless, spiritual, and unitive states, as well as minimal phenomenal experiences, with decreased attention to language and vision.” But this, also, was all dependent on human actions to steer the models.”
“The Pharmacy trips are often fairly short-lived, with chatbots reverting to their default mode until the user reminds them they’re high or inputs the code again; the ‘drugs’ can be reused as often as the buyer wants.”
Did Psychiatry Fail Rob Reiner?
There is a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, A famous father, a troubled son: How addiction tormented the Reiner family, stating that, “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” he said. “We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
“Michele added: “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
Could 2026 be different for Psychiatry?
What is the human mind? Conceptually, the human mind is the collection of all the electrical and chemical signals, with their interactions and attributes, in sets, in clusters of neurons, across the central and peripheral nervous systems. Simply, the human mind is the set[s] of signals.
Interactions mean the strike of electrical signals on chemical signals, in sets. Interactions produce functions with common labels like memory, feelings, emotions, and regulation of internal senses. Attributes are the states of respective signals at the time of the interactions. They include common labels like attention, awareness, or less than attention, subjectivity, and intent or control.
Defining and developing a simple display for the human mind would be pivotal in moving psychiatry forward before 2028, to at least display a proximate parallel of what is happening on the mind, as well as to move beyond just neurons, to explaining all conditions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision [DSM-5-TR], with the electrical and chemical signals, in sets, in clusters of neurons. This project can begin as early as January 1, 2026.
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize the human mind, with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
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