I was introduced to this fantastic painter through the Schizophrenia book I put in my reviews in the Library page.
This post will, however, focus on a specific thing rather than on the life of Richard Dadd.
Here is a really good short documentary about him if you’re interested or never heard of him.
Note, that it will start from the moment I want to focus on, so you’d want to pull it back to the beginning.
The above mentioned book does a really good job going through the different factors (biological, environmental, uses of drugs) that could contribute to the development of schizophrenia. If you don’t know much about this serious and sad mental disorder and what causes it, I just put this quick revision here:
The Origins of Schizophrenia
A complex neurodevelopmental disorder caused by an interconnected web of environmental, biological, and genetic influences.
🧬 Genetic Vulnerability
- Polygenic riskHundreds of distinct genetic variations combine to create a vulnerability.
- Spontaneous mutationsDe novo mutations not inherited from either parent.
🧠 Biological & Brain
- Neurotransmitter imbalanceDisrupted dopamine and glutamate communication.
- Brain structureEnlarged brain ventricles and reduced gray matter.
- Immune activationChronic inflammation disrupting neural development.
🌍 Early Life & Env.
- Prenatal stressorsMaternal infections, malnutrition, or high stress.
- Birth complicationsHypoxia (low oxygen) or emergency C-sections.
- Social factorsUrban environments, childhood trauma, migration stress.
💊 Chemical Triggers
- Drug interactionsHigh-potency cannabis, amphetamines, hallucinogens.
- Prescription variablesRare adverse reactions or heavy metal toxicity mimicking psychosis.
How the Factors Connect: The Diathesis-Stress Model
Rather than looking at these as separate checklist items, they function as a combined threshold.
Vulnerability (Diathesis)
Stressors
A person might be born with a high biological vulnerability, but they may never develop schizophrenia unless a specific combination of severe life stress, birth trauma, or drug use pushes their brain chemistry past a certain threshold.
Watching that 20 second clip that the video starts from, saying Richard Dadd smoked 5 consecutive days and nights from that water pipe. A quick search reveals that “historians and medical experts widely agree that he was smoking hashish (cannabis resin) mixed with strong local Middle Eastern tobacco (tumbak).
Hashish (Cannabis Resin): In 19th-century Egypt, hashish consumption via waterpipes was a deeply embedded cultural practice among the local men. High-potency cannabis resin was often mixed into the pipe bowls.
It is not hard to connect the dots…
He deteriorated in a spectacular way from that moment, and there was no way back anymore.
To quote a short passage from the beginning of the book, about how it feels “losing your mind”:
“A particularly memorable account, quoted by Sir Aubrey Lewis in 1967, was written by a boy of 18 years who had been ill for at least a year.
“… I lose myself more in the disease, I sink into an almost oblivious existence. My fate when I reflect upon it is the most horrible one can conceive of. I cannot picture anything more frightful than for a well-endowed cultivated human being to live through his own gradual deterioration fully aware of it all the time. But that is what is happening to me.”
If you’d argue that “it made him a brilliant painter”, just read some of the comments under the above video, where other artists with mental disorders confess that they work better when not in an episode, and those episodes actually make them impossible to work properly.
Apply a simple rule: Don’t do drugs.
Even better: don’t smoke anything.
You cannot know when, and if, you will reach your onset, then there will be no way back.
viC