I feel like there was probably some mental health issues going on. Whether before or after the gold, I think this person probably had some kind of delusional thinking or maybe mania? I'm not a doctor, I won't try to diagnose him, but I think the real atrocity is his "friends" not intervening and getting him help and instead apparently cheering him on and hoping he would succeed in this ridiculous experiment.

[–] KoboldKomrade@hexbear.net 11 points 5 days ago

Yeah, unless they were doing some very high dosing or whatever they were injecting wasn't gold or had some other chemical, I don't think what I'm seeing online matches with what's being described.

Lots of mentions of gold miscoloring skin (matches) but almost none about psychological or neurological effects. Mentions of gold and gold salts being used and having some reactions (positive and negative), but no warning or mention of mental breakdown. Warnings of contamination from certain gold salts and non-gold heavy metal contaminations. In fact, one article I found claims gold doesn't even cross the blood-brain barrier? (https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/10408444.2018.1513991:"The blood–brain barrier prohibits passage of most metal particles or therapeutic agents (Lansdown 2007; Gromnicova et al. 2013).")

Definitely seems like the gold thing is more a symptom then a cause to me but I ain't a doctor.

[–] vice2remember@hexbear.net 9 points 5 days ago

Yeah I really don't know how to parse the bit about hoping he would be vindicated... Like, does he mean he was hoping his buddy had actually discovered the gold secret to etental life? The chances of that are uh vanishingly small, and I feel like our mans here should know that P: