Sanity

**Sanity** within the Backrooms is far different than within the real world. Insanity is when a person's mental well-being is drastically lowered to the point of lunacy and shows abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. It is a thing that only can affect users mentally rather than physically. However, the opposite effect is seen within the Backrooms, with users being affected in a physical manner that grossly contorted and destroys their original selves. The subject of insanity within the Backrooms, and especially what causes it, is fairly new and riddled with speculation, and most of this speculation comes from assumptions of the Backrooms itself. Many aspects of the Backrooms are dictated by things within reality, with these things often being perverted in certain ways completely different from how they function in a normal sense. For example, The Backrooms may think that since all trashcans are eventually dumped somewhere else, where do they all lead? And in terms the Backrooms fills in those blanks within its own knowledge of reality with new rules, inventing the idea that all trash bins within its space will magically lead somewhere else, in this case, the Depositary of Level 1. Another such example of mimicking by the Backrooms could also be something like paintings. It understands fully how they work, but in practice, it will often accidentally mimic actual real-world paintings like the Mona Lisa or Stary Sky to name just a few of the possible paintings it has mimicked.

The assumption here about Insanity is that the Backrooms believes that people who suffer from insanity suffer it as if it were any other disease, and therefore makes it a disease to make itself seem right. And so people who suffer from Insanity will suffer it like a disease, and how the Backrooms views diseases then merges with its idea of Insanity and makes it overly painful for the individual who suffers it. However, the Backrooms also understand that diseases at times can be countered and in turn try to mimic this as well with its aliments such as Almond Water.

As a phenomenon, Insanity is wide-reaching and affects everyone within the Backrooms, as although it acts as a disease, it is still tied directly to your mental stability. This makes it paramount that you keep yourself as sane as possible within the Backrooms, as not doing so poses a liability to yourself and others that you could encounter within the various levels of the Backrooms. Insanity typically can be more drastically affected by other phenomena, as well as the levels own hazards and anomalies that can affect your wellbeing. The greatest counter to the effects of Insanity is the aforementioned aliment Almond Water, which is a natural cure for most bad things within the Backrooms, which includes Insanity. However, for as good as it is at countering things, it does not fully remove the effects of the thing in question, and only stalls it so that you can get better by other medicinal means. As for those means, the best remover of Insanity is simply the way you would counter it in the real world; staying calm. Meditation is a good way to remove the effects of it, so is relaxing, socializing with other people, et cetera. Being with other people has shown to be a great way to mitigate the threat of insanity amongst pretty much everyone you are with, so if you want to mitigate the risk of insanity, try traveling or being with a group of people with whom you can socialize and talk with.

Essentially, mitigate the amount of stress within you, calm yourself down and you may easily get over your lowering sanity. May, as in that it may not be just caused by you slowly losing it within the Backrooms, it can be from external phenomena as mentioned before. Directly coming into contact with entities, no matter if they are friendly or not is a big cause of lowering sanity. This is why the best course of action when encountering anything resembling an entity is to simply turn in the other direction, as it circumvents any danger from it, as well as loss of sanity. The level itself can also just be a breeding ground for you to lose your mind, such as Level 6 which is completely shrouded in impenetrable darkness where the only remedy is the dimly lit candles permeated around the level. Being within the presence of light within any level can also be a good way to calm yourself down and reduce stress, even within Level 6, holding a candle in your hand can cause you great amounts of relief even if Level 6's — to say the least — gloomy atmosphere gets the best of you. Light sources are a great way to keep you sane as they provide a physical remedy to darkness which already lowers your mental stability by just being within it.

## Remedies / Summary

All of the following methods are good ways to help you relieve stress and in turn, remedy you and increase your sanity levels.

* **Mediation / Relaxation:** The most effective form of reduction is to simply take a break and relax. Take things easy before continuing on your journey. Take deep breaths, stretch a bit, and maybe even try to get comfy with the environment you are in. This helps more within heavily furnished levels.
* **Within a well-lit area:** Lit areas are another effective means of reduction, simply by staying out of the dark you will be far more relaxed because of the more knowledge you gain from being within a lit area. Fear of the unknown grows within darkened areas, and fear is something you shouldn't be experiencing if you want to reduce insanity.
* **Drink Almond Water**: While not an effective means to long-term reduction to insanity, it is a good remedy from time to time. A fair warning for those who aren't aware; Almond water can become addictive to users who take them too much. Since they are technically an aliment they can be classified as medicinal drugs, and you can become high on Almond Water can get addicted to it.
* **Be around other people**: Socializing and talking to people can reduce your stress when you are in a pleasant conversation with them. If you are talking with someone who is losing themselves, try comforting them and staying close to them to make them feel safer.
* **Carry a Light source**: This goes hand in hand with being in a lit area, though this applies mainly to people who are in dark areas rather than lit ones. For this, carrying any object that emits enough light to make the area around them more visible will help with sanity increases.
* **Entity-Objects**: Some entity objects have insanity reduction properties to them that help with users' well-being. Only use this method for extreme cases, as well as reading the article that goes with the entity properly. Many Entity-Objects have drawbacks to their seemingly good properties.

If you are wondering about the long-term effects of Insanity on an individual, see the victims of insanity here: Entity 015.

## Footnotes

1. ↑ Unless that insanity directly caused someone to harm themselves, it cannot harm victims directly.
2. ↑ This does assume that the Backrooms is some kind of living entity however. Which is the pervasive theory behind a lot of other theories and speculations.
3. ↑ Examples are Liminality Disease and Rapid Evolutionary Disease (R.E.D).
4. ↑ However friendly entities may be able to recognize this. Such as the now-extinct Joykill, who was able to sense that people were unhappy or with dwindling well-being and could plan out accordingly. This is quite ironic as the entity is a major depressant when being around.
5. ↑ Which is also another cause of insanity, Darkness.