Is there mental poison too?

Some sort of psychotic.

@XOIIO Huh?

In AA they talk about stinkin thinkin and I believe that is similar to what you are saying. It is a thought process that is detrimental to your well being. It can be precipitated by something someone else has said or just the ramblings of your own thoughts. So yep, mental poison it is!

Yep.
I have a coworker I call the Pastor of the Church of the Poisoned Mind. He’s nothing you could really put your finger on as “terrible” but carries an aura of discontent about him that can alter a perfectly functioning atmosphere in 30 seconds flat when he enters the room. Good teamwork evaporates, though each individual still responds normally one-on-one. It’s the oddest thing. People’s rational and regular behavior change and adapt to his.

I’m glad he’s on a long vacation.

@AntJR It would probably be some sort of psychotic drug, or some mind altering thing, something like LSD or acid but made to have a permanent effect would do the trick.

Something potent enough would leave them a bumbling wreck caught in delusions until they died. Quite a nice way to keep someone silent when you think of it. Could be simple to make too.

A famous psychologist warns of what images you let your brain see. He says that they can affect your life. Like too much violence.

I know a more benign thing that I’ve started calling “working memory pollution”.
That’s for example when you get an annoyingly catchy song stuck in your head that you can’t get rid of any more, hogging your attention, and it keeps you from concentrating on things.
I had that problem a lot with Weebl’s songs while I was trying to work on my internship.
“So let’s see, what do these data mean? Hm… Narwhals, narwhals, swimming in the- oh jeez, give it a rest.”

Maybe that’s more like mental food poisoning from eating unhealthy sweets.

Sounds like projective identification to me.

@Fyrius They’re called earworms. So annoying!

Of course! We are what we think, just as we are what we eat. Feed yourself a steady diet of mind junk and your mind will become bloated with negative thoughts and images that effect your outlook on everything. This includes being around negative people on a regular basis as well, not just what material you choose to read, watch, or otherwise gorge on in your free time.

any lie is poison to the mind

Thanks a lot @Blueroses, lol!
Do you count someone spewing their poison on those around them? And then the first person is all happy, and professing not to understand why everyone else is in a shitty mood?

Trickle down economics.

Well, we do talk of toxic people who certainly can affect your mental state.

The Buddha once said that “holding on to anger is like drinking poison, and expecting the other person to die.”

When you’re keeping hatred and anger inside you, you’re just drowning yourself in negative energy, ruminating, fixating, lacking clarity and focus, and hurting your body with all the effects that highly stressful negative states can do to you but people keep on drowining in it because they feel like they need to exact that negative energy on others, or feed off the false sense of power and control it gives when all it does is sap all of the happiness and peace out of themselves and everyone around them.

It’s probably not coincidence that it takes more muscle energy to frown than to smile.

These are all very deep responses, I really appreciate them :D