Welcome to another edition of Time Suck Shorts. I'm Dan Cummins, and today we will be diving into the mysterious world of psychology, specifically the psychology of vampires, or of people acting like vampires.

Clinical vampires, more commonly known as Renfield Syndrome, is defined as an

obsession with drinking blood most often for sexual satisfaction.

One review of psychiatric literature claims that over 50,000 people addicted to drinking blood

have appeared in case studies between 1892 and 2010.

Clinical vampires has been observed by psychiatrists and psychologists dating back to the 1800s,

clearly, and random regular folk have encountered blood drinkers for millennia.

But is it actually a valid clinically defined treatable medical condition as its name implies?

Maybe, maybe not. Despite how official it sounds, clinical vampireism is not found in any

addition of the international classification of diseases or the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.

So good luck using it as a basis for an insanity defense plea in your upcoming trial.

While you might truly believe that you are a vampire, your judge will not.

Nonetheless, clinical vampireism feels like a real thing, doesn't it?

Clinical vampires have appeared on shows like CSI and Criminal Minds.

Clinical vampire case studies have appeared in peer-reviewed

psychiatric journals.

However, most academics and doctors

will argue that it is not a real thing. Not at least in how it sounds. Most will argue

it's just part of an ongoing obsession, our ongoing obsession with the figure of the

fictional vampire and all of its blood-sucking gory.

That we only think we see honest-to-God vampires and people who are actually suffering from

way more common and explainable mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Now let's examine the history of the

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