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You people who don't think that insanity is a valid defense are all insane!
In all seriousness, people who don't feel that insanity can excuse your actions are not thinking about the situation objectively. Here are some hypothetical situations to help you challenge your own convictions on the subject.
Suppose someone slips you a drug as a practical joke. While you weren't looking, they snuck a drop of some psychotropic drug into your drink and then watch the hilarity ensue. Next thing you know, you just killed someone because you were defending yourself from a dangerous demon. Are you guilty? I mean, you did kill someone, after all. There's no denying that...
Another situation is if you were a waiter serving a drink in a restaurant. Some accident in the kitchen happened and a container of some beverage was accidentally poisoned. So, you serve a drink to a customer and they die as a result. Are you guilty of murder? You did kill someone, after all.
The answer to both these questions is obviously no. The question is "why?" Why aren't they guilty? They did kill in both cases, after all... They're not guilty because intent is important when assigning responsibility. No one intended to kill anyone in both these cases, so there can be no guilt.
Insanity is very similar, particularly to the first example. The insane person doesn't know what they are doing, by definition, so how can they be guilty? Despite what some might think, if someone is criminally insane, they aren't just let free because they're found not guilty. Depending on the situation, they can be sent to a psychiatric institution and are let free only until a doctor (or doctors) decides that they are no longer a danger to society, if that ever happens! This can be worse than prison (or better, depending on what they can do for you). This all depends on the particular situation of the case.
Actually, I had more to say than I thought I would. If I knew I was going to go on this long, I would simply have talked about the role of criminal incarceration. A lot of this can be understood by examining the actual goals for criminal imprisonment. Why do we put criminals in jail? Why do we ever let them go? What's the point of all this? Stuff like that...
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