As my schizoaffective disorder reared its head near the end of my highschool years and into my first year of university (studying chemical engineering at that time), until now, I have lost many of my previous interests, which is not really a bad thing, but nonetheless it has happened. This is probably due to both the symptoms of this illness and the antipsychotic (AP) medication that I take for it. I learned in my Drugs and Human Behavior class that a man with bipolar disorder won in court to be taken off his bipolar medication because it was suppressing his creativity. For those of you who don't know, research shows that madness is associated with genius, particularly in those who have bipolar disorder. And, AP medication suppresses this in many people. Modafinil has helped me to gain more energy, which has helped me to some extent to be more creative.
In fact, I started writing this blog while feeling a bit manic when having taken a generic form of olanzapine that was not working as a sedative and probably not as an AP either, that coupled with takeing 200mg of modafinil for two days in a row, and 100mg thereafter.
However, I still have a problem in that I am quite quiet in public settings, not finding creative or appropriate things to say. Even as I look through the way I used to write in emails prior to my illness, I was a lot more "colourful" and "flavourful" in my writing, however, now I'm just factual, not really expressing much emotion through my text. However, I am still able to recognize emotion in other people and would say that I have higher levels of empathy and recognizing others emotions than many people. I feel that I am dry or not colourful when interacting in real-life, i.e. not much non-verbal expression. Although I can realize this, it is not easy to change. I do not always have on a serious face, I do smile, but, my non-verbal expression is too dry in my opinion.
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