Blade Ballad

I didn’t want to make such a personal post since it doesn’t relate to game development, but I was recently placed on medication, and this has had a noticeable impact on my ability to work on the game.

Antipsychotics, which the name doesn’t really imply, is not explicitly for psychopathic behavior, but for managing “disordered thinking”, namely schizophrenia, which was my “official” diagnosis.

I won’t share the full circumstances which led me to this diagnosis, but I suspect there were political maneuvers at play rather than purely health related reasons. This practice—admitting healthy people to psych wards under the guise of mental illness to discredit them for things they’ve said—was done extensively by the Soviet’s KGB program. My reason of being “hospitalized” were similar, as it was due to “inflammatory” things I’ve wrote online, things which had caught the attention of a certain government agency, and likely placed me on some kind of watchlist, all because I told the truth, the truth about society, nature and humanity.

I had state and will state that I’ve said nothing condoning illegal behavior, nor committed any illegal acts, but none any of that mattered once I was locked up and placed under the control of the hospital staff where I first had a taste of anti-psychotics, which had a stinging bitterness to them.

This psychiatric hospital functioned very much like a prison, barring the lack of prison doors (pun). You had no access to the outside world except an old phone booth, you had to take your medications when the nurses made their rounds, and you had to be on your best behavior at all times if you wanted to be released. There were also security guards standing on every corner at all times.

But what was truly concerning were the other patients. Yes, some were like me and was placed in a hold for saying stupid shit, but others have lost a lot of their faculties. I do not mean to deride their condition—in fact some were quite pleasant to talk with— but their mental state were subpar to say the least, and being drugged with a cocktail of high dosage non FDA approved pills only made it worse than better. It was a tragic sight, and I wish them the best.

There was an old man who’ve been there God knows how long, but it seemed a while as he would always get the same front seat to watch inane public television, which was the only form of outside information along with the daily papers. We discussed technology and AI, but he wasn’t too familiar with the latter.

Fast forward a few days and I was discharged, with the condition that I am to follow up to a clinic for additional “assessments” and “labs” (taking blood is very lucrative, especially when you don’t have to pay the person giving it). It was here that I began my prescription.

The primary function of a anti-psychotic (also known as a neuroleptic) is to suppress motivation. The doctors will say otherwise with their fancy medical jargon, but that’s basically its purpose. Obviously, this made developing Blade Ballad more cumbersome, and ideas, which used to spontaneously pop out of my head, are now throttled and often gets lost. I feel lethargic most of the day, especially when I want to develop, but I still manage nevertheless.

Granted, it has only been a few weeks since I’ve began the prescription, so changes might feel more jarring. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic in a few years and give a more concrete personal opinion after the medication has stabilized.

In all, I find the whole situation ridiculous, and I look forward for a speedy societal collapse.