(no subject)

[mousme]

Interview by forthright



1) To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: "Any drug or medical treatment for mental disorders that changes a person's core personality should be abandoned, no matter how substantial its medical advantages may be in other respects"?

I'd have to say I disagree almost completely with that statement. For one thing, I don't believe that any medication can change a person's core personality, or at least not irrevocably.

The idea in the treatment of mental illness, as far as I'm concerned anyway, is to find a treatment that will enable the patient to live as fulfilled a life as possible. Thus, a paranoid schizophrenic patient on a very high dosage of anti-psychotics will no longer be consumed by the belief that his every movement is being watched, that he has to perform specific and sometimes destructive actions in order to remain "safe." That in itself is a major change in behaviour and, some would argue, personality, but the schizophrenic patient will likely tell you himself that he feels much better and happier while on the medication that has "changed" his personality.

In my case, I don't think that the medication I'm on has changed my personality at all, but rather allowed it to resurface. It allows me to function and pursue activities that interest me and make me happy, instead of being so revved up as to make living with myself and others impossible, or else so depressed that I can't bring myself to leave my bed, let alone the house, consumed by my own thoughts and imagined sense of guilt.

The one case in which I will advocate the abandonment of a treatment is when the side effects of the medication prove as disabling as the illness it's trying to prevent. When a medication causes painful muscle twitches, digestive disorders, mood disruptions, or whatever else, that equally prevent a patient from functioning, it's time to alter the dosage or seek an alternative treatment. The idea is to cure, not replace one problem with another.


2) What language that you presently have no knowledge of would you most like to study/learn, and why?

If I had to pick just one, it would be Russian. I've wanted to know that language for a long time, partly because I have many roots in Russia on my mother's side (half her family is Russian, the other half Romanian), and partly because I've always harboured the desire to read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Soljenitsin in the original text.

3) What do you think is the primary reason that you enjoy having your characters suffer horribly in games?
I've always enjoyed stories in which the main character or one of the main characters has to suffer before the end of the book, and since I started roleplaying I find that I enjoy it more if the PCs are made to suffer in some way.

It doesn't have to be physical suffering, of course. Any kind of suffering will do.

I think it has primarily to do with the fact that I find no goal is quite as satisfying, once reached, if one hasn't had to fight for it, to overcome major obstacles or seemingly impossible odds to attain it. Very rarely do things come easily in real life, and to have them come easily in a game seems to cheapen it, in my experience.

4) If you could be any punctuation mark, what would it be and why?

I would be a comma: pausing after something important, with the promise of greater things to come.

5) What was the title of the novel you wrote as a teenager, what was it about, and where is it now?

I never gave that particular book a title, come to think of it. I could never think of one that would have suited it. It was a futuristic novel, set on the eve of World War III (somewhere in the 2070s), seen through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy who was relatively far removed from the action at first, and then gradually got sucked into the thick of things in spite of himself. The book unfortunately was lost along with my computer back in September. I foolishly destroyed my backup copies when I transferred it onto my laptop in 2000.

Not that it's a great loss for humanity, or anything. ;P

Comments

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

Russian is an amazingly cool language, but it's a bear to learn. I took four semesters of it in college, and all I can remember is "yes," "no," "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank you," "book," "I live in a dormitory," "word to your mother," and "walrus prick."

Ahem. Yes, well.