u/turtlewick

Alogia, also known as “poverty of speech” or “poverty of thought,” is a psychiatric and neurological symptom characterized by a significant decrease in the amount of spontaneous speech. People with alogia may give brief, one-word answers, take abnormally long pauses, or speak in a vague, repetitive manner.

Anyone else with SM or recovered SM struggle with this? I know this is frequently seen in autism, which I highly suspect I have, but I’m curious to know if it’s common among people with SM and a contributing factor.

I feel like a huge part of why I didn’t speak when I had SM (outside of anxiety) and why I barely speak now, is because my brain genuinely doesn’t generate any thoughts, regardless of whether anxiety is present. I fit the description of this symptom to a tee. I take a long time to respond and frequently pause between words/sentences, I only speak when prompted or to get needs met, I tend to give brief or one word answers, and I also have set phrases I repeatedly use for the same scenarios, as I can’t think of anything else to say in those moments, so I have to script. It makes holding a normal conversation nearly impossible since my mind just doesn’t think of anything to say. It’s like I have no opinion on anything. It also makes me sad that people tend to judge your intelligence level based on how much you contribute to conversation. And they lose interest in you for not entertaining them in some way. It’s too mentally exhausting to mask having this, so I just stay quiet while secretly feeling bad that I’m disappointing others with my silence.

I’m only on 2.5mg and it still feels like I took 10 melatonins and could sleep for 16 hours. I’m trying to wean off to switch to a different AP and even at the lowest dose, I can’t just hop off. My brain/body is completely dependent on it to sleep and I have insomnia without it.

And it’s so powerful that it jacks up your tolerance to where other sleep meds are like taking a sugar pill. The only thing that really compares when it comes to drugs that induce sleepiness are benzos & opiates. At one point, I had been on Zyprexa 10mg for 3 years and it took me a year to comfortably wean off, then I had to bridge with Xanax for a week when I fully jumped off.

Also psychiatrists really do not understand how strong these meds are. Like my psych really suggested hydroxyzine as an alternative sleep med to help me wean off. Hydroxyzine is a joke compared to this stuff.