#AND I get my adderall scrip back?

[acowardinmordor]

Love yall asking for more of that random secret admirer thought like it isn’t public knowledge that I last posted a chapter for FTB three hundred and sixty days ago.

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam, any chance you can talk a bit more about saffron at some point? I've not encountered it as a possible ADHD treatment before and am curious what you meant about finding it not helpful at higher doses. Does it just not work, does it kinda work but have an annoying side effect or two, etc etc. Thinking I might give it a go, but I'm on 60mg of rubifen a day (2 pills in morning, one early afternoon) and want to have an idea of where to place my expectations :)

The saffron thing is pretty new overall as well as new to me, and I tend to side-eye "natural" cures because generally when natural cures work they, you know, become medicine. There's also very little regulation on natural remedies/vitamins so it's always a toss-up as to what's actually in the capsules; when I went looking for saffron pills, all of them seemed sketchy, made and sold by the kind of place that'll sell you gunpowder tea for weight loss. (I ended up going with Nootropics simply because they put most of the info on the bottle.)

I heard about saffron as an ADHD treatment from a woman I was speaking to who's got three kids with ADHD, all under 15, and was having trouble getting their meds. We originally started talking because I was offering tips on how to find pharmacies that might have larger stocks of Adderall during the shortage, and she tuned into the conversation since trying to get three 30-day scrips for Adderall filled at once really sucked. She told me she'd tried saffron after hearing about it on an ADHD Parenting community, and that it was helping her kids with the hyperactivity element, though she wasn't sure if it was helping them with focus and executive function. The study here seems to be the main source of data on it, and it's admittedly a small study, but the fact that it is being studied by actual scientists is somewhat reassuring.

The recommended dosage is 30mg/day of the saffron, which I've been taking for a couple of weeks on top of the first dose of Adderall (and daily vitamins). I really only have my own experience to go on but it seems to me to act as an enhancer for the Adderall; gives it a little kick, at least it feels like. It doesn't seem to do much on its own for me. On the one hand, the placebo effect can be mighty, but on the other, I'm a reasonably skeptical person who hasn't been subject to placebo effect during drug trials in the past, so I think what I'm feeling is a real effect, it's just very mild. (A while back I tried Rhodiola, which is another commonly-recommended herbal supplement for ADHD, and didn't feel like it did anything.)

On top of 10mg of Adderall, the 30mg Saffron works pretty well, seems to intensify it a bit. I do take 20mg of Adderall on occasion but unless I'm super tired or stressed, it's too much -- it pushes me through productive and back out into scattered -- so the saffron intensifying 20mg is way, way too much, even if I need the 20mg. If I'm taking both doses at once I leave the saffron capsule in the pill box.

Overall, the science is still a bit shaky, but less shaky than a lot of non-prescription cures out there, and Saffron's pretty safe to use. Even if it's not doing anything, the only real consequence is I'm out $22 for the bottle. I might go off it for a bit once the bottle's done and see if I notice a downswing. All my data is pretty highly subjective, so all I can recommend is trying it out for yourself.

[littlethingwithfeathers]

What to do if you get caught by the Adderall shortage:

So, it’s not getting picked up by the news much (at least not that I’ve seen... NPR, BBC, AP), but there’s a pretty serious Adderall shortage happening right now. It’s been building for awhile helped along by the usual suspects (labor shortages, limited manufacturing facilities, shutdowns due to illness... blah blah) and some not so usual ones (More people getting diagnosed with ADHD... when you take away someone’s coping mechanism, which for some people it’s their in-person work environment and social activities, people start to have more issues!). And it looks like this could last until the beginning of 2023... so... what to do?

Please note, I’m not a doctor or medical professional of any kind. I just had to deal with this, and it’s worrying and a little troublesome to manage, so I thought I’d pass on some advice from my experience. It might not be one size fits all but it might help someone to know who to talk to and what to ask.

Also, if you’re going to use this as a moment to spout some drivel about “Maybe we don’t neeeeed all these meds, you guysssss!” please kindly fuck entirely, completely, and all the way off into the void. Same goes for people who are looking at this as an excuse to whine about “addicts” or drug related crime. Read the room. This post is not your soapbox. 

SO! You’ve gotten a call from your pharmacy that they can’t fill your Adderall prescription because your scrip is on backorder. Wat do??? Step one: Don’t panic. It is one pharmacy out of one version of a drug. You’ve got options, though it might take some legwork. If your prescription is at a chain like CVS, Target, Walmart, etc see if the pharmacy tech will call around to other stores in the area and ask about their stocks. Step two: 

Call your prescribing doctor, inform them of the situation, and ask for a paper prescription. Go pick up the prescription. Ask them for their advice and for information on which pharmacy to call (they might know of a pharmacy with the med in stock).

Step three: 

Start phoning pharmacies. Begin with the big chains. Places like CVS, Walgreens, Target, Walmart, and major grocery stores... places with multiple locations in town. Start here because they might be able to check with other stores in their chain to find out who has your prescription in stock, which will save you a phone call or three potentially. They also have more integrated supply networks and will have a better handle on their inventory. Fan out from your location with the help of Google. If you live in a big city, don’t be afraid to start checking in the ‘burbs or outlying towns. Also, if the pharmacy tech doesn’t seem like they’re in a rush, ask them if they’ve got other options... the generic form, other measurements, other types (long acting, short acting, etc). That will potentially save you this rigmarole a second time if you come up dry.

Step four:

If you call every pharmacy and have no luck, call your prescribing doctor back. Tell them you’ve phoned literally everyone and no one can fill your prescription and ask if there is a way you can change it by a few milligrams or switch to generic for this month? Could you get a shorter prescription (fewer pills, thus easier to fill)? Could you do short acting instead of long acting or vice versa for a few weeks until backorders get filled? In short, see if you can get an alternative to tide you over. Go get that paper prescription, and then start over (this is why asking some of those questions to the pharmacy techs could pay off).

Concluding advice:

-You do not have to do this by yourself. You don’t even actually have to do this yourself. Someone can do 90% of this for you. Other than the call to your physician for the script, a parent, spouse, friend, sibling or otherwise can help with this. They will just need the paper prescription, your insurance card, your name and date of birth, and your prescribing physician’s name and place of business. Get someone to help you if you can.

-If you’re not getting bit by the shortage, take this as a sign to stockpile your meds a bit. And this kinda goes for everyone, not just the ADHD/Adderall people. Shortages and supply issues are not going to go away any time soon. Next it might be blood pressure meds, or a particular steroid... who knows. Talk to your doctor about how to effectively plan for this with the meds you’re taking. Future you will thank you.

[fantasticcloudcreation]

Aug 18

The scale is still saying 113.5, I've binged the past 2 days (actually out of control eating whatever nonsense I can find kinda binges) but I'm going to do better today :)

I got a new notebook so I can start a new journal which always feels like a good symbolic fresh start. After the past couple weeks it really does feel like a new chapter is starting. Making plans for camping with D this week in the old familiar beach towns, so that'll be nice, maybe he'll come meet my family after a couple days of camping, we'll see how it unfolds. Drinking another cup of tea rn bc I forgot to get coffee; hitting the old vapes bc I'm insane and I should just go buy a new one until I'm actually ready to address the addiction.

The new journal has the dot grid instead of lines which makes me feel extra productive haha something about it. Made a couple tracking charts to get on track with goals again, and a nice big to-do list so it's all in one place :) maybe I'll actually get my shit together this time (I say that every time i start a new journal haha.) also thinking about L getting back home and immediately diving back into his life and goals and projects, meanwhile i got here and immediately went on a weed + wine bender and turned into a fog machine for 3 days ... Doing better today though, I'll check some things off the to-do list, it's fine to relax and reset and work at your own pace. It's nice to have motivated ambitious friends who inspire me to do better. Yesterday I thought real hard about giving into the negativity spiral and then I thought about L and was like, I want to do better! (Also dug out the old dying vapes from the van and maybe that lil bit of nicotine was enough to pull me back from the edge lol.)

Anyway. Life is good today. Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed like there was no hope of ever accomplishing anything or moving forward or doing anything interesting or special; today I feel like I got it under control and I can just keep taking baby steps and the path is unfolding as I keep walking :) amazing what a good organization system can do for you. That's another thing L inspired, he's as ADHD as I am but he's got all these systems that keep his things in order and i feel like i need to get better at that, creating systems and structures for myself to work around/inside of. I create them and follow along for a couple weeks and then get distracted/do something else, but I think if I can keep working out a system that eventually works for me, that might make all the difference between needing Adderall vs not needing Adderall haha. Still considering getting the scrip refilled but I'm gonna give it one more try first.

[chicago-geniza]

well i intended to go for a nice evening walk, ended up having a panic attack, ordering a couple of cocktails at the bougie bar, joining a jam session with a bunch of old hippies on the logan green (one of them gave me a handpainted wooden medallion which seems to be carved out of tree bark, strung on a length of yarn???), met a crustpunk train-hopping dude in town for the month (& his dog, in a leather-studded harness) who's lived in 45/50 states & a 44 yr old guy everyone called "the wizard" wearing a tattered, patch-covered robe who shares most of my parents' conspiracy theories & considers himself a latter-day prophet, he bought us sorbet & ice cream, wound up hanging out with them & staying up all night at their indescribably eclectic, cluttered, blood-spattered (!!!) apartment, belonging to 44 yr old guy's art curator father & decorated accordingly, smoking m*th & listening to music & talking (or rather listening to them rant/rave/recount stories from their incredibly wild lives), i gave them advice on applying for unemployment & medicaid & how to appear compliant enough w/ carceral psychiatric intervention so they won't section you without actually submitting to forced medication or institutionalization, especially if they assign you a case worker & do regular "wellness checks." also how to pass off certain aspects of behavioral dysregulation as executive dysfunction, get them to pay for an adhd evaluation, get an adderall IR scrip, sell the 30 mg pills (cite body weight, high doses of other psych meds as reason for higher dose; look sincere; play to systemic biases toward cis white men, unfortunately), & use the cash to buy m*th, if they'd prefer to keep doing that. you can also pass positive psychotic symptoms--agitation etc.--off as severe anxiety, especially if you have a history of trauma, & they will give you benzodiazepines. it is in their best interest to keep you docile, i.e. tranquilized, particularly if your past convictions & involuntary institutionalizations revolve around a pattern of aggressive behavior, & that's On The Record/there's a paper trail. (e.g. one dude got arrested trying to keep cars away from an injured bird on the road, some genre of raptor i think (???) by threatening them with a shopping cart, not hitting them, but like, running at them as if to collide then feinting at the last minute so they'd swerve out of the way. not the safest or most effective maneuver, lotta reckless endangerment, but the motivation was admirable. probably put the fear of god into some drivers, though. he doesn't seem to have, like, impulse control.) it's a lot easier & you have fewer run-ins with the cops if you game the system & appear cooperative. they gave me this coat, which "just showed up in their apartment one day," like i did. 44 yr old guy walked me back to apartment, stole a street sign & tore down a real estate sign en route, lori lightfoot did indeed take down the pride flag in front of her house on july 1st & replace it with an appropriately patriotic american flag, i walked past the idling plainclothes cop car & another marked police vehicle with their Mayoral Guarding Detail inside at like 4.30 am smoking a menthol cigarette (not inhaling), high on m*th, draped in a neon anime jacket, in the company of a visibly insane, unshaven & unshorn middle-aged man in a technicolor patchwork trenchcoat, holding a lit cigarette in one hand & an upside-down traffic cone in the other, which he was using as an ad hoc amplifier for a noise track playing on my phone. he was also carrying the stolen real estate banner &, inexplicably, a stack of mail. i gave him my old backup phone (no SIM card & doesn't hold a charge long, ancient, but still works), since neither he nor the other dude have phones (cops took them), also one hybrid edible for each of them, as a thanks for the m*th & the kindness. their hearts are in the right place but they have some fucked-up beliefs about "reverse racism" being real, while also saying in the same breath that you can tell our country is irredeemable by the way it continues to

treat black people. we were discussing medical weed for seizures on medicaid & 44 yr old guy mentioned one of his close friends, a black epileptic woman, whose seizures were frequent & severe enough they prevented her from working. then he added, in apparent bemusement, they she hadn't spoken to him in some time, & he wondered why. a little while later he relayed their last conversation & i was like "my dude, i can say with 100% certainty she is not talking to you because you said some *appallingly*, jaw-droppingly racist shit & did not even realize it was racist." then i, comma, a white person, explained to this man that he literally thought of their exchange as, like, an abstract argument over insignificant ideas, a theoretical exercise, & therefore considered it simply a smug gotcha to "counter" hotep theories about egyptian origin by claiming that "if that's true, american slavery & the oppression of black people in america are divine retribution for the enslavement of the jews in ancient egypt, an eye for an eye & a deserved punishment." like, first of all, what the actual fuck, if i were that woman i would also never speak to you again, second of all there's the collapse of historical time & mythical time, history & exegesis, an assumption that rests on spurious claims of biblical literalism (zionist colonization logic, btw! him: what's exegesis? what's zionism? me: never mind, not the point. exegesis is the interpretation of religious texts in a religious CONtext, in this case what you would likely call the hebrew bible.)--but most importantly it is 100% irrelevant to this discussion whether or not black americans are Actually Factually descendended from ancient egypt! you just told this woman to her face that the ancestry she claims, of which she's proud, is the reason & justification for SLAVERY & BLACK SUFFERING--not only that, but that if it WERE true, than black people would DESRVE to suffer, by DIVINE DECREE. you are trying to force her to abdicate her claim on this heritage by putting her in a position where she'd be forced to concede complicity in her people's historical & present-day persecution, oppression, & essentially the existence of structural racism. & using The Figural Jew as a rhetorical cudgel to bludgeon her into this corner. what a despicable thing to say. like, he hadn't considered it from her perspective at all, & once he groked why the comment itself was, like, unforgivable (idk, maybe she's more forgiving; she has a virtue-name), i started socratic-method-ing him through why it was particularly unforgivable for *him* to say to *her*--the individual is not responsible for the systems from they benefit, but they are imbricated in them, they are implicated when they actively perpetuate & uphold them, even with speech acts. & finally gave the same "there is no such thing as reverse racism because racism is not an individual act, it is an institutional, systemic phenomenon, & it is an ideology, one which individual acts can bear out or be in accordance with, & to which individuals can subscribe (this bearing it out in their behavior, in their institutional roles, in their interpersonal interactions--here i gave & solicited examples of each) or be subject (also gave & solicited examples). m*th makes me very good at Explaining clearly & he was surprisingly receptive--like, it was astonishing that it had not occurred to him??? but it hadn't, the same way it hadn't occurred to my mother, & she interpreted it as "reverse racist" when their next-door neighbor called her the "white devil" for disputing their property line, & i had to be like "ok but if you called in a random third party to mediate in lily-white [city], oregon, where white supremacists openly drive down the street in pickup trucks with swastika armbands, whose side do you think they would take, statistically speaking, in your property dispute. that's why racism is systemic & institutional, & your rude neighbor calling you a name over a disagreement does not constitute 'reverse racism,' because 'reverse racism' by definition cannot

exist." now this dude wants to like, read books, so i gotta get him some entry-level Intro To Racism primers??? how did i end up here, but better me than his black epileptic (ex-)friend, i guess??? jesus christ. both of these guys have the most chaotic, reactionary politics in a potpourri with these deep commitments to abolition & mutual aid & a kind of proto-anarchist consciousness, none of which would be called by those names, but all of which is borne out in practice & in the politics of everyday life. they remind me a LOT of my parents. i'm loath to imagine how they'd internalize my stepdad's rambling, street-preacher-style libertarian lectures. probably go out & buy guns & invest in gold on the stock market & double down on the conviction that free speech is being curtailed & individual rights are in jeopardy because you can no longer unleash a barrage of harassment against some guy on the street because you think he looked at you funny. these claustrophobic convictions, like the space to express oneself is getting smaller & smaller every day, *other people* are taking it away from you, suffocating you on all sides with their offense demanding your silence, they are *making* the walls close in--when in fact it's more like a holodeck. you're a member of the Hegemonic Group, afforded the privilege of the default, so you don't question the vast verdant expanse that is your domain--ah, Free Speech, the sun never sets on the empire of ~uncensored expression, you can say whatever you want whenever you want without facing consequences because you control all the organs that mete out consequences & you have also determined that those groups who might be adversely affected by your words--emotionally OR materially--are not, well...of consequence. but of course the vast verdant domain is an illusion, photons & forcefields, held together by the all-encompassing TOTALITY of the dominant group's hegemony, power, etc. once that power begins to redistribute throughout the system--however unevenly, however incrementally, however slowly--as even the smallest pieces are appropriated by those deemed inconsequential, who have endured years of systemic, material, institutional violence that allowed the dominant group to become dominant & retain its dominant position--once those 'inconsequential' groups speak up & say "actually, these words bear an indelible imprint of the violence enacted upon us, these words are the legacy of that violence, these words are a tacit endorsement of the ideology behind that violence, which classifies us as subhuman, & even if *you* can't hear those echoes, the words broadcast on two historical frequencies, so now that we're able to broadcast on a frequency *you* can hear, we request you find other language, & consider the implications of the words you've been using for years." well--once The Subaltern Speaks, the dominant group loses its 'innocence,' & becomes aware the vast verdant expanse of language is an illusion of infinite space, aware of the four holodeck walls pressing in behind the simulacrum of the horizon, & suddenly "what one can say without negative consequences"--largely social, sometimes, rarely, if social media goes viral, professional--feels much more claustrophobic. so they get angry. & some of them are just bigots, obviously, but some of them--like my parents, &, even, this weirdly well-intentioned m*thhead who said one of the most shockingly racist things i've heard in my life & *honestly didn't understand why it was racist*, is really riled up about free speech & individual rights, hates the government, hates "FANG" (facebook amazon netflix google) & has a bunch of dystopian conspiracy theories about data harvesting & personal information that only miss the mark in that they get too nefariously biopolitical (billionaires want to put microchips in everybody for surveillance to monitor our movements & sell us more stuff; they don't need to, they already use our phone location & browsing habits to generate the algorithm & sell the information to ad companies lol, it's digital& cast a

single illuminati figure in the role of comic book villain, controlling the operation behind the scenes like an evil puppetmaster (classic conspiracy fare; again, we gotta take that energy, that suspicion, the understanding that they are being taken advantage of & tricked, the idea that power & capital & resources are concentrated among a very small number of people, however it's not an individual wealthy villain with a desire for world domination who wants to turn Free Americans into microchipped drones, it's a *class* of people--or rather several classes, but *who those people are as individuals does not matter*. if you guillotined bill gates, another billionaire would take his place. bill gates qua bill gates is not the problem. it is classes of people who control the means of production & own property & profit enormously from exploiting the labor of a desperate, rapidly increasing underclass, i.e. from the system as it is. therefore it is in their interest to maintain the status quo, because it serves them. 'the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.' the middle class gradually ceases to exist. if you want to compound it by race, consider the GI bill as an example - you learn about it as the leg up that enabled thousands of WWII vets to buy houses, enabling them to enter the middle class. hundreds of thousands of third-gen middle class white americans still reap the structural, socioeconomic benefits of their grandparents' initial upward mobility, including,, very tangibly, those selfsame houses, which can be inherited & then rented out as a second property if the children or grandchildren accrue enough money to buy their own properties. but only about 100 black vets got approved for homeownership loans, despite the staggering numbers of black soldiers who enlisted & applied through the GI bill. anyway! the impulses are there, & they're only being funneled into conspiracy thinking because that makes intuitive sense on a narrative level. these guys have a high school education; so does my stepdad. their reading habits are...eclectic, sporadic, pretty much dictated by occasional recommendations & like, little free libraries around the neighborhood. it's both interesting & frustrating to see like - hey, here are these people, we agree on a lot of things, they're earnest & open & want to learn & would give their neighbor the shirt off their backs as a matter of principle. they'd give a *stranger* the shirt off their backs; they'd share whatever they had. even what chores there are in their collective--they live with two other guys--(dumpster diving, walking the dog, tidying up the apartment) are allocated by ability & inclination. they made advance plans to look after the dog & their roommate with War PTSD on the 4th of july if the fireworks upset them, jokingly called the dog an emotional support animal. you give them the tools, the reading, talk to them like normal people with a stake in society--like, imagine a society that would have a stake in people like you instead of criminalizing you & consigning you to the margins! that's already *political imagination* because anyone who occupies a marginalized position will have their existence politicized, whether they want this or not, so better to become a self-aware, self-reflexive political subject, no?--talk *with* them because tbh i am them, i'm just better at situational masking & also i am very very afraid of cops so i only damage property in groups during planned political actions (not spontaneously, because i feel a flash of rage at my neighborhood gentrifying, & simply do not have a superego, so i tear down the real estate sign for the fancy new apartment complex in a fit of pique, because in this house we believe that spontaneity can & should be developed into class consciousness, again, the seeds of which are there in the initial trigger for the spontaneous reaction, i.e. anger at gentrification. not opposed to a little direct action, but they're just gonna put up a new sign tomorrow, it doesn't advance your agenda or hinder the gentrifiers' progress. now, if

you sabotaged the construction site for the new apartment buildings & painted a few potent symbols + graffiti'd a pithy, written statement expressing your opposition to gentrification generally & these apartments specifically? in a prominent place, large font, eye level, visible & legible from oh, a block away? maybe as a member of a collective, your neighbors, perhaps? & you could sign it "[neighborhood] or [block] residents" to pack more of a punch, the power of a crowd speaking in unison to say "not OUR home, you predatory developers"? that's no longer spontaneous, impulsive, affective violence, & it's also no longer an individual--acting alone leaves you vulnerable. again--i didn't just *intuit* that he tore the sign down because he was mad about gentrification, i asked, in a genuinely curious tone, not at all accusatory, no hint of reprimand or censure, just...interested, "why did you do that?" & he was like "it made me fucking mad." & i was like "what about it made you mad? the apartments? how come?" & he thought about it for a minute & explained. i'm not sure *he* necessarily made the conscious connection until prompted. idk, i know people talk a lot about the fact that breitbart & drudge report are free while NYT & "all the news fit to print" is paywalled, & q-pilled covid hoax sites are free while "reputable" pandemic coverage & public health guidelines & explanations of mRNA vaccines for a lay audience are paywalled & that's true but also We Live In A Society & if you talk to the wingnuts who AREN'T that way because of any far-right ideology, a lot of them are just...autodidacts without much formal education but a lot of raw intelligence that leads to analyzing The Big Picture & trying to deduce a pattern, find a framework that explains why the world is the way it is, profoundly frustrated, deeply aware of American society's, universalized & figured as the world's, exceptional unfairness & cruelty, & *that can be redirected* with reading, discussion, prompting critical thought, introducing community connections, & perhaps most importantly for this genre of person, getting them to see patterns at work in terms of systems & structures rather than individuals, letting go of American individualism's explanatory power & belief in its liberatory potential (see: the sort of ad hoc libertarianism that goes hand-in-glove with much conspiracy thinking, both stemming from 1) mistrusting the government, & 2) ultimate freedom of the individual as the most sacred value, therefore it is what all enemies want to take away), outlining positive, actionable goals rather than just ambient suspicion & anger at authority, & figuring out how those goals can be accomplished more effectively by an organized collective (but this will ultimately benefit the individual). If the world isn't run by a shadowy cabal, if you begin to understand the structures responsible & how they manifest even on the scale of your block (e.g.!!! predatory developers buying up properties during a pandemic, tearing down affordable housing to build expensive condos on the lot, or giving old buildings a "spit and polish" so they can double the rent, pricing all the current residents out, not to mention all the little local businesses, almost all mexican & run by the mexican families who live here, that give our block its culture & will get pushed out by boutique coffee shops & the like, catering to a more affluent & almost certainly whiter clientele)--you can, in fact, change the world, something both of them repeatedly referred to as their purpose on earth. it may not be as a maverick figure, one against an army, but strength in numbers is an aphorism for a reason.

anyway! thse guys were also really weird about jews, in the philosemitic way conspiracy theorists of a certain stripe often are. the itinerant vagabond guy gave me one of his drawings; it's really lovely. i'm going to give them "are prisons obsolete?" & "the wretched of the earth" & some david graeber. 44 yr old guy has this idea that society is atomized & people aren't connected to each other & have lost the willingness or the ability to communicate with each other, also that the overreach of authority has driven some people to violence, & that makes the world feel unsafe to everyone else. he feels guilty because he is acutely aware that language, when wielded adroitly & intentionally, always has the capacity to manipulate; he is afraid of succumbing to the temptation, because he senses the coercive power of language within himself. the other guy was mostly quiet but said 44 yr old guy is one of the best friends he's ever had. he thinks animals are able to sense emotions and to heal, & he thinks they can mediate between people who have become too isolated, who have forgotten humans' innate ability to forge connections, approach others as social creatures seeking to bond instead of mistrustful, apprehensive, rejecting overtures of friendship because they expect subterfuge, or propriety has evolved to deem such overtures inappropriate outside of strictly delineated, artificially orchestrated contexts. deviation from the norm is not permitted. & back again to policing. they have an idea called "the omega family," omega for the end, a group of like-minded people who come together, who encounter each other serendipitously (predicted through auspicious auguries & recognized on sight through a constellation of signs & wonders, because of course we are all psychotic here, it was nice to just be psychotic & discuss these things like they were normal lol), & serve as catalysts to each other's "personal truth." anyway this is why i don't go out when i'm crazy, i always end up in situations like this, see also: the last time i did m*th, in a pizza hut bathroom in tallinn with an art student from glascow named muhammad ali (he went by ali), the son of white muslim converts--we thought it was c*ke but it got lost in translation & that's how i figured out i had adhd. later i got [redacted] by a filmmaker from kazan & he gave me his business card afterward for some reason, which was extremely funny. thankfully these dudes were better behaved. one of them even gave a speech about how men shouldn't rape people??? & also how our society shouldn't construct women as universal victims because in doing so it makes victimhood almost compulsory & shoehorns women into a victim role as part & parcel of womanhood? i was like yes my dude you are almost there, read the essay "abject feminism." (i did not tell them i was trans bc i wasn't sure how that would shake down, to be honest; couldn't get a read on it. did tell them i was gay & they respected it, though one did say he dated a lesbian once, & i explained that many men feel compelled to interject with an anecdote relating an exception to the rule or insist that they will he the exception to the rule, & it's really just bad manners, not even getting into the bad politics. he took it on the chin & talked about how the girl in question came home to find her partner dead of an overdose & his wife had just died of MS, so their relationship was more about grief & comfort than sexual attraction. i was like that's really, really sad, & it's wonderful that you were able to be there for each other at a time of such staggering loss, & i am a person who totally understands what you mean to communicate, but if a lesbian tells you they're a lesbian & you reply that you once dated a lesbian & they get offended & instead of responding with contrition or correction you elaborate on the tragic backstory of the relationship as though that explains the circumstances in which a self-proclaimed lesbian would date a cis man, other lesbians *will* deck you, or at the very least not take you, an unwashed white guy in

his 40s who isn't neurotypical & sits way too close for social convention in a way that could easily be construed as a come-on, in good faith.) tl;dr made some new friends, did some good drügs (i much prefer smoking m*th to snorting it, basically like purer, more potent adderall, & as such will not be doing it again for a LONG time, because i enjoy it FAR too much; slices through the brain fog & the chronic fatigue & the joint/bone pain, makes me able to pay attention, follow the thread of a conversation, actually be *interested* & want to ask *questions* & expand, build, encourage my interlocutor to elaborate, place more kal-toh pieces until the conversation shimmers into a three-dimensional shape, instead of being listless & exhausted & disengaged & *bored* all the time, so obviously i would get addicted immediately if given the opportunity, & i've known this forever lol)--now going to hydrate, refill pill case, write some emails, & meet C at the beach! not how i expected to reboot my brain, but it works! also putting them on limited facebook view because i try to keep some groups of people in my life quarantined from each other & that includes 1) my relatives & my academic ~colleagues (ne'er the twain shall meet), 2) my exes & my family, 3) my relatives, colleagues, & uh. a couple of lovely, but extremely psychotic dudes with very long criminal records i met while doing hard drugs

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

Ok so actually trying to DO THINGS like walk around and get to classes and stuff on my current Adderall dose is proof I need to drop back down to 20mg from 25mg bc everything awful.

I have a sinus headache that might just be high blood pressure, my tinnitus is worse than usual, and my heart rate is so high I am getting anxious and feel like I may have a panic attack bc it feels like my adrenaline is ramped up.

Plus I go from "ew food" to "so fucking hungry I literally can't eat enough to feel better" bc my stomach isn't big enough and my appetite is shit but I'm burning hella calories.

So even tho I have nearly 2 weeks left on this scrip I'm going to see if I can get the lower scrip called in now anyway bc this is the fucking worst.

Why would people who don't have ADHD ever take something like this recreationally???? It does not seem pleasant or helpful.

[soulvomit]

Thinking about heavy stuff lately.

I used to be passionate and obsessive about my fantasy life. My prolific writing was the product of that: a childhood through young adulthood spent with intrusive daydreams. Those daydreams killed my academic life; I wasn't at all a good student until later, when I had concrete goals (and medication). I had a compulsion to put these daydreams on paper, and eventually I ended up with so much RPG writing, a rough draft of a novel, and hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing in a sci fi universe.

One day, that changed.

Starting at around 2004, when I was around 31, I found I wasn't daydreaming about being an alien space priest (the 100s of pages) or a time traveling Buddhist monk (the novel which I basically ripped up; it's just not a story I am qualified to write) or for that matter, anyone else.

One day I found I was fantasizing about being a doctor, in a hospital. Or a forensic medical examiner. That's what my fantasy life became. Being an MD was my new escapist fantasy. I joined StudentDoctor.net and just lurked and fantasized about completing my pre-med courses and taking the MCAT and going to med school and the residency match process and then being Dr. D, and eventually dying as an old person, as Dr. D.

I kept returning to that fantasy over and over and over and I fantasized about going to med school and I read all kinds of books about medicine and biology that made my fantasy life richer, but somehow at the end of that - as my marriage was unraveling - that I needed a stable way of making a living. (Tech hadn't actually been that. Misogyny for one - and much of it from women bosses and coworkers, not men. I'd been fighting for stability for years up to the dot bomb. And now that the same jobs were now asking a degree of me, I had to ask myself: if I have to go to school, is this REALLY what I wanted to study?)

Lots of people, including my ex husband, the partner who came after him, and my mom, doubted I had it in me to do this because after all, I was a dreamy, retiring nerd, and I was determined to prove everyone wrong about who I was.

After my ex husband and I separated and I moved back north, i enrolled in phlebotomy and EMT coursework. I became a certified EMT Basic, and also volunteered at a hospital. I eventually moved to Sacramento and while I was in pre-nursing coursework (because over time, and after working with a wound care nurse, I realized that what I really wanted to be was an RN then jump to Nurse Practicioner or Wound Care), I became a caregiver for some medically more complicated clients doing a lot of stuff that outside of a home setting would require at least an LVN license. A lot of forward momentum happened at this point of my life, though I was also in a new and draining relationship. I enjoyed the joking and camaraderie I had with coworkers when that did work out. My identity was becoming bigger than it had been when I worked in tech - and now I was learning to get along with a lot more people than I used to.

At some point I started having health issues, and it became obvious that health care wasn't a sustainable thing for me, either. There was work drama that I won't go into.

Also, I was hyperfocused on reaching my goals but made much harder demands of my body than I had with tech; 12 hour shifts plus side hustles and study and writing the ~Great American Novel~ are one thing when you do desk job, but... maybe you have to have a certain physical and mental constitution to be a health worker. Not just anyone can do it.

It became clear that I didn't have what it takes. First, the disillusionment that came from becoming attached to my clients; I was in a perpetual state of grief that I wasn't even allowed to process. I was also in a deeply unhappy relationship (which I'm no longer in) and having just about the worst time of my life.

Every time I tried to push the amount I needed to push, I had some kind of a major health crisis. That i could do most of what I did, academically, was because of being on meds, and eventually I developed an autoimmune disorder that contraindicates stimulant meds. And in retrospect, maybe I should've been doing clinical/doctor's office type work instead of taking a caseload of four clients, but my ADHD craved more hands on work.

Eventually I lost a job (aforementioned work drama) - in a rather humiliating way I might add - and the fight for unemployment benefits that followed, disillusioned me about my professional path.

Health care is a human centipede of a hierarchy.

Only the stakeholders, politicians, and administrators are not in that human centipede.

If you are a doctor, you get to be the front segment instead of the back.

Also, the amount of misery and drug/alcohol abuse among my coworkers (that seemed like it was never going to end no matter how high I climbed) just... ground me down; that was going to become me eventually, too. I started off thinking that I was better than that. But by the end, I realized I wasn't. I was no stronger. The only thing I had going for me that my coworkers didn't was that my family wasn't poor, and I didn't have kids, or any responsibilities. That's it. The difference between me and the other people I worked with who took drugs to be able to work, was that I had a scrip from a psychiatrist (up until I could no longer take Adderall - but I lost my insurance, which had been leftover after my divorce, and would have had to quit anyway).

I went back to school at the end of that. I ended up studying art, because I've always done art. I figured also I could update my tech skills. But I was a zombie the whole time. I don't remember a lot about my classes, tbh; I was checked out the whole time.

I've been a zombie since.

I never found that spark again, that interior feeling inside that made me do 12 hour tech work marathons while writing books, that made me voraciously skill up and climb while in tech, and later made me want to become a nurse.

I never found that again. And I really miss that person. That person was a self absorbed jackass who couldn't sustain a relationship. Being a good family person is the one area of personal growth I've developed but it was at the cost of everything else.

Yet that old person I was? I still miss her. And grieve for her loss.

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

i've needed an adderall refill for nearly 2 weeks. i get my scrip from my university, which won't call in adderall refills to the pharmacy, you have to go in and get a paper scrip, take it to the pharmacy, then go back to pick it up.

Shockingly, I did remember to email the clinic for a refill, but I forgot to go pick it up before Thanksgiving break. Who knows if i will remember Monday. Never mind that not having it will affect my ability to do... school.

But this is clearly a fine and not harmful way of doing things.

My friend has ADHD talking about her ADHD meds that's a schedule 2 drug in America.

Let me remind you ADHD effects your working memory. So essentially if you gotta remember to call your doctor tomorrow, you will not remember to call your doctor tomorrow.

And let me tell you how hard it is.

First of all, you can't get it on auto refill.

Second, you can't get it refilled weeks before you run our. You only have a small time frame between when you can get it refilled and when you run out.

If the pharmacy doesn't have it, they can't substitute for generic.

If the pharmacy doesn't have it, they can't just move the prescription to another pharmacy. The doctor has to prescribe it AGAIN at the new pharmacy.

It has to stay in the bottle.

You have a whole group of disabled people with issues with their working memory, and you make it as hard as humanely possible for them to refill it? To the point where they can do everything right and still not have their meds filled on time? Even though suddenly stopping this medication has serious side effects?

And for what? This made up war on drugs?

I get SO MAD.

Because you have all these drug laws to criminalize Black and Hispanic people, but all its really doing is making it impossible for disabled people to get the meds they need.

Let me remind you. This is medication for people that have issues with their memory. You're forcing them to rely on their memory, which doesn't with correctly, to get it refilled on time.

And even if they do everything right, they still may not get it in time.

(My memory is shit from my migraines, and I'll order my meds a month in advance because if I don't remember to order it when I think about it, I'll entirely forget.)

-fae

[mulattafury]

hm, i just realized something kinda shitty (bitching about brain drugs)

ok so i take adderall for ADD. i’ve only been on it since last december and the psych i was seeing last year told me he expected good and fast results on this medication after our sessions. however he’s a psychologist so I had to see a physician to get the actual prescription.

i see a doctor at a low-cost clinic here in town (i’m currently uninsured because reasons, and with healthcare pretty much up in the fucking air right now i’m not in a rush to do anything about it), and i like him a lot but he prescribes me very, very low dosage. like, he started me on 5mg 2x a day, eventually bumped me up to 10 mg 2x a day. i didn’t get the scrip refilled for a few months because i was spending a lot of time out of town and 10mg literally did nothing for me, but I’m terrified of being labeled as drug-seeking if i ask for a higher dose

i finally went back to get a new scrip, and told the doctor honestly “hey, this medication is very expensive and i was feeling literally no difference when i would take these and when i wouldn’t. i have a lot more energy and more positive mood now because i’ve made lifestyle changes, so i want to go off my NDRI but my focus is still nonexistant. i’m working from home now so it’s more important than ever that i have an effective dosage of this medication.”

so he’s like “ok we’ll raise you to 15″ 

again, don’t want to argue bc i don’t want to be labeled as drug seeking, so i’ve been taking the 15 but i take them pretty close together and i think it helps some, but the effect wears off within a couple of hours.

but i just realized that the instructions for the scrip say to take them ONCE a day, not 2x as before. so i made a request for an increased dosage and he actually lowered it. i’m sure it was a mistake, but i’m worried this will cause problems getting refills later if i take it as i have been

also i’ve been doing some reading and talked to my psych and the dosage I’m on is for CHILDREN. most adults start at 40mg/day (either 40mg XR or 20mg IR 2xday) and raise it slowly until they find their ideal dose.

i dont want to try to find another doc right now, because i like mine well enough otherwise, but it’s frustrating to pay $50 to go in and get a scrip and another $65 for pills that don’t even work. my mom says i should switch to her doc bc he’s a lot more progressive about prescribing brain drugs (she told him about my struggles and he sympathized) but idk how i feel about having my primary care doc be in a different town, and i dont know if i can afford his self-pay rates

ugh, adulting

[vaspider]

I wanted to ask abt the bit where you talked abt the "potentially harmful medications on the same Schedule". This isnt a callout by any means, im just curious as to what you meant by that (also as someone with ADHD THANK YOU for saying 'medications' instead of 'drugs' i see that SO often when ppl talk abt meds I need to function on a daily basis; also if this was more explained in the original post, i never saw that post). Feel free to answer however (public or private) i dont have a preference.

Sure. If you check my 'opioids' tag, I've written a lot about how very differently people who are prescribed Adderall are treated as opposed to people who are prescribed opioids such as oxycontin. I have used those 2 meds as a contrast specifically because I have long-standing personal knowledge of the difference.

The dosage of Adderall prescribed to the average teenager with ADHD can easily be as lethal as the average oxycontin scrip for a chronic pain patient. Adderall is easily abused. So they're good points of comparison.

Here's what I have to do to get a refill on my Xtampza (which replaced oxycontin on my insurance and is the same medication):

Doctor's appointment during working hours. Pee in a cup so they can drug test me every month. Only get 1 month scrip at a time. Carry the pieces of paper to the pharmacy. Be looked up in a state computer to make sure I'm not trying to refill too soon (and then they run my insurance separately). Only be given a 1 day grace period to refill in before I run out. Be treated like shit in the ER if I'm ever hurt, and have been thrown out of an ER and called a drug seeker, with diagnostic tests canceled, only to return less than 8 hours later vomiting violently and have my gall bladder removed, the thing I came in complaining about. Be constantly treated by doctors as if I'm trying to pull a fast one on them for more drugs, despite a perfect record that's years long. Come back next month for another 1month prescription so I can pee in a cup again and pay for the appointments and the drug testing.

Here's what I have to do to get an Adderall refill for my family member:

Leave a message on their Doctor's refill line. Drive up to the office, pick up a 90-day prescription. Drive it to the pharmacy.

... slightly different, isn't it? Both drugs are abusable, cause addiction or dependence, and can easily be lethal, and are both Schedule 2 drugs.

Big difference, though, yeah? I've never seen a doctor treat my family member differently bc they take Adderall, either. It may happen, I'm sure it does, but it's so widespread that chronic pain patients are advised to carry letters from their doctors in their wallets saying THIS PERSON IS NOT A DRUG SEEKER.

Really.

I don't want people who take Adderall to be treated like me. I just want people to realize that we're not treating patients fairly, and that the outcry over "why isn't there an exemption for ADHD" is ... it's... it's very hurtful. Because I'm right here, and I don't deserve that treatment any more than someone with ADHD does.

And of course I called them medications. No one calls my dad's anticonvulsant his "epilepsy drugs." Why do we put up with our medications being denigrated as if they are optional?

I hope that helps clarify what I meant.

[acowardinmordor]

Send me victorious energy. I have an appt tomorrow to try to get my goddamn adderall scrip back and if she says any version of 'you're too smart/successful/independent to have adhd' I am going to reach through the telehealth screen and flip her table.

[copperbadge]

Sam - You probably already know this, but I just heard that Adderall is now on back-order nationwide (even worse than it had been before). If you can start trying to re-order it well before you run out this time, I'd recommend it. I don't know if that's possible, though...

Unfortunately -- but also fortunately! -- it’s not possible. Because it’s a controlled substance that can both be abused by the patient and sold for a reasonable profit, it’s got very firm regulations. You get one scrip for a 30 day supply (you can’t have more) and then on day 30 you can file a whole new scrip (no refills!) for your next 30 day supply. This is a bit bullshit because there’s no real reason not to give someone who has a history of regular non-abuse a 90 day supply or two refills, but it’s legal meth, so you know, I see why the bullshit is in place. 

So it’s Bad, obviously, because it means I can’t get a refill now while there might be some still in stock; my 30-day deadline is next Friday and there’s no moving that. So that’s me fucked a bit. However, this is also Good, because it means nobody else can do this either -- you can’t create artificial demand when it comes to Adderall, because nobody can buy out the entire stock or take more than their share. So while it would be much more ideal if I had renewed my scrip last week, the demand will only rise as much as the immediate action of people who are normally slow to fill their scrips, which I can’t imagine is a lot. Like yes we all have executive dysfunction but I think a lot of us have a real laser focus on the Good Brain Drug, you know? 

The real problem is an uneven backstock. Some pharmacies will probably have a reasonable amount, others will be out for weeks.  The pharmacy I use is a perpetually-empty Walgreens that nobody ever goes into or uses because nobody lives near it (I work near it) so I might get lucky. 

Usually, so far, the protocol for me has been "every 30 days have a consult with my psychiatrist, he puts in a new scrip, they fill it". This time, OF COURSE this time, we're trying something new -- he wrote two scrips at once, one got filled, the other one gets submitted by me on the 30 day mark. So I’ll call the pharmacy on Monday and be like “I’m not freaking out about the shortage, I just need to know when I should submit a scrip that can’t be filled until Friday” but hopefully I’ll also get some info on the shortage. 

And if I can’t get any immediately, well, I take frequent breaks and often don’t take my second dose, so I did the math in my tracking sheet and I have enough to see me halfway into November, especially if I don’t take any on weekends. I don’t love breaking into my personal backstock, but that’s why it exists, after all. This is a much bigger deal for people who really need the drug for basic function -- people on higher doses are going to be significantly more fucked. 

I may ask my psych next time I see him if I could get on a 20mg scrip so I can split the tabs and make a 30 day supply last 60 days; I don’t think it’s normally something he’d approve of but with the shortage it might be the best way to secure a reasonably-sized emergency stash. 

And I think all of this -- the spreading of the news, the counting of backstock pills, the strategies to stabilize one’s personal supply -- are really fascinating evidence of how treating non-addicts like addicts...makes them behave like addicts. If half the population of Adderall patients had a 90 day supply in hand, this shortage wouldn’t be such an issue. 

[modernliterature]

ive been trying all day to draw anyone besides nott and look where that got me

[mogsk]

I’ve been working on weening myself off SSRIs for the last few weeks.

The experience so far has been, without exaggeration, an absolute nightmare.

When I first had them recommended to me, I discussed with my psych about the potential risks and complications involved in taking them, or in having to switch to a new one, but I am now realizing I was never properly briefed on what would happen if I tried to stop them altogether.

I had to have someone else who’d been on them before tell me what a “brain zap” is.

If you’re unfamiliar, when you stop taking an SSRI, one of the common symptoms is that you’ll suddenly start experiencing what feels like electric jolts to the head. They apparently vary in severity from person to person, but for me? It’s bad enough that I cannot recall what was going on any time an episode hits me. With every zap, it’s like that experience of first waking up from a dream and having to adjust to reality, except I’m experiencing it several times in a matter of minutes.

And this is with a very very generous weening process, cutting my pills and cutting them again so that my dosage is halved, quartered, in eighths, but all the research I’ve done says it doesn’t matter -- you can lessen it, but it’s just an inevitability of the experience.

And they don’t really know why.

They say its probably not a type of seizure, but scientifically (like with most things surrounding SSRIs it turns out) no one’s really quite sure, but that’s why it’s important to stay on your meds, right?!

So I’m given a choice: spend every day feeling exhausted, needing to nap every few hours, missing out on spending time with friends, partners, or even just time to myself working on projects, or spend the first few hours of every day basically going through the cycle of waking up repeatedly into different dreams, except its all happening while I’m awake. I choose the latter because they say it should stop eventually, whereas the lethargy is apparently just par for the course with the SSRIs that my dna tests apparently demonstrate will be effective for me.

Which is funny because that’s not the choice I was offered. It wasn’t even offered in fact, so much as insisted upon -- I chose to go on them not as an earnest attempt to address a problem, but as a way to “play ball” with the system so I could get on Adderall (which has actually helped me)

No, the choice I was given was something to the effect of “live the rest of your life struggling and languishing, or take this pill and reach your FULL potential!” Now, I didn’t buy that framing at the time, life is never so simple, but what I would have liked to have been made clear are the consequences that would come from stopping them. 

I could have lied -- I would have lied! 

I could have said I was taking them and they were working out great and I would have gotten my Adderall scrips, but instead I thought “what’s the worst that happens? They don’t work?” -- evidently not!

I’ve got a long-standing reputation for my anti-psych stances, but I’ve also always been a strong advocate of the idea of approaching these things based on whether they work for you or not. I think people who treat SSRIs as a panacea for anxiety/depression represent a perspective that is equally as skewed as people who believe that taking pills for mental health is the worst one can possibly be doing. 

However, now going through this, I think it’s important to highlight, one of those perspectives tends to be held by people abused by the psychiatric system and the other is a stance backed by a multi-billion dollar subset of the Pharmaceutical industrial complex, so like, I feel like only one of those perspectives is representing a legitimately malevolent force (and it’s not the one people tend to frame as being as such, funnily enough!)

Like, if meds like this help you, more power to you, 100%, but like, I really REALLY wish there was some niche for “whatever positive effect these have had is overshadowed by the detriment and so I’d like to stop” and not have it be dominated by voices which see that as, like, a bad or misinformed decision without ever extrapolating beyond “because staying on your meds is important!”

[mental-health-advice]

Submission from Dazed & Confused

I’m not sure if any of you have experience with drugs (both scrip and recreational) but I have some questions and I’m not sure if I’m having actual side effects or if this is a mental thing.

I’ve been on Adderall XR for about a year and a half now, and so far it’s helped a lot as far as my motivation and productivity goes. However, about a month ago I tried weed for the first time and didn’t feel anything (I took my meds that day). I tried again a second time about a week ago, and I felt a little something but not enough to feel good. I took my meds earlier that day as well.

I haven’t taken my Adderall again for the last few days or so, and I’ve noticed that I’m…lighter? I’m more open to suggestion, I’m braver, and I don’t feel as anxious. I was worried as to how much my motivation and productivity would decrease, but these past few days I’ve had no major projects to work on so I didn’t feel so bad about it.

Anyways, my point is, can Adderall (or similar stimulants) worsen my anxiety or depression? Or at least intensify them? My doctor suggested I take them every weekday, because if I stop for a period of time (like during the summer break) I’d have to get my prescription re-issued or something since I’ve “proven” I can function without it for an extended period of time. I’ve felt depressed and anxious for as long as I can remember, so I’m not sure if I’m feeling better because I want to THINK I’m feeling better or if it’s because I’m genuinely feeling better. It’s worth noting that my life situation (the reasons for my depression) hasn’t improved though.

And as far as the weed goes, I’ve heard it can worsen depression, but I’ve yet to get high at all (or even try smoking without having taken my meds) and my friends have never had bad experiences so far. So I’m wondering if I should try again without my meds to see if I feel any better from the previous two times.

I’ve heard of the placebo effect for when people feel something when they TAKE a drug, but not for when they STOP taking a drug. Is this possible in my case? Or is it just me trying to make myself feel better?

If this question is out of your range then I completely understand. I’m just trying to find answers and this is the first place I thought to ask.

Hi darling,

Before anything, I want you to know that we are in no way medical professionals. If you have any questions about your medication, if you’re thinking of stopping it or if you’re doubting about whether it’s helping you enough, I really think those matters should be discussed with the psychiatrist or doctor who prescribed you the medication. Medication is very complex, and it’s just generally best to handle those issues together with a professional.

I’m glad to hear that taking Adderall for the past year and a half has helped to increase your motivation and productivity. It’s good that the medication is helping you in the way it should. Since Adderall is a stimulant however, it can indeed increase anxiety. By not taking your Adderall for a couple days it’s therefore definitely possible that your anxiety decreased. I don’t really know a lot about the effect on depression, but I do know that anxiety and depression can influence each other, so the decreased anxiety could also have decreased the depressive symptoms. I’m not sure if that’s what happened, but it’s a possible explanation. I do know that sometimes stimulants are used to treat depression, but since different medications help different people, it could just be the case that stimulants don’t work in an antidepressant way for you, just like some people don’t really benefit from SSRIs.

You’re right that weed can increase depression, although this mostly happens in high doses. I believe there is being done research on how cannabis can be used to treat depression, but I don’t think they’ve developed a certified treatment just yet. Either way, self-medicating isn’t right and I’d highly advise you not to do so. I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but why are you smoking weed / why do you want to get high? Depending on your answer to those questions, you might want to look more into whether it’s a good decision to get high or not. What I do want you to be aware of is that both stimulants and smoking cannabis can increase heart rate, so combining the two generally isn’t the best idea.

I’m honestly not really sure on whether the placebo effect can exist when stopping a medication, so I’m afraid I can’t give you a definite answer to that question. I’d personally think that it’d be possible, but I can’t really back that up with any arguments. Whether or not it’s possible, earlier in this answer I talked about another explanation for you feeling better when you were off your stimulants, so that would explain it all too.

Please be careful lovely, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you! Please don’t make any adjustments in your medication without consulting your doctor, and when asked please do be honest about your weed usage. Doctors aren’t there to judge, but they need that information in order to safely get you on medication.

Sometimes what seems impossible, is just hard.

Keep fighting beautiful ❤

Love Pauline

[soulvomit]

Am I in a bubble or is the culture “just saying yes” now?

Is the culture starting to back off a bit about drug use or is it just my corner of the culture?

Now, I am way out on the fringe in some ways and in a filter bubble. But it seems like psychedelics are getting kind of normalized. Kind of. They’re starting to get revisited by the psychiatric profession, and taken seriously. In many communities I’m in, recreational psychedelic use is treated like having a fetish or kink, like, “well, not my thing, but if it’s your thing, ok, just don’t push it on me.” And like in Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/founder culture, there’s a push toward “efficiency culture,” and there’s some winking around drugs if your Adderall scrip makes you more efficient. 

(I kind of hate that. At least psychedelic culture tends to come along with other things I like - such as music and art, introspection, freethinking, new models of psychology, etc - but taking drugs to improve “efficiency” and make me a better drone? That sounds like a toxic workplace.)