#But I was cut short because of that appointment I'd forgotten about and I really couldn't be late to it.

[royalarchivist]

For folks who missed today's QSMP Movie Night or want to rewatch it with the original audio intact, I've uploaded the Movie Night portion of several members' VODs to a public Google Drive. I will keep these files up until Monday, December 4th, so be sure to watch and/or download whatever you need before then!

UPDATE: The lovely folks at @mcyt-archives have added all Movie Night 2 VODs to the QSMP Archivist VOD Masterlist. If you're still having trouble finding an unmuted version of the VOD you want to watch, check out their archive!

[ As a side note: thank you to everyone who left such kind comments & messages on the previous VOD Archival post. You're all so sweet, it made me feel really happy and appreciated :') ]

[ragnarokhound]

hey i saw ur tag on the executive dysfunction post where u said ur meds allow u to punch a hole in the wall and access the internal well of motivation or some such. can i ask how that works as in can you just do things after that?? you like have a task you gotta do and you up and do it? sorry to break into ur askbox like this i was just very curious because my executives do not function

Hi! Sure, I don't mind :)

Short answer: yes. :') I take my meds in the morning, and over the course of the day, it is much easier for me to add tasks to my mental list and then knock them down like the most dutiful Sim in the world. I forget to do things sometimes still - but those are usually due to other barriers like 'I would like to schedule this appointment, but I'm at work right now so I can't do that yet.' and then hours later I will have forgotten that I needed to do that. WHOOPSIES. Not necessarily an ADHD problem, just an average human one.

Also, the meds make it easier to access the well. That doesn't mean I always CHOOSE to use the well, haha. Sometimes I am just sooo comfy in bed and think 'i should get up. But I bet I could get away with another 25 minutes of dozing UwU' and then after my alarm goes off because my 25 minutes are up, I'm cursing my past self for being a hedonistic sloth because I really do have to get up now or I'll be late. I CAN choose correctly. That doesn't mean I do.

Long answer getting into the nitty gritty of my ADHD med journey below the cut:

So just remember that I'm not a doctor, I'm a stranger on the internet, so I don't know quite how it works, and not all medication will work the same for everyone. Executive function is huge for folks with ADHD, but it might be something else! ADHD often shakes hands with other conditions.

BUT - in my experience, I was diagnosed with combined ADHD (both the hyperactive bouncy kind and the laser focus, sit still for 12 hours doing one thing kind). A lot of my own executive function problems stemmed from not being able to choose what I hyper focused on, for how long, or if I even could. :')

There's a few different medications available to choose from once you get a diagnosis, including a fast-acting stimulant and a slow-release stimulant. The one that helps me is a slow-release - I take it in the morning, and it'll start to kick in after an hour and gives me a steady stream over the course of the day, wearing off about 8 hours later.

People with ADHD don't make as much dopamine on their own, and stimulants help your brain produce more of it. If you find yourself feeling calm and more able to focus or task-switch after drinking coffee, or soda, or other uppers, you might be self-medicating, and a diagnosis and meds may be helpful (but definitely talk that out with a doctor).

It took a while for my "storage" of dopamine to build up, and it wasn't pretty the whole journey there. There were multiple days in a row that I had to force myself to eat because the meds suppress appetite, so it was easy to skip meals I shouldn't have. (I embraced snacking over the whole day as a solution until my humors were balanced and I'd built up the habit of prepping a lunch hours beforehand lol)

But the benefits were immediate. Some things are normal, and habits are something every human has to figure out how to build regardless of whether you make enough dopamine - but I was immediately calmer. I would think 'i need to take out the garbage. I will do that now' and I would, in fact, take out the garbage? I'd just get up? And do it??? It was that easy. I find it much easier to stop in the middle of what I'm doing without getting annoyed, and to task switch without it completely breaking my flow. I'm CAPABLE of task switching at all. It's easier to remember that mug I left in the microwave. I can sit or work in silence and it's fine, I don't need music to be playing in the background to focus.

I still have to convince myself sometimes to do things when my executives don't want to function - a big coping skill I like is giving myself a crossroads moment. If I'm reading, the crossroads moment is at the end of a chapter, or a scene break. If I'm playing a game the crossroads moment is when I lost or won a round, or when I completed the task I was in the middle of, or reached a safe area.

At a crossroads moment, you can either choose to keep doing whatever you're doing, or do something else. It's why being on Tumblr and other social media is difficult to get away from, because there is no natural stopping point if you haven't turned off infinite scrolling. If that's hard for you, see if you can change your dash settings to only load a page/set number of posts at a time. You'll get a crossroads moment every time you reach the bottom of that page.

This is all my own experience with ADHD and stimulants, so again, I encourage you to think about whether this sounds like you and bring it up to a doctor if it's having a really big impact on your life.

I hope this helps! I also suggest this video from Jaiden Animations - she talks about her own experience getting an ADHD diagnosis, and funnily enough, this video dropped within the same week as I got mine, haha.