#i tried ritalin first

[misterxsamsa]

Hey, Tumblr, I've been going through medications at the advice and supervision of my hack psychiatrist. After yet another godawful experience on these pills, I'm seeing her later today and getting on another one, and you guys get to decide what it is! The fate of my life is in your hands, so have fun!

[prettyoddfever]

Local God doesn't fit Ryan Ross

I'm still getting a couple questions about this, so let's go through each line in the beginning of the song...

In 1998, you bought a B.C. Rich: Here's how Ryan described his actual first guitar that his dad bought as a present around 1999 (the year was generally ballparked in interviews): "I kept begging my dad for a guitar. I picked out an off-brand, a Harmony, I think, out of the Sears Christmas catalog. It came with a battery-powered amp. It was $100 for everything." That is such a far cry from a B.C. Rich.

You were a master shredder from the jump: Just no. Ryan told Ultimate Guitar that "In the beginning, probably about the first year, I just tried to do it on my own. It was really, really frustrating. So I took lessons for a little while." And the songs he was trying to play in the early years were easy. Spencer told Drum Magazine in 2007 that “blink-182 was a great band for Ryan to play to because the guitar parts were all three-chord songs. But Travis Barker’s drum parts were so far musically beyond that – it was just frustrating.”

Blew them all away with the Ritalin kids while I was shedding through my sophomore slump: None of this applies. Ryan & Spencer were basically just messing around in a garage for years. Here's Spencer reminiscing: “I set up my drum kit in my parent’s garage. Ryan would then come over and he’d bring his first little 25 watt amp with him and we’d go from there. We’d cover songs, try and write our own; it was great fun. A couple neighbors came over and complained about the noise... As long as we didn’t play too late, most people were really cool about it." Spencer talked about how they came up with original material that was "20 or 25 songs that were just horrific sounding, just horrible.” Ryan said that “they were some pretty terrible songs!" In late 2003 their band was trying to get into a small local battle of the bands, but meanwhile some of their peers like Kyle Lobeck were in solid bands that were playing actual shows (ex: Brown Eyed Deception). The Summer League wasn't in that scene.

You had so many chances to become a star, But you never really cared about that: Yeah he didn't seek fame itself, but he absolutely cared about the big chances that were presented to P!ATD because being bigger & more famous would allow the band to do what they wanted. So this one is iffy idk.

And all of this is just taking Local God at surface value without looking at the context of where it falls in the album. Viva Las Vengeance was brilliantly done in my opinion. The songs are deliberately arranged to tell a story, and Maggie symbolizes so much. It doesn't make sense to me for Local God to be about Ryan. I mentioned more in this post about how song lyrics are up for interpretation, though, so that's just my opinion.

[actuallyadhd]

hi, sorry in advance if this isn't the kind of thing you are open to getting in your inbox, but i just don't know what to do with my feelings. i really hate my adhd. i spent my youth cruising through school and high achiever programs, being told i was going places, and nowadays i am nothing short of completely useless. i'm early in diagnosis to where i'm just starting with medication (15mg of ritalin twice a day at this stage) and haven't effects yet. it's already clear that the dose i'm going to need will be embarrassingly high.

ever since i told my friends, it's obvious that the diagnosis came out of left field for them and that they see me differently. i keep catching them giving me sympathetic looks after zoning out, fiddling with something, or presenting some other stereotypical symptom. i tried mentioning to them how i'm not getting results out of meds yet as a means of whinging since it is making me anxious and a little impatient, and their response was completely uninformed medical advice about how i should be taking them. they're also all talking about how they all probably have adhd too since we 'tend to glom together'. they're all straight-A students with no symptoms or functional issues, so i find this a little condescending. i might be imagining how they've starting talking down to me/talking slower. the diagnosis made me feel stupid enough without them acting like this, and now i just feel like a human joke.

i don't really know what the point of what i'm writing is anymore, but i'm struggling to get any assignments in, failing all my tests, my friends treat me different, my parents are unabashedly disappointed, the meds are taking too long to work, i'm lazy, dysfunctional, getting dumber every day, and my head is too fucking loud to keep living in.

i'm sick of how trying to have a thought feels like being a sentient pile of spaghetti wading through tar, and of not being able to read if my brain decides a particular paragraph is not to its liking, of not remembering anything, of struggling and not even being able to remember and articulate what with, and all the other bullshit. i probably just have to wait this out while we figure out meds, but i'm sorry for using this inbox to vent because i think that's what i'm doing as i can't really go to my friends. feel absolutely no pressure to respond, i might have just needed to wright this down and see it sent off somewhere. any advice is welcome if you have it though, lol.

Sent August 16, 2024

Oof, I'm so sorry you're feeling this way. There's a lot here, so I'm going to try and go through it a bit at a time and tackle everything as I go.

First, this is absolutely the kind of thing I'm here to try and help with. No worries at all on that.

Second, this is a long one, so I'm putting in a cut.

I understand hating your ADHD. You feel how you feel, and that's okay. Reaching out for help is a fantastic way to deal with those emotions.

It sounds like you were a gifted student, and now that you have less of a schedule being imposed on you, you're struggling. That is totally normal, but it also sucks a lot.

You aren't "achieving your potential" or meeting expectations, and at this point they aren't just others' expectations, they're your own. I spent several months working through this issue years ago, and it still comes up for me regularly! The friend who walked me through it was incredibly patient with me, and their job in this case seemed to mainly consist of "why do you think you need to do this thing?" and then just continually asking why until we got to the bottom of it all.

Once you know what's at the base of the expectations, you're in a way better position to decide whether they're expectations you want to try to meet.

One of the good things about getting diagnosed is that it gives you information. Now you know why things are hard, and you can start looking for solutions that will actually work with your brain. You may find some of those solutions here, and you can always ask for help with specific issues.

Now, it's possible that Ritalin/methylphenidate isn't the right medication for you. It is also possible that the dose is too low; I don't know a lot about doses for Ritalin (I was initially put on Concerta but it was Very Bad so we switched to Dexedrine/amphetamine) but I used to know someone who took 150mg Ritalin every day, so that's a thing.

As for your friends, talk to them about how they're acting. Tell them that you don't appreciate the jokes or the different treatment. Explain that ADHD has been there all along, it just wasn't discovered earlier because your giftedness hid it. You are not a different person.

Having ADHD doesn't make you stupid. We've already established that you're gifted. I know what that's like; I was this flavour of twice-exceptional, too, and I was 28 with my ADHD was finally diagnosed. I know that doesn't help how you feel right now, but it is true.

For your school stuff, talk to your instructors about getting extensions so you can try to get caught up. Go to your school's disability services office and talk to them about what you can access in terms of accommodations. Set yourself a schedule for studying and working on assignments that you stick to no matter what.

I'm not sure why your parents are disappointed. If it's your school performance, I get it. Showing them that you're doing your best will help a lot with that. If it's the ADHD itself, that's not your fault. ADHD is hugely genetic, so it's just a thing that happens and probably you have relatives who also have ADHD, or at least people who would probably qualify for a diagnosis.

Medication can take a while to figure out, and it can be difficult to deal with waiting while you get the right medication and the right dose. At the same time, you may not notice a difference right away; so much depends on the person and the medication.

Now, you are not lazy or getting "dumber" every day. You have ADHD, which means you have executive dysfunction. That is hard because the world is not set up for people like us, so when we struggle we compare ourselves to other people and that's never a good idea.

I have a suggestion for helping you feel better about yourself, and then I have some resources for you to look at.

Start a scrapbook that's just about good things about you. Make a page for things you're interested in (or a page per interest). Do something about your favourite colour, things you have done for other people, etc. The idea is that then you can look at this book and remind yourself of the good things about who you are as a person.

As for resources, here are a couple of posts over on the main Actually ADHD site that might help with some of what you're struggling with. Most of the posts there include printables, so do have a look and see if those might help you at all.

Followers, do you have any other suggestions for this anon?

-J

[bomberqueen17]

realizations

this is just me having medical realizations and again wishing I had someone to help me coordinate my medical care. I hear rumors some people use primary care physicians for this but mine doesn't do that kind of thing, so I'm writing things out here instead.

physical therapy:

shit got so busy last week that i fell off the wagon for the first time. I've only ever missed a single day of the thrice-weekly physical therapy exercises since I was first prescribed them in January; on two occasions I think I've wound up doing them only twice in a week. But last Tuesday, I woke up and did a few of them and then ran out of time, and then worked three twelve-hour days in a row, and a fourth day I worked six hours and then drove four more. And then I was visiting friends and had horrible menstrual cramps. So I just didn't climb back onto the wagon.

I haven't had bad sciatic nerve pain at any point during any of that. Sure, toward the end of the long days on my feet I was taking any opportunity to sit, and I was doing some of the pt stretches, and it's not that the sciatic nerve didn't hurt at all. But it didn't keep me up. And I now am back to a normal level of physical activity, and I slept in a bad position last night and am experiencing no consequences today.

I'll go back to them-- need to figure out today if I have an appointment tomorrow or Thursday first-- and I'm sure not saying the exercises caused the sciatic nerve pain-- but it sure is a fucking data point isn't it.

ADHD meds:

I have managed to take two doses of Ritalin about four times in the last two weeks. It used to be that I would at least really notice the first dose, but I've been faithful enough with it that at this point my body doesn't seem to react to it at all. I can't tell whether I've taken it, most days, and that means I don't notice it wearing off and I don't think to take the second one. I know it shouldn't work like that but it definitely doesn't. There have been days I've forgotten both doses, though, and there's no real difference in those days. And that time I tried to sew those bike shorts was one of my most obvious two-dose days.

I don't need help focusing my attention, which seems to be what the stimulants do. My manifestation of ADHD is not distraction. I have always been able to focus on a task. What I cannot do is initiate a task, change a task, or perform a sequence of tasks that depend on one another, beyond a very simple list structure. Last night I had to entirely admit defeat because coordinating a sequence of tasks was beyond me. It was an embarrassingly simple sequence of tasks: I had to drop my car off for service, and get dinner, and the hardest part was that I had to coordinate a person accompanying me in a second vehicle so I could get a ride home. And there was a time constraint, and I could not do any of it because I could not initiate the task of looking up which takeout restaurants were nearby. "Solve one thing at a time," Dude said, and proceeded to help me, but I said "i can't solve one thing at a time, because if I solve one thing I will not then be able to initiate the solving of the second thing, and then the second problem will derail the rest of my night."

On my own I would not have been able to feed myself dinner, I think. I would have had to abandon that very simple task as unsolvable. I simply could not hold two things in my mind long enough to consider it. It was absolutely stupid.

Relatedly I was trying to figure out how to calculate the sale price of an item, and it was 60% off the listed price, and I know to get 60% of something you multiply it by .6, so I was trying to do that and then subtract the number I got from the original number, and I tried it literally nine times without being able to remember the .6 result long enough to then type it back into the calculator. Yes, I know you can just times it by .4 instead now, and I also know that at any moment I could have gotten up and gotten a piece of paper, or gotten a second calculator, or taken a screenshot, but all of those solutions were so cumbersome and involved me abandoning my initial task that I could not figure out how to use them. I finally asked someone else and they told me the answer and also how to use the times .4 method, which I had considered but wasn't confident enough in.

All of this is related, I think, to me having basically no working memory. I cannot hold a thing in my mind while I contemplate a second thing. And I don't know if any ADHD medication would ever help with that. That is the root of almost all of my problems: I know, from long experience, that I have to continually maintain the single thing I am focused on in my mind, and if I try to think of any second thing, I either can't, or if I succeed, will lose the first thing irrevocably. So i can't use most of the problem-solving skills I know fine well how to use. I can't get fucking anything done. (I give amazing advice, always have, because I've spent a ton of time figuring out how to solve problems and then discovering that I can't actually use any of those methods successfully.) And, I can pretty conclusively state after these several months of experimentation: ADHD stimulant meds have zero effect on this problem.

I don't know if any meds have any effect on this problem. It may well be that there is nothing to be done for my condition, medication-wise. I guess I'm glad I was able to try medication, since it is such a miracle for so many people. I guess I'm just sad it wasn't a miracle for me. But it hasn't addressed any of my problems so I don't see a point in continuing it.

Possibly what I need is some other kind of therapy, some kind of like behavioral therapy or life coaching or something, I don't know. It would help me enormously, I think, to have a lifestyle with a predictable routine and very little dislocation, but that's not possible for me with my current job and life situation. And I don't know how to discover what kind of therapies even exist, and I know the psych provider I've been seeing will not be able to recommend anything in the three minutes we get per meeting. So I might just be out of options, now. But I guess I'm glad at least I tried.

I really wish I had some kind of doctor overseeing all of my medical care I could consult about this, but I don't, I only have the individual specialists. So I'm on my own and I'm just trying to work around my severe memory problems by writing things out, I guess.

Currently I am just going to have to accept that there's literally no way I'm going to be able to figure out how to get to Rochester and back this week, so I'm going to give up on retrieving my critical personal electronics and just wait until I head back to the farm to get them on my way through. Which sucks and I am sad about but I just don't know how to coordinate the logistics and incorporate that into my life, so I'm going to stop worrying about it. This is how I get through things: I just let almost everything go, and live with whatever I can pick up in the aftermath. C'est la vie!

Oh huh you can't add more tags onto posts once you've stopped adding them huh. Fascinating choice, Tumblr.

[auriza-side-tomb]

I have just tried Ritalin for the first time and I think I might have ADHD because I worked for like a solid hour on a really stressful project that I’d been avoiding and only felt minor jitters…

I apparently got ADHD free with my Autism.

[gayhenrycreel]

in the wake of the Abuse in Care report, i want to share my own story

for context, i am a young kiwi. im autistic and adhd, and struggle with violent meltdowns.

tw for all sorts of abuse

a few years ago, my meltdowns got very severe. i was dangerous. i got sent to the psychward 3 times. the first 2 times were scary, but i was okay.

the 3 third time nearly killed me.

i was 13 and they didn't have any spaces left, so they put me in a solitary confinement area of the asylum. yes, modern psychwards are insane asylums. if you had a good experience at one you are an exception. the wall were concrete and my room had a small outdoor area attached that was lined with barbed wire. the toilet did not flush. i was not allowed out, except for a few times when i was allowed to see the other inmates.

i was trapped for 11 days. i still remember exactly what date it was. i called my mum every day. neither of us knew if we would ever see each other again. i had been kidnapped by the state. i was fed green sludge and something that may have been extremely dry and cracked fish or chicken. this was my only meal i regularly got. getting breakfast was a hit n miss.

on day 9 i snapped. i tried to hit a nurse and my punishment was to be strangled half to death. i couldn't breathe. they nearly dislocated my shoulder. my vision turned black. i vaguely recall being injected with a sedative.

when i have flashbacks i can feel the physical pain again. it feels like my arms are being torn off.

i only went back home when my mum showed up, unauthorised, and demanded to bring me home. i never thought i would see my family again.

something i didnt mention earlier, i am medically recognised with a complex dissociative disorder. im not sure if that big traumatic event caused my alters or if Doc had already existed, but it certainly split my sense of self to some degree. Doc saved our life. Daniel, the alter who presents as the original, could not handle existence. after the psychward, my system almost achieved final fusion. Daniel went dormant. Doc was the only alter. later that month a new alter split and it took 4 months for Daniel to return.

afterward my horrible psychiatrist with the tiny shorts decided that my meltdowns were because of my adhd, which has been successfully treated since i was 4. he put me on ritalin, despite my bad history with it. ritalin gave me a panic attack that lasted 3 days without stopping. my mum immediately took me off it as soon as she noticed the heightened anxiety. a microdose of magic mushrooms of all things, cured my anxiety for a week while also treating my adhd while i had no adhd meds, so do with that what you will (mushies may have saved my life).

i already had a traumatic life, and the asylum was the hammer that finally shattered my cracked mind. i never really had a sense of self, no individuality, so its no wonder i have OSDD.

the trauma didn't stop there.

couple years later i ended up in E Puni, a jail for children who cant live with their families. i mean it when say jail. concrete walls and floors, cameras everywhere, doors that cant be opened from inside, stale food. i cant eat a lot of thing due to being autistic, so i starved. they did not not accommodate my needs.

i had another meltdown, so i got violently picked up and literally thrown onto a concrete floor in solidarity confinement. water all over the floor. i dissociated so much i could barely stand. for some reason they didn't take my belt so i tried to hang myself.

they damaged the nerves in my left arm when they threw me. i couldn't use my arm for 3 months, and when i explained why i was struggling with arm strength, they said i was faking nerve damage. i thought i would be permanently disabled. thank god it was temporary. i was forced to participate in being around screaming teenagers who made sounds i cant handle because of sensory processing disorder. some of those poor kids had been there for 5 years.

the only 2 staff there who cared for me left because they couldn't handle seeing the organized abuse the children went through. i couldnt take it either.

im in a different place now, though still in state care. its been rough, but here its only bad if i have meltdowns.

as for the cops, the most notable thing theyve done is tell me that they "can restrain [me] without reason".

if anyone ever asks why i am an anarchist, this is why.

[jules-van-hering]

tried some of my partner's ritalin for the first time and what can I say, I just did two hours of study of a confusing and tiring text on taoism. maybe that was full on placebo, maybe not. do I care? not really. it worked, so 💁🏼‍♀️

[kittykatrattie]

How do you feel about Max’s whole situation with his parents? Are you the ones that feel like “they don’t care” in the show or the ones that feel like it’s complicated or Max just REALLY overreacts when it comes to his family?

Haha I've answered this a couple times so I'll summarize it first and then link the other asks

Max's dad is abusive (alcoholic, takes his anger out on Max and his mom, wants to be In Charge) but otherwise just doesn't care about Max beyond whether or not the kid is making him look bad

His mom, though, is more complicated. Because she does care, sort of, she just can't handle it. She doesn't like her life so she deals with it with heavy drug use (pills, cigarettes) which causes her to also neglect Max. She's not a good mom by any means, but she does technically care about him (she tries to keep him out of trouble a little, because she cares and also it's then less trouble for her too)

I think they both have their occasional good moments, no person is black and white, but Max, as a child of abuse and neglect, doesn't really acknowledge nuance when he's in survival mode

[jynxeddraca]

A Thought on Adderall

So for the first time in my life, I am getting actual medication for my ADHD. I am not counting the 2 weeks when I was a child where I was on Welbutrin and Ritalin at the same time, and a barely functioning zombie because of it. Because of this effect my mom took me off both medications and then decided I didn't need them and so I never got help after that, even though it was exceedingly clear to everyone that I was in fact ADHD and probably needed some help.

But I digress.

I - after a 3 month long wait - finally got an Adderall prescription filled this past week. I cried all morning the first day I took it because it is a night and day difference. I could choose to focus when and on what I wanted. I wasn't as fidgety. I wasn't dopamine chasing. Weirdly I could actually hear people in my meetings without the subtitles being on. A large part of me wishes I had tried to get medicated years ago. A small, angry part of me feels cheated of all the hours I spent beating myself up because I felt (and was made to feel like) I wasn't trying hard enough and was just lazy.

Now don't get me wrong, Adderall is basically state-approved, micro-dosing of meth. There are some downsides. I am so thirsty all of the time, I have had low-grade headaches every day I've taken it (which are getting better), I was not sleeping well the first couple nights, and I am at a much higher risk not only of sunburn but also heatstroke. And for someone gardens that's a very dangerous risk. On top of that, my little sheet the pharmacist gave me also mentions that sudden death is also a risk. Fun times.

There's also this side effect that studies say isn't a side effect, but there's a lot of forum posts about it happening when people take Adderall and it's about nipples suddenly hurting. Cause that happened. Thank the gods I work remote because I had to stop in the middle of a meeting and take my bra off because I hurt so bad it felt like my nipples were going to fall off. I hope it's a one-off.

Overall, this is the best thing I've done for myself in a long time. And already I've been able to get things done around the house that I am not normally on top of. I may ask to go to a lower dosage if the headaches don't stop though.

[mo0l]

god i love that ive been doing so well at pushing myself with my hobbies lately ^^ still feel actively enthused with learning rpgmaker despite hitting the first major difficulty block,,, tried making homemade doughnuts for the first time ever the other day! im happy with myself lately :) even ritalin doesnt seem to be making my anxiety more volatile like it can be known to do

[newpartnerincrime]

ok hi i want to get into ER but honestly mostly to see what the fuss is about Carcy according to you (/gen) so can you recommend to me some essential or fave Carter/Lucy episodes

i’m vibrating violently at this ask just hope u know that.

firstly i’ll say that the lucy era is only from season five up until mid-season 6, so if you’re starting there you’re missing out on a lot!! they are genuinely incredible. but you can probably enjoy these episodes without seeing the rest of the show if that’s your prerogative. sorry if this list is long, it’s also season 5 heavy.

05x05: masquerade. we’re building tension here babey. lucy and carter are caught up in halloween party madness and it doesn’t end well

05x06: stuck on you. more tension!! honestly a lot of the first half of s5 is them bickering and me going KISS KISS KISS. but in this one carter gets his beard stuck in carpet glue. that’s all you need to know

05x07: hazed and confused. incredible episode for the “argues like a married couple” lovers such as myself because that is exactly what they do.

05x08: the good fight. this is THE carcy episode. it’s required reading. they do some crazy shit looking for a girl’s father. carter dislocates some bones. lucy gets referred to as “the missus.” it’s everything.

05x10: the miracle worker. christmas episode!! very funny but also very heartbreaking moments. i don’t know how else to summarize it without giving away too much of the plot so just trust

05x11: nobody doesn’t like amanda lee. more genuine affection. jealous carter. that is all

05x14 & 05x15: the storm part 1 and 2. this is where noah wyle pulled the plug unfortunately and it drives me insane. but there’s some 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

05x20: power. lucy tries to use pheromones to get carter’s attention. i’m fairly certain this is also the episode where carter’s girlfriend straight up asks lucy if she’s sleeping with him SO.

i think both 05x21 (responsible parties) and 05x22 (getting to know you) touch on lucy’s adhd and her and carter butting heads about her use of adhd meds. lucy’s been on ritalin long term and the show presents this as kind of a bad thing but i don’t know enough about the science behind that to say otherwise, so warning for that message.

obligatory 06x13 & 06x14 be still my heart/all in the family mention. while all in the family makes me sob uncontrollably it is genuinely one of the best episodes of television ever made. it’s so tragic and horrible but like. you can’t Not watch it.

there’s little moments throughout but these sum up most of what makes me nuts. honestly the majority of season 5 is very carter/lucy heavy, pretty much every episode up until the storm is good if u just wanna see their journey but these are my faves. so thank you for asking and indulging me 💔💞

[cocklessboy]

Finding the right meds or combination of ADHD meds can be one hell of a journey.

First my psychiatrist had me try Atomoxetine (an SNRI) but I had psychotic side effects so we had to ditch that.

Then we tried Ritalin. It helped, but I got loads of side effects. It made my heart race, made me dizzy and jittery, made my sensory issues worse, gave me acid reflux, and even increased my sex drive to problematic levels (which is not a normal side effect and may have been a strange interaction with my HRT).

Those are basically the only ADHD meds available in this country (no, we don't have Adderall or any of those other ones here), with one caveat: the active ingredient in Ritalin (Methylphenidate) is available in a slow-release form called Concerta. Instead of taking it twice a day and it being out of your system in 4-6 hours, you take it once in the morning and it lasts up to 12 hours, gradually releasing the drug into your system.

Even though it's the same chemical, the slow-release version worked like a dream. Basically no side effects aside from increased acid reflux (which I already take medication for), and it's pretty effective. Basically life-changing! The problem? It wears off around 8 pm.

I don't go to bed until like 1:30.

So for 5+ hours each night I'd be unmedicated and miserable. Unable to work, unable to do anything really, and also unable to keep track of time or switch tasks, so I never managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

I described this to my psychiatrist and he suggested that around 8, when the Concerta is wearing off, I can take half a tablet (just 5 mg) of Ritalin. It's not enough to cause side effects, but combined with whatever remains in my system of the Concerta, it should be enough to keep me functional until bed time - and make it easier to turn off the computer and go to bed.

I've been doing this for several days and... it's working. No major side effects, and I get a bonus 4-5 hours of actual real life functional time in my day, plus I'm able to watch the clock and shut down the computer and head to bed at the right time, which is helping me fix my sleep schedule overall (which had been a real nightmare for ages).

Finding the right meds or combination of meds for ADHD or for any other health problem (physical, neurological, or psychological) can take a lot of time and trial and error. But it is worth it. If you find yourself feeling frustrated because everything you try isn't working, don't give up. While it is true that some problems just don't have a solution, it is worth keeping at it for as long as you can.

I feel like this whole process has been a great lesson in not giving in to despair when things don't work out right away. I still have a lot of other health issues that don't have solutions yet, and it's easy to feel hopeless, but there are still more options to try. And maybe the next one will finally do the trick.

And if there's anyone out there trying to push you away from medication that helps you, because they think of medication as inherently bad, or because they think the side effects can't be worth it, ignore them. They are wrong. Finding the right medication for a chronic health problem or disability can change your entire life. Do not ever let anyone shame you out of being as happy and healthy as you can possibly be.

[flowers-and-pollen]

Dear anon i got earlier

Okay first thanks but i don't do drugs other then Ritalin and caffeine and those don't count

Second watts is kinda my friend so that's also a no

Third tf is moon suger, if it's suger made from the moon i bet i can get better then whatever you have. The stars are my siblings.

And lastly you can't stop me from posting this and warning @anti-wizard-council @the-guy-in-the-robe that someone's after him and tried hiring me to kill him by paying with drugs, it won't hurt you since you're anonymous and i can't find you like this.

[bomberqueen17]

quick turnaround

The first chicken processing day is this coming tuesday. so we got back into town around 7pm last night, and I immediately put a load of laundry in.

This is mostly me wittering about chores and medical stuff, so, cut for boring, LOL.

it's cold and rainy here so I hung last night's laundry up on drying racks in the guest room, so mostly it is dry this morning-- delicates, so they didn't need to dry in the sun really-- and now this morning i've put in a second load and it's already on drying racks and some is on the line, it's not raining but it's cloudy so it'll dry slow, but like, trousers and t-shirts do better on the line than on racks. Yes I do own a dryer-- a gas dryer actually-- but it beats the fuck out of my clothes and I don't like to use it if I can in any way avoid it. (Mostly I use it to tumble towels and dress shirts for fifteen minutes, and then I hang them out once they're steaming and hot, and they dry without wrinkles that way. Yes I'm on the OCD spectrum, yes it mostly manifests about laundry. Hilariously, my farm BIL is also on the OCD spectrum, farther along it toward where it's actually a problem [mine is SO mild I don't claim it as a disorder at all, i just have things i Care About for Reasons], and has done tons of work on himself and tries to mask it, but once I understood that about him I understood that most of our lil workplace quarrels were our compulsions clashing, so I started making more concerted efforts to decide when to bow to his compulsions and when to advocate for mine, which in many cases are informed by superior knowledge as I've worked in food service more than him. I bow to him more on cleaning now because he does have prior janitorial experience. Unless I can prove he's wrong, LOL.)

I went off Ritalin mostly while on vacation-- I took it the morning I went fabric shopping because I thought it might help me actually make decisions, and that went well so maybe it worked. But that means I have extra pills, so I'm going to try to today take a morning and midday dose, while I have So Much To Do to prepare for the coming couple of weeks, and see if that plus the structure of this massive to-do list help me get anywhere. I just feel like if I can have this data before my next $300 3-minute psych consult I'll make more progress. Ritalin is better than Adderall (less brutal comedown, less getting "stuck")-- I *think*, but it's hard to tell. Vyvanse was also very hard to evaluate, is the problem, because that one I never did have any spare pills so I could never try an effective dose.

I do get it, i do get not giving me high doses when I'm so unsupervised, but-- for all of the medications, the first couple of days were weird and I had trouble hydrating and I was jittery and stuff, but it went away so quickly, I would have been fine with "take half dose two days, then ramp up to effective dose and see how it works" type directions, instead of "take what we know absolutely will be too little for you for two weeks and then come back and try to guess whether it helped", which has just meant I don't really have much data to on on here.

But. I've spent almost forty years needing this kind of medication and not able to access it at all, so I'm reminding myself that this is very rapid progress really.

So I figure I'll do a double dose today, a single tomorrow while I'm driving (maybe I will take that sole dose at midday, since driving is easy and boring but then I have work I need to get done all afternoon), and then I'll try either single or double dosing for the week of farm work until I can get my next appointment, depending how many pills I have. I want to be consistent but lol. It's not in my nature and it's not in my circumstances, so it can be a goal.

I also should write down what I realized about my sciatic nerve. I was joking that my knee caught a haunting in New Orleans somehow. Because it went from being a classic sciatic nerve pain situation-- starting in hip, through back of leg, ending at back of knee-- and wound up just being this horrible pinching pain right inside my knee, like not in the joint but somehow manifesting in a dimension extending from the back of my patella into Hell somehow-- and it was keeping me awake both when trying to nap during the day and also at night when trying to sleep. So I gave up on sleeping and sat on the couch to bitch about it in the complaints channel on the Discord where I'm mostly at home (it was a witcher server and over the last two or three years has mutated into just this ragtag group of us bitching about unrelated things and occasionally dumping fanworks on each other, sometimes about unrelated media)--

but here I'm gonna let you in on a secret, which is that complaining works sometimes. What? Yes. So in order to elicit maximal sympathy from my pocket friends by describing the problem really well (they're very good pocket friends, and many of them know things so describing stuff well sometimes means they have good advice, but even if not, I take satisfaction in communicating well, so I at least feel better about having done that), I really started paying attention to the pain, and I realized that what was happening was that it was sort of slowly throbbing on a cycle. I always knew where it was, but then it would get painful enough that I felt I had to move and change position, and it would stay at that level of pain for three or four seconds, and then taper off until I only just was aware of it, and then it would repeat-- and it was on a thirteen-to-fifteen-second cycle, and this is the crucial thing, it was unaffected by movement. I had been tossing and turning because what would happen was that it hurt badly enough that I felt I had to move it, and I would move and the pain would ease, and I would try to settle into a position, and then the pain would come back, and my half-asleep exhausted self thought that it was something I was doing. So it meant I was constantly moving, which meant I could not sleep. I had finally gotten out of bed and was alternating stretching and pacing, which seemed to be helping but then it was coming back, and the pacing sure as fuck wasn't helping me sleep, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, until finally I stood still and timed it, and then moved and timed it, and realized it was the same.

Realizing that it was happening regardless of movement made me able to hold still while it hurt most acutely, and then sure enough it faded away. And once I knew that moving wouldn't help, I could ride out the urge to move. And once I wasn't constantly trying to find a comfortable position, I could rest. And once I was resting, I could fall asleep. Because this is the annoying thing-- the pain wasn't that bad, even. It's not the agony it has been in the past. I could move through it, easily. It was just too much to hold still through, until I realized that was what I needed to be doing.

So anyway-- traveling home it was mostly fine, it does not like standing in lines, and mostly i sat as much as possible, which isn't good for me long-term but i know over the next couple of weeks i will be doing a shitton of walking and standing so. we'll figure out tactics then.

so along with the ritalin i will be working out my ideal regimens of ibuprofen, aleve, and weed, LOL. Routine! I can make a routine. I can hinge my routine off other people's, which is what works well for me at the farm, and i can see if i can master the art of the amphetamines and maybe get some of my shit done.

Unfortunately all I want to do this week is sew, I watched all of the tourists and locals in NOLA and looked at what they were wearing and now know exactly what I want to make.

and i don't have time to do any of it. but. if i think about it and make concrete plans, i already own much of the fabric and most of the patterns i need. so i can do this. But I'll post separately about the Fashion Lewks I want to do, LOL.

I won't see my physical therapist again until like maybe early June. I counted it out and I've been doing physical therapy for about sixteen weeks at this point. My sister graduated from her physical therapy program and is out on her own now, having hugely improved. I can tell the bad hip is much improved but not healed-- sitting on the plane yesterday someone walked by and bumped my knee and it absolutely did make the cartilage flap go "pop" so that's not healed, but it hurt a lot less than that sort of thing used to. At the last appointment I had, the PT said I should just keep doing the exercises as my circumstances allow, and if they're too easy just increase reps etc., and we'd re-evaluate when I finally saw her again, because obviously I've had all these underlying cascading problems that can only be slowly solved by getting slowly stronger, so who knows.

I don't have concrete goals for that but I would really just. Like to be not-disabled, mostly. Every person has limits, every person is going to have to sit down sometimes, every person is going to have to think hard and make choices about what they do with their bodies-- it's just part of getting into your mid-forties, really-- so I can't just set my goal as being able to do whatever whenever. But I would like to be able to walk for longer distances, I would like to be able to wait in a line without paying for it for days, I would like to just generally be in better shape. So I guess I'll try to work toward that.

idk. and sometime in july my doctor wants me to re-test my fasting blood glucose because the only thing she cares about of my health is that i'm fat and she thinks putting me on metformin will make me not-fat. you'd think she'd have had some interest in diagnosing the pain that was making me unable to exercise but that was not on her radar i guess.

anyway. that's what i'm going to do to get me to june. it's all farm time for the rest of the month and i'm going to do physical therapy and take meth. we'll see how that goes.

[the2amrevolution]

Ive found multiple sources that say Ritalin can help with POTS symptoms 😠

On Monday I'm going to have to call a couple offices to make sure they've actually sent/received my referral that was supposed to have been sent in February (and wasn't when I last called first week of April), so I can get this fucking sleep study so I can maybe not have nightmares constantly and dream that I'm trying to literally rip through a barrier back into the real world so I can wake up and stop suffering (I dont have any normal obstructive sleep apnea symptoms, but I might have central sleep apnea since I have other funky brainstem things). But if the study shows nothing abnormal cardiac/pulmonary wise, then I can go back to my cardiologist and I can kick him in the knee caps for denying me Ritalin this whole time when I've tried to explain how much I'm straight up fucking Suffering because I can't do anything that requires more than a click of a mouse to start. I'm surrounded by hobbies I enjoy and projects I want to do and I have multiple note files of multiple art ideas and I can't actually just fucking do any of it because I can't just do things I want to do if there's no deadline with actual consequences.

And my cardiologist is supposed to be the POTS guy for the area. Yet "Ritalin and Adderall are basically the same," and "we really don't want to give you stimulants because they'll raise your heart rate." But Ritalin could actually help improve my symptoms and if it helps my ADHD and increases my heart rate, my beta blocker dose can be increased still. The max dose is 60mg/day, and I'm at 15.

Like, fuck! I'm trying claw out as much quality of life as I can, but my fucking doctors won't get their shit together enough to make it happen! As long as Ritalin doesn't fuck with my ME, I would actually be able to complete projects by working on them a little at a time if I can't fully do them from bed. I can't sit at a desk for more than a couple hours at a time a few times a week (so not long enough for a job), but if my brain worms would let me consistently do 30-90 minutes a day, I would actually accomplish things. I might would actually be able to do my physical therapy enough for it to make a difference instead of suddenly realizing a month has passed. I could brush my fucking teeth every day for the first time since I was a child being constantly monitored on hygiene by my parents.

[xlovelessdiaryx]

In the meantime, it has been a few years.

I haven't thought about it for a long time,

Why should I? It was far in the past.

But now, alone, my head seemed so empty.

Didn't expect anything else, in the middle of the night.

For a long time I liked to wallow in secrecy on the subject.

I don't know where to start.

These complex thoughts

This little confession.

I really suppressed it for a long time,

The subject made me waver slightly

Now it's more of an admission.

But still I remember.

Of that voice, those eyes, that laugh, our conversations.

All the things that fascinated me so.

Nothing about you was artificial

But I possessed a strong character flaw.

Which is why I ruined everything.

In 2013, the world was a bit Difficult.

The whole issue about transgender or gay

And I, at that time, was in the middle of it.

It was said by many I was just curious....

The topic was not so current at that time.

But it felt like a new beginning of the year.

Like a new phase of life.

No idea what actually happened.

But I met her and everything made sense.

Every defense was in vain

Only when I looked into her eyes

She was my queen.

I don't know how to explain it.

These complex thoughts.

This little confession.

It was easy to be friends with you.

It was easy when I saw another girl

It was easy to fall in love with this one.

But it wasn't that in general.

The whole thing was a difficult subject

To say so was an understatement

Two women...2013, it was hard to explain that

It was exhausting to listen that its just a phase

Or you just feel that way because it was trend.

People were in other spheres

They were still too much in their bubble.

It seemed inconceivable to some.

But no matter how hard it seemed.

How alone I felt.

You were there with me. As my best friend.

Hell, you were my Ritalin.

The one that made my mind churn even more.

You were my queen.

When I broke up with that girl, you were there.

You never once scoffed.

Didn't condemn me

And that's when it hit me

You always supported me.

Shared all your thoughts with me.

I don't know why I never said it.

These complex thoughts.

This little confession.

Damn, it's been 12 years.

We've been through a lot and in the end never saw each other again.

Never spoke again, never laughed again.

The first time I was broken by it

I didn't want to go through it again.

Because you, you had turned me off.

I loved you more than a best friend.

For months I cursed you

I pushed everything about you, everything of you out of my mind.

So that your name would never rise in my head again.

I never tried it with another woman since then

Just hung every thought of it in my head.

I don't know why I let it happen.

These complex thoughts.

This little confession.

When you wrote me I couldn't believe it,

Read over and over that you wanted to see me.

Struggled with the skepticism inside me, but agreed.

But when you stood in front of me, I couldn't just trust you again.

Even though you overwhelmed me with your old ways.

All this awakened in me a strong restlessness.

I didn't tell you much, after all we were only acquaintances again, even strangers.

I avoided the old feelings, the thoughts

Rightly kept you at a distance

You, on the other hand, spoke without end

You made me waver

But it was not planned that way.

I didn't want to let you get so close to me anymore.

I never wanted to have you in my life again.

But when your tender face broke like that and I saw the tears,

I knew you hadn't left all that behind.

You wanted again what we gave up then.

You wanted it to be like it was before.

I don't know why I didn't say it then.

These complex thoughts.

This little confession.

I was debating inside.

Could only thank you for your words.

And you showed understanding.

For all the things that troubled me.

For my choice at the time.

You understood me.

I never wanted to tell you.

Not even this time.

But I loved only you.