#i'm scared of the side effects too it can give high blood pressure and other things

[albonium]

i told my doctor about my adhd diagnostic and she didn't even really ask questions she looked at the letter from the psychiatrist and made me a prescription for the necessary tests i have to do before taking a treatment

[foone]

If I get covid, I'm suing the DEA for violating my constitutional rights.

See, I can't have my ADHD meds mailed to me like all my other prescriptions, because they're scared someone will steal them out of the mail. So I have to go into the pharmacy, during a pandemic, and potentially get infected by all the coughing maskless people.

But hey, at least I only have to do it every three months!

EXCEPT NO.

There is a nationwide shortage of ADHD drugs at the moment that is entirely artificial: the DEA decided there was "too much" Adderall being used and limited the supply. Presumably to try to keep it out of the hands of people who will "abuse" it, not specifically to harm people with diagnosed medical conditions who have a valid prescription, but that may be giving them too much credit.

So now I can't get a three month supply anymore. I can only get in monthly. So every month I have to go into the hospital with the maskless coughing people and risk covid, all while I'm surrounded by big posters saying "hey there's a pandemic, why don't you have your prescriptions mailed to you?"

There's a "shortage", but calling it that seems wrong and misleading. It's a completely artificial shortage. No factories shut down. No mines had their sextroamphetamine veins run dry. No key ingredients had their prices spike unreasonably due to political unrest and capitalists capitalisting.

The DEA just woke up one day and decided there was too much Adderall and turned down the big knob on how much is allowed to be made.

Well, here's the fun part for people with ADHD: if we can't get the prescribed stimulants that make our brains work, we'll switch to other ones.

Which is just great because it's not like those alternatives don't have side-effects! Without Adderall there's gonna be a lot of energy drinks and coffees and teas, and all the side-effects of those. You wanna talk about high blood pressure?

And those are just the legal ones. Meth is still plenty easy to get ahold of. Not to mention crack and cocaine.

Which is funny, because the DEA has already fucked me over meth. They decided to wage war on pseudoephedrine, which is a great decongestant with minimal side effects. They restricted the sale of it, making it behind the counter and requiring pharmacies to keep records of who buys it and how often, so that if you buy slightly too much they can kick down your door and yell "where's the meth lab?"

Which has a couple problems. First, it makes the medicine harder to get for people who need it legitimately (I have a deviated septum, my nose barely works at the best of time, I need decongestants!), but also it means that medications that included pseudoephedrine (your Allegras, Claritins, and Sudafeds) had to reformulated to not include it anymore, so they wouldn't massively lose out on sales.

So they switched to phenylephrine. (and continued making a behind-the-counter version with the pseudoephedrine in it, usually called OLDNAME-D).

So what's wrong with that? Fucking EVERYTHING.

At the recommended doses, phenylephrine shows no decongestant effect over placebo. So it doesn't work. Great.

But that's not the biggest problem: see, it has no effect on congestion, but it does have an effect: it raises blood pressure.

So basically the DEA's war on meth caused millions of Americans to switch to a medication that

1. Does not work

2. Causes high blood pressure

IN A NATION WHERE HEART DISEASE WAS THE #1 CAUSE OF DEATH PRIOR TO COVID SHOWING UP.

And the final bow on this cluster fuck? The ultimate crowning achievement of the DEA's failure?

Do you know how much effect restricting pseudoephedrine had on the meth supply?

Fucking zip! Nada! Ziltch! Nothing at fucking all!

Pseudoephedrine only ever made sense as a meth precursor if you were making it in big batches, and in those cases it tended to be stolen/reappropriated from laboratories, not by going into the Walgreens and asking for 500 boxes of Sudafed.

Meth production was already switching to smaller and cheaper methods of production, ones that could easily be done in mobile labs or just "any car", which made it much harder for law enforcement to effectively combat it, and also meant PSEUDOEPHEDRINE MADE NO SENSE AS A PRECURSOR CHEMICAL.

This is literally a policy with a death toll associated with it. Innocent people who have never touched a meth have died because the DEA wanted to be "tough on drugs", and the companies making legal drugs switched to an alternative that caused heart problems.

That's not to say that like "all meth users should die" or anything, of course. I'm from the south: I have more relatives who have used meth than have gotten an Adderall prescription, despite ADHD clearly running in my family. Drug users are people too.

It's just that even in the grim calculus of the "war on drugs", they failed. They didn't sacrifice the lives of drug dealers and drug users to fight meth, and they certainly didn't save any of their lives by making meth harder to get (because they didn't make it any harder).

They instead sacrificed the lives of a bunch of people with allergies and heart disease, to win no actual ground against meth, other than the publicity of the George W. Bush administration being able to say they were "cracking down on meth".

I hope it was worth it. Since that law went into effect, something like 12 million people have died of heart disease in America. How many of them would still be alive today if the DEA hadn't fucked up and put a bunch of people on medication to spike their blood pressure l?

The fun thing about having to go to the doctor to prove my blood pressure isn't too high is that going to a Kaiser facility is the most aggravating thing I do on a regular basis.

"yeah your blood pressure was a little high the last time we tested it, so you can't have any ADHD meds. Come back in and test it again"

Hey maybe my blood pressure is so high when you test it because every time I have to go to your damn hospital, I get misgendered five times BY THE PEOPLE LITERALLY GIVING ME HORMONES and nearly get killed trying to park and I'm surrounded by coughing people who aren't wearing masks? It seems that might increase my blood pressure somewhat.

[clatterbane]

Just reminded with the honestly much higher than expected ability to keep advocating for myself in the hospital coming up? As compared to the more usual experience of sensory overload and eventual medical PTSD causing meltdowns/shutdowns, and too often making me lose communicative speech in medical situations? (Unfortunately leading to more PTSD from the kinds of treatment that can get you, yeah. 🤨)

After I landed in the hospital with that long-building crisis over the summer, I kept getting impressed at how well I was managing to keep looking at least halfway functional and stubbornly keep speaking up for myself, in what would normally be terrifying circumstances. And kinda were still, but I could mostly handle it and keep chugging along.

Besides feeling halfway out of it and (unpleasantly) goofy as hell the first couple of weeks after the emergency surgery, likely from all the meds they had me on? I figured that I had pretty much just burned out on the overload and fear, and come out the other end at least temporarily in possession of very few fucks to give. Kind of like when I forcibly got burned out on my fear of needles, during another (traumatic) surgical stay in high school.

(I also totally expected that to catch up with me later and seriously bite me in the ass, once I was back in a safer situation. Rather like some of the things Mel wrote about hir Emergency Speech Mode. So far, so good with that, at least. *fingers crossed*)

I still don't know how much of the difference may have had to do with any of those factors--or additional ones which haven't occurred to me. I do know that my traumatized autistic ass has mostly been able to keep it up in medical settings, so far, and (I think!) come across as less of a flake who doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.

(I also have to suspect that masks have been helping me there, tbqh. If half your face is covered, nobody else can see you doing Wrong Face! 🙄 Not going to help with Wrong Body Language, but hey. ETA: I am also sitting in a wheelchair, which may well make a difference there.)

Anyway, I was also interested to find out recently that, besides nerve pain and epilepsy? Pregabalin is also apparently used specifically to treat anxiety.

It is also known to keep blood pressure from spiking as much with exertion, or I'm guessing anxiety. Maybe helping with the lack of PTSD white coat factor when I was in the hospital, yeah--and being off it then possibly helping with that latest blood pressure scare at the GP's office. 😑

Since I've been back on the stuff, along with tramadol, after their getting unaccountably stopped for over a month? I have noticed that I already seem to have fewer fucks to give. After only like a week, which is apparently roughly how long it tends to take to start working for pain.

And thankfully NOT in a scary "suddenly I just don't care about anything (and can do basically nothing)" sort of way, like has happened in the past with some psych meds.

Using pregabalin before trying some other drugs to treat anxiety really does strike me as an "opening walnuts with a sledgehammer" type approach. Unless there is some very specific, good reason to avoid using less heavy-duty options.

(Where a blanket "Benzos Are Now The Devil" policy--like the default here in the UK now, thanks to some earlier inappropriate prescribing--would not qualify. Similar with prescribing it for non-neuropathic types of pain that it isn't even intended to treat in the US more recently, because Opioid Madness. Not to mention neuroleptics for anxiety. 😵)

And that is, indeed, speaking as someone who has been diagnosed with/treated for just about every anxiety disorder known to humankind. Even if at least half of it was really coming from autistic overload. And has taken every major category of psych meds over the years, usually way more than one from each class.

But, as an unexpected and unintentional side effect, which at least so far hasn't been coming alongside other intolerable ones? I'll take it.

[north-and-ellie]

On the Subject of North

So I recently made a post showing North in her ESA vest with one of her tags being, Service Dog in Training. Since then, I have received a few anonymous asks, a comment, and a message telling me the difference between an ESA and a Service Dog, some respectful, some not. One of the anons was even hateful, telling me I was disrespecting the ADA and all service dogs by claiming she is a Service Dog with my "attention-seeking ways."

Normally, this is something I would ignore. I know my situation. They don't. Granted, I have been very quiet on both this blog and my main blog so most of my followers don't know what is going on. The most I have shared was on a chapter update on AO3, which can be seen here.

And even then, this says next to nothing about what I have been going through emotionally. My videos with North say nothing about it either. Some disabilities are invisible. Anxiety is invisible. My followers didn't see how I had at least two anxiety attacks a day while hospitalized. My followers don't see how a simple thing such as going to the grocery store can turn into a nightmare as I try to hold back tears simply because of a minor inconvenience. They don't see how I start shaking in the car whenever a car in front of me gets too close, and how I've still been unable to even try to drive more than a month after the accident. They don't see me waking up every hour of the night, whether it is due to pregnancy pain or a nightmare. They don't feel the guilt I feel at being unable to handle certain tasks, especially since I'm supposed to be a mother soon.

They don't see how much North helps with this.

When we first adopted North, I'm not going to lie, I wanted my husband to take her straight back. This husky was loud, easily excitable, had severe separation anxiety, terrify my cats, and I got anxious leaving her home because I was scared she was going to get out, tear up my furniture, pee on the floor, or try to eat another battery so I burn my hand on the acid as I try to get it out of her mouth. And how incredibly selfish was I to want that.

We are North's fourth owner. She was nine months old when we got her. Nine freaking months. On top of that, she is a husky. Of course she has separation anxiety. Of course she would act out. Of course she is easily excitable and incredibly social. She was a husky puppy. And once we took a trip to my parents-in-law to Thanksgiving, the bond I formed with her completely destroyed any doubt that she belongs with me and my little family. She became my daughter, and I her doggy mom. She loves training and responds well to it. She loves people and animals, and has learned to be gentle when playing. She sleeps on the bed with me and constantly guards me while following me around the house. She is so smart, so sweet, so loving, so funny, and so North, how could I not love her? Sure, it took some work but she fits like a puzzle piece now.

It's almost common knowledge that huskies are working dogs. They need the constant physical and mental stimulation to be happy. So when my anxiety started to really act up, she was the perfect candidate to start training as a Service Dog, and my doctor agreed. I didn't want medication, talking to people just didn't seem to help, and as everything started getting worse and worse, I knew I needed a solution, and I needed one quick. I'm going to be a mother soon and I have responsibilities to my family. North became my solution.

North already does several things to help me, and everyone who knows us knows that I'm her person. Just as I go to her for comfort, she does the exact same. Just like I depend on her for protection, she depends on me. But as for how she helps me, let me list the ways.

Whenever I have an anxiety attack, she recognizes my "huff-cry" and she puts her paws on my shoulders and licks my face until I'm calm enough to breathe normally. If I try to push her off, she comes straight back and nudges my hands until I'm petting her. This was not trained but she does it every single time.

If someone acts threatening to me, she puts herself between me and them, and if they make a move toward me, she growls. If they try to place a hand on me, she places their hand/arm in her mouth and moves it. This was reinforced behavior she already had but she was trained to stop on command, and she does so, every single time.

Whenever I have a godawful day or if I come home in tears, she just seems to know and she presses herself against me and stays by my side until I feel better. Sometimes she brings me a toy to accomplish this. This was not a trained behavior but is reinforced.

She's always down for some petting and acts as my "shadow" so she is always available to be pet. Medical studies have proven that petting an animal has calming effects, and can even lower your blood pressure.

Seeing how she is incredibly insightful and intelligent, this makes her the perfect candidate to be MY Service Dog. Would she be perfect for everyone? Hell no. She is very high-energy and willfull. Just like I need a special dog, she needs a special person. However, as of right now, she is not ready to be a registered Service Dog.

While legally speaking in the US, there aren't a specific set of requirements, there are international guidelines and quite a few of the groups that register Service Dogs require that these dogs meet those guidelines before they'll register the dog. I also happen to agree with those guidelines, and I know use important it is that she is well behaved when in public, for our safety and the public image of the ADA. So, for now, she is an Emotional Support Dog. It doesn't give her the same rights and access as a Service Dog. However, she is protected in terms of housing and can accompany me on airplanes. My hospital in particular allows them, although not all do. For now, it'll have to do while I train her, and work with a trainer, so she can properly do her job and learn a few more behaviors to mitigate my attacks.

And while Emotional Support is not officially listed as a proper task, it helps far more than you know. Before you judge my situation and name names, keep in mind that you know nothing about my situation. You know nothing because you are not entitled to know my situation. I'm simply sharing this so I can stop this before it becomes a problem. And never once did I claim she is a Service Dog. I made a tag: Service Dog in Training. Not Service Dog. Service Dog in Training.

Please be respectful to others and don't buy into this "attack" culture before you know the full story. Save that for when the disrespect is real and there is actually a problem.