#now that i'm on the vyvanse and my brain can brain a little better

[not-poignant]

The question 'which of my original stories is least likely to be booted from a distributor (like Amazon) for its highly questionable content' is like...a tough one, because I inevitably end up with something like 'oh what about The Wildness Within? That's pretty tame and- OH THE INCEST' and it's like...

Oof okay try again.

[dissociacrip]

this turned into a long adhd rant whoopsie

it really does suck how people seem to downplay autism and adhd now lol. autism has been reduced to people who can mask and have low support needs and adhd hasn't really changed from its status as a joke.

i don't talk about adhd much but it probably gets in the way of me being able to function just as much, if not more than autism does (in my personal situation) when it comes to mental disability. not showering enough. not cooking. not cleaning my living space properly. forgetting to brush my teeth. dishes sitting in the sink for so long they start getting moldy. only being able to maybe do 1-3 tasks a day maximum because my brain can't organize itself enough to do more than that. difficulty committing to things and being consistent in overarching ways. being late to things a lot. highly impaired verbal recall so i forget things people say to me, forget verbal instructions, etc. on top of the other acutely stressful situations that come with memory and regulating my attention span (e.g. locking my keys in my car or locking myself out of my house when i have a very limited support network to remediate those situations.)

my meds barely touch this stuff for me and i'm not especially inclined to increase the dosage after bordering on psychosis when i was taking 40mg of vyvanse. i've just become so accustomed to living the way that i do (because my case is pretty bad afaik) so i can't just will myself to be another way. any efforts i make to change or be more organized and routine and consistent end up getting dashed away because i just cannot do it lol. my shit just doesn't work. adhd is a massive barrier between me and being a functioning person or being able to take care of myself. i'm pretty sure would still be a "gross" and unpalatable disabled person even if my muscles worked and i didn't have POTS/etc. that also get in the way of my hygiene and the cleanliness of my living space.

that doesn't even go into how other people react to it. a good chunk of physical and verbal abuse i faced from my family as a child was related to my adhd symptoms. i was diagnosed at a young age but my parents "forgot" it happened and it was never addressed otherwise. i got constantly called disgusting for my hygiene problems and was threatened with violence over it (on top of the times where i was actually getting assaulted.) people take my impaired verbal recall and lack of impulse control irt accidentally cutting people off or interrupting them personally, accusing me of not caring enough when it's something that is extremely difficult to be aware of or manage when adhd is a condition that distinctly involves impaired awareness of your own behavior.

so when i see shit like "just set alarms" or anything else that amounts to "you're not trying hard enough" or adhd not very much being a disability, especially when it's coming from other people w/ adhd, it kinda makes me wanna stab things with knives.

sure, it's not the worst condition ever, but just like most other disabilities, the way it affects everyone who is it is different and some are gonna be able to manage it better than others. sure, there a lot of really fucking annoying people (usually able-bodied) w/ adhd on social media that have large platforms and who very often profit from or encourage liberal pop psych bullshit when it comes to adhd, but it's still very much a disability. it can affect hygiene. it can affect employment or otherwise means of earning an income. it can affect our social lives and whether we have a support system. it can affect whether someone can keep their house from getting infested with bugs or mold. it is very much something that causes dysfunction in ways that aren't nearly as cutesy as the little comics you might see on instagram are drawn.

just remember that.

[musashi]

That's similar to what my experience on Vyvanse has been! I'm on 40mg now, and the way I usually describe it is that I can focus more, but I have absolutely no control over WHAT I'm focusing on. I'll try to write a fic, and end up filing my taxes & sending some work emails I was putting off instead. Which is better than not managing any of those things I GUESS, but is also very annoying when I'm trying to do something specific :/

i do not mean to be rude but that is not what i am experiencing at all and i am a little confused how that is what you got from my description. it's not hyperfocus where i can't switch tasks or maneuver away from the task my brain has chosen, i literally cannot stay on a single task for more than 30 seconds. i keep opening new social media windows, googling stuff, posting, just all over the place where normally i have the urge to do that but am able to wrangle my focus and say 'ok, yes, i know you want to play with the rattle because it makes funny sounds, but we need to build this super mega powerful rattle that will make even BETTER sounds now, thank you.'

unmedicated me builds the super rattle and complains the whole time. me on adderall breaks into 40 different supermarkets within the span of a minute to grab every rattle on the shelf, discarding all of them after looking at them once.

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

This is a big one, going under a cut for several paragraphs of introspection and some brief mention of my last suicide attempt.

Hell of a thing, realizing this time last year was about the start of my Nuclear RSD Spiral that ultimately led to me trying to go play chicken with a freight train back in February with half a bottle of rum and a handful of sleep meds in my stomach to make sure I didn't flinch. Obviously I didn't, but I did get far enough that I had to drag my drunk ass off the train tracks and go stumbling back home to have the rest of my meltdown in peace and un-queue the suicide note I'd had prepped since last November. Fun stuff, crazy to think about.

Especially considering how I'm doing now that I've had the necessary wake up call from that whole situation and have finally started internalizing "hey, letting people see you hurting and hoping they'll decide you've suffered enough to deserve help is not the same as communicating your needs. Talk to people before it gets to your usual Talk About It After You Tried To Off Yourself About It. If it gets to this point again, next time won't be an attempt." (Fun stuff, lots to thank my grandparents for.)

And now I've got the right medication combo to help me keep an even keel. Wellbutrin/Vyvanse? Bad. Lamotrigine/Vyvanse? I might actually be a human being for the first time in my life. I've been getting a shower every night and brushing my teeth twice a day without fail since I started. And trust me when I say that's fuckin astronomical progress for me. Even when I found out it wasn't the case, part of me was still certain it was fake that people could just get up and do things without mentally screaming at themselves for anywhere between 2 hours to 4 months first. Shit, I can do it now and it still feels fake.

Anyways. The ability to Task was an expected improvement, as was the ability to regulate my momentum on said task better than without meds (ie, at fucking all). Although I figured it'd be a ways off to get this much improvement. I can put things down without freaking out (mostly) and I can pick them back up again after an interruption.

Another unexpected bonus too, I hadn't even thought to anticipate any change in another big factor at all. Like, not only did I not realize it was on the table, I hadn't realized that this particular table even existed. I figured this other issue couldn't improve with anything but another two years of therapy.

I've got a lot more control over regulating my emotions and the kind of obsessive, destructive thought spirals (usually RSD or my usual Leech And Burden thoughts or my brain cooking up scenarios to get upset about because they felt too real, or a fun combination of the three) that'd lead to me writing off entire days or weeks until I burnt myself out. Used to be these were so intense it'd just kind of gut me and I couldn't do anything but ride it out. Intense enough that I've had a couple mental health professionals tell me "yeah, no, it's not enough for formal diagnosis, but there's definitely strong evidence for OCD where the autism and ADHD overlap," one of whom went "right, that makes sense with what you've described about the last month, and speaking of the last month, i think we should consider going back to once a week since every three weeks hasn't been helping you." It used to be that the only way I could get these under control would be by heading them off before they got started or getting borderline blackout drunk in the middle of the spiral and distracting myself until I couldn't stay awake to think anymore. Both required sufficient distraction because every attempt at actually trying to take it apart and process just perpetuated it. Healthy, right?

But now, not only do the little things that used to sap my energy for the whole day now just breeze by like nothing (again, hygiene stuff), I can stop the spiral. They're not nearly as loud and sharp as they used to be and I can just... put them down. I've got the energy to do more and the control to just pick something else up until I'm ready. The bad ones still take a few tries, but that's huge after 25 years of "welp this is just the week we're having." And even bigger than that, it's already easier to pick it apart to find what needs fixing instead of just metaphorically cutting myself up while making a bigger mess.

It's also easier to not need my anger as a wall to keep between me and the people who have hurt me. For the first time since my granddad died, I can look at him and my grandmother as people through a sympathetic lense and still be able to say that the bridge there is burned and I won't be going back. I used to need to think of them as awful, irredeemable people just to keep from crawling back for their approval.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still pissed about everything that's hurt me deeply enough for my therapist to go poking at in the wake of a PTSD screener saying "yeah we're not even close to done, try again next year." But it's not the only thing that's there, and maybe someday I might even be able to scrape out my own closure instead of starving myself waiting for apologies that'll never come. Cleaning out the bullshit associated with the hurt didn't kick off the meltdown it would have even a month ago. The little scar from an arm-clawing meltdown last November is just a bitter little emotional bruise that I can push right back to the back of my mind until the dirt-spot mark finally fades out completely.

It's easier to not hate over it now. I've got more energy now and can finally use it for better things. Why waste it turning people into demons when I know damn well even if I wasn't the only one who fucked up and hurt people, I still did exactly that. And yeah, there's stuff I'm gonna stay bitter over, on both sides of things, and probably still mildly bitch about when the irritation of it decides to pop back in for a visit. That feels like a fair tradeoff for something that did still very much almost kill me, but it's not gonna stop me anymore. And it's not even a matter of "the best revenge is letting go and living well" because in the half dozen cases that stick the hardest, that wouldn't even be revenge. Fucked up as things ended, it's not like I was hated. Hell, maybe I'm lying to myself when I go this far, but I'd like to think that most of those people would be happy to see me doing better, even if they'd promptly turn right the fuck around and pretend they didn't see me at all.

Or maybe things did fester to a point where there's just as much animosity as I had for them and they'd rather see me lose a game of chicken a few more times before they can let go. God knows I was bitter enough for a good while to think pretty goddamn frequently that I hoped they were in just as much pain as I was. So yeah, that's also fair. Maybe they don't care either way, and as much as that idea stings the most, it's still entirely fair.

Regardless, I've got better things to do. I've got some self love and self respect to cultivate after realizing I was never given any kind of foundation besides "If You're Not Giving Everything, You're Not Worth Anything." Joked about it for years, but only in the last month did it actually Click. Admittedly I'm still falling into some of the same thinking, although instead of "I don't deserve the love people give me unless I'm Being Useful, I'm a manipulative liar if I get it without earning it," it's more like "I can finally Do Things, so I can finally deserve my own love." It's a brittle crutch, but that just means I know not to give it too much weight while I get my feet under me and start building the foundation I actually deserve. Because people deserve love and I'm a people too, goddammit.

Anyways, this was a big long rant partly for myself and partly for the six of you who've paid attention and might wanna know how I've been doing. I'm still standing, let's see where it takes me. For now, I'm gonna go be gay with my girlfriend of 6 months as of last week.

[wigglebox]

Sorry if this is TMI, but started ADHD meds today (I'm a newly diagnosed AFAB adult) and already feel like an actual person, so I just wanted to share w/someone bc my irl friends don't get it. Thanks for being out there about your neurodivergence!

aHHH congrats! yeah it was so bizarre feeling like.. oh are people always this energized and actually able to do things? is this what it's like every dayyY??????

like i was having medication issues over the weekend and into yesterday so i didn't use my meds Saturday or tuesday and it was rough i only managed to get by yesterday bc i had a shit ton of caffeine which isn't good. like the crash was more bc I'm on vyvanse so the crash can be hard but it still even felt like my old self just walking through a cloud of wool or something + the crash from vyvanse which made me extra tired.

so yeah like, the meds help. understanding your ADHD and therapy help. but yeah feeling like a person you just wanna cry lol. i cried a little when i was on concerta bc it made me feel better [though it screwed with my eating cues]

and then with vyvanse i cried bc i felt like a real person AND it didn't screw with my eating cues and yeah

honestly fuck anyone who says meds aren't the way. especially if they don't have ADHD themselves. and if they do have ADHD and have tried meds, then I'm sorry it didn't work for them but for those of us who have brains that do, biologically, scientifically have a deficiency that hinder our every day lives, the meds are a blessing.

bc i found when i was diagnosed with adhd, i spent the months between the diagnosis and seeing my psych wondering if i truly needed them but then found that all i was doing is pinging certain aspects of my life in the past and now that were negatively affected and all i could think about was 'what if i had help so it didn't feel like this anymore' so that's why i chose to go on meds.

sorry this is a tangent lmao speaking of meds mine is at the tail end of its extended release and my edibles are kicking in awlekjfalwekj

but i'm happy for you nonny i'm happy they're making you feel like that bc that's how it's supposed to be! a brain that's functioning a little better than before and in this case, a little does go a very long way.

and talking about it helps! it helps me, it helps others find me while i find them and ADHD shouldn't be in the public conversation as the butt of a joke but as an actual medical condition that's discussed seriously!

[sixstepsaway]

so a little bit ago i had an anon who asked for advice on going back to writing after a long time and responded with a thorough if slightly incoherent reply about how i go about my own writing

but i wanted to offer today that i am trying something new

some of you know i was diagnosed with ADHD back in february. i'm pretty sure that when i was 16-19 my ADHD was presenting as mostly hyperactive rather than inattentive and so i used to write a downright ridiculous amount (i wrote 20,000 words in one night once and I did a 170k nanowrimo month) and, yeah

but now it's gone more inattentive and writing has become, to put it mildly, a struggle

i also struggle with finishing things, which is about as fun as it sounds

i started medication a few weeks ago. i'm being titrated through psych UK and what that means is they started me on 20mg of my meds (elvanse, known as vyvanse in the usa) for 7 days, then it goes up to 30mg for a week and then 40mg for a week and then 50mg for a week until 60mg being the top of the planned titration. the idea is you find the top dose you can have that works for you, and you dont go any higher (apparently a too high dose is the same as nothing at all)

the first week was amazing because i suddenly had energy for the first time in literally my entire life (i am getting 16-18 hour days. i am LIVING the life. before i used to get 4-8 hour days and it was awful) and i was sleeping better and it was just. a miracle.

but it didnt really help me write after that first week or so

last week I was on 50mg and my PMS was awful so i was doing terribly then too

and i was getting upset because i couldnt write still

and then a few days ago it clicked why i couldnt write: i was getting stuck on the points of the fic i was writing

so, i might know that "they have sex" is the goal

but i was getting lost in the middle? because i couldnt properly brain how they got from the point they were at to where i wanted them to be, and my brain goes too fast to write 3k words between those points and not get stuck along the way. MY FINGERS ARE ONLY SO FAST!!! SLOWER THAN MY BRAIN!!

so. i'm now doing it like this:

i can include bits of dialogue i want to work in, i can write out the steps they need to take to get where they're going, and then i can follow that to its conclusion by writing those points into proper prose

anyway i hope this helps someone somehow, i've written 1k of bullets so far today lmao okay good day