Lucky for me caffeine is the only sustained addiction but I will challenge the self-directed anger. I think universally it can be better described as internalized disappointment.
I shared with my psychologist recently something I heard years ago and can’t find the study but a child with ADHD hears the word “no” a lot more than a neurotypical child. As such we internalize and our default mode is “I did something wrong”. To which I told my psychologist and my best friend it’s like going through your life trying to be good but at the same time a part of you keeps saying “you’re a piece of shit and you don’t deserve good things”
Of all the challenges in life that has been the hardest one for me to tackle. The level of self-sabotage I have committed for the sake of thinking I am wrong even when I may not have been as well as the humility to realize that I intentionally fucked up a good thing multiple times in the past when I didn’t have to.
So yeah, it’s not self-directed anger. It’s self-directed disappointment of this ideal you could never live up to because you and those around you didn’t know you were struggling from ADHD.
This plus some autist traits I think led to my anti authority under pinnings. You get told no a lot for reasons they can’t explain and you start too a majority of norms are just enforced through sociol habit
The issue is that people (such as myself) on the spectrum need justifications and require explanations. If you can’t provide them, all you are doing is being confusing and we HATE being confused. Ambiguity is our “gamma radiation,” if you catch my meaning.
It’s situational but I didn’t have this it was very clear why I was being told no because the majority is neurotypical so I was an outlier. Always told to be quiet. Always told to stop fidgeting. Always told to stop touching things. Always told to slow down. On and on. I never asked why because I knew why. I was not behaving like everyone else.
What I didn’t know and wasn’t explained was I couldn’t do those things as easily as everyone else because my brain literally wouldn’t let me.
AuDHD here. Before my 40s I was never a coffee drinker and I couldn’t get medicated when I tried.
Now, on days when I am good about taking both my doses of Adderall and making myself both cups of coffee (morning & lunch time for both) I feel amazingly normal and can just choose to be productive at work and crazy shit like that.
THC is amazing in its own way. It CAN help me happily do certain things I normally don’t want to do, but over time it seems like a net loss for executive function, energy levels, and generally taking care of the shit I care about. So right now I’m on a break, but have not necessarily sworn it off.
Oh, medication would definitely help. You have $700 you can loan me for a weeks supply of Vyvanse, right?
Jesus over here it’s like 30 bucks a month. I’d ask where you live but I’m almost certain it’s America.
America. Land Of “you need this to function so it costs more than you earn from functioning” Also, it’s technically a controlled substance (Schedule 3 I believe) so the 70mg dose I need was HEAVILY metered.
30 bucks in America too with insurance. Just a FYI, the system is obviously still fucked.
No alcohol? Sweet! A bottle of Aberlour 16 please!
I would just like to be diagnosed and be able to make a rational decision about it all but the neuro guy does not take my insurance. If I had the right insurnace hes like booked out for a year or more.
Except THC makes me have quiet paralytic anxiety for hours
I find a little bit of the medicinal herbage, in the proper dose, shuts the noise down. Try adding a little bit of caffeine. It keeps you alert while letting you enjoy the calm and order.
Some days I do some days I don’t but I’m not allowed to be prescribed stimulants because I am a medical cannabis patient, so fart noise
i wake up at 3am and fall asleep around 9pm and waste my life every day. yes, it would be nice to be medicated with adhd medication again.
I’ll start by saying I’m not sure I have a point. But memes like this make me uncomfortable. It makes me wonder what the line is. Most people lean on at least one of these things as a crutch. It’s full-on not an ADHD thing. I think it strikes at a deeper thing centering around the fact that the way we’ve constructed society means that most people don’t fit into the system we’re in, and I guess it’s a style of Foucault to say we’ve expanded “adhd/autism” to encompass many people who’s diagnosis is that they don’t fit into the way we’ve constructed our society.
I think what I’m saying is: when I see these types of memes my question is instantly: who do we assume is ADHD/autistic? Is it most people? What does that say for the diagnosis vs what is the norm? Especially when people are diagnosing themselves based on these memes.
Ahh, self-directed anger my old friend XD
May the one without sin throw the first stone
you know what else I picked up on here and maybe it’s the pattern recognition but everyone here seems to talk about autism as a collective. as if it’s a generalization or as if it’s something that’s a second entity people live with.
in a way it is. I am in a new job and my manager/trainer noted that i need to write things down more. Immediately I had 2 reactions at once, and neither of them I could really vocalize in the moment because it would sound like I was making an excuse, so I had to sit there and scream internally.
first, this is a computer heavy job so if i’m busy navigating menus, I don’t really have time to stop and take notes and second, because of the free form nature of the training, how the ever loving hell am I going to keep all of this disparate information parsed and organized if I did?? Additionally, I’m sure that the costumers I will need to deal with wouldn’t be too forgiving about a guy spending minutes at a time flipping though notes to do “simple data entry.” It’s stupendously disheartening and terrifying.
How’d you know my plans for Friday evening?
No i don’t think it would cause i’m not sick, i think questioning obvious things and refusing to buy into social norms or standards isn’t a sickness but a choice, also i have no credentials to talk about this so take it as uneducated opinion but i don’t think pills are right way to handle autism or adhd rather lifestyle change, surrounding yourself with right people and right environment
i don’t think pills are right way to handle autism or adhd rather lifestyle change, surrounding yourself with right people and right environment
Yeah yeah whatever I am struggling like crazy in life not getting anywhere because I’m not on meds. Some people need them, Surrounding yourself with the right people is important and I will admit that a social life is needed to stay sane, I don’t have one of those and I don’t have friends anymore and I refuse to go back into having friends because it’s a lot of emotional shit that I don’t have time for plus friends in your 30’s costs money and I’m broke.
Some days I think I’m just lazy but I know there’s something wrong with me.
removed - context wasn’t there - was an asshole comment.
I don’t make my family or friends my therapist i think that’s awful thing to do not only for me but for them too not that they’re qualified to be one to begin with
When is the eventually going to come and why single out autists by it if it’s environment related, i’m working just fine as a closed system and what gets dealt to me from outside world is not my fault because i’m different, i don’t see your point
Feel free ask me questions though i get the feeling you just don’t have good context here o/
I’m sorry you’re right I don’t know the full context and I am sorry. PotatoPie is one of the greatest usernames I’ve ever seen. I swear I didn’t even realize it until now. Made my day.
It took a long time and some trial and error, but I have finally found medication that helps (Ritalin - long acting).
I don’t feel like a different person, and I don’t feel like I don’t have ADHD. I just feel a little more in control.
Examples
Instead of working on a side project for 12 hours straight and forgetting to eat or work on the important tasks, I’m working on a side project for 12 hours with food and drink breaks, while being aware that the important tasks aren’t being done.
Instead of getting irrationally angry when interrupted and going straight back to what I’m working on, I get angry for a few seconds, take some breaths to calm down, then listen to the person who interupted me before going back to what I was working on.
Instead of wandering aimlessly around the house unable to focus on anything, I wander for a while, then decide to have a nap because I’m now aware of the exhaustion.
It really isn’t a miracle drug, but my life is so much better now. Most of the time I don’t even notice the effects, but I really notice the lack of effect when I forget to take them for a week.
As someone who tried and gave up on medication this makes me so happy you have found what works. As much as I hate medication I acknowledge it works for some people and many need it to survive.
From a stranger, I am proud of you ♥️
Edit - for me I found exercise and a psychologist was what I needed. I feel equally blessed.
Yeah. I don’t feel mentally exhausted anymore.
Fighting with myself to do stupid pointless boring stuff that I hated was just so exhausting.
I still have to do stupid pointless boring stuff that I hate… but I don’t ALSO have to fight myself to do it. Turns out that was like 60% of the expenditure.
So now I don’t feel just drained by the end of the day. I come home with way more gas in the tank for the people I actually love.
Bro I could have typed this exactly. I only recently (within 6 mo.) have started taking Ritalin and I get to enjoy my day after work. I’m not just cracked out, I just don’t have the same internal struggle happening ALL day long. Haha who would’ve thunk
Dang, that sounds incredible.
Maybe I should talk to my doc about this…
Ritalin is basically amphetamines.
I had it for a while, and then switched back to uncut speed. After I cleaned up, I found that exercising a lot had the same effect for me, and that got me through withdrawals :-)
It’s focused on minimising side effects, unlike speed, which is focused on the high.
When it works, it’s amazing. You also don’t develop significant tolerances (aka physical addiction) to it, if you have ADHD. It ends up working with your homeostatic systems, rather than against them.
Apparently it is a running job with many specialists. People with ADHD regularly forget to take the “highly addictive” drug.
Maybe it didn’t do the trick for me, then, because I’m more on the side of autism than ADHD.
Speed worked amazingly well for me, though. I could communicate enthusiastically with people, and it helped me with all aspects of my life … the scene in Trainspotting where Spud has too much of it before an interview still makes me laugh :-)
Speed has a fairly broad effect on the brain. It sounds like it was helpful to you.
The danger is the difference between ADHD and autism. In ADHD the brain knows it’s out of kilter. The drugs work with the homeostasis mechanisms to bring it back into balance. With autism, the homeostatic systems think the brain is fine. It’s a social based problem, not a chemical imbalance. Speed then gets into a fight with the homeostatic systems over brain chemistry.
The end result is “chasing the dragon”. You use drugs to “fix” your mind, but your body then corrects for it. An ever larger dose is required to maintain the effect you want, leading to addiction and its problems.
I was an addict, but at a steady dose … there wasn’t any dragon - chasing going on. Even after years, just one dab too much would give me a headache, make my blood pressure uncomfortably high, and make me clench my jaw too hard.
That was not the case for codeine, which I also abused. Couldn’t ever get enough of that shit.
Ritalin is amphetamine. Are you saying it’s modified amphetamine?
It’s in the amphetamine family. It was chosen due to the bias it has with where in the brain it acts. Speed has a different bias that create a different effect.
I assumed the names were more specific than that. Thanks for explaining.
I regularly have days where I think “did I take my drugs?” I can often tell by looking back at my day, and realising how much I got done, without running out of mental energy. My partner can also tell quite reliably if I’ve forgotten.
I’m still me, just a bit less scatter brained, a bit more productive, and better able to focus. I lose some creativity, but that’s a fair trade for actually being able to apply my creativity.
