Idk about the whole "127 variations" thing and tbh I'm deeply skeptical about it - I reckon that's just a way of selling a course tbh.

But aside from that and the brief shilling segment in the middle, this video is a really thorough look at ADHD across its presentation, symptoms, treatment options with decent consideration for neurophysiology and neurochem etc. in about as succint a video as I've ever come across.

I think a lot of clinicians don't dig deep enough into the span of symptoms of ADHD and this might be a good starting point for folks with ADHD or people who think they might have it to begin discussions with their doctors, especially if you are dealing with difficult symptoms or side effects.

Some bits might go over your head unless you're a nerd for this stuff but I can find some other videos or I can do my best to explain but even if you don't fully understand every part of this video I reckon you'll still find some useful information in it.

(It's also kinda vindicating because I occasionally talk about conditions that aggravate ADHD or which can mimic it - sleep disturbances, anaemia, problems with hormone levels etc. so it's nice to see this stuff getting mentioned and it's validating to see a qualified psychiatrist talking about this because it means I'm not a total crackpot.)

[CW: for all the typical heavy metal health stuff]

I think this is going to be more of a vent post than anything. I'm not expecting anyone to provide me with a comment that will be a watershed moment for me.

Here's the backdrop:

I was caught in a bad long-term relationship and didn't know it.

A had a crisis of political beliefs that really shook my worldview to its foundations because what I thought I knew about things and the way that I understood and moved in the world was all through that political lens.

I had been dealing with poor mental health since forever but I reached a turning point where I finally acknowledged that I was autistic, which again shook my worldview because it was a massive shift in I thought I knew about myself and my interpersonal relationships, as well as my relationship to myself.

I got a curveball diagnosis of ADHD along the way, and one of the things that they don't tell you when you start on ADHD meds as an adult is that you can expect your relationships to others to change and that often if you have a bad relationship, ADHD meds can be the catalyst for change there. They also don't tell you if you have a significant history of trauma, especially if it hasn't been processed, that when you start ADHD meds your brain is going to find itself with a whole lot more presence and a whole lot of reserves so you're probably going to start dredging up and processing that old trauma whether you like it or not.

As I got things together and found some of the right meds, my long-term relationship deteriorated. I started to keep track of things a lot better and this helped me to realise what was really going on in the relationship.

Anyway, shit got really bad with my ex engaging in medical abuse, using the cops as leverage (e.g. physically assaulting me and then calling the cops on me) and lots of stuff like that.

I was already burnt out before she started becoming openly abusive of me. I didn't have anyone that I could fall back on for support. I was preparing to become homeless and to live out of my car, until my ex stole it. The stronger and more independent I got, the more of a threat that was to my ex and the worse the abuse got. Those who do not move do not notice their chains, and all that.

And meanwhile the ADHD meds were working pretty well but they were also making me much more prone to full-blown anxiety and I was processing old trauma while getting fresh trauma heaped on me. I needed them to be able to get my shit together but I desperately needed to not take them because for as much as they were helping me, they were also making things that much harder too.

Anyway, I get out of the situation and I start again basically from scratch. Except I have a pile of trauma to deal with, even more than before.

By this point I had been redlining it for a very long time and I was so focused on survival that my mental health went to shit. I started suffering bouts of catatonia and I had to rely on myself to figure out what was going on and to ascertain the cause of it, without knowing what it was. That took a heroic effort on my part because I was dealing with really intense suicidality, trying to work through the trauma, trying to rebuild my life, and between all of that I was getting pummeled by these periods where I was barely able to care for myself in the most basic ways. Then I had to try and scrape together whatever was left over to determine the etiology of these mysterious bouts where I was debilitated -I had to catalogue all of the symptoms and potential triggers and then I had to make a list of causes and to eliminate the easiest and most likely ones until I figured out what was happening to me.

And there was stuff that had to be dealt with in the court system and with police and other government agencies because my ex did shit behind the scenes like committing fraud in my name and stealing restricted meds (think Schedule II if you are in the US) and having to report this to the police because otherwise the risk was that my ex would have these meds with my name on the prescription and that this could possibly be used to either cause me legal trouble or that I could get my authority to be prescribed those meds rescinded because there was "evidence" of me giving them to others/selling them. I hate dealing with the cops but it was a situation where I couldn't afford to risk my access to the meds and I couldn't let my ex exploit this potential vulnerability if the theft wasn't reported immediately. So I had to compromise on my principles. Hooray! 🎉

Anyway, I determine that the most likely candidate for those debilitating bouts is catatonia and so I scrape whatever I can into researching this for myself. I had to do a medication review for myself because I suspected that some meds were aggravating the suspected catatonia because if you go to a pharmacist or doctor and request a medication review because you suspect you're catatonic they're going to look at you like you're completely unhinged.

Stuff falls into place and the catatonia hypothesis fits - it explains some anomalous responses to other meds and it has a lot of explanatory power.

I make my case to my psychiatrist but unfortunately the gold standard for diagnosing and treating catatonia is the lorazepam challenge (a benzo) and I didn't want to come off as drug-seeking so I had researched alternatives to this and had a breakthrough with treatment when I requested a different drug to use as a trial. A couple more positive responses to the drugs and taking them once when I wasn't catatonic, yielding a completely opposite response, made the catatonia diagnosable.

I get through the legal stuff. I start dealing with managing the difficult side effects from the ADHD meds through the same sorta process as above, except it required more of a self-inflicted crash course in psychopharmacology. My life becomes stable.

And since that point I've been so, so pervasively tired. I was ready to give up before any of all this shit started.

I'm dealing with immense (autistic) burnout coupled with crippling depression and it's hard because half of the advice for dealing with depression is contradicted by half of the advice for dealing with burnout and vice versa and because I just don't have the energy to do much or to make positive changes in my life, so I feel completely hamstrung.

The things that give my life meaning are hard to participate in because I am very often too tired to engage with them.

I have to swallow my outrage at the state of the world because I am mostly incapable of contributing towards change (e.g. going to rallies for Palestine.)

I almost never have the energy and focus to read and so I'm basically stuck in a holding pattern with regards to resolving my internal crisis of political beliefs until I'm able to sit down and go back over the things that I had read with a strong ideological bias.

Rebuilding interpersonal relationships is difficult because it's hard for me to be consistent at all and I just end up turning down invitations to do things because I don't have the capacity most of the time, and it's just plain hard for me on account of the fact that I'm autistic. Also it's hard because I'm exhausted and miserable, so it feels like a choice between bringing all of that to a friendship (which is a huge downer) or putting on an act to give people the impression that I'm fine (which makes me feel inauthentic and it tends to aggravate my feelings of isolation.) It's probably obvious but my trust is pretty broken too so this adds a layer of difficulty.

Rebuilding a positive sense of self is really difficult for me because my ex exploited my vulnerabilities, on account of being multiply-neurodivergent, and it's hard to feel anything but regret and resentment towards being the way that I am.

I barely have the energy to take care of my basic needs let alone to do anything else and I'm so anhedonic that even if I do have the energy to do something that I used to enjoy, I get nothing from it and then I just feel the need to grieve the loss of a thing that used to make my life enjoyable.

It's hard to find the will to persevere, especially when all of the things that could help me get well are out of reach to me and it feels like I've reached an absolute impasse.

I'm just so tired.

Truly the US is the greatest country in the world and we are blessed to live in a rules-based order

Posting this here because idk where else to post it. For legal reasons, I'm not sure what Palestinian song this happens to be a mashup of but it's weird that they mention the name George in the lyrics - what kind of a Palestinian name is George anyway? I can't think of a single Palestinian named George lol.

Anyway this song no longer exists on the internet since the original creator removed it post-October 7th. I thought I'd put it somewhere for posterity before it vanishes from the internet forever cos it's already an endangered file. Enjoy!

🟥🎏🔝

I'm just venting, it's not a big deal and it's nothing that needs fixing.

I take a conciliatory approach to engaging people, except when someone is completely out of line in which case I match their tone and rhetoric because shutting them up is of more use than a discussion could ever be. I don't appreciate the online slapfight culture and I think it's pretty toxic and it just causes people to double down in their position.

I don't bother with teaching people way to refine their arguments if their politics are in direction opposition to my own but if I get rh impression that someone is having a discussion with me in good faith about a topic we disagree with, I will often explain to them where my argument is heading, where I see their argument heading, and how the chips will fall. Not in a way like I'm trying to say that I already know everything and this is exactly how it's going to play out but more like the fact that I've been through this discussion before and we can cut to the chase if they are willing to level with me sorta thing (it probably doesn't come off that way but oh well.)

So recently I came across someone who I figure is either a baby leftist or more likely a progressive lib saying that fascism is when corporate power merges with the government or whatever. This was on an actual discussion about fascism btw.

I'm sure that most of you have already had this same discussion that I was about to dive into with this person. I find it to be tiring.

If you don't know the discussion basically it's this:

• People quote Mussolini as saying that

• The quote has never been sourced

• Mussolini only ever discussed corporatism, not corporatocracy and he details this system in writings like The Doctrine of Fascism

• While Mussolini coined the term fascism, he is not the only voice on the subject and just because he may have used a particular definition doesn't mean that we are all bound to sticking to his definition

• The Wikipedia entry on corporatism used to have a disclaimer about distinguishing the term from corporatocracy but I think they've updated it to being the entire first paragraph because lay people keep on conflating the two

• Corporatism is a system of structuring the political and economic spheres in such a way that people are grouped according to their profession or their interest group (but usually profession) into guilds that advocate for the group the represent with government - think where trade unions having a seat at the table with government and other interest groups like stay at home parents, unemployed people, religious groups etc. also have a representative guild

• Corporatocracy is a garbage-tier lib term that is functionally meaningless because it appeals to this notion of being able to turn the clock back to a time when corporations and governments were separate (you know, like back in the old days of the first corporations such as the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company, which ran intercontinental militaries and ruled as the government over entire countries they annexed... 🙄)

Anyway, you know the deal.

I told this person that I get what they're saying but corporatism doesn't mean what they think it means and I gesture to the Mussolini stuff being about corporatism not corporatocracy etc. I'm trying to be patient and kind in how I engage with them but they immediately go into online debatebro mode and start getting snarky and condescending and all of that stuff.

I was trying to give them an easy out and let them down gently so they could develop a deeper understanding of these terms and of politics more broadly. I wasn't looking for some beat down or to feel a sense of superiority over them. I was just trying to signal to them that they're on shaky ground and their position relies upon assumptions, and if they're willing to listen then I can give them pointers for developing their knowledge.

Idk. It just drives me nuts when people automatically assume that they are the smartest person in the room. I don't like humbling people but when someone is so self-assured it's almost impossible to get through to them without turning a discussion with them into bloodsport. I hate it.

Title is the epiphany. Story as follows:

There's a fairly new neighbour that has moved in next to me. They are outgoing and extroverted in that needy or demanding way whereas for me as an autistic person, I'm much more self-contained and don't seek out idle chit-chat with acquaintances because I honestly don't need it in my life and I don't reap any benefit from it.

Anyway, there has been a few odd conversational topics that have arisen multiple times over the course of our interactions and with one of them it got to the point where I've thought to myself "What the fuck is up with their preoccupation with this topic? I'm sick of talking about this." and, upon reflection, I realised that they were insinuating themselves into a situation that they are completely oblivious to, that isn't their business, and that isn't a concern whatsoever.

I don't want to explain exactly what it is because it's pretty identifying info but think along the lines of someone "casually" mentioning that the soil your cacti are living in is very dry - yeah it really is, what of it?

Anyway once the penny had (finally) dropped for me that this person doing that weird Boomerish thing where they repeatedly drop mention of something like how nice the weather is today and they expect that you're going to understand that they're trying to suggest that you should mow the lawn today (a legit post that someone made on social media but maybe it was about mowing the lawn or maybe it was about putting the washing out - I forget the specifics), I turned this over in my mind and came to the conclusion in the post title above:

They are literally treating interactions with me like it's a chess match. They are making conversational manoeuvres in an attempt to force a particular response out of me. You don't do that sort of thing with a person unless you see them as an adversary. If you are gonna treat me like an adversary then we are not friends and I have no obligation to extend my goodwill towards you.

(On a tangent, this is the reason why I have a strong dislike of the Socratic Method - because it essentially treats people as your conversational adversaries.)

This is the newest development in my experience of unmasking and growing beyond my people-pleasing so I thought I would share this realisation with others.

Never thought I'd see it happen. Not sure which original members are going to be part of the reboot. More news to come I guess?