@Ailbhe L-phenylalanine is what you get if you take amphetamine and replace the alpha methyl group with formic acid. It's an amino acid that is used as a precursor for all sorts of stuff the body does with substituted phenethylamines. In particular, it makes dopamine from it, via a few extra steps. Raw material basically, It's listed because there's a condition called PKU which is very very rare but involves being unable to metabolise away a lot of substituted phenethylamines and so if you have too much in your diet you can end up with dopamine poisoning.
It's stupid rare tho.
Anyway, for us ADHDers, it can often massively amplify the effect of amphetamine.
Basically, we can use it recreationally when we're medicated and get high from diet pop.
Don't keep doing it daily though, or it'll stop working.
Oh shit, kids in Kindergarden did exactly this with my 6yo son kast month. This was not a thing when we were in school decades ago, this is STILL a thing that's happening. I could scream in pure rage. And you do not want to know what my wife told the Kindergarden staff, because she became very angry.
She went to the kindergardener who is assigned to our son and told her what the other kids do. She said she's going to have an eye on that particular group. The next day, when I picked up my son, she went to me and said the kids did it again and this time she saw and heared what happened and stepped in.
That's the difference between kindergarden kids and teenagers: They don't hide their shit and get caught easily.
After this summer he will go to elementar school. My wife is the head librarian there, we are in close contact with the principal and almost all teachers already know him from her having to bring him to the library because I was at work and the kindergarden was closed. I don't expect that shit like that will happen there and I know the principal does not tolerate bullying, especially against neurodivergent kids. We're on an first name basis with the school social worker and it looks like he will get his older brothers teacher who is very familiar with ADHD.
I know, it's THE DREAM for an AuDHD kid and for us parents, too.
I also know that the principal is in close contact with the Kindergarden about the new first graders, especially with splitting up and handling bully groups. They had one 4 years ago when my older son was in first grade and they analyzed the groups social structure together with the kindergardeners to effectively split up the group. The three people on the head didn't change at first, I think one changed school, one was suspended a few times and the last one eventually stopped when he learned that it's basically him against the others. Because the other neurotypical kids started protecting the NDs and the younger kids from them, stepping in on fights while a few kids went on to get the next teacher.
Oh shit, I remember why one of the bully kids got suspended! After school the kids went to get their bikes and go home. My son already had his helmet on. The kid grabbed his helmet, pulled it backwards from his head and was basically choking him with the chin strap until the entire class stepped in pulling the guy back and getting help from a nearby teacher.
Yeah, the kids
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I also know that the principal is in close contact with the Kindergarden about the new first graders, especially with splitting up and handling bully groups. They had one 4 years ago when my older son was in first grade and they analyzed the groups social structure together with the kindergardeners to effectively split up the group. The three people on the head didn't change at first, I think one changed school, one was suspended a few times and the last one eventually stopped when he learned that it's basically him against the others. Because the other neurotypical kids started protecting the NDs and the younger kids from them, stepping in on fights while a few kids went on to get the next teacher.
Oh shit, I remember why one of the bully kids got suspended! After school the kids went to get their bikes and go home. My son already had his helmet on. The kid grabbed his helmet, pulled it backwards from his head and was basically choking him with the chin strap until the entire class stepped in pulling the guy back and getting help from a nearby teacher.
Yeah, the kids are good. I have the hope this will really end for good.
April 16, 2025. One year ago today. Zoe and I took speed (Elvanse) for the first time.
Less than an hour later - “oh”.
The profundity of that one word; when everything changed. Everything.
Because suddenly you KNOW.
The thing that was there your entire life. The thing that trapped you. Hurt you. Turned you into an alien amongst your own species. The thing you could never understand. Could never know WHY.
Suddenly you know.
All of it.
The force of the revelation was like a supernova.
Fifty one years after they formed, for the first time ever my synapses worked properly.
And they did what they should have done all along.
I’m still processing the grief.
But it’s not just grief. I’m also furious about the revolting way people treat us. The advantage they have over us and neurological power imbalance is immense.
And most of them use that imbalance to use us as convenient receptacles for their own frustration, knowing somehow that we are incapable of fighting back, and apparently revell
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April 16, 2025. One year ago today. Zoe and I took speed (Elvanse) for the first time.
Less than an hour later - “oh”.
The profundity of that one word; when everything changed. Everything.
Because suddenly you KNOW.
The thing that was there your entire life. The thing that trapped you. Hurt you. Turned you into an alien amongst your own species. The thing you could never understand. Could never know WHY.
Suddenly you know.
All of it.
The force of the revelation was like a supernova.
Fifty one years after they formed, for the first time ever my synapses worked properly.
And they did what they should have done all along.
I’m still processing the grief.
But it’s not just grief. I’m also furious about the revolting way people treat us. The advantage they have over us and neurological power imbalance is immense.
And most of them use that imbalance to use us as convenient receptacles for their own frustration, knowing somehow that we are incapable of fighting back, and apparently revelling in the ease with which we can be made to experience unbearable emotional distress.
One thing that really seems to confuse people is when it just … stops working.
And for the first time in your life you assert boundaries.
Every day now I take four times the amount of amphetamine than was in that starting dose.
And I hope I will for the rest of my life.
Because if I ever stop, I will be what I was again, within days. I will KNOW, all of it, and I will know WHY; and I will know what’s coming, and I will be utterly powerless to stop it.
It’s not something I like to contemplate.
Knowing is a cursed gift.
But it’s still a gift.
Amphetamine not only saved my life; it started it. I woke up for the first time ever a year ago today, at the age of 51.
I’ve recently learned there’s a name for a thing I have encountered all my life and been actually quite traumatised by: The Double Empathy Problem.
In a nutshell, if you’re a neurodivergent person you start from a very young age, before you can even speak maybe, trying to work out how to interact with pretty much everyone else using a system of rules and procedures which nobody ever explains to you and which seem Byzantine and inconsistent. The amount of effort you put into this is exhausting, and yet no matter how hard you try to behave exactly the same way everyone else does, and try to clarify things when you don’t understand, or try to join in with “smalltalk”, most of your interactions are judged as malicious and get you yelled at.
Then you eventually get diagnosed and work out that you basically have complex post traumatic stress from decades of this.
And so you find your people and you limit interaction with people who hurt you. You still have to exist in their world because you have to buy things and pay taxes, but othe
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I’ve recently learned there’s a name for a thing I have encountered all my life and been actually quite traumatised by: The Double Empathy Problem.
In a nutshell, if you’re a neurodivergent person you start from a very young age, before you can even speak maybe, trying to work out how to interact with pretty much everyone else using a system of rules and procedures which nobody ever explains to you and which seem Byzantine and inconsistent. The amount of effort you put into this is exhausting, and yet no matter how hard you try to behave exactly the same way everyone else does, and try to clarify things when you don’t understand, or try to join in with “smalltalk”, most of your interactions are judged as malicious and get you yelled at.
Then you eventually get diagnosed and work out that you basically have complex post traumatic stress from decades of this.
And so you find your people and you limit interaction with people who hurt you. You still have to exist in their world because you have to buy things and pay taxes, but otherwise … you back off for your own sanity because it seems no amount of effort to try and accommodate them will ever be acceptable to neurotypical people.
Meanwhile when neurotypical people encounter you they tell you that you are incapable of empathy, have no theory of mind, and are rude and annoying. They have tried nothing to understand you, and are all out of ideas.
Apparently I don’t understand their social rules, but unlike them I do understand irony.
@David Howell tailored to my body as well. Custom build. Lovely lady in Brighton. Very suburban. Very respectable. Makes the filthiest kinky clothes. Love it.
Love it. I got married in a corset and circle skirt made for me by an IRC friend who makes LARP costumes, the former navy taffeta and made for even deep pressure rather than body shaping in the traditional sense, the latter from a metallic blue fabric I picked out from John Lewis by way of being unable to stop stim-staring at it.
I did have a gender questioning period shortly before then, but settled on my gender being presumably-cis but entirely secondary to The Tism and more specifically the sensory stuff. Hence "skirt go spinny" as extremely an isolated thing in itself, and the corsetry intention being Wearable Hug. (I wore the corset over a yellow shirt. My spouse - demigender, not identifying that way at that time - wore a kilt, also for sensory reasons.)
I curse the Compulsory Not Shiny of male-coded clothing!
I’m increasingly understanding why the idea that some of us with neurodevelopmental disorders are considered “high functioning” is basically crap.
Recently, by myself, I managed to unmask pretty much completely and … in that moment had anyone seen me they would not have considered me “high functioning”.
I speak two languages and yet I felt like speaking none. I gave up any pretence of trying to act like *them*, and it was liberating.
And it gave me a level of relaxation hitherto only achievable on amphetamine (I’d dropped into the unmedicated state when I did this).
And that’s when it hit me. There’s no difference in kind between me and a “rain man” stereotype. No. Some of us in infancy are pushed into masking as a necessary but ludicrously expensive survival mechanism and some are not.
And masking works, and they call us “high functioning”, but the cost is astronomical. I realise that now.
I think it’s where the idea of the “savant” comes from as we
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I’m increasingly understanding why the idea that some of us with neurodevelopmental disorders are considered “high functioning” is basically crap.
Recently, by myself, I managed to unmask pretty much completely and … in that moment had anyone seen me they would not have considered me “high functioning”.
I speak two languages and yet I felt like speaking none. I gave up any pretence of trying to act like *them*, and it was liberating.
And it gave me a level of relaxation hitherto only achievable on amphetamine (I’d dropped into the unmedicated state when I did this).
And that’s when it hit me. There’s no difference in kind between me and a “rain man” stereotype. No. Some of us in infancy are pushed into masking as a necessary but ludicrously expensive survival mechanism and some are not.
And masking works, and they call us “high functioning”, but the cost is astronomical. I realise that now.
I think it’s where the idea of the “savant” comes from as well. As our NT peers develop the executive functioning that we never do, our differences increasingly paint a target on our backs.
And so we try to fina an acceptable way to escape. If adults were going to help us, we wouldn’t have had to start masking in the first place and one of the first lessons many of us learn is that indeed, the adults in our life are just as dangerous as our former friends.
But they mostly approve of book learning. And it gives us a way to keep ourselves apart.
And it hits our novelty and interest triggers.
And thus the path we are on reinforces itself. We spend the following decades using all of our intellectual and emotional capacity to bolster this survival mechanism and turn to things like alcohol or worse to manage the stress.
And then finally, some of us eventually find help. It took five decades in my case. I was exhausted.
To see me now, many would think me “regressing”.
I’m not. I’m just starting to live my truth. I deserve that. I need to rest. I’ve more than earned it.
I appreciate that IPv6 is necessary but couldn’t it also have been necessary and “able to be understood by more than 2.5 people on the planet” at the same time?
Having used networks with public v4 for every host instead of rtc1918 addresses and NAT, I don't think this really is an IPv6 specific thing. But v6 comes with prefix delegations that can help.
The part that I don't understand is why any proxying would be needed. That sounds like using the same /64 on multiple vlans?
@Whreq Jnnyobre I'm not using the same /64, no. I have a /56 and a /48 which I split apart into /64s. The risk is that it ENDS UP being the same /64 if you configure the router wrong.
And then some stuff is handed down from the parent interface, some comes via DHCPv6 (how does that work? Nobody knows), and some via SLAAC (dark magic, don't ask).
Do individual VLANs want to be master interfaces for RA? Probably not. Seems to work if you hand it off upstairs. Don't forget to let the clients know that DHCPv6 tells them where the DNS servers are as well.
And so on, and so on, and so on, for page after page of v6 config options.
Compared to "This is my IP address, this is the netmask, yeah, we're doing DHCP and you start at this address and end at this one, here's the router, here's a tickybox to turn NAT on and off, done"
@Whreq Jnnyobre Oh, and the prefix delegations ... you're sort of expected to know that this shit randomly breaks if you don't hand down a /64 because obviously most vendors just assumed that and your router absolutely lets you put a different number in there but your lightbulbs will CRY.
@Whreq Jnnyobre oh, and there’s DHCP which isn’t SLAAC which is also DHCP. Yes. You need both. Probably. Nobody knows. Two DHCP servers. They play nice. Anyway, so here’s your globally reputable address.
Oh yeah, you still need the v6 equivalent of your private /24. It’s called “link local”. Just assign that one and carry on using NAT? Nobody knows how to turn NAT on for v6. Yes you do have to keep the private subnet. Why? Don’t ask awkward questions. Look, you’re getting lots of IP addresses. It’s fun! Don’t ask stupid questions.
True, that SLAAC needs /64 or larger is a thing one just has to know. It's weird that almost all configuration software will allow smaller subnets without any warnings.
Do you really *need* DHCPv6 though, if you don't use PD? I honestly have never provided DHCPv6 for a client subnet, only between routers. (Except when I used OpenWRT which enables it by default. I don't see a point in disabling it.)
As for needing a private address space - I disagree that it would be needed, at least for regular networks. It can come in handy if you can't depend on a stable prefix from your ISP and use raw IP addresses instead of (m)DNS, but I don't think I've come across any network that had it (except my own servers which use a unique local prefix for inter-container communications).
Turning on NAT for IPv6? Most routers don't support that. Linux can do it with nftables, in which case it's done the same way as IPv4 NAT.
I wasn't paying attention and read unique local (fc80::/7) where you said link local (fe80::/10). I now understand how someone could find questions about that to be awkward, because indeed I guess many people who use IPv6 daily would not be able to answer those 😀
Link local isn't the equivalent of your private /24, though (unless you mean multicast 224.0.0.0/24 perhaps, which shares some properties but doesn't usually show up in ifconfig etc? 😀). It is not routable and can't be used with NAT. You can mostly ignore its existence but turning it off (is that even possible?) would break things because it's used internally for other IPv6 stuff, not in the least neighbor discovery, DHCP, and SLAAC.
I guess if you could turn it off, and would assign a static configuration that includes neighbors, maybe things could keep working? Yeah, you're right, I don't think I'd be brave enough to try. 😁
@Whreq Jnnyobre Yeah, and I understand why it can’t be used with NAT, but it’s just more complexity. “You need two subnets. You just do. Yeah, you need a globally routable one even if you’re using NAT. Yeah, you just do.”
Noticed my YouTube recs are getting increasing filled with pop psych content that all seems to be talking about classic ADHD traits without ever mentioning ADHD, once.
Profoundly great therapy session. A realisation: have spent my entire life trying to hide who I really am from people who actually LIKE who I really am, and instead strive towards some neurotypical idea of what someone like me SHOULD be, and beating myself up for not reaching a standard I will never reach set by people who I don’t respect and who will never respect me anyway.
And being terrified that my constant failure to reach that standard means my actual loved ones will abandon me because I’m unable to be what I was always told I needed to be.
Simultaneously grossly overestimating my ability to mask myself from people I share my life and bed with, and actually being a bit insulting to them and myself for believing that I needed to do that, because nobody would ever actually want ME.
And I know why I did that. It was something I needed to do to survive a landscape where my synapses would hoard the neurotransmitters needed to prevent my own subconscious constantly whispering self hatred into my thoughts.
But I don’t need that any more. I
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Profoundly great therapy session. A realisation: have spent my entire life trying to hide who I really am from people who actually LIKE who I really am, and instead strive towards some neurotypical idea of what someone like me SHOULD be, and beating myself up for not reaching a standard I will never reach set by people who I don’t respect and who will never respect me anyway.
And being terrified that my constant failure to reach that standard means my actual loved ones will abandon me because I’m unable to be what I was always told I needed to be.
Simultaneously grossly overestimating my ability to mask myself from people I share my life and bed with, and actually being a bit insulting to them and myself for believing that I needed to do that, because nobody would ever actually want ME.
And I know why I did that. It was something I needed to do to survive a landscape where my synapses would hoard the neurotransmitters needed to prevent my own subconscious constantly whispering self hatred into my thoughts.
But I don’t need that any more. I’ve made them give up their precious monoamines.
And I can be me.
And stop apologising for it.
Because who I am is not only good enough; who I am is loved.
Oh this is SUCH a good realisation. Maybe write it down somewhere you can look at it every now and then, in case you forget. The drugs really do work don't they?
Profoundly great therapy session. A realisation: have spent my entire life trying to hide who I really am from people who actually LIKE who I really am, and instead strive towards some neurotypical idea of what someone like me SHOULD be, and beating myself up for not reaching a standard I will never reach set by people who I don’t respect and who will never respect me anyway.
And being terrified that my constant failure to reach that standard means my actual loved ones will abandon me because I’m unable to be what I was always told I needed to be.
Simultaneously grossly overestimating my ability to mask myself from people I share my life and bed with, and actually being a bit insulting to them and myself for believing that I needed to do that, because nobody would ever actually want ME.
And I know why I did that. It was something I needed to do to survive a landscape where my synapses would hoard the neurotransmitters needed to prevent my own subconscious constantly whispering self hatred into my thoughts.
But I don’t need that any more. I’ve made them give up their precious monoamines.
And I can be me.
And stop apologising for it.
Because who I am is not only good enough; who I am is loved.
I have seen the Pomodoro technique described as a “low stress way to help focus” and honestly I find it hard to imagine something being much more stressful and less likely to help me focus than Satan’s tyrannical alarm clock.
It doesn't work for me, too. I mean I use alarm clocks but more to remind me to go to a meeting to be on time. Homeoffice works if I have 2 or 3 kitchen timer running around me with sticky notes on their back telling me which meeting I have to join when its alarm goes off.
It never worked for me either until one day it became obligatory for me to take breaks from the screen roughly every 30 mins. The main focus is not on being productive within those 30 mins but on having rest in between. Somehow it naturally translated into me focusing solely on what's important instead of procrastinating. Also my mental stamina lasts longer this way. I only recently realized I've been following the Pomodoro technique. I don't use an alarm clock, though.
Oh yes, I had a similar reaction when I first tried the technique years ago. Doing something within those 25 mins felt like an obligation, so it tired me in advance. Now the only obligation is to have a break -- this is the only rule. Maybe that's why the work part doesn't feel like a chore anymore. It's always just my choice. I also don't follow the timer strictly.
@I Write Like Large parts of my brain regard obligation as the most profoundly offensive insult. It's something I spend a lot of energy trying to avoid.
I keep getting this content promoted at me and all of it ignores the inconvenient elephant in the room: that what these people charge over a pound a minute for comes out of a bottle marked “Elvanse”. youtu.be/mR-svVBD18M?is=Lok3Ny…
Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Watts-ThoughtsMost people believe healing makes you softer.Kinder.More open.More forgiving.Carl Jung discovered the ...
"The same sound, color or texture can suddenly change from very sensitive to very dull."
What do these words even mean? What is a very sensitive sound? A sound which I feel acutely? A sound which is appropriate to the needs of another? A sound which evidences a precise change? What is a dull sound? A bell made of lead? A thud? A quiet sound? A boring sound? An unintelligent sound? How are any of these parings in opposition to each other? How can they preserve any such meaning across all of sounds, colours and textures?
Never seen this test before, but it is infuriating. All the options seem to be "True" or "Never" as well.
@chiffchaff I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the point of RAADS-R is that you do it in the presence of a clinician and the real test is how you respond to the questions, not what your answers are.
in searching for what this test was, I was given the French version, and that question seems more coherent if still unclear what they mean by "without any transition"; presumably "without passing through intermediate states".
«Je peux sans transition être très sensible ou pas du tout sensible au même son, à la même couleur ou à la même textture. »
≈ "I can, without any transition, be very sensitive or not at all sensitive to the same sound, color, or texture."
@pseudomonas I think that's a lot clearer (at least to a charitable reader).
In English, "sensitive" in the meaning they intend is a property of someone who senses, not of the thing being sensed, whereas "dull" is the opposite. Putting the two in opposition is just ugly and weird.
Clearly a sensee can be dull (like Father Stone) and a thing being sensed can be sensitive (like a balance) to make the subjects of the sentence arms match, but neither of these meanings was intended.
They could have written "I can be sensitive to a sound, color, or texture one moment, but not at all sensitive to it the next", or something like that.
I understood the meaning, but it's hard to credit something so gauche making it into a published test.
@chiffchaff indeed. And given that supposedly these questionnaires have gone through several iterations of validation, it seems surprising that they kept it. (though once it had been published I am not at all surprised that there was no move to change it; any changes would need a re-assessment. I wonder how much translations get scrutinised.)
A thing they don’t tell you when you start amphetamine for ADHD, but they SHOULD, is that what they do is NOT make you function like a neurotypical.
What they actually do is turn you into a person with ADHD with greater capacity.
Sometimes MUCH greater capacity.
And there can be a honeymoon phase when you’re all like, “OMG! I’m saved! I can do all the things now!”
And the risk is that you will use the extra capacity to mask harder and engage in more of the same stuff that was causing burnout.
And then 3-6 months later you find yourself in the same place you started but with an amphetamine habit. Also you can sit still.
I see a LOT of people online who hit the point a few months in where they conclude they have stopped working and start desperately doing meds breaks, long supplement recipes, etc to get back the “functionality”.
And these people, more often than not, also seem to have massive internalised ableism. They never accept their own disability, instead thinking it’s their “duty
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A thing they don’t tell you when you start amphetamine for ADHD, but they SHOULD, is that what they do is NOT make you function like a neurotypical.
What they actually do is turn you into a person with ADHD with greater capacity.
Sometimes MUCH greater capacity.
And there can be a honeymoon phase when you’re all like, “OMG! I’m saved! I can do all the things now!”
And the risk is that you will use the extra capacity to mask harder and engage in more of the same stuff that was causing burnout.
And then 3-6 months later you find yourself in the same place you started but with an amphetamine habit. Also you can sit still.
I see a LOT of people online who hit the point a few months in where they conclude they have stopped working and start desperately doing meds breaks, long supplement recipes, etc to get back the “functionality”.
And these people, more often than not, also seem to have massive internalised ableism. They never accept their own disability, instead thinking it’s their “duty” to use any means possible to “not inflict my shame on anyone else”.
And using up that extra capacity from amphetamine to do that is a nasty trap because you can’t go back. Ever.
@neoluddite What if street drugs aren't actually fundamentally addictive? They just seem addictive because they're illegal. So the only people who take it are those who really, really, really feel they "need" to. @FIAR_Light @goatsarah
It is known to work for 80-90% of the people it treats, which is a proportion many medications can never hope to reach, and with more efficacy than any other psychiatric medicine.
And a lot of the remainder it works for with less efficacy, and a smaller number of them don’t actually have ADHD and are misdiagnosed by a clinician who thinks it’s “phone scrolling disease”.
I mean, it’s up there with ibuprofen and paracetamol for efficacy.
Why THIS medicine in particular, when we are already stigmatised for taking it by many?
Yeah. Me too. In particular: House is clean. Blood pressure has gone from grade one hypertensive to low normal. Sleep quality has improved. Alcohol consumption dropped from 30 units a week to ZERO. Diet now includes salad. Weight gone from obese to ideal. Getting more exercise. I no longer hate myself. My tics have stopped. I can hear what people are saying in noisy environments. My driving has improved. THE FUCKING BED IS MADE.
Just seen someone saying they support bans on trans healthcare for under 18s because “let kids be kids”.
By the time I hit puberty, I had KNOWN for a decade.
I also knew that telling anyone would be profoundly dangerous.
So I hid who I was and, am almost grateful that the neurodivergence gave the other kids something else to latch on to. They were so busy calling me a “mong” that they didn’t notice I was trans.
Because that might have got me murdered.
Or pushed me into a position where I felt I had no options other than the same end result.
So I hid it.
And I hid it really well.
And one of the things that happens when a 5 year old child is terrified of their parents, or their families, or the school bullies finding out who they really are is that they end up traumatised.
A 5 year old child. Traumatised and ashamed.
Ashamed because adults openly talked about them.
Or people like them.
And what they said was horrific. What they said made it very clear that they would regard their ow
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Just seen someone saying they support bans on trans healthcare for under 18s because “let kids be kids”.
By the time I hit puberty, I had KNOWN for a decade.
I also knew that telling anyone would be profoundly dangerous.
So I hid who I was and, am almost grateful that the neurodivergence gave the other kids something else to latch on to. They were so busy calling me a “mong” that they didn’t notice I was trans.
Because that might have got me murdered.
Or pushed me into a position where I felt I had no options other than the same end result.
So I hid it.
And I hid it really well.
And one of the things that happens when a 5 year old child is terrified of their parents, or their families, or the school bullies finding out who they really are is that they end up traumatised.
A 5 year old child. Traumatised and ashamed.
Ashamed because adults openly talked about them.
Or people like them.
And what they said was horrific. What they said made it very clear that they would regard their own kids as subhuman monsters if they ever found out.
So we hid. And an important part of ourselves died in childhood. A light that should have shone, went out.
I’ve tried my best to rekindle it.
I’ve managed somewhat but it will never be right. Not really. I’ve made peace with that.
“Let kids be kids”. Trans kids like me never got to be.
@jfmezei @burnoutqueen @jrdepriest I don't know what the actual decisions are in Québec but the principle is "Children 14 to 17 years old (but under 18) can make decisions on their own about care necessary for their health," so this whole under 18 thing should not matter if they are interpreting the principle correctly.
@jfmezei @jrdepriest @burnoutqueen for medically necessary interventions; governments could conceivably meddle there, but that is not the current target of the Quebec government as I understand it.
Due to complaints, I apologized for having wanted to learn because apparenrtly it is called "sealiioning" when one wants explanations and complaints were made. My posts appear gone already, but would have deleted them dueto complaints. I still learned some stuff.
@mcnado@mstdn.social I'm not trans either, and definitely not a physician or other healthcare provider. But because I have trans friends, I still felt a need to write this, ICYMI: https://www.commondreams.
I just got IPv6 with multiple upstream and downstream interfaces, one of which is Wireguard, working via prefix delegation on my OpenWRT box and I feel like a networking goddess right now. THERE IS NOTHING I CANNOT ACCOMPLISH!
Phone call out of the blue from car dealer about organising a service. Changed location, date, various sundry questions, all in Portuguese, all with no more stress than had it been in English (which given I hadn't taken my Elvanse yet is a very low bar). Even a year ago that would have been unthinkable. Something has "clicked".
Being a member of the Cult of Amphetamine is all consuming in a way that even transition isn’t.
The trans thing these days is easy. You take HRT and then forget about it (we outsource “constantly being Normal about trans women” to Joanne Rowling and Shut Up Wesley Streeting).
But this … the thing is you have the whole Flowers for Agernon daily speed run (pun possibly intended). You count your hours and plan your day around the likely time, plus or minus a bit, when you will suddenly turn from being a functional adult into an overstimulated bag of cats.
A true revolution would be giving us all day relief. You can’t do that with stimulants though.
And as a result, you kinda end up leaning into the whole “medically sanctioned speed addict” thing, especially as irreverent humour is already something having ADHD tends to prime you for.
ah yes welcome to the 'is the person I want to be?' angst. After 5 years I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that career success isn't worth it. I frequently miss being embodied chaos.
@Cy I have Elvanse 70, which is delayed release rather than extended release, and Amfexa 20, which is instant release dexamphetamine, which I normally take in doses of 10mg
yeah just today I slept in and thus couldn’t really take my extended release pills anymore cause it’d still be in my system round bedtime so I was useless all day. Jokes on me of course as I clearly ended up staying up late enough anyhow
i sleep fine on stims during the day (planned and unplanned naps) but not at night. I think it’s purely psychological (worrying i’m not gonna sleep keeping me up) but knowing that doesn’t change it
In a surprise byelection upset, it’s a thumping victory for estradiol. Testosterone must now rethink its focus on “growing hair in stupid-ass places” and get back to basics.
Imagine being one of those academics who realised in the 80s, or even earlier, that software development needed to be an engineering discipline.
And then you watch as the tail end of Gen X and the early Millennials teach themselves to code and some of them you can convince of your worldview.
But they end up working not as engineers or scientists, but as artisans in an industry that comes to depend on them working as artisans.
And then gets greedy.
And then decided it needed a million or more artisans.
And there just weren’t.
And because nobody turned it into an actual engineering discipline you then got an industry of senior artisans with a million idiots working under them
And now the idiots are being replaced with idiot machines that somehow, despite being computers, forgot how to even do arithmetic.
And then the ageing artisans are replaced by the idiot machines redigesting their own multiply ruminated “stack overflow from 2015 in a blender” over and over and over until it’s just whatever the silicon equ
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Imagine being one of those academics who realised in the 80s, or even earlier, that software development needed to be an engineering discipline.
And then you watch as the tail end of Gen X and the early Millennials teach themselves to code and some of them you can convince of your worldview.
But they end up working not as engineers or scientists, but as artisans in an industry that comes to depend on them working as artisans.
And then gets greedy.
And then decided it needed a million or more artisans.
And there just weren’t.
And because nobody turned it into an actual engineering discipline you then got an industry of senior artisans with a million idiots working under them
And now the idiots are being replaced with idiot machines that somehow, despite being computers, forgot how to even do arithmetic.
And then the ageing artisans are replaced by the idiot machines redigesting their own multiply ruminated “stack overflow from 2015 in a blender” over and over and over until it’s just whatever the silicon equivalent of drool is.
Imagine being one of the people who tried to prevent this and nobody listened to you.
Well, we're also the ones who spent several years busting hump to fix all the software we could think of that didn't understand that the year after 1999 was 2000, not 1900 or 19100. We had vendors sending us new releases in July 1999 that were still not compliant, we worked like mad dogs in the background to make sure everybody's milk got bottled and their checks got printed, then heard the world say "Oh, what a joke that Y2K thing was, all that fear and nothing bad happened! What a waste of time and money!"
So I'll say, on behalf of said academics, "Nah, we already knew they're all drooling lackwits, at this point it's become sick entertainment watching it all unfold."
I remember reading Knuth's Art of Computer Programming in the mid 1980s and thinking: yay, mathematical rigour will make CS really a "science". Then in my second round of university in 1986 a programming course was teaching Hoare's formal specifications and I thought: yay, software will have real "engineering".
Then I dropped out of the industry for a few years. When I came back to it (say, mid 1990s) there was no rigour, and "science" and "engineering" were just labels.
I was taught Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville when he was at Strathclyde University. So its infuriating that people are now vibe coding via plagiarism machines.
UK TERFs hate this one simple trick! Use your workplace toilets legally by adding the word “cleaner” to your job title and carrying an emotional support mop.
I know that some people swear by (rather than at; important to get prepositions right) the stuff but I’m convinced that Ritalin largely exists to make people like me feel better about not getting a childhood diagnosis.
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Elon became the billionaire with the highest score ever at billionaireing and the other billionaires will won’t have him on their rounders team. That’s got to sting.
People are being VERY hard on Elon. Who amongst us hasn't taken time away from your children on Christmas Day to email a convicted sex offender to tell him you'd like to party on his secret island of underage girls? Perfectly normal behaviour!
(Seriously though, I’ve heard that Psychiatry UK were so snowed under with demand that they closed their waiting list shortly after I joined. They’re overwhelmed)
Have talked to Sylvia’s psychiatrist about the possibility of him prescribing my ADHD meds rather than having to get them from the uk.
The problem is that my prescription is a hybrid Elvanse 70mg, Amfexa 20mg regime and whereas the Elvanse (lisdexamphetamine) is available here, the Amfexa (dexamphetamine) is not.
The latter is literally pharmaceutical grade speed. That’s not hyperbolic. That’s literally what it is. Some countries are a bit funny about prescribing it. Portugal is one such. They were going to before the pandemic but it seems to have fallen but the wayside.
The former is a prodrug which converts to dexamphetamine in the blood. This makes it much less attractive to addicts because you can’t snort it and it has a delayed effect.
That delayed effect makes it rubbish as a booster. It’s also fickle. Sometimes it just doesn’t work very well. I am extremely reluctant to give up my dex.
Said psych suggested a few possibilities:
1 - take Elvanse later in the day. That’s literally rationing sanity. A
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Have talked to Sylvia’s psychiatrist about the possibility of him prescribing my ADHD meds rather than having to get them from the uk.
The problem is that my prescription is a hybrid Elvanse 70mg, Amfexa 20mg regime and whereas the Elvanse (lisdexamphetamine) is available here, the Amfexa (dexamphetamine) is not.
The latter is literally pharmaceutical grade speed. That’s not hyperbolic. That’s literally what it is. Some countries are a bit funny about prescribing it. Portugal is one such. They were going to before the pandemic but it seems to have fallen but the wayside.
The former is a prodrug which converts to dexamphetamine in the blood. This makes it much less attractive to addicts because you can’t snort it and it has a delayed effect.
That delayed effect makes it rubbish as a booster. It’s also fickle. Sometimes it just doesn’t work very well. I am extremely reluctant to give up my dex.
Said psych suggested a few possibilities:
1 - take Elvanse later in the day. That’s literally rationing sanity. An Elvanse 70 pill is 6-7 hours of Flowers for Algernon speed run. That’s no way to Live. My facial expression made him discard that.
2 - switch to methylphenidate, the other arch stimulant. Available in sustained release form as Concerta and in instant release as the very well known drug, Ritalin.
Problem with that is as far as my body is concerned (I have tried methylphenidate. I will not elaborate on this point), it’s basically “a bit shit”.
I free to it as “a coffee tribute act”, or if I’m in a scathing mood, “shitalin”. It’s a very big the “sit in the corner and shut up” zombie drug that was always used as a threat as a kid if I didn’t “act more normal”.
3 - Elvanse with Ritalin booster. See 2 for explanation as to why this can get in the bin and stay there.
4 - Elvanse with Elvanse booster.
Ok. Not ideal. Elvanse is at least amphetamine, which is the med that actually works for me, even if the neurotypical world seems to treat it as basically raw addition fuel (weirdoes), although it’s fickle. And slow.
But I was encouraged to experiment.
So I have done
Some months ago I tired 70+30. The 30 gained my about 90 minutes and had me running back to my beloved dex at the end of that. Useless.
In November I tried 70+50. Got 4 hours extra. They were rubbish hours. And the drop was horrible.
Getting a bit despondent here.
Today I tried the nuclear option. At 10:28 I took my usual Elvanse 70 and waited.
20 minutes later I started to feel myself turning into a functional adult.
Bit rubbish and distractable for the next 6 hours. Despite being trans I do have a monthly cycle (I can see it oh my resting heart rate graph. It also syncs with Sylvia’s period which is freaky) and I’m at my low and - see previous comments about Elvanse being fickle.
At about 17:00 I started to feel what I now know is noradrenaline imbalance in my peripheral nervous system. Dopamine drops faster leaving noradrenaline to go after. It means my brain is going to follow within the next 15-60 minutes and when that does … Flowers for Algernon.
At this point I would usually take my die at Amfexa of the day.
I didn’t. At 17:20 I took another Elvanse 70.
Peripheral noradrenaline imbalance continued to climb because … Elvanse. Amfexa would fix the problem in about 2 minutes.
But it doesn’t take a big rise in serum dexamphetamine to ward the drop away. Within 15 minutes I was fine.
So the question is, how long? As a primary med, the difference between Elvanse 50 and 70 was about half an hour, so I was a little pessimistic.
But then a curious thing happened. The executive function I’d been a bit rubbish on all day came roaring back. Nice!
Got to 10pm ish and had something to eat. That causes Elvanse’s prodrug conversion to increase usually and indeed, it did.
“Have the lambs stopped screaming, Agent Starling?”
That never gets old. I sat upright I stared into space. The earworm fell silent. Intrusive distractions went away. My sensory overstimulation dropped to zero. Emotions fell into line and got fully with the programme.
And after a few minutes of enjoying the utter utter bliss of a quiet mind, I got up and tidied the living room and kitchen.
At 01:10 I felt peripheral noradrenaline imbalance. That’s it. The end was coming. I have to let it happen.
Turn coffee machine on. “Esvaziar bandeja de gotas!” (Empty drip tray). COME ON! NOT FAIR!
Urgh! Hands feel gungy. Thighs are touching. It’s horrific. Every sound is loud. Getting louder. Lights so many lights. So many. So bright. Tension. Stress. Fiddle with hair. Scratch at arms. Empty the drip tray.
Double long espresso, with maximum brew strength.
Sensory issues building. Coffee grinder runs for the first shot. LOUD.
Coffee pours.
Grinder runs again. MAKE IT STOP. PLEASE. NO. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE!
01:17. Jaw starts trembling. The neural pathways that make me into a functional adult abruptly cease function as the dopamine needed to regulate the synapses became simply unavailable. Emotions go haywire. I am so sad. There are air molecules touching my skin. I have internal organs. It’s all horrible. The world is noisy and bright. I think there’s supposed to be a squirrel at this point?
30 seconds later I stabilise a little below my pre-medication baseline. My brain is now the brain of a mildly confused child. The focus, executive function, emotional regulation, clarity of thought, neural interconnect that I had enjoyed 15 minutes earlier was just gone.
It’s a lot like being two different people. One of them has to parent the other.
Oh, and the one that’s writing this has no bloody impulse control. That’s fun. I’m also twitchy as hell.
I drank the coffee. I’m now on my fourth shot of espresso. It doesn’t get me back to that beloved state but it takes the edge off and it will help me sleep.
Anyway, experiment a success. My drops are pretty much all like that so whatever. I got almost fifteen hours, and the latter few were really nice.
I’m sticking with the UK for now but I might make an appointment with the psych and present 70+70 as a hypothetical.
I feel like 70+50 he’d have no issue with but 70+70 might make him suck his cheeks a bit.
Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Ailbhe • •@Ailbhe L-phenylalanine is what you get if you take amphetamine and replace the alpha methyl group with formic acid. It's an amino acid that is used as a precursor for all sorts of stuff the body does with substituted phenethylamines. In particular, it makes dopamine from it, via a few extra steps. Raw material basically, It's listed because there's a condition called PKU which is very very rare but involves being unable to metabolise away a lot of substituted phenethylamines and so if you have too much in your diet you can end up with dopamine poisoning.
It's stupid rare tho.
Anyway, for us ADHDers, it can often massively amplify the effect of amphetamine.
Basically, we can use it recreationally when we're medicated and get high from diet pop.
Don't keep doing it daily though, or it'll stop working.
Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Claireity
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.