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.