Half the pharmacies in town are refusing to dispense my sister's lisdexamfetamine prescription because she doesn't have an existing "maintenance prescription" with that pharmacy.

They (presumably) don't want any patients who receive only a controlled substance from them for fear of the DEA accusing them of being a pill mill.

What if someone doesn't have any other prescriptions? Or they do but their regular pharmacy is out of stock? Every year it's some new bullshit.

I struggle even feeling like I deserve trying to improve. I'm so convinced I'm a horrible worthless person. Every memory is tinged by hate. I'm not even sure there's anything wrong with me mentally. I think this is the logical conclusion to a lifetime of misery and suffering. I'm relatively convinced that I actually am irredeemable and deserve death.

How do I stop feeling this way? Should I?

I fucking hate these people so much.

Sourced from https://neurodivergentinsights.com/ They got a lot of useful information about a variety of things, definitely recommend checking them out!

Autists will be one of the first in the camps it seems. In fact, getting out of America should strongly be considered

I have ADHD. That’s a certain. Officially diagnosed, on the process of finding medication and titration.

Although the doc I was meeting who was conducting the ADHD tests and a few followups, took account my traits and the answers to the ADHD questionnaire, which suggests AuDHD in their experience.

I read many AuDHD accounts and blogs online. Their story always lines up really well with mine.

I am of the opinion that the label does not matter in terms of practicality. A “what helps, helps” kind of motto. But I do feel a bit disingenuous when I say I am autistic to people since I didn’t get a second opinion or anything.

Any experiences and thoughts on this? Is there is any concrete benefits if I were to seek out an official Autism diagnosis aswell?

this might be more vent-ish and long winded than i intended it to be so i might eventually delete but i desperately need to get it off my chest somewhere and to people who might Get It ?

That is all, but I do know it feels like imprisonment

I missed the last one

I'm getting an ADHD assessment soon and I've been sent a blood pressure monitor. I did a test just now and it came up 144/97 which is apparently high (stage 1 or 2 hypertension depending on the diagram you check).

I was caffeinated at the time so I'm gonna try tomorrow but I'm curious what my target mmHg should be for when I'm making changes to my health.

Side note but if I'm regularly getting to stage 2 hypertension to barely keep focus at work and crash shortly after then maybe that's a good example of why unmedicated ADHD lowers your life expectancy

alt-text: [Words in yellow text. One says"intro to ableist language". They are next to the disabled pride flag and on a digital art wooden background with a grey table in the bottom left corner]

How can I be better liked in communities? I put myself out there, I go to hobby groups and various other social groups all the time, but it's really been feeling like most communities I'm in, at best, I'm someone you talk to for a bit until the people you actually want to see show up or can talk to you. Or if I'm in a group conversation, I'm slowly pushed out. That's if people talk to me at all. I rarely feel valued in any group, I mostly feel like filler. How can I be better liked?

This whole week has been nothing but me being ignored and nobody even acknowledging my existence. On Tuesday, I went to a social event for a community I often go to, and that was a complete bust. People just spoke with their small groups and weren't open to outside people and didn't mingle. OK, so the next day, I went to my dance class/social. Nobody really even acknowledged me, I saw everyone ignore me. Group conversations without me.

Today, I was supposed to go to the Art Museum with a friend. She was making it up to me after a miscommunication during a recent planned group thing at a new place, in which I didn't get the right plan, leaving me alone, waiting for the group for almost an hour, which never showed up. She wanted to make it up to me, but then today, she told me that she's canceling it because she isn't in a good place emotionally. But she didn't say anything more about that, and didn't even offer any alternate dates. Then by the time I went to another dance thing tonight, I was far too down from everything that happened to even have any real interactions with anyone.

Does anyone actually care about me? I think that if I were to suddenly die in my apartment, nobody would notice. Nobody would check on me, so nobody would notice until the police are called to evict me for not paying rent. And even then, none of my friends or groups would know unless someone just reads the obituaries for some reason.

Call that a stimbotter

Love to completely avoid a simple but critical task for weeks only to be reminded that I really need to have it done by now and now I have to make shit up and pretend I'm dumb or lost my notes or my dog ate my laptop, because saying "my brain didn't give a fuck about this particular task for the last month because there was no real deadline and now I'm filled to the brim with anxiety and I want to hide in my bed for three days because now there is one and it was today" is a valid thing in therapy but some how not at work.

Anyway, ADHD sucks and I get knocked down but i get up again and so on.

Anyone know what I mean? Either I mask into being much quieter and "mysterious" which does help me avoid eye contact, but I just feel like I'm being cool on purpose which is really goofy and undermines my confidence. Otherwise, I think the other personality I fall into is really, like, boring I guess? I basically roleplay as what I imagine a redditor who isn't bigotted is. Politics definitely plays a role there, obviously, if I feel the need to make a statement about a subject that is prone to set other people off I tend to hide my power level and say things in a very boring and "academic" way. But both of those definitely are pretty far from how I naturally am, and it feels like I'm being a little deceptive to my acquaintances who I don't know well enough to be myself with.

Also I don't mean this in a plural sense, I just mean that these are 2 ways that I contort my personality slightly to hide autism a little bit.

I wish I could figure it what's wrong with me. Am I rapid-cycling bipolar? Is it ADHD? Is it autism? I'll go days, maybe even a week or more feeling like I have barely any energy at all, it'll be hard to do much more than a quick chore or two. Fatigued, unmotivated, energy drinks don't really work. And then all if a sudden boom, awake at 7am, energy drinks kick my ass. Yesterday I was doing chores/projects from 11am to 1am. Couldn't fall asleep til around 3am, and now I'm up naturally at 8am, with energy to go. Towards the end of the night I got hyperfixated on making pretty excel spreadsheet templates so that might be why I was up so late. I'm also spending hundreds of dollars on things all at once which I normally never do... But they are all practical and I'm tired of not having things that make my life nicer/easier.

I was way more scattered than usual yesterday, bouncing around like a pinball, but my baseline is pretty forgetful/ scattered, it was just on overdrive yesterday. I wish I could harness this energy all the time for things like work, socializing, or hobbies so that I could make them a normal part of my life. I've even been able to/WANT to play video games! I can never get myself to do that even, which is relatively low effort so I feel like thats a decent marker of a shift in baseline. This nay be hypomania, but I'm not getting the confidence/inflated sense of self esteem which I need so badly.

What fucking gives?

PS here are some examples from my mood tracker of where I'm normally at, first graph from 2023 (i stopped tracking for a long time)and third is from this month(the green lines to the right are just the past couple of days that I'm talking about:

I got an Instagram account when i got out of rehab because I wanted a way for people to get ahold of me when they haven't seen me for a while. I like reconnecting with people but I can't do it (sober; I used try to do it while I was drinking and usually acted inappropriately or just ghosted them really quick lol)

So when I was exploring the app for the first time I watched a random video on the topic of ADHD and the algorithm decided to show me pretty much only videos on the topic of ADHD. I'm really new at realizing I have ADHD and contextualizing my struggles in life through that lens, and I gotta say, I REALLY like having an app that just feeds me videos for and by people who have ADHD. I guess it even satisfies some urge to scroll but in a way that I'm learning and seeing people like me, so it doesn't feel like a waste of time.

Is this a good idea? Are there better apps or resources for this kind of thing? Should I try not to feel shame about using a meta product and embarrassed about engaging with such a "basic" app? Does anyone else have any ways they do something similar?

Love ya

I figure what better way than to make one up of like-minded people who see the world similarly. Maybe meet like once a month or something. The more I venture out into the world, the more it seems like I am speaking a completely different language than everyone else

I envision it being very structured so that everyone has a turn to speak and maybe others offer suggestions (if they have them) for what has worked for them. Maybe schedule block out kinda like an office hours of sorts so there is a known time when we meet and people can come and go as they please.

Last thing: Not sure if this a me thing, but the whole idea of this sounds very uncomfortable to me but perhaps that’s why my life has remained stuck in the same place- doing whatever possible to make sure I’m always comfortable. This might be a mistake

Let me know your thoughts and if there is any interest whatsoever, feel free to DM me and I’d love some help putting this together

I just finished 3 very expensive psychologist evaluations yesterday (it cost me as much as my rent split even after insurance) and it turns out my childhood diagnosis was correct: I've got a big ol case of Autism!

No more imposter syndrome baby! It's cheered me up quite a bit. I might even get to WFH full time if my workplace accommodations are approved. But uh... you remember what else happened in the last couple of days?

MMMMMMMMMMMMM Yeah, I can't remember either.

ANYWAYS, hope I don't look sus as fuck at work this week by being a lil upbeat while the country rapidly deteriorates in real time.

Chat, can I get a "certified pogchamp" in the comments pls?

Just wanted to share a bit of a bright point from last week, especially since I know The Workplace is a gauntlet of horrors designed to punish a lot of us neurodivergent people.

I've always got really great feedback on my communication skills. It's one part writing-as-a-hobby, one part devops drive for operational efficiency, and three parts AuDHD. In particular I'm really good at communicating technical topics in ways that engineers are receptive to and that non-technical people can understand. Since my entire workplace is remote, efficient and comprehensible written communication is really important.

About a month ago I got looped into an initiative to add explicit guidelines about how to communicate effectively while remote. I was just asked to give feedback on how the guidelines sounded — and I realized that they were all modeled after how I specifically communicate. I even asked my boss about it and she confirmed that it was "heavily inspired" by my communication style. The best parts: I didn't really have to do much work for this initiative, and I've been openly AuDHD at work for a year at this point, so they're quite aware.

They literally just want everyone to make their communication more autistic, and they're documenting that explicitly.

Unironic DEI win

This could basically be a checklist to determine "is this person not autistic"?

When are we going to reckon with the fact that job interviews are designed to keep the neurodiverse out?