sorry about the babble tonight guys

My dad has spent decades searching for alternative medicine solutions to his nebulously defined mental insufficiencies.  Brainwave biofeedback.  Sketchy hormone replacement pills.  Blue-green algae extracts which a Google search can show you are neurotoxic.  Homeopathy, of course.  Weird doctors with overly “charismatic” smiles that one could very easily imagine being cult leaders, who eventually lose their licenses for prescribing human growth hormone in ways it is not meant to be prescribed.  "Biofield"-cancelling pendants.  Radically alternative dentistry.

This is all an alternative to what mainstream medicine did to him, which was to diagnose him with bipolar disorder, prescribe him Lithium, and then tell him: “make sure to drink a lot of beer when you take this, like a lot.  It’ll help, like, the chemical balance and stuff.”  He was a fledgling alcoholic when he was given this piece of medical advice.

I don’t look forward to becoming him, but I can see it ahead of me.  There is no easy medical answer to the nostalgebraist family condition.

Just to fill in the gaps here: I used Adderall (illegally) on occasion during my senior year and I feel like I am in grad school on the strength of that.

It made my senior thesis much better than it would have been.  And in the end my senior thesis advisor was so impressed with me that he not only sent out an absurdly positive recommendation letter to the jobs and grad schools I was applying to, he also CC’d me, because he thought I should know how he was helping me begin my (implication: illustrious) academic career.  Which is how I know about it.

It made me do well enough on a final project for a class that, not only did I get an A in the class, but another student cornered me at a party later and told me about how he felt my final project had been so much better than anyone else’s that it nearly embarrassed the entire rest of the class.  (The professor who taught that class, too, I asked for recommendation letters.)

The neuropsychologist told me: responding well to Adderall doesn’t mean you have ADHD – if Adderall was sold in stores, everyone would buy it and benefit from it, just like coffee.  (I’m sure.  But would it be the difference between … well, the bill of goods I sold myself as and the wreck I am?)

(I didn’t even take that much Adderall.  Like, I dunno, once every … two weeks?  I’m not some sort of drug fiend.  I once took it and then went to a party, and all I could think about was how I wanted to go home and work on my thesis.)

i think you should try explaining all this to the psych and hope he understands. a paradoxical reaction to stimulants isn’t THAT unusual, after all.

Yeah, that’s what I’m planning to do (it’s a she BTW).

Like I think she and I agree that the current anxiety treatments are not working to our full satisfaction (e.g. the SSRI seems to be doing nothing).  For all I know I could convince her to give me a sample of a stimulant in the spirit of “hey, let’s see whether this totally random (?) thing works” and then, guess what, it would

I’m already on a benzo and an SSRI, and my anxiety is still significant.  The neuropsychologist said that my psychiatrist and I were probably going to talk on Monday about “changing things up.”

What could that mean?  Buspar?  Would that help?  I’m already on the most “serious” drugs here and they have not solved the problem because the problem is “I can’t stop thinking about horrible shit when I’m trying to work, and that goes away if you turn off my brain, but unfortunately a turned-off brain cannot work”

Maybe I switch benzos for starters and see if that helps

kadathinthecoldwaste replied to your post: Don’t have ADHD, still IQ Georg (verba…

I think I’ve mentioned before that I kind of want to punch your father?

You’ve expressed the overall sentiment if not necessarily in those terms, and, well, yeah.

He’s doing the best he can and he’s had a hard life, but man, “the best he can” is just a truly bizarre thing sometimes

Don’t have ADHD, still IQ Georg (verbal IQ >> nonverbal IQ) even though I’m no longer taking Risperidone

No new diagnosis, just the same old shitty brain

Oh well

(Apparently in the questionnaire he filled out, my dad didn’t note that I experienced any attention issues in childhood whatsoever.  I had to remind the neuropsychologist of the specific lines in the report from when I was 13 that contradict this, and the fact that that report exists because I was being evaluated for attention issues.  What the fuck)

Today has been a lethargic day and I didn’t do much of anything, but I did finish The Story of the Stone Vol. 1 and wrote a not very interesting review.

On Monday I impulse-ordered a book called Darkmans because it was cheap, someone on the internet recommended it, and I couldn’t resist something called “Darkmans.”  It arrived today and I read a few pages.

The purpose of this post is 1) to plug my Goodreads review because writing it was the only thing I accomplished today, and 2) “Darkmans.”  Darkmans!!!

Okay, I clearly am now chewing too much nicotine gum and need to cut back.  Something to work on slowly in the next few weeks.

An unexpected, though retrospectively obvious, downside of nicotine gum is that it makes consuming nicotine too convenient.  I’ve never smoked habitually, but I imagine it’s a often bit of a hassle, when you want a smoke, to find a spot of free time and a place where smoking is allowed.  Where with nicotine gum, I can just decide I’m going to have the dosage equivalent of a cigarette at any time – in a class or seminar, on the subway, whatever.

Which is very “nice” but it makes it too easy for your consumption to increase without you thinking about it much.  (At least with cigarettes, the complicated nature of actually finding a place/time to smoke would make the increase more obvious.)

Hmmmmmm perhaps I will just stay home today because I can just read class lecture notes online and am really not relishing the feeling of getting on a subway

This way I might get some work done instead of being too tired to when I get home, or if not at least I will be resting pleasantly with persistent access to kleenex

I told my therapist I had felt mildly sick for two weeks and he was like “you should schedule a physical exam” and I should do that, too

I just thought “I’m feeling pretty human tonight” and then realized that what I meant by “human” was, roughly, “relaxed.”

(Of course there are various frames in which to hang this kind of intuitive feeling, ranging from “I’m better able to relate to my fellow human beings when I’m not plagued by irrational worries that no one else will necessarily share” to “it’s easier to pretend to be one of the flesh creatures when I’m feeling supple rather than brittle, and thus less likely to make any telling mistakes”)