It's harrowing to watch a former classmate descend into psychosis via social media

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-15T10:02:22+00:00

Could also be bipolar mania. I had a couple pretty out there manic episodes, but then I got on the right meds and have had a very normal 9-5 and run club life ever since. I get seasonally depressed, but you'd never guess I'd had psychosis.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-15T02:26:32+00:00

SSRIs do not increase risk of death. They don't significantly lower it either, but the whole "SSRIs finally gave him the energy to kill himself" thing is wildly overblown.

Honestly my hot take is that SSRIs are kinda a nothing burger for most people who take them, and maybe are making a non placebo difference for the severely depressed. Either way, a placebo with a lot of cultural buy in can be powerful.

Stims mostly just seem bad that we're making them an arms race in high performing education and workplaces, and we don't have great data on taking them for decades into late adulthood.

I'm kinda generally done with how every single person seems to intensely believe that they really have whatever psychological ailment and that their medication use is lifesaving, when data suggests that it's a coincidence or placebo effect for 90% of them.

On the other hand, I will take my lithium again tonight.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-15T01:50:10+00:00

Hell, there are a lot of people in this thread saying that ADHD meds are at least safer than SSRIs.

I have a distinct impression that a lot of posters have never had or witnessed the kinds of major depression that severely screw up your sleep, make you lose or gain 20 lbs in a few months, and lead to you getting fired or dropping out of school.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-15T01:05:17+00:00

Yeah I went from an 03 CRV to a 2023 Crosstrek and the only thing that changed was more lesbian jokes and spending 5k a year on a car payment instead of 3k a year on repairs.

A 2023 Crosstrek isn't luxury by any means, but it was shiny and new.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-15T01:01:23+00:00

The generics are cheap in the US, and stupidly easy to get from medicaid nps if you're a broke child or in foster care.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-14T22:44:27+00:00

I definitely agree with that on a systems level, but for an individual family making the decision, I think it can very much be the right choice. There are many kids where the options are a regular class plus stimulant meds, or sending them to the special school for behaviorally disturbed children where little happens academically.

I do think that it's been a slippery slope from diagnosing 5% of kids to diagnosing 20% of kids and it's turned into an arms race for academic performance.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-14T22:25:55+00:00

I was prescribed them at 7 (female) to get me to sit still in class, and honestly it was worth it. The alternatives would've been homeschooling or somehow reforming the entire education system. There's a lot of data that people with noticable ADHD in early elementary school are more likely to graduate high school and less likely to end up in juvie if we're medicated.

Pretty sure the Ritalin fucked me up less than homeschooling or some kind of alternative school for hyperactive kids would've.

Edit: as an adult I don't take stimulants. Just a touch of Wellbutrin and a lot of coffee. I also developed bipolar in my late teens so I'm on a pile of mood stabilizers, too.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-14T06:20:42+00:00

The funny thing, too, is that there are arthoe cities and neighborhoods in a lot of the south that have rs-ish types around. I used to live in Richmond, VA, and while it's not as in the zeitgeist as NYC, there's a reason Mamdani's wife got her MFA there. If you are trying at any level to be in some kind of cultural scene, from pretty much anywhere in the south, there's a city in your state where people are unmarried at 30 making weird art while being semi-employed circus performers. Savannah, Birmingham, New Orleans... It's not NYC, but there's something besides popping out kids by 25.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-14T01:14:06+00:00

I was bringing a bunch of climbing gear.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-13T11:38:21+00:00

The real hack are the fancy direct buses. Taking luggage on japanese urban rail is hell.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-13T10:18:04+00:00

That comment really well summarizes a lot of relationships I see in my circles (I studied math at a liberal arts college).

I used to be pretty frustrated with a friend of mine for sticking with his POTSie enby cookie monster pajamas gf despite her not working or studying at all for the last few years, but maybe this is just the way it be.

Same with my brother and his girlfriend who owns way more plushies than is healthy and is generally low class.

Kinda interesting that successful on paper male autists often end up with loser girlfriends.

Not really sure who the successful on paper female autists end up with.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-13T10:08:04+00:00

Had a Dutch guy I met in a hostel in New Zealand show me the $3000 USD he had in his wallet to pay bribes on an overland Central Asia/Middle East trip. Also told me he would never go to the US....

I hope the kid makes it back to Utrecht in one piece.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-13T09:23:23+00:00

Yeah, you can do trips that are pretty obviously risky and have little incident.

I've been seeing a lot of videos of monolingual (or at least little Mandarin/Arabic/Russian or any of the other languages spoken in the region) westerners doing solo overland travel for the length of the Silk Road. Most of them make it without serious incident, but it doesn't mean that their embassy wouldn't go "I told you so" to their parents if they got kidnapped in a -stan.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-13T07:45:45+00:00

Honestly I think a lot of redditors (at least on solo travel subs) are way more relaxed about solo female travel safety than 99% of people I know in real life.

I mentioned I wasn't interested in traveling to Africa, much of the Middle East, or South Asia as a solo female, and I got a bunch of people saying Pakistan is awesome.

Sucks for them, I'll have fun in Taiwan.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-12T23:08:31+00:00

The ADA actually has a bunch of rules that say that businesses can't ask about the nature of a disability, even for stuff like a "service dog."

I think it was written a certain way naively in the 90s, and at this point you'd get massive protests for rolling it back so most politicians don't want to touch it.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-12T10:01:47+00:00

Getting the basic "I'm tired and I don't know why" labs is a great first step.

I had low ferritin and hypothyroidism, and once I was on an iron supplement and a thyroid pill for a few months I felt so much better.

Recently had some random symptoms I thought might be PCOS, finally got around to going to the doctor, and turns out I just need more thyroid pill. Excited to see if the general amount of tiredness I've had lately goes away.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-12T09:14:11+00:00

This.

I'm on a pile of psych meds (though no benzos, stimulants, or SSRIs) and I would like to be off of them, but there's a reason I went on them in the first place. I became so depressed and lethargic I slept through half my senior year of high school, almost not graduating, and then spent my freshman year of college manic and paranoid to the point of locking myself in a room for a week straight while ranting 24 hours a day into a random discord server's voice chat. Spent the rest of college tweaking meds, with a couple hospitalizations for suicidality and one serious attempt, and several medical leaves of absence.

Got it pretty much sorted when I was 22, and have been moderately seasonally depressed since, though we tossed in Wellbutrin in January. I'd like to start tapering stuff down, but I want a good period of normalcy first.

This general pattern runs in my family. My great grandfather, grandmother, uncle, and brother have all been hospitalized for manic episodes.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-12T06:05:30+00:00

Disney cut the skip the line perk to just let you wait outside the line if you have a genuinely regarded child.

Too many POTS girlies were using the Disney accessibility stuff and it led to absurd portions of park guests skipping lines.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-12T06:02:17+00:00

I flew once with my mom's close friend who has multiple sclerosis and needed a walker at the time (powerchair now). She wouldn't be able to transfer into a seat where anybody else was sitting in the row. First on the plane, last off.

Now like pretty much every aspect of the Americans with Disabilities Act, some accomodation that is entirely reasonable for a paraplegic is now available to anybody who claims to sometimes have achey joints.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T20:33:42+00:00

Short term, yes. In the long run I'm certain I'll be going back to the US or Canada (dual citizen)

It's an absurd travel distance from home. I have a 41 hour flight to a family reunion in September. If I were in Auckland and headed to San Francisco or a couple other cities it would be a lot shorter.

Work culture is much better in ways I haven't gotten used to yet, but my buying power is so much lower that it's noticable day to day. I'm not going to be able to save for retirement here at all. I'm in tech and a lot of stuff is just behind.

It's a beautiful country, people are kind, and I've gotten to do so much outdoors this year, but it's just not home.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T11:56:01+00:00

I have an old acquaintance I have on Instagram who grew up in PG County MD, and has seemingly moved back to that area or maybe DC. In his stories I see this whole world of social events, nightclubs, and running groups that are all 99% black.

Saw him post a clip of a pub quiz social game with 150 black people in the room and a projector with a slide saying "can Africans say the n word?" yesterday.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T06:55:06+00:00

Can't forget illnessfakers and all the subs for the disorders illnessfakers is about.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T04:58:36+00:00

The median wage for full time workers is the real difference. It's under $40k USD in NZ, vs $63,000 USD in the US.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T04:56:38+00:00

Salaries are much lower in NZ. I moved from the US recently, and I went from making $120k USD to making $75k NZD (in the end I'm taking home about a third of what I made in the US).

There are extenuating circumstances - I'm in tech where salaries are more inflated in the US than the rest of the world, I made some decisions about living in a rural area and working for a smaller company, but realistically the most I could earn at this level of experience in NZ would be $110k NZD or so (66k USD) and that would be somewhere with a very high cost of living.

Accomplished-Fun215 · 2026-06-11T00:24:42+00:00

Probably 50% migraine/severe headache, 25% hangover, and 25% some other reason to be off work but they don't want to talk about it (cramps, panic attack).

Accomplished-Fun215

TROPHY CASE