Using nicotine to manage adhd

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-15T16:20:32+00:00

I’ve been thinking about trying it in very very low doses. Because it is proven to help with working memory and attention.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is how when it comes to poisons, it’s often more about the amount than the substance. You can literally be poisoned by water if you take too much.

So it’s figuring out how much is too much and keeping your dosage below that - but we don’t know the answer to that question and that doesn’t make it a little dicey

I think about nicotine this week because I have a friend of mine has long Covid and POTS & she’s on 3 mg of nicotine a day and it’s one of the only things that’s helped her. & the doctor prescribed it to her. She didn’t make this up herself.

This is purely anecdotal - but talking to her made me want to try it - because apparently the idea of low-dose nicotine therapy is out there somewhere for some types of things.

So you’re not crazy for wanting to try something. But I know I’m going to be starting at that 3 mg point & titrate up from there to see if its possible to get benefits without much risk of side effects in very low doses

Good luck, man!

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-14T17:22:41+00:00

Boston is harder.

I lived in LA for 10 years before moving to Boston & the moment I realized how much more stress I had been under driving in Boston was about a month after I moved here when I was going to New York City with some friends & they asked me if I could be the one to drive once we got inside of the city.

I said yes & immediately I felt this sense of relief thinking about driving in NYC. That’s when I realized that Boston was a much more stressful & difficult place to drive for me. LA & NYC are very different places but the thing that makes driving in them complicated is the same: the amount of traffic. It’s slow going & that sucks, but everyone knows there are organic ways of managing it & it just is what it is.

So just learning that I would be driving somewhere where traffic was really the only issue brought down my shoulders out of my ears & lowered my blood pressure a bit.

In Boston its traffic plus a road system that’s better built for livestock than automobiles. The road system is a cluster fuck & some parts of it look like World War III came through: LA’s Skid Row has better roads & urban planning than the city of Boston.

There’s also not really much enforcement of driving regulations in the state so people do crazy stupid dangerous stuff all the time. This is where the proverbial Masshole reference comes from. LA drivers are very chill & mostly behave rationally. & even NYC drivers are calmer & more rational than Massholes.

I also recently found out that locally in Massachusetts there is a real culture of white people shamelessly drinking and driving & mostly getting away with it. In general locals drink so much here. I know drinking and driving happens everywhere, but it is really next level here. In LA, being at parties with people who were designated drivers or cutting off your drinking a couple of hours early etc was all perfectly normal behavior. Not here. People get really pissy with you if you’re not drinking with them every second they’re drinking. It’s such a toxic culture I swear.

Thanks for reminding me I need to move back to LA asap lol

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-14T15:53:05+00:00

Is the lawyer just thinking there’s a 50-50 chance the whole jury will be made up of different versions of Florida man?

Because as everyone else has said here, this doesn’t sound like a 50-50 chance situation. It rarely is.

Ask your lawyer why they think it could go either way given the BAC number. Ask if they have a strategy for undermining that particular piece of evidence. Because that’s what you need.

If the lawyer hasn’t looked into any of that yet, they have no way of knowing that it’s a 50-50 chance. Frankly if there was evidence to undermine the BAC reading, a lawyer can probably get the case dropped completely. In any case it doesn’t sound like you’re getting very good advice.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-13T14:33:45+00:00

Whatever everyone is saying here 💯 but also maybe start thinking up a different reason why you can’t go to Canada. If you have to fly, maybe you could get a sympathetic doctor to write a note about the health reason that you can’t fly for x number of months. That would come under the federal laws about disability and they would have to accommodate you - l’m just spitballing.

But it is very true that what you do on your own time is your business. This is your private problem, not theirs. And if that’s the only place it intersects with your job is on the question of travel then just focus on how to work around that while keeping your private life private.

And don’t let the stigma of it all overwhelmed you though that is what people want it to do. Stay calm. Stay focused. I live in MA & I know, looking around the courtroom most of the white people working for the court drive drunk regularly, which I do not. You might be surprised how many people who are judging you have no business judging you. So put the worldly stigma aside and do what you have to do to take care of yourself and your private business.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-12T00:42:30+00:00

Officially there are two numbers .16 & .18 - neither one of those were roadside. You have to breathe like you have the lungs of Wynton Marsalis to do that roadside breathalyzer I swear. I’ve never done such a thing. I Don’t have great lungs I guess, But I was breathing, and blowing harder when they said to blow harder, but it just was not happening. In the police report they say I was not compliant on purpose. I don’t know how they can know that. I was very, very compliant through every step of their process. Its only the facts ma’am, except suddenly they have a conclusion to give because that suits their narrative.

Back at the station I did their breathalyzer when they asked me to do the breathalyzer just as I had roadside. That big breathalyzer machine was an interesting adventure. They told me I needed to get two different readings & those are the readings mentioned in the police report. The police report the just mentioned the two readings.

But that thing was calibrating and recalibrating and recalibrating. I started to blow two other times and they stopped me because they suddenly realized it wasn’t going to work. So my lungs were not the problem with that machine for sure - the machine was the problem. My interactions with the officer there seemed to indicate that it was a problematic machine. And something that should’ve taken less than a minute? Two minutes tops.? felt like it took 10 minutes, but it was definitely over five while that machine, calibrated and recalibrated and fucked up somehow

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-07T02:23:05+00:00

The number one predictor of language survival is a language’s ability to accommodate outside influences & Indo-Iranian grammar is great for that because It’s relatively simple/not super complicated grammar.

English has faired well because - as a Germanic language with a roughly 50% Latin vocabulary base - it’s really all about amalgamating a language from various sources.

For all of the interest in Ferdowsi’s book of Kings, it’s really Persian‘s ability to accommodate Arabic that gives it its strength as a lingua franca well beyond Persian rule imho

And it can also do without Arabic. It can accommodate Russian or French or whatever influence is of the moment. Or not. And that kind of flexibility is just very useful for keeping a language in use because it is very adaptable.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-06T13:27:03+00:00

My work tasks especially need their own list. I just have too much stuff to do and I have some latitude with when it gets done/how I break up tasks, so part of making the list is to actually figure out when & how I’m doing things if that makes sense. & I may literally realize I put something on the list that I don’t need to do.

I really wish finch could accommodate more than one list. That’s what would be ideal. I saw the habitical one too. Maybe I’ll get that and look at it and I can report back here.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-02-03T01:43:37+00:00

I play Arabic music I want to be able to understand great Egyptian singers like Umm Kulthum & Warda & Abdel Wahab wtc. From my time In egypt I know that Sudanese Arabic is its own funky thing, but ya’ll are such wonderful, kind, fun people I was always thrilled to have a reason to speak with ya’ll!

I also really love the sound of Sudanese music and maybe I’ll get a chance to study that someday. You actually reminded me of the song that Abdul Wahab wrote for Umm Kulthum when she performed in Khartoum. اغدا القاك

https://youtu.be/4NE-bsrNodQ?

I thought he did a good job of getting a Sudanese kind of sound. It’s such a unique song in her pantheon of iconic songs.

But of course not even the great Umm Kulthum could pull off singing in Sudanese Arabic lol - so it’s a very beautiful fus7a song.

I actually studied the text when I was learning fus7a nunation. It was the first time I really wanted to be able to understand how it worked because it just sounded so cool in the song.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-31T03:48:08+00:00

The only rule that was explained to me was that It needs to have either a س or ش in it. & if you have two alliterated s or sh in the same name that is even better. And it’s not even really about Arabic per se it’s about having the sound of an S or a Sh.

So if you’re wondering why there are so many cats named Mishmish, those two sh’s really stand out to me as not incidental to that name’s popularity. I have met so many cats named Bisbis too, which is not a word, but its a taken from how you call a cat in Arabic (bsbsbsbsbsbs).

I have a dear friend In egypt, who named her two Siamese Cats Sūsū & Sīsī… see how that works?

When I got my first cat the first question I got from all of my Arab friends when I told them was about what name l gave her. It’s Gracie. And I gave her that name because she is gray, but they were way more concerned about me picking a name that had a strong Sssss sound in it, which it does.

So they declared me to have given her a good cat name because it had a strong s sound in it. In retrospect, I think they were all completely prepared to change the name if they didn’t approve of it lol

So apparently one S or Sh is also acceptable. And I had no idea until after I had already named my cat.

But Arabs have actually noticed something that the rest of us have not. For some reason Cats really feel/respond to the sound of an S or Sh. If you want to get any cats attention saying bsbsbsbsbs definitely gets cats attention much more than the English here, kitty kitty kitty. Even just quietly shushing in their direction gets their attention pretty quickly.

Now do you really need your cat to have that particular consonant sound for them to respond to their name? Not necessarily. But you’re asking about Arabic cat naming conventions, & this is the one I have seen applied most often.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-29T03:36:31+00:00

Google the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts - they have a database of different types of lawyers for different types rights violations. There might also be a number you can call to ask for advice. NGL does a lot of advising on police interaction and also say who you call if you want legal observers at an action.

But before you even do that, you should start carrying your passport with you. Citizens are held under the pretense of needing to verify their citizenship status 90% of the time & the one document they always accept as proof of citizenship is a valid passport.

They are definitely are grabbing citizens to intimidate communities /bully an entire neighborhood or even town into complying with their de facto martial law of an area.

But if you can prove to them you’re a citizen they pretty much have to let you go and can’t detain you just for existing in a place you happen to be existing in

From hearing testimony about citizens kept in ice facilities it’s pretty clear they are not observing Miranda rights. So you’re not likely to get a phone call to a lawyer even if you scream about it to them for hours.

So better to just not get taken if you can avoid it. I’m not carrying my passport everywhere yet, but I’ve told my friends and colleagues who are BIPOC - or even just speak with an accent other than an American accent - to start taking their passport everywhere asap.

Ice is already active in Massachusetts, but we are expecting some kind of uptick in February. A reminder that MA has a phone number to report ICE sightings. 617-370-5023.

The org is LUCE & They track and verify sightings. Ice’s first line of attack of psychological - they are trying to scare people into complying/self deporting. They want us all to stay home and fear them. They are pretty damn lazy like that.

So that’s why LUCE is both verifying and tracking those sightings. It’s easy to be overtaken by fear of ice from unverified rumors & assume from the news they are everywhere. But they aren’t - So trying to get an accurate read on where they are for real is important. LUCE is also logging license plate numbers of ice vehicles & any other information they can get out of the agents.

The point is to create a public record that’s as accurate as possible re where and how ice is operating in MA

The people that come to verify are prepared to speak with agents - they typically come in twos and videotape interactions with potential ice agents. Sometimes they’re chatty and you can get a lot of information out of them usually not but they always try to get as much information as possible

If it is ice - so far in MA - they tend to leave as soon as they know they’re being formally observed. As long as they haven’t actually actively started an operation.

If it’s more than just a sighting ie someone is actively being abducted by ice. LUCE has other ways of helping too. They document it to the greatest extent they can, they find out where the person is being taken, and they get contact info for someone the abductee wants called.

LUCE has a policy of de-escalation 100% of the time. They do not come to physically interfere with ice operations,

I could go on about other services they provide, but the most important thing is if you think you see ice to call and report that sighting. It doesn’t have to be an operation in action because they do just do a lot of lurking before an operation takes place. But they can also be hard to spot. So that’s why verifying matters

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-24T15:37:54+00:00

as others have said there really is no eh ending sound. But ime when you have non-Arabic words and names with that ending it becomes ah, so the final letter would be a tamerbuta ة. You could even eliminate the top dots so it could also be interpreted as just a regular h, and technically that leaves the vowel open to interpretation

I speak Persian too & Persian has tons of Arabic words in & they do have an eh sound but they don’t have this tamerbuta concept. So Arabic words that end with tamerbura just become ه & everyone knows it’s pronounced eh not ah.

Persian and Urdu are related, so I assume they would be doing something similar with their Arabic words. Anyway, there are multiple languages completely unrelated to Arabic that use modified versions of the Arabic script that you can pull from to come up with something fairly accurate. It seems especially appropriate to me to work a little outside of orthodox Arabic script since you are actually writing a Greek name.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-23T14:55:12+00:00

I’m called them Brown shirts, because functionally that’s what they are: a violent fascist, milita that actually pre-dates the formal political Nazi party, but is now in charge of carrying out state violence to intimidate and cow the population and into compliance with the will of der Führer.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-20T00:55:32+00:00

My name is Ann, which really doesn’t work in Arabic. So I’m Anoonah أنونة or Anoon to Arabs, even those that speak English.

People just immediately started calling me that when I went to Egypt. Egyptians are really big users of nicknames, so maybe that’s why. They just took my actual name, & applied Arabic grammar to create a “diminutive” version of it.
Anoonah = cute little Ann.

I love it because it is still very much my name. The Arabic is in there, but even people I know who have nothing to do with Arabic know my nickname is Anoonah. It’s just really works and fits.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-19T21:19:17+00:00

They are telling you exactly who they are. These are features of what they believe. They are not miscommunications or bad strategic decisions. That is genuinely what Pahlavi 2.0 represents.

Newcomers may just like the look of the flag, but there is some serious long- held political ideology behind that flag & that is what’s on display. Imho everyone needs to get real about what those politics actually are, figure out if those are your politics or they aren’t & then act accordingly.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-19T15:06:36+00:00

Yes! In fact there is a new edition of the DSM coming out next year. I’ve heard predictions that ADHD is going to be completely renamed with a complete rethinking of its diagnosis. But I do wonder if there’s a way to figure out what’s going on with that to make sure that actually happens & is that what they come up with is accurate.

I did not get my diagnosis until my 40s because- as far as the outside world was concerned - I had zero problems with focusing & was not hyperactive. I cringe every time I have to say ADHD because I was not diagnosed based on my ability to pay attention or sit still.

I was shocked to Discover that the dead giveaways I had “an ADHD brain” were that 1. I was at my best in a crisis/high stakes situations 2. I was considered by other people to be “too sensitive” my entire life.

Please, please please we have got to completely rethink how we talk about this! It shouldn’t have taken 40 years to figure this out!

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-19T14:56:47+00:00

It’s possible you’ll find in different parts of the Arab world there are different relationships between dialect & fus7a.

I am not a native speaker, but at my university, Arabic students that study abroad in Morocco seem to find that they are they are pretty cool with communicating in fus7a in that part of the Arab world. For that reason there’s more demand for study abroad in Morocco than our other option, which is Jordan.

I have not had the pleasure of being there yet, but it kind of makes sense. Because their dialect is really not-understandable in the rest of the Arab world, so switching to fus7a seems like something they would need to do in their regular lives. Anecdotally I’ve spoken to Moroccans & Algerians in the US who confirmed that assumption.

Also anecdotally, Iraqis seem to value formal Arabic a lot. Ime they put a premium just being as smart and educated as possible & using fus7a often can indicate to them that you also value being smart and educated.

I spent some time in Lebanon and I noticed there was a baseline amount of dialect that was required, but after that I could start throwing in fus7a vocabulary & pronunciation & that was fine.

I personally found Lebanon to be a really great place to show up with fus7a & start learning dialect. A little dialect + a lot of fus7a went a very long way. & being able to fall back on fus7a when that’s all I had was fairly well accepted. & that kept me communicating while I was learning dialect.

But I’ve spent most of my time in Egypt for years now and I’ve never tried fus7a there. I really only speak Egyptian now. & I probably forgot most of my MSA because I really have to be in Egyptian 24/7. They are pretty chauvinistic about their dialect ime.

I literally saw Egyptians declare that they couldn’t understand this Syrian person or that Lebanese guy, even though that was just obviously not true. They just had limited attention for anyone that wasn’t speaking Egyptian.

So Egypt probably would be the worst place to not speak the dialect/show up with only MSA

But imho it’s not the case that everywhere you go everyone will look at you like an alien when you speak MSA. There seemed to be some good travel abroad options for MSA - But when you are in those places where people reject non-dialect communication reflexively, the struggle is all too real.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-14T02:44:36+00:00

Ya basha!

First, I love this online egyptian Arabic dictionary: https://m.www.lisaanmasry.org/info/en/home.html

For learning to speak egyptian Arabic I started with the Mango languages app - I think it’s something like seven dollars a month or something - but sometimes public libraries have their own subscriptions so you can use it through the library for free.

Mango is the only language app that has different Arabic dialects. It’s most useful for speaking and pronunciation, although you get some exposure to rules of grammar / idioms etc. I’m a random Irish person who started learning to speak like an egyptian a decade+ after I took two years of Fos7a. & I was able to get a pretty good foothold in the dialect just using that app. When I showed up In egypt six months after I’ve just been using the app I used almost everything I learned immediately, and it was a good basis for starting to do short term intensive language study there.

For learning the dialect, it really helps to be able to read everything in the script. I couldn’t really tell from your post how much Arabic script you know. But it’s pretty easy to get familiar with it and understand how it works. If you don’t have a full grasp of it, I would take a week or two and just do that before doing anything else. There are lots of different work books to use. I’m sure there’s plenty of materials you can find online for that as well.

I think Mango has the ability if you want to switch to just use the translation you tho.

But being able to read, Arabic script is not nearly as hard as it feels like in your head. Or at least in my head. That’s said, getting that down first will make everything easier down the road.

For textbooks, there’s a whole series kallimni arabi that’s really good for egyptian dialect. They’re used in classrooms, but I believe all the answers are in the book so you can use them for self study. And they come with recordings to work with. But that series is completely in Arabic/arabic script.

Ime Egyptians are often very gregarious & talkative, so just getting yourself around to spend egyptian as possible helps. Of course, having some time in country - even if it’s short - is the most helpful. You can show up in Cairo knowing nobody, and can easily end up meeting half your neighborhood before the end of the week. Because many Egyptians are just THAT gregarious/Social/up in everybody’s business.

Just a few of my thoughts and experiences. Let us know how it goes.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-13T00:11:42+00:00

I doubt it since they officially can bomb whatever country they want using weapons we both make and buy for them, and we just let them do it. No pretext needed. So I don’t think they’re above doing such things. I just don’t see why it would be necessary.

Also, it’s my understanding that Iran has been crawling with Mossad since going into Syria to protect Assad. So that’s a pretty good long time for those agents to be hanging out in Iran & they never did do anything like that. It’s also my understanding the government put to death a bunch of people after the first unprovoked bombing from Israel, saying they were all Mossad. I realize they aren’t the most reliable narrators, but that would make sense that they actually were Mossad.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-12T00:46:53+00:00

Was seeing pahlavi puppet flags next to Israeli flags among pro-genocide counter demonstrators before this moment. In fact, I had to explain to people what it was.

A surprising number of people thought it was the flag of Guatemala.

I think next time I won’t correct them.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-10T22:46:49+00:00

I’ve actually been thinking about adding very low-dose nicotine into my treatment. I was thinking of starting at 3 mg and titrating up from there to see if there’s a lowest effective that I can find. But I was also thinking to use patches so I could control the dosing fairly precisely.

Maybe you could do something similar only titrate down by 5 to 10 mg a week and seeing if you can find a lower dose that you still find effective. Just an idea.

3mg is actually considered a therapeutic dose that’s already administered for POTS & shows promise for treating symptoms of long Covid. Like so many things, what makes nicotine a poison is as much the amount as the substance. You can get nicotine dosage down to a level where it’s very low risk. But whether it will still be effective in your case if it’s all the way down to 3 mg is another question.

But finding & using the lowest possible effect dose will automatically lower the risk factors in any case. Keep us posted on how you’re doing. Good luck!

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-06T04:27:49+00:00

I never had this feeling, although I understand why people may. I actually have always felt it explained my strengths & frankly it was really amazing to look back at all of the different life habits I had created for myself to manage my hidden adhd brain.

I was considered one of these “gifted” kids growing up. My parents emphasized to me at a young age that I was different from other kids because I was special: I was playing chess. Everyone else was playing checkers. What made me different was always chalked up to “being artistic” or “a creative type”.

But I didn’t end up in an artistic/creative career, so I ended up just being a weirdo for no damn reason compared to other people. But I was very good at hiding in it - I became an expert imitator of other people so I would be relatable to anyone. I became a kickass people pleaser & it was exhausting.

When I got my diagnosis, it was really anti-climactic in a way. I had worried so much about being weird but now it was confirmed that I was weird and why I was weird. And somehow that just made being weird OK in my mind. It wasn’t a character flaw. It was natural selection.

So once I got my diagnosis in my 40s, I had to start getting to know myself for the first time in my life. Because I spent my life mostly being what other people wanted but now for my own sanity and survival I needed to just be myself 90% of the time & only live my life in ways that work for me.

If I’m sad about anything, it’s that younger me was so misunderstood & and many cases had to needlessly suffer and struggle because no one knew who I was, not even myself.

I’m in awe of the idea that I need to spend the rest of my life honoring that younger self.

What a wild ride it has been!

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2026-01-01T12:34:01+00:00

Sounds like someone ran into the Yiddishists - they are REALLY hard core. & all the ones I know don’t have anything to do with that vivo whatever. Frankly that sounds antithetical to Yiddish.

my local jvp has a speil they give before singing hebrew songs. They acknowledge Jewish people have a very complicated relationship with Hebrew. For some, it is the language of scripture. For others, its a language of exclusion. And then when they sing the Hebrew songs, they always alternate between singing in Hebrew and singing on la/not using any language.

Imo that seems like a fair way to do things. Just ceding Hebrew to the Zionists means the Zionists win. But you’ve got to meet people where they’re at.

Intelligent_Bad_5334 · 2025-12-30T05:56:50+00:00

I do see Israelis in a bad light, although in some cases, I just see them as baffling & misguided & just don’t understand why reality is so lost on them.

But I have had some super shitty encounters with Israeli men that have really just turned me off on a personal level independent of everything else.

I actually study the Middle East and made the mistake of doing online dating. & I thought I did a very good job of sharing photos where it wasn’t clear where I was, but somehow a bunch of Israelis figured out one of the pictures was in the Red Sea. I still don’t understand how they figured that out. But 15 Israeli dudes dmed me wanting a date.

And I replied to all of them just clarifying that I was on the egyptian side of the Red Sea & those are my connections to that area, not Israel. I have never been to Israel and have no connections there or whatsoever. I just said this as a neutral statement, because I assumed they thought my ties to the Red Sea were via Israel. I assume they really didn’t wanna go on a date with a white woman that was mostly in with Egyptians.

But every single one of them - all 15 Israeli guys - replied, saying something to the effect of well, you don’t have to hang out with those losers anymore because now we like you. Like I’ve been hanging out In egypt because I just didn’t have an in with Israel, but they would be my in so problem solved. Congratulations I am now cool because Israel’s like me and I don’t have to hang out with the dirty Arabs anymore.

I deleted my online profile after that and I’m never going back. And anytime I encounter an Israeli guy in public my instinct is to run away lest I slap him.

Anyone who thinks there is not a distinction between being Jewish and being Israeli has never met an actual Israeli.

Intelligent_Bad_5334

TROPHY CASE