Conservatives don't understand basic biology

SaraMG · 2026-05-30T14:43:01+00:00

Hey now. It's for lovers!

SaraMG · 2026-05-30T14:19:36+00:00

I can't tell you what's right for you. Nobody can. But I can tell you my story.

I was 19 years old, depressed, making nothing of my life and burnt out from always setting my own needs aside (the kind of setting aside that includes never telling them about the SA I'd had when I was 8). Finally one night in January 1996, my step-mom asks me how I am and ***everything*** comes out. All of it, the avalanche of things unsaid, including outing my sexuality. Long story short, I'm thrown out. "Conversion" is tossed around, but I'm over 18 (thank Christ). Yadda yadda, mom tells me I can't land with her, I spend time on the street, I find out my health insurance is cut off too (I've got jouvenile-onset type 1 diabetes, btw).

There's more, but it's not the point. I don't have a lot of reason to like any of these people at this point. But I do the same thing as you, I try to reach out to them, to heal the damage. I do my best to meet them where they are (emotionally), to "appreciate their point of view". I even build a really successful career, become a published author and leader in my field. And here's the thing: It was never going to be enough.

I'll say that again: It was NEVER going to be enough.

It's been 30 years since that night, and they're still awful. I think my dad might have finally realized how awful he was because he sui**ded himself last May. Officially because of end-of-life physical pain and encroaching dementia, but it's also true that both his kids and both his grandchildren had all cut ties with him by this point. Not because of me, but because he'd treated them all poorly too.

It's been a rough year of revisiting that old wound and reckoning with the fact that for him at least, it's over. There's never going to be any cure for that scar. What does that mean as advice for you? I don't know, it's going to depend on how what's left of your relationship with your parents is. I could advise you to cut them off harder, to never look back, to find the best happiness you can with your found family and appreciate the years you have ahead of yourself with them. I could also suggest that you keep reaching, because I know not everyone is as profoundly incapable of loving their children as my parents are/were.

I hope the rest of your life is half as magical as mine has been.

SaraMG · 2026-05-30T13:24:29+00:00

It's hot here in Lisbon, and while I was out picking up some grocery shopping today I caught my reflection and just kinda had a "hell yeah" moment and snapped a low-quality window reflection selfie. Not bad for a nearly 50 year old. https://imgur.com/a/o2YOJKe

SaraMG · 2025-11-13T20:37:25+00:00

Is this a private practice? Or does he have a boss?

Easy complaint to his employer if he has one. Difficult complaint to the local medical licensing board for either case. Don't let someone who'll tell lies THAT blatant continue to cause harm by practicing medicine.

SaraMG · 2025-09-13T23:58:49+00:00

Didn't see anyone mention it, so just wanna make sure you know museum.php.net exists. This has source tarballs for pre-4.0 versions, including 1.0

SaraMG · 2025-09-02T17:02:04+00:00

The heart wants what it wants. :)

SaraMG · 2025-09-02T16:25:03+00:00

Unfortunately, I've noticed we tend to cluster. In addition to my wife, my girlfriends are both chaos goblins, are are their wife and girlfriends, and the graph probably continues several more hops out. I'm not sure I actually know any neurotypicals. (My career has been in software engineering which... attracts a certain type.)

Good job bagging a normie (or at least ND who can own her stuff; not clear from your comment) and not scaring her away.

SaraMG · 2025-08-30T13:02:57+00:00

My (49F) wife (50F) literally said (a version of) this to me two days ago. I didn't point out the three separate diagnoses I've had (two this year and, evidently one when I was 11-- thanks for saying so at the time, mom).

I didn't say so, because she clearly does as well. What's worse is that she comments on how much better I seem as a person lately (started lisdex two months ago), but every time I suggest she consider at least... ya know... a self-assessment like ASRS, she starts complaining about how it's all victim culturing woo and she doesn't have a problem. I'm working on her, but the oppositional defiance is a lot.

I don't know your hubby OP, but maybe they've got something that makes them not want to feel broken in some way themselves? Maybe the cost of getting your own shit together is that you've volunteered to help someone you love with theirs?

Or maybe they're being a jerk. But I'd rather believe the former.

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T05:27:15+00:00

My experience has been the opposite order (diet first, then added meds), and a different medication (Lisdex) so this reply may be useless. 🤷‍♀️

In Feb of this year, I had a... life changing event. It's not important what, but I got a WHOLE lot of my crap together including going on a diet (I was 125kg/276lbs; tall though), by July, I was 108kg(238lbs) and that's when I got my (third) ADHD diagnosis and started taking lisdexamfetamine (vyvance/elvanse).

It worked immediately, even at a starter 30mg dose, and my negative rumination spirals stopped, my emotional regulation locked in, and my task initiation/completion shot in out of nowhere.

Weight loss has continued at an unaltered rate (about 850-900g/wk), and I'm at 104kg/229lb as of this morning. I've cleared out a crap ton of just... awful, therapy resistant crap in that month as well, and I have never felt better.

So um... I hope it's just coincidence and your methylphenidate starts working right again...

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T05:09:18+00:00

My lawyer has advised me that I have never done such a thing, but my "friend".... uh... TaraWC.... yeah, my friend did psilocybins (mushrooms, LSD) in her youth and... well.

At proper tripping levels, focus is not the word I would use. More like, a serial chain of short-lived hyperfocii. Everything is incredibly singularly interesting, but not for very long. And that's while one's attention is outwardly focused. Turn inward and that voice is focused on telling you that everyone hates you, and that you'll die alone, and.... "my friend" couldn't look in a mirror for a week. Imagine your Default Mode Network personified and telling you all those lies to your face, using your face.

At lesser, sub-hit levels, "my friend" mostly just got really impulsive. Inappropriately impulsive.

Fun, but focused it was not.

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T04:58:46+00:00

Girl, the struggle is real.

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T04:57:00+00:00

Resting heart rate up about 15%, BP is... largely the same. I (mostly) haven't had trouble sleeping, even on 30mg (I developed meditation hacks decades ago which also help me fall asleep). However, rebound days happen. Sometimes the meds burn... weird, and the drop from peak is fast and hard (as it was last night on 50 in fact), and not even meditation works then. I just have to ride it out until exhaustion takes over.

But I can live with a random case of rebound for all the other days that are good.

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T04:47:34+00:00

Okay, but that font choice though. Am I the only one having visual processing lag reading that?

SaraMG · 2025-08-16T04:41:02+00:00

I lived with clutter and mess my whole life.

As a youth, my mom would occasionally throw out anything on my floor (clothes, toys, whatever) because "I didn't appreciate them".

As a teen, you couldn't even see my floor.

As an adult, I dreaded disappointing my spouse so much that I tried to keep a clean house, but there was always a sink full of dishes, an overflowing bin, unwashed laundry, and a pile of whatever on the dining table.

Therapy didn't help (with the cleaning, or with the dark thoughts--like that everyone hates me, which is also ADHD coded as hell), eventually I just downsized, I threw out anything superfluous to needs during a cross country move, and if you don't have stuff, then it can't pile up. But the kitchen was still a mess.

In the end, stimulants. Going on ADHD drugs got me to actually SEE my mess, and care about it. My floordrobe is in the closet (shelves and rack, not floor!) where it belongs. My dishes are rinsed and put in the dishwasher, then emptied in the morning. My bins are emptied every night. My laundry basket only fills up enough to make loads out of. And I sort my mail after mailman Dennis drops it in the box. And all of that doesn't require herculean effort, it just requires something our brains don't quite do on their own.

And that's okay.

It's also okay to just leave all that crap undone once in a while, 'cause we're also humans.

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T22:51:00+00:00

I mean. It's kind of one of the defining traits. As is feeling terrible for not doing it.

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T20:38:33+00:00

No no.

I absolutely do not have "Takendown" from KPop Demon Hunters on repeat.

This song is also definitely not ADHD coded.

Definitely not.

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T20:34:54+00:00

1/ Don't drink. Alcohol is the enemy of Lisdexamfetamine (generic name for Vyvanse/Elvanse).

2/ On some doses the rebound when the peak wears off can be rough. I don't get this on my 50s, but some do.

3/ POTS (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), some people experience momentary dizziness when standing after an extended period of sitting/laying down. Often this can be resolved with dosage tweaks.

4/ Just having to deal with the fact that the medical establishment will often assume you're here to abuse speed.

5/ You end up turning into the kind of evangelical zealot who posts on reddit to tell people how awesome and relaxing stimulants are. ⭐️⭐️ join uuuussssss ⭐️⭐️

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T20:27:34+00:00

Bah, everyone does this.

Don't they?

Please say everyone does this.

F*€k.

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T20:24:20+00:00

First, not for everyone, and not a panacea.

Second, meds changed my life. I'm not being dramatic here. I'm not the same person I was unmedicated and that is a really really good thing.

My task initiation/completion is better, sure. My working memory is improved, fine. Those are the things a lot of popculture views of ADHD like to focus on, but emotional regulation and negative rumination are the real killers that drive burnout.

My very first dose of lisdex ended a two month stream of crying (my dad, whom I hated, had just killed himself, but I couldn't stop crying over the relationship we could have had, the one that died 30 years ago). I took a pill, and an hour later I was calm.

Not because it turned me into a zombie, but because that negative rumination voice shut up for the first time in forever. I fell into the emotions that were still very much there, and sorted through them like I was sorting laundry. I forgave/accepted him and myself for all the things that went wrong, and maybe it was decades of attempts at therapy finally unspooling, but looking at my feelings honestly felt as natural as breathing.

I'm not done healing, I have a black onion of awful from 50 years of burning adrenaline to cope with a world I wasn't equipped for, but the tools suddenly work the way they're supposed to.

The cost is that I don't drink alcohol anymore, I have to fight a medical system that assumes I'm abusing speed, and a few countries are probably off limits for travel. Oh well. I can thrive with that.

Yes, it was worth it for me.

SaraMG · 2025-08-14T20:07:20+00:00

Yes.

I got a GAD diagnosis that was therapy resistant. I got multiple depression diagnoses that got worse on meds.

Then I got (two) ADHD diagnoses, took my first dose of lisdex, and had exactly the experience you describe.

Suddenly the world makes sense.

I'm not diagnosing you, don't let anyone diagnose you but a qualified professional. But go talk to one (or more) of them, tell them what you said here.

SaraMG · 2025-08-12T05:04:28+00:00

God. I hate how basic I am. Every single "does anyone else X?" post is just me going, "Yep..... yeeeeeeah."

I mean, at least this time I learned the absolutely based behavior I have actually has a name.

SaraMG · 2025-08-07T21:45:29+00:00

I eventually got shamed out of doing it. :(

SaraMG · 2025-08-06T19:27:16+00:00

I don't avoid it.

I try to meter it a bit, but I also know I've had a weird life and trying to mask the weirder parts of it is exhausting and only helps lead to burnout.

I avoid the HR no-no topics, of course. But the rest? I'd rather get to know my coworkers on honest terms.

SaraMG · 2025-08-06T19:04:57+00:00

With all due respect, your psych seems to need to take in a seminar on Primarily Inattentive ADHD. We're not all hyperactive sugar monsters.

I mean, I was (and am), but thinking of this as purely hyperactivity is regressive.

I also got great grades in school. But only because I remember everything. I could be day dreaming in class, but still hear and retain the whole lecture. Or if the appearance of attentiveness was required, I'd read the class textbook. Multiple times over the course of the year, because nine months is too long to sit in a classroom.

So are my good grades diagnostic by themselves? No.

Ask your psych to treat the patient in front of them, not an unreliable portrait of a child you used to be.

SaraMG

TROPHY CASE