https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534592771792572418
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534593481892540416
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534598869501194241
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534599573322092544
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534600566558535680
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534603005537841153
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534607287238524928
https://twitter.com/The_Weed/status/1534607965629452288
As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I have mixed feelings about this thread. Yes I was a terrible procrastinator in school, and I always got in trouble for putting off chores. But I also don’t think that I should have been told it wasn’t my fault and that I just wasn’t neurotypical or whatever.
What I really needed imo was good study habits starting in high school. I was a latch key kid and my mom never really had time to help with that stuff. So I just screwed around in high school and got by. By the time I got to college it was too late. I think if I’d had more structure before college, my brain might have wired itself differently so I’d be prepared for college.
There’s tons of stuff we don’t want to do in life. But you do them a few times and they start to become a habit and get easier.
But also it could be I have mild ADHD compared to some people. I feel I could have overcome it. Maybe some cases are much more debilitating.
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I did not have at all the same reading of that thread. To me, that would be like hearing the pitch for a twelve step group and saying that an alcoholic recognizing they have a disease is the same as saying they don’t need to take responsibility for anything related to it.
I relate a lot to what the thread says but for other reasons. I am neurodivergent and disabled. People telling me as a kid that I just needed better study habits was part of what traumatized me. As the person writing the thread notes, those unfair expectations and demands on neurodivergent people remains part of what traumatizes us still today.
Or to go back to the alcoholic analogy, some people can just stop drinking and their life straightens out. Other people are actually addicts whose compulsive behavior is the symptom of the problem, but not the problem itself. Corrective behavior just leads to different manifestations of the same problem.
So how do you know whether or not you should get on your kid for not studying or doing chores? Because no kid wants to do chores, and very few want to sit and study for hours.
I may have been more productive if I was on ritalin in high school. But I’m glad I wasn’t because I don’t think I’d be the same person. It was hard in a lot of ways, but it led to the perfect career for me where I can get into flow state.
Maybe if I’m on Ritalin I settle for some career I don’t like as much, and maybe I don’t move to California. I dunno.
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I’m not sure what would have helped you, just that you sound to me like you did not get the support you needed 
That’s not always because no one tried. Sometimes we just don’t know better until we do.
There are lots of specialized approaches and techniques now to help people based on whatever terms are available to you. I won’t usually be the expert on anything for anyone, but having faced enormous and unusual obstacles, I like to at least help people explore their options and reconsider what might help.
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My half brother has a son with pretty severe mental illness; he’s like 20 yo and will get these anxiety attacks when parents have to leave the home, scream all kinds of threatening shit, completely melt down. I’ve never witnessed it so can’t say exactly what’s up, and I know he’s got other triggers and generally has a real tough time regulating his anxiety.
But, he’s called for advice regularly and as an lmhp I tell him what this looks like, ways he could proceed with psych testing, etc.
He’s never followed the advice and instead ends up seeking out some fucking quack holistic pseudoscientist whose snake oil never works. Newest version of this is “Dr Mensah” in LA I think who says some vitamin cocktail will cure his pyroluria which afaict is not a real thing.
So frustrating.
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Welcome back Dude.
I’m glad he has you to call regularly. Those calls might be one of the things that helps him, even if you can’t be the cure.
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My daughter had some artwork she did for middle school placed on display at the school district art fair. When we went to see it, we saw an incredible painting and drawing done by another student (unknown to us) at her middle school, which were clearly in a class above the rest. Found out yesterday from a school email that the student committed suicide.
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Thank you all for sharing. It really means a lot. More than you know.
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Kevin Smith tells the story of how he discovered he had a terrible relationship with weed and why he is now a month sober.
A big shift for him came when he began attending Codependents Anonymous meetings (CODA).
Similar for me. I got a lot out of ACA and CODA.
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A very good friend of mine recently had what I think is a fairly severe paranoia episode that I’m pretty concerned about. I reached out to my therapist of 10 years, who said she doesn’t handle psychosis, but recommended something called the Wright institute (https://wila.org). My friend, who seems to be better now, but sounded really shaky, said she called and made an appt for Wednesday. I’m in Europe right now, so unfortunately I can’t drive her, but I hope she goes.
Anyway I feel like the most important thing here is to get her professional help. But I’m not even sure what that would look like. She’s pretty adamant that she doesn’t want to go on any prescriptions. So any advice is much appreciated. If anyone wants the details, here’s the bullet points of what happened:
- She disappeared about a month ago, her phone went from blue (iOS) to green (text only) and she stopped answering anyone in my group of friend’s texts (she has multiple groups). I wasn’t too worried because I know she follows Phish around and sometimes gets overwhelmed with friends making demands on her time.
- I had just finished paying her to be a beta reader my book (she’s very smart and good with that stuff), and everything went great. Right at the time she disappeared though, she returned my 2nd of 2 payments on Venmo, which I thought was weird, but also took as a good sign that she hadn’t been kidnapped or anything.
- She canceled visiting a friend in the Bay Area, citing unspecific family issues.
- After about 3 weeks one friend got worried enough to call her Mom (who we didn’t want to scare if the Mom hadn’t heard from her either). Her Mom said she was with her Dad in Alabama and there was a death in the family. Ok I thought, crisis averted, she just needed to unplug and help her Dad for a while.
- A few days ago, while I’m in Europe I get a text from the most worried friend who talked to the friend who dropped of the radar. Turns out she is back in LA, had some kind of thing where she thought all her friends were against her (including me), and just planned to disappear. There was zero strife with any friends as far as I knew. The concerned friend said she was better now but still shaky and not all back to normal.
- I immediately called her and we had a good talk. It turns out some of the stuff in my book was a trigger for her. She’s actually in the book because we traveled together. But the trigger was me not using enough of her suggestions (she thinks I start too many sentences with the word “But”), and I made a joke about her being a positive thinker, whereas I need to be a negative thinker so that the universe makes me look stupid when the worst thing doesn’t happen. There might have been others but those were the only two that came out. I didn’t ask her point blank for examples or about the episode. Anyway none of this rose above the level of us just joking about it when we were going over the book. But I guess when someone has an episode like this, any little thing can trigger paranoia. Oh yeah, she convinced herself that I wasn’t taking any of her advice (which is very far from the case) and returned the last payment because of that. We ended the talk on a very good note, I told her I love her and she’s one of my best friends in the world, and I paid her the rest of the money which she accepted this time.
- Something like this happened maybe 20 years ago, where on a canoe trip she wound up with a group of friends that wasn’t our core group, and everyone was on shrooms. According to her, everyone in that other group was cruel and made fun of her mercilessly. I’ve always believed her until this incident. Now I wonder if this was another episode, because I’ve met all those people and this would be out of character.
- My friend still does a lot of hallucinogen-type drugs - shrooms, e, acid, maybe some others. I wonder if this might have something to do with it. I asked her if she was doing acid when this trigger started and she said no.
So that’s it, thanks for reading anyone who made it this far. Any suggestions short of 5150 (which I hope never becomes necessary) are greatly appreciated.
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Although your friend has a lot people worried about her, I’m not really seeing any signs that she is close to being a candidate for involuntarily commitment, or that she’s even psychotic. At worst it sounds like she’s struggling with serious depression (aggravated by family issues) versus some type of psychotic or dissociative disorder.
However, the fact that she continues to self-medicate using hallucinogens (and possibly other drugs and/or alcohol) is going to complicate any diagnosis and treatment. Unless she gets herself clean and is willing to seek and accept mental health treatment there isn’t much any of you can do to help her.
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Thanks, yeah it’s not close to involuntary commitment. But she does realize (I think, my friend talked to her more directly about it than I did) that she was kind of delusional for a while, and wants to get help. So hopefully she’ll keep her appointment with that clinic.
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I have been in your friend’s position a lot more than yours 
My feedback if you want to make a contribution to her well being.
She needs help processing what she is experiencing.
This means discussing the reality of her experience, not the rationality. For example, when she says everyone is being absolutely cruel to her, that is ABSOLUTELY true for her. And there will be things she can point to that support her case. But that’s not what she’s really arguing about. The point is that she had an experience that FEELS so real that she has to start from there. The feelings didn’t start with a rational argument and aren’t going to end with one. It’s more about finding what helps the person feel safe and “like a hug” until they’re calm and not so volatile that they cant reflect and practice grace.
People in a calm state get really confused about this and try to help the person have a rational conversation. Let’s make things make sense! Ugh.
But that is a completely different conversation than helping someone process big feelings and big experiences. You can’t really talk about “what is likely objectively true,” eg my friends all hate me, until or unless the person is in a state where that conversation is on the menu.
Arguing instead pushes them to counter argue and reinforce why their experiences are true and you don’t get it.
This can be exceptionally difficult if the person’s internal state is in constant flux due to a biological imbalance and/or drugs that make their state too volatile to engage with them, but the drugs have helped them manage their experiences so the cycle continues.
I have DID and a TBI, for example. No drugs needed for me to be a basket case. Drugs can definitely make it worse, though, especially for the people around me. I’m already starting from a place most people need LSD to experience.
The other thing is to respect your own feelings and limits. You can love them and see them as worthy people while also recognizing when you are a human at their limit and can only do so much to contribute to their recovery and well being
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Odd question but when do you know when it is time to cut back on the number of sessions a month in therapy? What do you do when things are going fairly well and you can’t even fill an hour with things to talk about in your therapy session? I don’t mean those as a brag as I have had a rough last year or two and am finally coming out of the fog but the last few therapy sessions I have gone to (going once a week) I feel like I am struggling to even come up with things to talk about. That alone is causing me anxiety.
Going regularly the last 6 months or so has been enormously helpful in many ways fwiw.
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Running out of things to talk about is probably a good sign. In my case I would go out and have a bender whenever I was just starting to get my shit together. So then we’d have plenty to talk about.
The other things that helped me end it after 12 years was pouring myself into my book, and as dumb as it is, the Chiefs winning the Superbowl really put me in a good mood for a long long time. Which is incredibly stupid that that had any impact on my happiness, but apparently it did.
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Thanks a lot for this. I forgot the mention that my friend has been going through a pretty rough menopause by her own account.
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Pretty relatable so far tbh. I’m hoping as I go forward these become less and less and eventually none. I have been on Naltrexone the last 7 weeks or so and that has been amazing as far as allowing me to drink less. I’ve still been drinking a bit but the blowout drinking nights are down from like 20 days a month to roughly 1-2. That’s an enormous difference on how I feel both mentally and physically. I’m also not drinking alone at home anymore at all which has been one of the biggest problems.
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Its pretty play it by ear. Cutting back when you have little to talk about is a good option, so long as you can resume appointments pretty easily.
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