Right or wrong doesn't factor for me. I do not make value judgements about my neurochemistry, I just care about how well I am able to exist. I do not believe I'd live a happy life if I was unmedicated, regardless of our society. You are free to believe that about yourself, but I know what my untreated depression feels like—an absolutely crushing nothingness where I starve myself because I'm too apathetic to eat. I know what my untreated ADHD feels like—a bottomless pit of unmotivation and a maddening lack of emotional mindfulness. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong or shameful with having a medical condition that requires medication to treat. People with physical conditions shouldn't be told that they'd be fine if society just accepted them when the consequences of not treating their condition is misery or death. I have a physical condition that affects my neurochemistry to a degree that prevents me from being happy and living. Some people have depression and can deal with it by making concessions or exercising or meditating and I'm happy for them. Therapy helped me a lot with my depression, but the baseline miserable nothingness is still there. Some people have ADHD but have found coping strategies and don't need meds, and I'm happy for them. The D in ADHD is too strong for me to deal with on my own in any conceivable circumstance, and that is fine. There's nothing wrong or shameful about that, it is what it is, like how someone with a congenital issue might need a wheelchair. I am entitled to my own understanding of myself, the shit I've suffered through, and how I deal with it.

I absolutely agree that our society treats neurodiverse people like shit. I agree that we're generally lonely and don't support each other well. Nothing wrong at all with that premise. I categorically disagree with your statement that we "likely wouldn't need to be medicated anymore" if things were to change. I am either not a part of your "we," or you are attempting to invalidate the decades I've spent coming to grips with what I need to survive.

EDIT: I don't like being this hostile, but as I said, I am very fucking touchy about this topic. I've had enough of people assuming they know how my head works.

This is what is breaking my mental health.

Life is not guaranteed to be good, nature is cruel and has no rhyme or reason. People die and suffer in horrific ways every day because of nature.

Why the fuck are we adding to that cruelty!?

The chaos of the natural order of the universe sucks and you've got to learn to cope with that. But I've always found that side of life easy to accept because it is so inevitably universally unavailable.

I was born with a genetic illness, it causes lifelong disability due to structural deformity, but can also just randomly cause fatal aneurysms in young people. That's nature, that sucks, but hey, what are you going to do? Figure out how to do what you need to do to live and live it.

But then I'm born into a country with no disability discrimination laws, and no right to access laws. Fortunately we had public healthcare and public disability services, and public welfare services, and when I was younger a disability act was finally brought in (though it's often just lip service)

Growing up I felt safe and secure knowing I had a good social support system...but the public disability services shut down and was replaced by an insurance model, the public healthcare has been functionally split to a semi public copay system and a private paid system, and the welfare pension is so far below the poverty line that people on a disability pension don't earn enough money to meet the eligibility for public housing.

(yes, You can be too poor, for public/social housing.)

And it's one thing for law and legislation to lag behind the needs of the people, it's another thing altogether when an individual or small group of individuals in power systematically impose laws to remove the support and resources you used to have, for barely no more reason than "they want to".

I can't help but feel that a significant portion of my suffering is the result of the few people in the local conservative government that shut down the public disability service providers because it was "costing too much" .... Even though the insurance model they replaced it with costs the government more and supports less people than the previous system, and supports them less effectively.

And how do you live with that?

Like it's one thing for nature to have cursed me to suffer, but a human being heard my story, and countless stories like mine, and still said "nah, fuck em" when it came to vote.

We are living with psychopaths and sociopaths in complete control over our lives. The suffering is happening for a reason, and the reason is that those who are causing the suffering are enjoying the situation (because it gives them money, power, influence, or straight up sadism)

How the fuck do you reconcile that and "learn to sit with your emotions" in one CBT session and in the very next session my therapist is going to teach me about "enforcing my boundaries".... How do I enforce my personal boundary to get the homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and ableist government to stop abusing me? Oh, I don't, I sit with that emotion.

I can't afford the pills they recommend.

The game came out in 2008. I can't believe it was that long ago.

This is a huge issue. People really do stop when they are hopeless and it really messes you up. Optimism is hella dorky and feels dumb and wrong to a lot of people, but it's not just a low IQ take for nerd ass dicks it's also a necessity you need to protect you from shut down and languishing in your own endless dispair. You HAVE to be hopeful. You HAVE to look forward and you HAVE to believe things can get better in order to move forward.

I wrote that comment on 50 lol.

Best paper I’ve ever written was done over 36 hours on a couple of addy, three pink Monsters, several shots of rotgut vodka, and 200 mg THC spread over the course of it.

500 mg is where I get fucked up. I did 1000 mg once and experienced the Christian hell. 50 mg is like being a normal human being.