this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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As a fellow OCD sufferer (among many other things), can I ask - how do they help you?
My OCD is mostly thoughts and almost no behaviors. The pills help me to ignore the thoughts. But they're still in my head but easier to control
Thanks for responding, and I'm glad they're helping you! Being able to control the thoughts even some must make a real difference..
I've been considering meds for a while, but I worry that they either won't work or have some unexpected side effects that make life worse, hearing from people who actually use them helps in trying to ease those concerns..
Not OCD, but ADHD. Otherwise same attitude towards rx drugs, especially since my parents opted against them when first recommended as a child.
In my lucky case, it took 2 hours after taking the stimulant medicine my brain was lacking to maintain a coherence state (aka a flow state), for me to feel like the world's greatest fool for having waited until I was in my 30s.
The day is literally seared in my memory levels of life changing.
Highly encourage you to discuss with your healthcare/psychiatry provider and strongly consider trying them. The side effects are often charted and entirely avoidable in many cases. The most important thing is a dialogue with a professional.
I appreciate your response and glad you found meds that work for you!
I don't know how this works with ADHD, but being autistic I know I am much more likely to experience side effects (as I have in the past when I tried different meds), so it might not be that easy to avoid or clear cut to prescribe in the first place, but yeah, the plan is to speak to a gp at some point, there just always seems to be something more urgent to be dealing with..
Yes, I wish you the best of luck in finding a GP that will listen finely to your subjective experience.
That is absolutely key, and often the most difficult part—especially for anyone with any degree of neurodivergence—to the point I almost gave up trying to advocate for myself.
Even with my (reportedly? I don't know how these things are measured to be honest) lesser degree of neurodivergence many meds side effects affect me differently.
If you can find a provider that already has experience diagnosing autism in adults, they might be the kind of provider whose opinion on the specifics of the side effects you might want to seek.
I wish you the best of luck in your journey towards ease of being, fellow person.
Thanks, and you really hit the nail on the head there - far too many medical practitioners don't understand autism and neurodiversity in general, and worse, trying to bring that fact up just makes them more antagonistic (even with an advocate by my side, it's quite pathetic really). It's probably one of my biggest hurdles in getting the care I need, and why I'm putting off looking again.. But I will, at some point.
About 10 years ago I went for a sleep study after my mom witnessed me not breathing in my sleep, I was visiting her house and slept on the couch.
The day after my second study where I wore a CPAP to get the pressure adjusted properly to get me breathing again. This is the day like you that is seared into my brain. I somehow spent 32 years before that not breathing properly while sleeping.
I was at work later that day and felt weird but couldn't figure it out, I stood on a forklift unmoving for 10 minutes thinking about this troubling feeling in my head. It felt like I had drank a Jolt Cola, and I realized the first time in my life I felt awake without needing a ton of caffeine. I literally reintroduced myself to my co-workers because I felt like an entirely different person.
Now I don't drink more than once or twice a year because living life raw and unfiltered and awake is still new to me 10 years on.