If you’re one of the approximately 16 million Americans who take a daily stimulant medication, you’re well aware of the impact the ongoing shortages/supply chain issues/general bullshittery and fuckwittery is having on our lives.

If you don’t have ADHD or narcolepsy or another condition for which you are prescribed Ritalin or Concerta or Adderall or another related medication, congratulations. I’m officially jealous of you.

If you do have one of these conditions, particularly ADHD, fuckin’-a friend. What the actual fuck?

I won’t bore you with the truly long and fabulously convoluted story, in part because it’s so long and so steeped in Bible Belt fuckwittery and so convoluted that I don’t even remember all of it (small mercy?). But let’s summarize by saying that due to insurance fuckery, I had to see a new PCP. This Doc was displaying a bible and lots of scripture prominently in the office, and they essentially decided that although Adult ADHD has a billing code for the insurance company, it’s not really a thing that an upright and moral human might need medication for… or perhaps more accurately, that stimulant medications are evidence of evil in this world, adults seeking to take their prescribed stimulant meds are clearly drug seeking, and I was obviously a meth addict.

Now, they drug tested me in the office, presumably because I looked like I was speeding my titties off. And I had no amphetamines in my system. See, THAT WAS THE PROBLEM. Because if I have amphetamines in my system, I am calm, focused, collected, low stress, pretty able to sit still and carry on a conversation. WITHOUT meds, I can’t sleep. I can’t stop moving. I can’t stop talking… I look like I’m speeding my titties off.

But I did have THC in my system. Which was legally purchased. With a credit card. From a brick-and-mortar store. That pays sales tax. So obviously… I’m a meth addict. And a drug seeker. Very dangerous individual, me.

Bible Belt logic.

I’m just lucky they didn’t try to involuntarily commit me. Because I am 100% certain that if the cops here saw a grown woman, apparently on speed, with “drugs” in her system they’d happily drag me off. And psychiatrists STILL, if they see an adult woman presenting like me, they assume bipolar mania. And those drugs have zero effect on me… so they keep me. They keep me and keep giving me the wrong drugs. And…

I’m pretty sure American mental healthcare is actual hell.

So, back to the main story. Combined with an older prescription that had been written for a dosage that the pharmacy simply could not get (due to the shortages) and all the fuckwittery of insurance and Bible Belt doctors, it took me a solid SIX WEEKS to get in to see a new Doc (who, thankfully, was sane and immediately re-started my meds).

And shock of all shocks, 20 minutes after swallowing my Concerta, I was immediately calm. Quiet. Still. Relaxed. I went and finally took a fucking nap.

But like, seriously. Fuck you, American healthcare. And fuck you, American health insurance system. And fuck you, weird religious freaks practicing your weird version of a weird religion instead of medicine.

And fuck you, stigma against adults with ADHD.

Fuck the lack of research done on adult women generally and particularly women and women’s hormones in ADHD. Fuck the decades-long notion that only little boys have ADHD. AND FUCK THE POPULAR IDEAS OF WHAT ADHD EVEN IS. Little boys vibrating off the walls in class is a tiny, tiny fraction of the issue, m’kay? And if you’re a healthcare provider, you should know that.

End rant.

______________________

So, it was a really hard spring.

But it did get me thinking this:

All natural systems are diverse. A forest isn’t made of one species of tree, or one species of bird or beast. Most trees depend on at least a few potential fungal partners. The vast majority of plants depend on multiple pollinators. Those that specialize risk extinction. Soil isn’t dirt, but rather a vast cooperative ecosystem of bacteria, nematodes, fungi, and more.

The human body is more bacteria than human cells by weight, no?

The notion that there is one neurotype that is “right” and all other neurotypes are “disordered” flies in the face of all evidence from the natural world.

Each “disorder” carries with it advantages — in context. Advantages that modern industrial systems and end stage capitalism have seen fit to pathologize because “mental health care” is a multibillion dollar industry.

And I’m not saying I don’t need Concerta to function in modern society. I do. I’m saying that in another context — in the context of 4.5 billion years of evolution — there’s nothing particularly wrong with me. Or you.

Also, that dual truth thing, the apparent contradiction, that’s also something that is evident throughout natural systems. And it’s a capital-T Truth that modernity cannot fucking cope with.

Context is the determiner of meaning. Context is perspective. And context is (almost) always the determiner of “good” or “bad” or “healthy” or “disordered.” Modernity has distorted and contorted and modified and manipulated 4.5 billion years of context. And then declared that some of the products of that evolution are a moral failing to be fixed.

And I’m tired of that shit.

Can we smash this bullshit system already? It fucking sucks.