KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
This diary has a trigger warning for what's written below the jump. If you're triggered by sexual assault or suicide, the diary is safe until that point.
I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disoder, Attentive Type.
To be honest, I don't like talking about it, at all, ever. That's because most people, when told about something like this, turn from intelligent, respectful people into fucking morons. Here's a list of the things I've been told about something I've been managing since I was ten:
“I had that when I was a kid!” (Possibly true, but unhelpful.)
“No you don't, it's a hoax created by the pharmaceutical industry.” (Thanks, Tom Cruise.)
“That's just a crutch used by lazy people.” (So's ignorance.)
“No you don't, you don't seem hyper.” (You don't seem like you know what you're talking about.)
“You can't. You're too smart.” (Which makes me feel incredibly stupid, actually.)
I've been told by one of the few people who knows what they're talking about that ADHD is a mental disorder where one of my brain chemicals isn't being produced in the right amount. That's the case with most mental illness: there's usually a physical component.
In my case, I make do. I can't afford to see a therapist capable of dealing with me. I'll get to that later. I self medicate: Nicotene, Caffiene, B-Vitamins, Omega 3s, and Ethanol. This is the only medication I can afford, and the only medication that seems to work at all beyond a certain point. I'm not an alcoholic. I use the ethanol as needed, and I don't binge drink, though my consumption is occasionally less than healthy, depending on your definition of that word. I drink to get tired and counteract the caffiene, or to bring me down when I've had too much caffeine, which is often. This is, I know, incredibly unhealthy.
But there's something physically wrong, and that's where the caffeine comes in. As a central nervous system stimulant, it punches up the amount of all chemicals, equally, to the point that my brain functions normally again. Statistics tell me that the average coffee consumption by a coffee drinker in the US is 3.1 cups per day.
If I'm working, I usually drink 8-12. On a bad day? Two pots. This isn't just less than healthy, this is pretty bad for me, I know. And yes, I know I've got about two decades to go before acid reflux starts to eat my throat, if that hasn't started already.
I've seen everyone from respected specialists that my family knows (who I liked, but can no longer afford) to fawning incompetents who've told me how well I'm doing on my medication – when I haven't taken it in months.
Other than the self medication, I don't take anything. I doubt I'll try medication in the future, because I can't afford another disastrous personality shift, like the time I didn't speak to my wife – then girlfriend – for a month. A month. She couldn't find me for a month. Neither could some of my friends or professors. I thank god D's are still passing grades, and that my profs were willing to scrub the automatic failure attendance policies.
I've learned to deal with it, but it takes a herculean effort to stay focused on anything even if it's something I care deeply about. I blast music in my ears in order to write, because otherwise, some noise, somewhere, would distract me and keep me from writing. Usually, it's some other person's horrible music that distracts me. Or talking. Woe betide unto you if you interrupt me by trying to talk to me – or at all - when I'm writing.
When I write, I have the next three to six paragraphs planned out beautifully in my mind, and the moment anything is said – boom. They're gone, and they're not coming back.
I used to think that medications were this horrible thing that destroyed my childhood, but it turns out that I was just a bright kid who was nice to people, so I got picked on mercilessly. I'm not upset anymore, I didn't have any arrested development issues, I was just too smart for my own good, and children can be vicious little groupthink assholes sometimes.
I've always been a pain in the ass, and apparently that's a good thing when it comes to writing about people in power, but bad when you're a 14 year old.
After high school, I ended up in college where I took a semiotics-based English 101 class. A note: my SAT grades automatically eliminated the English-101 requirement, but I was the only person who wasn't told this, for some reason. I remember writing about Kurdt Cobain, a subject I was obsessed with at the time, and when the time came for a measly 5 page paper on the subject, I sat in my closet with my laptop and stared at a blank screen for nine hours. I couldn't force myself to write a single line about my favorite subject. I bombed the paper. It was better than some of my classmates who got higher grades, but my professor failed me because it was obviously not my best work, and those classmates were farmboys who could barely string a coherent sentence together. Compared to them, I was privileged, and my professors knew that, and they weren't going to let me skate by. Ever.
This was very, very, important. It taught me how to work hard. I honestly couldn't write what I write today without this. Ironically, their attempt to make me work despite my privilege made me even more privileged. I'm better educated because of how hard they made me work.
I took English-101 three times, and bombed it twice. It was even tough in classes I liked and was interested in. I'd forget to do readings. Half the reading quizzes I passed weren't because I read the subject -I'd gotten distracted in the research and studied something important but irrelevant to my current classes- but spent a few minutes agonizing over the questions and deduced – guessed, really – the correct answer.
No, I'm not some incredible genius. I actually process information slower than most people. I'm not as quick on the draw. I've learned to plan out my snappy comebacks in advance, or to laugh whenever a comeback might be necessary. I've also learned a few tricks to recover from a flubbed line. It looks better if you laugh at an insult, rather than fumble for an answer, and if you can learn to laugh at yourself, they'll accept you. They wont notice your little problem. The other aspect of the processing issues is, while it takes me longer to think about things, I usually catch things that other people miss. After years of being unprepared for classes, I'd taught myself a skill: people always leave little hints to the answer in the questions, even if they don't mean to, just like they leave little hints about their true beliefs and associations in seemingly innocuous phrases. The only professors who don't do this are the Philosophy and English professors because they see sentences the way mathematicians see equations. Politicians do this sort of thing every time they're caught off guard.
In college I was going on and off medication. Medication would start working for me, and then utterly and completely fail just when needed it the most. When I was trying to get medication, it was almost never available. One thing that might work for me would be to keep some adderall for use on an as-needed basis, but because Adderall is so widely abused, I've never as an adult had a doctor willing to provide a Schedule III controlled substance to me on an as-needed basis.
The college doctor flat out refused to write prescriptions for ADHD. Despite the fact that I was covered by the college health plan, and was paying inflated tuition for an on-campus doctor, I was forced to (without owning a car) get myself to the next town and see a doctor who made me pee in a cup to make sure I wasn't using illicit drugs before he'd treat me. He was a pediatrician. I was 22. He turned out to be a wonderful doctor.
To this day, there are countless doctors who will not treat ADHD. If you don't have health insurance, you're probably fucked, because most free clinics wont treat it.
There are adults I know who cannot get treatment for their ADHD at all, and the ones who can get it treated go to pediatricians. I'll tell you, it's incredibly humiliating to sit alone in a room full of families wondering what that strange man is doing sitting alone near all their little precious darlings. To sit, alone, while those parents give you dirty looks, worried that you're some kind of child molester – why else would you be there – to see their confused looks when your name is called, and you stand – alone and without a child – and walk in to the doctor's office.
I would often just lie, and say “Oh no, I'm picking up my cousin's test results. They live way out in the boonies, and it's hard for them to drive all the way over here from Rugby. Yes, it's unusual, but the doctor is wonderful, and he's making an exception.” Which, of course, the pediatrician was, by treating someone who wasn't a child. You have to understand, too, that most pediatricians aren't willing to see adults. The only reason that doctor worked with me was because someone called in a favor for me. Privilege again.
And now, I have the same fears that most twenty somethings have:
What if I can't manage my finances? What if I never have a career, only a job? What if my life falls apart, and I don't have anyone left to turn to? What if I can't take care of the people who depend on me?
I have some fears that are a bit different.
No matter how hard I work, no matter how much support I receive from the progressive community, no matter how much catharsis I get from feuding with the idiots over at free republic or red state, or the comfort I have knowing that yes, there are some people who fail way harder than I ever will (thanks, freepers, for being schadenfreude-tastic) no matter how many of my diaries end up on the wrecklist, no matter how many people tell me what a good job I'm doing, I'll always be afraid that I'll never amount to anything at all, or I'll fail at a critical moment, and everything will come crashing down once again.
I'm afraid that I'll always be that idiot kid who can't seem to accomplish simple tasks.
And now, I fear that outing myself as someone with a condition will mean that I'll never, ever, have a career.
This is the world we live in. A world full of people whose brains work differently. A world full of people that have the same fears that everyone else has, but have all of these other issues piled on top.
At least most of us with the mental issues get to hide. We don't look disabled. If we can hide, we can avoid being treated like children or lepers: There's something wrong with you because you're a bad person, or, there's nothing wrong with you, you're just a loser. Oh no, you're not different, you don't analyze things differently, there's nothing different about you, there's something wrong with you. You're broken. You're useless. Lazy. Stupid. Crazy.
So we hide. We aren't honest. We pretend there's nothing wrong with us. “Oh, I'm just here to pick up my cousin's lab report.” We buy into the speech everyone else uses. We internalize the prejudices. We start to believe that yes, there's something wrong with us, we're stupid, we're crazy. And it gets worse.
When people start believing you've got an issue, literally nothing you say matters, because you're crazy. You don't feel anything real. You couldn't really be thinking that, you're just crazy. Your thinking about things the wrong way. Your thoughts couldn't possibly be correct because there's something wrong with the way you think.
Your family trusts the shrink more than they trust you, even if he's a quack (and I do mean he, though that's starting to get better.) As a result, those with mental issues are very likely to be abused, and to have their beliefs about abuse discarded.
I've been guilty, myself, of trusting a bad psychologist more than one of my family members. If you're a family member, you'll learn too.
It's hard to get a conviction for rape in normal circumstances, but if you're diagnosed with anything, you can forget about justice. Friends of mine have gone through this. One of them decided not to go to trial.
The girl's not stable. As a result, they must have gone to the hospital just to mess with that nice young man! The girl's crazy, remember! Can't trust her. Nevermind the fact that it's essentially illegal for the defense to mention the victim's irrelevant mental illness or sexual history in court, the defense does it anyway. The jury still hears it, even though they've been instructed to disregard it.
Suddenly she's not a rape victim who went to a hospital at 4 AM covered in bruises anymore, she's a crazy slut who had it coming.
Meanwhile, several members of the jury desperately hope that no one ever finds out about the reason they take meds every morning. Or they pretend that what they have is something normal, brought on by stress, but that other woman, whoo boy, something was just wrong with her. But not me. I'm fine. Denial. That's not me.
This is why some women don't even go through having a court case in the first place. They don't want all their dirty laundry hauled before a jury. They don't want to be “outed” in our enlightened society.
Take folks with Aspergers. It's not that they fail to understand when someone else is communicating emotion through tone or body language, it's that they're unfeeling monsters, right? They don't understand that other people have emotions. When in reality, all you have to do to help most people with aspergers understand what you're feeling is to tell them “this is upsetting me/angering me/making me sad” and you'll find that the vast majority of autists become immediately compassionate. High functioning Autists are compassionate people, in general. They have difficulty communicating emotion. They don't have difficulty feeling emotion, or being empathetic, they aren't receiving the signals you're sending.
Processing information differently isn't difference, it is disease. It's disorder. It's “illness.”
The stamp “mentally ill” has been used on gays and lesbians, it was used by the Soviets on dissidents. I want to avoid sounding like a scientologist about all this, because they're completely wrong, (they think my condition is caused by dead souls killed by the alien-god Xenu, I'm not kidding) but there's a lot wrong with the way mental health is looked at in this country. But no one cares, because they're crazy, amirite? It's being used on antiauthoritarian children right now. We're medicating antiauthoritarians for refusing to accept illegitimate authority.
According to the CDC, that stamp, “Crazy,” will be used on at least half of the people who read this diary.
That's right, half.
Either you, or someone you care about, will deal with some form of mental illness at some point.
Half of you are, or will be, crazy.
You won't be depressed, you'll be lazy.
You won't have attentiveness issues, you'll be stupid.
You won't have body image issues, you'll be shallow.
You won't process emotions differently, you'll have a personality disorder.
You won't care about other people but be blind to emotional expression, you'll be an unfeeling monster, and automaton.
And if it's not you, it will be someone you care about.
And if it's not now, it will be much, much later. You won't be a respected elder, slipping slowly into the dignified night, you'll be senile. You'll have Alzheimers. Your family will watch as your mind falls completely apart, and nothing will be left of who you were but a confused four year old that needs help using the restroom. Even if you have the rare moment of clarity, all you'll ever be is senile, and no one will speak to you or treat you like an adult, ever again.
This is why brilliant people take their own lives. Because when you're labeled with “mentally ill” in American society, there's nothing you can do, nothing you can say, and no way out. You'll never be taken seriously again.
Half of Americans will deal with this at some point in their lives, and they'll hide it, just like the rest of us.
I'm not writing this for me, but for some of my closest friends, because as I kept saying, I'm one of the privileged, lucky ones.
Because all of us have contemplated suicide or some form of self harm. The most brilliant people I've ever known have cut themselves, or burned themselves with cigarettes. They've sat in the dark, with a loaded gun in their hands. We've tied a noose to a ceiling fan. We've sat alone in our cars on the side of the road late at night, smoking and looking at the mile long straightaway ending in a fragile guardrail and a 100-ft cliff, seatbelt unbuckled. This is me, and this is my loved ones.
Someday, if not already, the person who sits there, literally a moment away from giving up, is going to be you or someone you love.
The only way out of this mess is straight through it. It's a long road, it's a hard road, and in some cases, the road doesn't end. That's the case for myself and many of my loved ones.
The truth is that as long as this society continues to treat anyone with a mental illness like a pariah, there will be a lot of bodies along that road.
And for those of you who are going through what I and my loved ones are going through, I have good news:
It gets better. It really does. I know this whole diary has been doom and gloom, and that's because I'm angry and frustrated with our society, but the truth really is that it gets easier. There's hope. You learn. By the time you've gone through the first bout of what you're going through, you will be tough as nails. You'll learn how to cope. You'll learn how to handle your emotions, how to control your own mind. You'll learn about your own brain, and you will know what to do.
If you've been a heartbeat away from giving up, feeling what we've felt, if you ever find yourself sitting there, remember that you're not alone. You are not the only one who's sat there feeling what you feel. There are others who know, who really know, and who can understand and help you through this.
There is a way out of what you're feeling, and what you're dealing with. That way out is straight through. You may not think you're strong enough, but you will be. If you find your strength is failing, you will find people to lean on who will help you make it through.