u/Expensive-Hope-4631

on some level I get that being alive and having the potential to do anything I were to put my mind to is an incredible gift that must never be devalued like that or whatever, but somehow the only times when I really seem to GET it is for a few months after every time I willingly put myself through something that actually managed to make me terrified for my life, before the inspiration fades back into the cynicism that is what being alive actually feels like.

after I beat that mf eating disorder again last year, there was that stretch where I just UNDERSTOOD life could be anything I wanted to. kid cudi's last album (free) was suddenly the most beautiful and powerful force of LIFE I've ever seen, but now I go back to look at mr miracle and grave and it's like they're happening to someone behind a glass wall. I just want to die. I know I shouldn't.

I used to just stop eating whenever stuff felt like that, playing with my own brain on the "how far could I take it" until I'd pass out in the backyard, but now I know how to have access to fucking street drugs. and I honestly don't even want to be high or have trauma scars on my body or stories to freak the guys at the party out with, swear to god. I don't want this shit as an identity, not one to live in. richey edwards got his life "narratively complete" or whatever, he became the ultimate romantic legend to millions, and how much good did that do to him? I want to just want to take my life one day at a time and see how much warmth there can be in it when you're not dying, appreciate the people around me for the incredible human beings that they are, go out there and make something beautiful and recognize that magic in the world around me too and understand WHY that life deserves to be treasured, and I KNOW that the shock of almost dying can zap you into it because it's worked before. but there has to be some kind of better way than this, right?

I don't know what to do, I just. a part of me wants the rush of keeping on with the downward spiral. another part is so pissed off that it wants to just out of spite. but I honestly think at this point I might just be too tired to keep going. I just want to feel okay and I don't know how you're even supposed to do that when this is the option that's the constant stimulus in the background. I live with my parents which means I have to just lie to them constantly, every person in my life I told about this didn't seem to have much to say other than "very bad make better choices please", and the only people I know who are at least normal about this are the strangers I meet THROUGH this stuff. I just. fuck my life.

(at least, I think this is the sub where people are supposed to get it, that is if I'm getting the sub's identity correctly, if not then please redirect me to wherever I would be better off posting this instead)

the thing about ADHD and executive dysfunction is that it makes you clinically bad at basic task-completion to the point where you feel like less than a human. and it makes you desperate for anything that can remove that fog of inadequacy that's constantly clogging up your day-to-day movement- living like that for long enough, people develop a lot of patterns of behavior that get really invested in leaning hard on whatever can best squeeze out dopamine from your brain from wherever you can get it out of.

and then the main times in active ADHD where you can get shit done and feel motivated, it comes through periods of hyperfocus where you get used to the flood of dopamine where you feel like you're superhuman, and get used to the feeling that you can do everything all at once as being what productivity and fulfillment are supposed to feel like.

and then, if you jump through all the hoops and get yourself a diagnosis, you can get a little dopamine regulator to let your brain function on a normal human basline level if you take one every day as instructed. and that can be great! that can be the part where you identify that as your gateway to easy normal functioning, re-evaluate your general approach to productivity, routine and just the very concept of consistently doing stuff you need to do, now that it's not stupidly way harder than it has to be, and figure out a way to function like normal people do.

but the thing is, a lot of people in ADHD discussion just kind of assume that's the only intuitive way people who've had ADHD their entire life are gonna approach these medications, and that's just blatently not a fair thing to assume.

because the thing is, if the productivity flow you're already used to is just alternating between concentrated hyperfocus dopamine floods and dysfunctional crashes, and you get a bottle of thirty pills for the month that each one of which can boost you up the functionality distance between less than a human and normal human, and you're already used to behavioral patterns of trying to maximize how much dopamine you squeeze from any given possible thing, it can fit a lot more easily into that framework to, for example, take triple or quadruple doses at a time to get your dopamine levels to feel superhuman, then spend the rest of your days when you're left out of meds just crashing miserably like you're used to and not actually fixing anything. (and also getting fucked up and dysfunctional from sleep deprivation whenever you're ON it, it's not like that part fixes much when most of the effects get wasted on times where you've been awake for too long to think straight)

and it really fucking gets to me how some people in ADHD communities will act like having these symptoms for your entire life isn't gonna create meaningful risk for priming you to abuse a boost of reward chemicals in pill form if you ever got the chance to.

personally, I can say that when I was using my ADHD medications right, these were some of the most straightforwardly good times in my life. it felt like the fucked-up painful machinery that is my brain was finally getting oiled right to work smoothly like it's supposed to. but I can also say that using them right doesn't feel intuitive in the slightest. they give you the ability to stay up through the night and finish three days' chores in an afternoon if you use them wrong, and that isn't exactly motivating to just use them the boring way to become a slightly improved version of your normal self. so now I'm trying to lock in on, like... not doing dumb shit? not speeding on them? so yeah. I just... I fucking hate that people act like these aren't seriously abusable medications.

generally speaking, taking boxes of chocolates on airplanes is pretty much entirely something you can get away with (at least in my experience, my family has a tradition of getting chocolates from vacations abroad and sharing it back home, they've never gotten in trouble for it). and I know it can be really easy to bake all kinds of different drugs into food in different ways, many of which can be plausibly placed in a box of chocolates without looking out of place at all. what would STOP you from doing that?

22, autistic, been going to dance clubs (often with an EDM leaning) here and there since I was legally allowed to but usually there I've been trying not to start too many imprtant life conversations with strangers to not get into anything too serious (overall I'm a pretty asocial person, I just like to dance). recently an IRL friend got me into exploring some of the uses of psilocybin in a pretty grounded context, and that made me realize psychedelics are actually kinda cool and interesting to learn more about. problem is, the friend I was introduced to this stuff from mostly is familliar with it from a medical research context, which means they don't have that many close friends either. and I know a lot of the people in dance clubs know more about different types of psychedelics, because there are a lot of situations where, for example, ecstasy is involved, and I've figured there's an association. question is, is asking around about that stuff in a general (especially "after-dark") social environment safe? figured this could be as good of a place to ask as any