That Other Post Today
Apr. 22nd, 2024 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutSo, I’m really sorry about that. It’s almost 5K words (and knowing me, I may yet add more).
TL;DR
I think everyone (<— obviously an exaggeration, but less of one than you might think) is taking stimulants to deal with excessive workload at school, as a parent, as a teacher, or in a work environment where there are parents or whatever who are wildly overcommitted elsewhere and so you have to pick up the slack. Because workload is coming from multiple sources on multiple calendars, and calendar reconciliation is extremely hard and time/energy/emotional resource consuming (not to mention requiring a lot of talking and negotiation), we sort of aren’t really _seeing_ the overcommitment and thus not collectively pushing back on it effectively. This isn’t exactly new, but it is worse now for a variety of reasons which I actually did not get into (oooh, more to write about!). But taking stimulants to deal with the normal everyday workload leads to creeping exhaustion, mistakes, short-temper, etc.
The two big strategies for dealing with overcommitment are: SAY NO! And put fences around activities (ideally both time and space fences — I’ll do school work during school hours and at school and not outside school hours or other than at school, for example).
The really long post was intended to get a bunch of shit out of my head so that I can take it apart into small enough pieces and then produce short form videos to make my point in a way that exhausted, doom-scrolling people waiting for the stimulant to wear off enough to let them fall asleep might be able to absorb.
TL;DR
I think everyone (<— obviously an exaggeration, but less of one than you might think) is taking stimulants to deal with excessive workload at school, as a parent, as a teacher, or in a work environment where there are parents or whatever who are wildly overcommitted elsewhere and so you have to pick up the slack. Because workload is coming from multiple sources on multiple calendars, and calendar reconciliation is extremely hard and time/energy/emotional resource consuming (not to mention requiring a lot of talking and negotiation), we sort of aren’t really _seeing_ the overcommitment and thus not collectively pushing back on it effectively. This isn’t exactly new, but it is worse now for a variety of reasons which I actually did not get into (oooh, more to write about!). But taking stimulants to deal with the normal everyday workload leads to creeping exhaustion, mistakes, short-temper, etc.
The two big strategies for dealing with overcommitment are: SAY NO! And put fences around activities (ideally both time and space fences — I’ll do school work during school hours and at school and not outside school hours or other than at school, for example).
The really long post was intended to get a bunch of shit out of my head so that I can take it apart into small enough pieces and then produce short form videos to make my point in a way that exhausted, doom-scrolling people waiting for the stimulant to wear off enough to let them fall asleep might be able to absorb.
Super interesting!
Date: 2024-04-24 03:41 pm (UTC)The claim about ADHD and stimulants is that they have a paradoxical effect on those folks: that a person with ADHD can take stimulants and it makes them feel calmer instead of all the unpleasant things above. But I'm not sure that's entirely true, because when Bob started taking Adderall, it increased his anxiety (and then he didn't tell anyone, argh). Not to mention the problems it causes with his appetite. So maybe it's a good thing in Bob's case that pharmacies are out of Adderall.
Also, I had an officemate back in 1999 who messed up his health through long-term use of stimulants. I think it was just caffeine, although it could have been other things too. He was chronically exhausted and had been diagnosed with "adrenal fatigue," which I realize is not considered a "real" diagnosis by mainstream medical doctors; but definitely he was messed up.
Re: Super interesting!
Date: 2024-04-25 02:11 am (UTC)I keep thinking back over the many years of hycomine cough syrup and the astonishing speedball cocktail that was. I’m pretty conscious of my caffeine consumption, because if I get too far out of line with it, I get headaches, but that’s about the extent of it. But wow, decongestants and me do not get along. And I really hate opioids.
The Odd Lots podcast about stimulants was pretty clear that everyone has basically the same response to stimulants. I had always heard what you were told (that it is calming for people who it is the correct choice for), so I now really just don’t know what to think. Sometimes, not knowing and being open to possibilities can be helpful. I’m really sorry to hear about it making anxiety worse. I absolutely believe that, and also, what a bummer.