Doctor: ok so on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt, how much pain are you in?

Autistic person who mistakenly believes this is a sincere question & is having the worst pain they have ever felt: 10

Doctor: ...ok *typing in health records* DRUG ADDICT ("Addict" is shitty, stigmatizing, cruel, and unnecessary language and doctors should be fucking ashamed of themselves if they use that term, but lets be real a whole lot of doctors and other medical staff still enthusiastically call patients "addicts")

Yep! NarxCare was based on points-based tools developed in hospital systems to assess patients for "overdose risk."

In the "history of preadolescent sexual abuse" category we can see that women get 3 risk points for being abused as children, while men get 0

https://twitter.com/Epowers100/status/1642859167701401602

statistically women are less likely to "misuse" drugs & alcohol than men are. Women are more likely to seek treatment when we do have issues w substance use. But since we're also more likely to be sexually abused as kids (& more likely to talk about it), we get penalized for it

Spent all day working hard to write, be a good & attentive parent, do housework. Made "not melting down" my priority. I succeeded, my kid went for her nap and I thought "oh! I can do woodworking now!"

I had a two hour window, & I spent the ENTIRE time looking for my rotary tool I know I charged it in the usual place this morning. I have a vague memory of grabbing it earlier thinking it was my vape, & realizing it wasn't. But I was doing a lot this morning, and I probably just put it down wherever I was when I realized it wasn't the thing I needed

I need ADHDers to understand that the same forces (CDC, DEA) which made it nearly impossible to be prescribed opioids for chronic pain (unless you're sufficiently rich & white), is now coming after your #ADHD medication The DEA will not respond to the Adderall shortage by easing restrictions on production. They will do it by eliminating treatment for ~undesirable~ patients, thus saving first line #ADHD treatment for the white & wealthy. Legal drugs for them, the dangerous illicit market for you

Thinking once again about how crucial anxiety can be to surviving life with ADHD, how it can function differently for us, and how patients (esp women or perceived as women) often have our ADHD dismissed because of the anxiety we lean on to get through unmanaged ADHD I cannot rely on my brain being able to order tasks by importance. It's like I set up a list ranking tasks by how important they are, then that list gets to my brain and my brain says: "eugh, yikes, that sounds tedious and boring so I'm gonna move [hyperfocus] to the top instead"

I've had issues not knowing someone was interested in me, issues with me using my same overly-friendly mask voice w everyone & being accused of leading someone on. There's also the manipulation- for a lot of my life it's been very easy to mislead or lie to me bc I assume the best

https://twitter.com/commaficionado/status/1542112595582357506

When I was 18 the husband (25ish) of a friend told me that he & his wife were in an open relationship. It never occurred to me he could be lying. He would cry & isolate himself when she went on trips, I'd feel like I had to comfort him, he would make a move, & I'd just... freeze

This is frustrating. First, & emphatically- discrimination against people w substance use disorder is rampant & its good to use ADA to fight it. But it's stunning to see DOJ fight discrimination against SUD patients while the fed govt enforces discrimination against pain patients

https://twitter.com/fightpaindaily/status/1541830441853927426

I worry that when I talk about disparities between SUD & pain care it'll come off "how dare those bad bad drug users get care pain patients can't get!" (which tbh I regretfully used to believe). But it's more being stunned at how nonsensical the division is in the first place

I tell this story occasionally, but I was a volunteer clinic escort for a few years. We had a lot of anti-choice protesters, & at one demonstration a white, Christian woman brought her two adopted Black sons. She went down the line trying to pressure us into hugging her kids

https://twitter.com/wildlytweeting/status/1541324088182034432

The kids were maybe 7 and 10? Unsure. But they looked incredibly uncomfortable. I ignored the woman, knelt down, asked the kids if *they* wanted to hug anyone. The little one looked up at the woman & then nervously nodded his head. The older one shook his head "no"

It's a lot like how my white, evangelical, "sanctity of marriage" mother has had three divorces. It's always always always "God says it's bad and wrong, but I talked to him and he gave me (and Only me!) permission."

https://twitter.com/pludger/status/1541063363362525185

My mom stopped eating pork bc she's an evangelical who loooooves appropriating Judaism (like she has a mezuzah next to her door), but one time my partner brought his famous seared kielbasa to Easter & she legit said "I spoke to God & he told me I could eat it just this once"

we're hitting the worst week of the year for autistics with auditory sensitivities here in the US. Cannot wait for my partner and I to take turns melting down over hours of extremely loud popping noises every single night until one of us ends up screaming in the front yard at 2am Personally I love the holiday that makes me choose between an escalating mental health crisis and dissociation so powerful I literally can't hear the people around me anymore and I'm basically Homer Simpson with the monkey cymbals where my brain should be

After taking my kid to the park (a different, more busy park than usual) I really have to work out my shit. I found myself sometimes policing her for Proper Neurotypical Behavior the same way I police myself. I don't know what to do bc it's so ingrained in me at this point How do I do this? I've trained myself to be hyper-aware of what other people are thinking & how they may react to me. My kid only wanted to look at a bright green piece of resin stuck into the narrow staircase, it was her only interest, but so many kids were stampeding...

When you are #ADHD/#autistic & have chronic pain, it's like the worst of all worlds. Pain, especially long term pain, can make life with ADHD/A miserable. Pain takes up your mental resources for sensory management, leaving your body a raw nerve. It eats away at your concentration I can get distracted in an empty room, just by thinking my own thoughts. But when pain is involved it's like someone is tugging at me & trying to talk to me non-stop & my ability to focus on something (no matter how important) is severely impaired. I'm using all my cope on pain

When you find out you're autistic later in life its... weird. My whole life I've been memorizing the things that upset people & what I'm supposed to say or do to un-upset them, the whole time being bewildered bc the way other people process things is not the way I process things It's difficult to talk about bc I've always had to orient myself around social rules that allistics get really wrapped up in, that they seem to just intuitively understand in a way that I don't. I end up with a lot of anxiety around shit I don't actually understand or care about

When you're undiagnosed w ADHD people take your lack of forward motion, your lack of career success, as evidence of laziness & lack of interest/ambition. In my experience, it's more like choice paralysis. I've daydreamed dozens of careers I'd be good at- I just can't stick to one It is very, very difficult to plan for a career you love when your devotion to a particular activity could suddenly die off in a few days or weeks. As ADHDers we tend to pick either jobs that provide an adrenaline rush, or jobs where we're doing something different all the time

The cycle of ADHD executive dysfunction/hyperfocus is so tricky to get correctly diagnosed. For me, it was misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. For some, it's misdiagnosed as depression & anxiety, but it's poorly understood (even sometimes to those of us who experience it) For me, I feel the best when I have a New Interesting Thing to throw all of my energy behind. It's refreshing to feel focused, competent, to play in a new sandbox. Hyperfocus takes my mind off of the discomfort of hyperactivity & sensory issues. I'm always hoping hyperfocus hits

Before I was diagnosed w #ADHD & figured out my autism, I'd bring up my pacing, rocking, swaying, skin-picking, tapping, & Drs always told me it was anxiety. I thought of myself as an extremely anxious person, but outside of specific contexts anxiety isn't much of an issue for me I keep thinking about that insight someone had on one of my threads- that the accepted analogy for hyperactivity is "as if driven by a motor-" a phrase many AFAB people wouldn't reach for bc we don't tend to get motorized toys & often aren't encouraged to learn how motors work

People with #ADHD are more likely to have poor oral hygiene, we have higher levels of plaque, gingivitis, pretty much every dental complication because we can't focus/remember to brush our teeth. ADHDers are also more likely to live in poverty & not be able to afford dental care Its cool to know that if I were a boy & lived in a family with resources I would've been dxed, & maybe I could've gotten meds to help me remember to brush my goddamn teeth. Instead, Drs see my poor person teeth, don't know about ADHD & oral health, & conclude I'm a "drug-seeker"

Wearing one ear bud & listening to You're Dead to Me (a history podcast by the consultant for BBC Horrible Histories) so I can hang out & play w my kid without getting too bored and agitated about it, wandering off, or zoning out into daydreams. Yup. I've got #ADHD

#adhdtwitter I love my toddler but she is not a sparkling conversationalist ok

This is wild considering that Kolodny himself financially benefits from anti-opioid efforts, as does Jane Ballantyne, and anti-opioid groups get funding from companies which financially benefit from forcing patients into their never-ending list of opioid-sparing therapies

https://twitter.com/life_is_art___/status/1495426592838934542

When anti-opioid zealots make bank on expert witness fees & anti-opioid groups receive generous financial contributions from anti-opioid pharmaceutical companies (i.e. Shatterproof and Pacira) that's apparently ethical. But pain patients are only allowed to be shills & "addicts"

A major struggle of late diagnosed #ADHD &/or #autistic ppl is realizing that a massive chunk of your life has been spent just managing symptoms, trying to make them acceptable so you can be accepted, or so you can feel at ease in your body. While everyone else was just... living I can't imagine the bandwidth I'd have if I weren't constantly monitoring my frustration levels, if I didn't have to hide under weighted blankets or melt down to innocuous noise. ADHD & autism come w many positives. But this isn't a world built for us, it's openly hostile to us

Feels like a lot of #ADHD & #autistic women get misdiagnosed w anxiety, or their anxiety is seen as the primary condition, rather than secondary to ADHD/A. Psychs told me my rocking, swaying, skin picking, fidgeting was all anxiety. Prolly bc they couldn't explain it w depression I'm constantly forgetting things, losing or accidentally destroying things, not paying attention when important information is being explained, I struggle big time with transitions & staying on task. So basically I've been in trouble my whole life. Of course I'm fucking anxious.