*pinches bridge of nose*

[yukie]

((Yeah this is - me and one of the boys in concert. He doesn't have my issues but neither of us like ignorant liars with agendas, so he's out. :B Also: I am a jerk in this entry, and profane, so if you're not in the mood, you're not gonna wanna read this!))

Authors, if you're going to be writing about any psychiatric medication, be it SSRI, NDRI, stimulant, or otherwise?

Do your research.

Don't just rely on scarequote bullshit and dumb photomanips of newspaper comic strips.

I'm very tired of agenda pushers who have no idea about shit on a stick preaching from on high about how all drugs is bad and all I need to do is cheer up and focus.

You know what, you abysmally ignorant whelps, you sons and daughters of mongrel whores?

I am better now that I have my medication.

I am no longer suicidal. I am no longer losing gaps of time because I lost my temper so badly that everything clicked off. I no longer hate myself so badly that I want to stop being.

I can focus. I have been able to relearn how to think - yeah, meds alone didn't work for me. Cognitive therapy plus meds? Yeah. That.

The medication prescribed for kids with ADD is not sedative. It's actually stimulant. You'd think that would be entirely counterproductive, but if you did your fucking homework, you useless whelps, you'd know WHY stimulants are prescribed.

But you're all so much more interested in pushing your agenda. So much more interested in calling me a liar and pretending that my mental disorders are just character flaws and that nothing ever happens outside your narrowminded pitiful understanding of reality.

(You're an ignorant and I hope your awakening is the most shocking, shattering and painful one possible.)

Yes, there is a problem with misdiagnosis and overmedication, but let's be reasonable, little ones, shall we? The plural of anecdote is not data. Paxil made me worse; Paxil is wonderful for others. If I condemned Paxil as useless and said no one should ever take it because it's shit and anyone who gets results is kidding themselves, I'd be acting like a privileged son of dust. I hated Effexor; some people like it. I'm on Wellbutrin and some people can't stand it.

I'm also on Adderall for ADD. The condition exists. Do not preach to me about how it doesn't, I will ridicule you and slap you down with your own ignorance until you wish yourself deceased. And you know what? The Adderall has actually increased my art output and writing output, and what I produce is BETTER. I FINISHED a story, something I could never do before. I can focus on my art, get interrupted by the phone, take the call, and then go back to my art without having my focus shattered into a million sharp little fragments like before. I don't forget to eat like I used to. I can stick with a task even when it's boring me to death. I COULD NOT DO ANY OF THIS BEFORE.

I have a job. I've had it for about three years now.

I am happy much of the time. I am thriving.

It's not all the medication, but the medication is like extra support for a structure.

The wrong medication is awful. It's like the wrong shoe size.

Getting it right is like a new pair of damn sneakers after walking in cheap offbrand ones for seven years.

tl;dr Do not make foolish, uninformed, self-righteous, vainglorious, conceited statements about other people's lives and minds around me if you want to keep your precious ego intact. Dare to suggest that my doctors and my friends are liars and I will shatter you utterly. Call me what you want, I don't give a christ, but do not cast aspersions on people I care for, or you will suffer.

Mental illness and disorders are real.

If you wish to write about them, and the treatment thereof, do your homework, you self-important children. Ritalin and Adderall aren't sedatives and you don't treat depression with antipsychotics.

Do your homework, ignorants. Don't, and you have no right to cry and whine and fuss when I savage you for foolishness. If you're stupid online you'll get called on it.

Comments

[finch]

I've known people that were helped by meds, and people that weren't, so I'm generally willing to accept "X was a bad idea for Y person" in a story as long as it's not clearly part of a crusade against medication or something like that. I hate Stories With Morals regardless of whether or not I agree with them. It'd definitely be nice if more people knew what they were writing about.

(FYI antipsychotics are occasionally used to treat some kinds of psychotic depression, but IIRC it's not at all common - I wonder if there's some real media source somewhere that uses that and that's where people get the idea they're used that way?)

[yukie]

Yeah. It's very much a matter of 'everyone's brain is different so everyone's treatment would have to be'. I won't - and didn't up there either - suggest that medz r good fur ev'rything. One of my close friends with ADD cannot take the usual trio of meds because they all make her sick.

'X didn't work for Y because of Z' is a legitimate story development; again, I didn't suggest that it wasn't. And I wouldn't, because that'd be dumb. I'm still going to insist that people do their homework, though - it's not hard to google. There's really not much excuse any more for not being able to find information about fairly common topics. And if google doesn't work, the library may - and there's comms like little_details on LJ.

I can generally tell the difference between 'didn't do homework for some reason but isn't harping' and 'didn't bother with homework on account of agenda'. Lecturing and moralizing has a specific flavour to it.

Re: the depression, I was discussing the...well, you can't really call it 'standard', but I guess 'usual' might sort of work? The depression that isn't associated with/attached to a psychosis. (God, that was clumsy wording.) I know that the kind that comes with bipolar disorder/manic depression, gets treated with such meds, and I just wiki'd and found out about Psychotic Major depression which I am -sure- I'd heard of before... But I digress. That one you usually need an antideressant and antipsychotic for, yeah. Either way I ought to have specified that I meant 'run of the mill depression'. Now I look daft. :B

Anyway - I think that people assume that regular-flavoured depression is treated with harder-core meds because regular-flavoured depression doesn't show up too often in mass media unless they're talking about someone who's made a suicide attempt (and if I had a nickel for everyone who thinks depression always ends in suicide I'd be a very very rich woman) or who is going to make one and is freaking out and needs to be sedated etc., or the media're actually showing a media'd-up version of psychotic depression because it's more dramatic than the regular shit. The regular shit is usually less conducive to drama-ing up to the extreeeeeeme. For me it was very perpetual-bleh, being unable to get out of bed much, losing my energy and appetite, not seeing the point of anything, having the 'bar' on my moods lowered...it's like a constant smouldering rage and hatred turned totally inward, is what a lot of my friends who'd dealt with it describe, and that's not inaccurate. While sometimes that rage spills out (you've seen when this happens to me - I am for the most part a lot better but my self-image is still prone to dying in holes and when that happens I'm certain everyone loathes me and wants me gone), it's not a very flash-and-pyrotechnics-and-Trogdor thing for the most part. Bipolar disorder shown in media is a tiny tiny bit more common, so I suspect that REALLY lazy writers figure they can just chop the mania off and go from there. Never mind that it's not the same frickin' - yeah.

I know that symptomatology (what the hell, firefox, it is too a word) is different from person to person. Hell, that's what left me undiagnosed with ADD forever. The only person who thought I had it when I was a kid was this terrified teacher who seemed afraid of kids in general and who had probably JUST heard about ADD and was armchair diagnosing every weird kid. And I'd never want to be the kind of jerk who goes 'your experience is not like mine, so you're wrong/lying/mistaken' seeing as those kind of jerks made my life VERY SHITTY for a while...

Anyway.

I think a lot of people just go by mass media and don't do homework, and that's frustrating; I think a lot of people will, based on this or based on their own misconceptions, push agendas and present plain erroneous information, and that's aggravating.

[finch]

I ought to have specified that I meant 'run of the mill depression'.

Nah, not your fault, I'm just pedantic. Mostly I was wondering if the reason some people think depression is treated with antipsychotics is because of that occasional situation, or because they've confused it with borderline or bipolar or something.

[yukie]

That's probably why. I mean, either reason could be the case. I've seen people mistaking it for bipolar disorder or thinking that depression is bipolar disorder without the manic phase.

Blah I dunno man! It seems a lot of people don't wanna bother with 'homework' even if it's just basic lolwiki. And I keep going like, 'half my friends who want to be pro authors cannot google WHYEEEEEE' because you guys have never been strangers to doing the dang research, and Drak and Kyl and the hootenanny are the same - but then there's this other bunch who apparently have broken google fingers? I don't even know man.

[finch]

I think the problem is that a lot of people don't know they have to do the research - they're sure they read it somewhere or heard it on Dateline, so why double-check? XD

[yukie]

*sporfle*

Or like, CSI or House.

(though! I will give CSI that they managed to get BDSM kinda right in a bunch of respects that are usually dicked up beyond reason.)

[novel_machinist]

Oh gods this. I mean, the human brain is an AMAZING and COMPLEX thing. Every SINGLE one is different. As you said above, you have to do what works for you, and no one else. It's hard to write about disorders, I mean, I've spent SO much time on Vincent, mostly because it's not something I wanted to romanticize or make too simple. It's scary to be serious about it.

Also, seriously, I'm kinda tired of people saying that the medical profession is all evil and we're out to kill you. Uhm... if certain medicines weren't here, a lot of people also would not be here through their own hand or body. :( In sort, word.

[yukie]

You are awesome.

I mean, like - Isaac has PTSD and understandably so. And I did my homework about it, because - well, a lot because I'm a perfectionist but mostly because I don't like when things I or people dear to me deal with are messed up, so I should be careful about other people's stuff. (Although some of Isaac's deal is drawn from my own junk ahahahahhahaha blargh.)

Like I have friends with bipolar disorder, friends with OCD, people dealing with depression from SADS to dysthymia to 'fuck this I'm not getting out of fucking bed because existence as a whole means nothing and is going to end anyhow' (which was a song and dance I did intermittently - comorbid issues is like a bunch of bad roommates in your head :B and I'm very glad that with you guys I can SAY 'yeah I have a mind that does some very peculiar things both because of heredity and chemistry and because of my childhood being weird in a very insidious way' and not have people think I'm trying to brag or make excuses or self diagnose or blahbleeglugnargh) - I have triends with PTSD and C-PTSD - and I want to depict what they deal with properly and RESPECTFULLY. It's crummy enough dealing with your brain going 'doot de doot doot doo de doot de doo *kicks in nuts*' without your having to deal with stupidness like mediafail on top of it.

Especially from friends!

And - yeah. WORD on the medical profession thing. Yes, there are jerk doctors; no, no system is perfect. But i've had AMAZING doctors and damn it I wish everyone could have docs like mine.