deadnoodle

[deadnoodle]

Been becoming a WoD nerd. Thank you Hunter the Parenting <3

[deadnoodle]

[deadnoodle]

The world feels like it's ending but here's a silly Lysander doodle.

[deadnoodle]

Some Invader Zim from memory.

[deadnoodle]

I'll go first:

I think I've posted this before but anyway- I'm in the middle.

im about to sleep but. Uh. Here's a question

How much would y'all judge me if I shared my fantroll

[deadnoodle]

[deadnoodle]

A color experiment that got carried away.

[deadnoodle]

Happy New Year

[deadnoodle]

[deadnoodle]

Art is a skill you gain from practice. Different people need different ways of doing things, but anyone can learn some form of art. If you're struggling, it's not because you can't learn- it's because learning a skill is hard & sometimes there's barriers that need to be addressed.

[deadnoodle]

And now a Thaeha, too!

[deadnoodle]

Quick Lysander as a mouse a la The Great Mouse Detective. I love drawing mouse / rat people.

[deadnoodle]

we are in a media literacy crisis

[deadnoodle]

2/2:

There's a million other ways the war on drugs impacts things like ADHD meds, Nothorses pointed out how the DEA is controlling a bunch of medications because the US government has decided to define certain drugs as extra scary and needing to be controlled. I don't want to get into how stupid and fucked the DEA is because that's a whole other essay and Nothorses already laid a bunch of it on the table.

But I really want to see more people start to recognize how anti-medication attitudes towards pain meds, ADHD meds, anxiety meds, all of that is an extension of the war on drugs and actually benefits a changing capitalist market, too. This wellness body and mind crap is capitalism trying to adapt to the war on drugs to keep selling you a new product. First, capitalism was way into drugs. Because drugs had the possibility of making workers work more. It's true happy people work more and more productively- But capitalism wants infinite growth, and now recognizes that it can't make as much money as it wants to on real drugs and treatments. What if they become public domain? What if one single real treatment means you won't buy more bullshit to self medicate and self sooth in all your suffering? Suffering = money. So puritanism and capitalism make decent bedfellows. Capitalism can make WAY more money on you through snake oil than real medicine. They can sell you rosewater and useless bullshit for days for your ADHD if you're too afraid to ever pursue an effective drug for it. Look at the long list of ailments I had I would do anything to alleviate before I got on ADHD medication.

I don't want to keep rambling too much more here on this, but I'll toss out two more thoughts:

If you want to burn it down and rage against the machine, look at what the machine is telling you is illegal and ask why. Is it illegal for a good reason, is it controlled for a good reason, or is it trying to control YOU for it's own gain? Taking ADHD medication, or even self medicating for ADHD, both fly in the face of the machine right now. It is a radical thing to pursue an ADHD diagnosis or medication proudly and unashamed and undeterred. Because there's the whole ableism aspect of shame associated with ND, too. There are a lot of ableist stupid doctors gatekeeping, though, so it's not as if the psychiatrist or doctor is always on our side even when we get the diagnosis. But it's still a radical thing to accept about ourselves and seek treatment for.

Nicotine is a stimulant. Caffeine is a stimulant. Some antihistamine drugs are used to treat ADHD. Just random facts I'm throwing out for no particular reason.

The tobacco industry is bad, smoking is bad for you, big pharma, big corporations in general are all complex but bad overall because of capitalist motivation. But drugs are actually relatively neutral. And the person you know who always vapes or has a million Mountain Dew bottles on their desk, there's usually a very obvious reason for that and it's not a personal failing, it's actually very clever.

it's just too fucking much! because of course there's a national shortage on your adhd meds so now you need to figure out how to resolve that except that the pharmacy never picks up their phone and their online portal is absolute dogshit and one time you drove an hour out of your way because they said they had it, but they didn't have it, and they tell you "well we can't transfer the meds, you need to call your doctor to do that" but your doctor only works very specific hours so by the time you call your doctor the meds have scampered off to a different pharmacy and the pharmacy kind of shrugs because you should just psychically know if they got a medicine shipment and all of this is the exact kind of thing that your adhd fucking hates.

so great! your quality of life has fucking dematerialized! within the span of this week, your apartment is a pigsty. you keep having racing thoughts that slam you awake at 2 in the morning, and then the next day you collapse in a brain fog by 3PM. but you need to go to your fucking job anyway so that you can have the insurance to pay for the meds that you're not even getting but you need the meds so you can do your fucking job! you need to make money to pay for the apartment you can barely afford as it is! so good luck. your negative coping mechanisms have started to creep back in. you find yourself loud, annoying, vapid. you fucking hate it.

and here's the thing - these meds are life changing, but not necessarily life saving. it's like going through life without your glasses on - you're struggling, but it probably won't kill you. it's just fucking annoying because the solution exists, and you can't obtain it. and the whole time you are begging the pharmacist to please just fucking fill the prescription all you can think is - holy shit. i'm so fucking lucky that i don't need these to actually survive.

like, are you miserable, sinking quickly into suicidal? sure. but you keep picturing the people who aren't okay-without-it, and it makes you so fucking sad and angry and disgusted with the whole thing that fire-and-static start running up and down your limbs because of course you want to help, of course you'd cut your hair off and hold out your own body, but what are you going to do about it? because fuck! remember the first time they accidentally filed your insurance wrong and said that your meds would be three hundred fucking dollars per-fucking-month? you stood there, shaking, your hand on your credit card, thinking - i have no idea how to make that work. and how you felt like the world was laughing, big and loud and long.

because it didn't matter! they can just say whatever fucking number they want! they could say any number, and you'd pay it, because you have to pay it. they figured out long ago what the landlords are just-now starting to recognize: profiteering in the age of capitalism isn't ever punished. if it's food or housing or medicine, you're going to pay for it, aren't you, darling.

god bless america! does it hurt? does it hurt, are you going to cry about it, in one massive, horrible sob?

and of course this is an incredibly busy week at your job. of course your life is currently falling apart. the life you're fighting so hard to cling to is in a world where it's an obscene luxury to own a fucking dog. you still have outstanding medical debt because you dared to experience hardship. don't mention the student debt. don't mention the price of groceries. don't mention how we have been through at least two life-changing recessions and nobody in the middle class has actually recovered from that yet.

be good, be an adult, handle your shit. call them again. feel like you want to scream, don't scream. feel your brain getting further and further from you. god, how the fuck did you ever live like this?

you tell your mom on the phone today while you drive to the fucking pharmacy again for the third time in the last 24 hours: if they don't have it i'm just hopping the counter and grabbing the first arm i see with my teeth. i'm going full alka seltzer with this one. they're going to need a rabies shot. and you realize you're not even mad you're just fucking desperate; the kind of beg that sounds like a whimper.

home of the free and the brave! it's not that you feel trapped, it's that they've taken you hostage.

it's not a healthcare system anymore. it's just a fucking mugging.

[deadnoodle]

All of this - but I want to add that I went for 15+ years without ADHD medication and I don't think it was worth it. If you can get access to it, do it. Fight for that. You deserve it. Tumblr character limit hit so 1/2:

I personally think that people don't always need medication for ADHD, but it's so life changing when needed that the only reason someone wouldn't take it is in my mind entirely related to the war on drugs, one way or another.

Since being on ADHD medication my depression has lifted. My anxiety and meltdowns are better managed. I'm happier and more sociable. Most of my anthropophobia went away. A bunch of physical stiffness and pain improved. I even fall asleep more easily now! And I can recognize my autism symptoms better now that the fog of ADHD brain has lifted. I'm still ADHD, but now I can experience the positives of it, less of the negatives. Because dopamine isn't a neurotransmitter that only helps with attention, it's a neurotransmitter that's involved in near EVERYTHING you do. The human body is holistic, not separate systems that can function just fine with vital missing parts in another.

A lot of things happened out of my control over those 15 years, so it's not all my fault and I can sympathize a lot when the system has made things so difficult or impossible for people. But I kept skeptical now because the war-on-drugs contributes so much to people's attitudes about "drugs" that I think we all really need to ask ourselves if we're avoiding or giving up on an ADHD diagnosis faster than others in part because we think there's something extra scary or wrong with that medication or diagnosis?

The war on drugs is directly related to puritanical ideals of medicine and drug use. Some puritans see all medication or body augmentation as sinful. They're focused on physical and spiritual "purity". So, the logic goes God made you as you are, if you can't pull your boot straps up and work yourself to death, you're wasting your god given vessel - and drugs are cheating. The puritans are very anti-pleasure. Anything that would make work less painful is a naughty bad thing. Work/being alive is MEANT to be painful. Pleasure is a reward for suffering and should only happen by god's grace, you rewarding yourself is sin.

So I do understand and sympathize when drugs are a nightmare situation or out of reach for someone, I haven't been able to take testosterone for 10 years because finding one I don't have a bad reaction to has been nightmarish- But we need to ask ourselves if we see ADHD medication as "drugs" - as "cheating" - or as "scarier" than other medications. Because that's puritanism talking. There is nothing less pure about any particular kind of medication. There are some that are more risky than others in certain ways, but there is nothing immoral about it. If we're willing to pursue all other kinds of potential-side-effect-causing medications, but not one for ADHD, it's probably because the war on drugs makes us think, frankly, that it's basically street coke, and street coke is dirty, wrong, immoral, lazy, etc- all things that only make sense in a puritanical world view. We can see then how this puritanical mindset looks down on an blames even street drug users for their drug use instead of seeing it as self medication. It's "cheating" and a choice, by this logic. They're being lazy and immoral for seeking pleasure or medication in a fucked up evil world. And so you would be too, getting an ADHD diagnosis or treatment, because that would mean you wouldn't be living in hard-mode anymore. You have a choice to suffer, and puritans believe suffering is the more moral choice.

It's fucked.

it's just too fucking much! because of course there's a national shortage on your adhd meds so now you need to figure out how to resolve that except that the pharmacy never picks up their phone and their online portal is absolute dogshit and one time you drove an hour out of your way because they said they had it, but they didn't have it, and they tell you "well we can't transfer the meds, you need to call your doctor to do that" but your doctor only works very specific hours so by the time you call your doctor the meds have scampered off to a different pharmacy and the pharmacy kind of shrugs because you should just psychically know if they got a medicine shipment and all of this is the exact kind of thing that your adhd fucking hates.

so great! your quality of life has fucking dematerialized! within the span of this week, your apartment is a pigsty. you keep having racing thoughts that slam you awake at 2 in the morning, and then the next day you collapse in a brain fog by 3PM. but you need to go to your fucking job anyway so that you can have the insurance to pay for the meds that you're not even getting but you need the meds so you can do your fucking job! you need to make money to pay for the apartment you can barely afford as it is! so good luck. your negative coping mechanisms have started to creep back in. you find yourself loud, annoying, vapid. you fucking hate it.

and here's the thing - these meds are life changing, but not necessarily life saving. it's like going through life without your glasses on - you're struggling, but it probably won't kill you. it's just fucking annoying because the solution exists, and you can't obtain it. and the whole time you are begging the pharmacist to please just fucking fill the prescription all you can think is - holy shit. i'm so fucking lucky that i don't need these to actually survive.

like, are you miserable, sinking quickly into suicidal? sure. but you keep picturing the people who aren't okay-without-it, and it makes you so fucking sad and angry and disgusted with the whole thing that fire-and-static start running up and down your limbs because of course you want to help, of course you'd cut your hair off and hold out your own body, but what are you going to do about it? because fuck! remember the first time they accidentally filed your insurance wrong and said that your meds would be three hundred fucking dollars per-fucking-month? you stood there, shaking, your hand on your credit card, thinking - i have no idea how to make that work. and how you felt like the world was laughing, big and loud and long.

because it didn't matter! they can just say whatever fucking number they want! they could say any number, and you'd pay it, because you have to pay it. they figured out long ago what the landlords are just-now starting to recognize: profiteering in the age of capitalism isn't ever punished. if it's food or housing or medicine, you're going to pay for it, aren't you, darling.

god bless america! does it hurt? does it hurt, are you going to cry about it, in one massive, horrible sob?

and of course this is an incredibly busy week at your job. of course your life is currently falling apart. the life you're fighting so hard to cling to is in a world where it's an obscene luxury to own a fucking dog. you still have outstanding medical debt because you dared to experience hardship. don't mention the student debt. don't mention the price of groceries. don't mention how we have been through at least two life-changing recessions and nobody in the middle class has actually recovered from that yet.

be good, be an adult, handle your shit. call them again. feel like you want to scream, don't scream. feel your brain getting further and further from you. god, how the fuck did you ever live like this?

you tell your mom on the phone today while you drive to the fucking pharmacy again for the third time in the last 24 hours: if they don't have it i'm just hopping the counter and grabbing the first arm i see with my teeth. i'm going full alka seltzer with this one. they're going to need a rabies shot. and you realize you're not even mad you're just fucking desperate; the kind of beg that sounds like a whimper.

home of the free and the brave! it's not that you feel trapped, it's that they've taken you hostage.

it's not a healthcare system anymore. it's just a fucking mugging.

[deadnoodle]

Hey, just wanted to make a post for anyone still following me - working on a lot of projects I can't share anything about yet. Have some unfinished art I wanna share but wanna finish first. Finally got ADHD medication again, first time in years, and holy crap didn't realize how much my depression and anxiety was just untreated ADHD. Such bullshit to deal with all that gaslighting for years. Even some of my chronic pain improved. I wanna say commissions are open but you might have trouble getting in touch. Sorry about that. I'll see if I can come up with a solution soon.