Lemme tell ya.

I ate one bite of a burger. It tasted amazing. Then I put it down and said, "I can't eat this and I don't know why."

Everyone else ate. After dinner it was discovered there was mold in the buns. A few hours later, everyone else was barfing. No one who was there will eat something if I can't eat it.

Over Xmas, I ate a bite of fudge. I threw up immediately after- just a tiny bit, because it wasn't much food. Someone who wasn't there for the burger incident wouldn't listen to me, and ate an entire square of the fudge.

I had to go downstairs because he spent the night hurling, and I knew I wasn't a very sympathetic figure. He kept saying, "Throw it all away! I should never have eaten it! Whyyyy!"

I've been called "picky" and I say to them, the loss of not eating a thing because it gives me bad vibes is absolutely worth it every time it doesn't make someone sick, so I can avoid the one time it does.

"Can track pretty for hours without losing focus, unless there's a berry."

I definitely see the value in looking on the bright side and identifying your strengths so you can achieve a quality of life, that's important for everyone but especially people with chronic illnesses and disabilities.

But it's posts like that that make me so uncomfortable around the medical model vs the social model of disability.

Yes, having ADHD causes you to fundamentally think differently and approach things differently. But no, it's not "just a different way of thinking" or "just a variety of neurotype", it's a disability.

Even in a perfect world socially constructed to be perfect for my ADHD, I would still suffer from my symptoms. I'll still get less than 4 hours of sleep, I'll still have poor proprioception and trip and sprain all my ankles, I'll still be predisposed to anxiety because I have internalised hyperactivity.

Sure, I can hyper focus and hunt prey for hours.... But I won't notice that I'm desperate for a piss the entire time, I'll give myself a UTI and then because the guy with ADHD who was eating all the mouldy food died instead of discovering penicillin, I'll die from having poor interoception for a full bladder, or dehydration, or hunger.

Living as a caveman won't suddenly fix my ongoing inability to close a cupboard behind me, and now, there are bears after me because I didn't remember to tie those delicious berries up in a tree.

*Slaps back of guy's head*

This bad boy can fit so many anxieties and depressions in it for optimal survival

Can track for hours, unless your brain decides it's not interested, in which case you'll lie under a tree until you almost starve to death.

Like I'm happy to take the wins I can get, but this shit is not a super power, it's downright debilitating for some people.

impulsively eating something you saw a bird eat is an easy way to get sick. or die. stick it on your bottom lip for a while to see if it will have any æffect (idk which one it is so i used both)

based on the pros and cons listed above, I'd say that you're doing fine, and civilized society as we know it today is what's fucked up.

Cons: pretty much everything.

Pros: fuck off with that shit.

I have found that neurodivergent people are the best to have around in a crisis. Everything is 100% stimulating, 100% of the time. There's plenty to do and getting things half done is usually "good enough for now"....

So when things go sideways, find the neurodivergent folks and hold on for the ride.

I've experienced this myself.

Just don't ask us to clean up after. I'd rather... Wow, would you look at that!

Wait, does that mean we're hunters and gatherers?

We'd be like the elite "Elder" who teaches everyone to survive, but no one else really can so we inevitably have to do it all anyway

wait why does that sound so familiar

Did Varg Virkines write this?

Overthinking is a super power, and dopamine is our kryptonite