Another chronic illness cat - TW for mental health and medicalstuff,
...but something in me is really resistant to putting this under a cut, because hiding this stuff away is part of what makes it so stigmatised and contributes to ignorance and hurts people.
Brilliant and Dull vs Dull and Stable.
This is the binary that my old doctor assumed to be the case, and why she refused to even consider meds for me. However, my experience of being on antidepressants is more use out of my brain, less low lows, and gaining the ability to think 'WTF self, that's silly, stop it and eat a biscuit' when experiencing suicidal ideation.
Yes I'm madder upwards, but my point is that it ISN'T a binary choice between being interesting or being sane, and even if it were, 'meds, y/n?' is not the decider. Brain wiring is. When you're sick, you have to work out the best way to deal with that in a way that you can live with, and telling people 'ho, mental health meds make you BORING' is a factor in people wanting to stay away from potential help, because they think that seeing a doctor about mental stuff = getting turned into a zombie.
Yes, some meds do do that. But that's another thing that normalising 'meds take away your emotions and make you into a society-drone' does - it means that people who do get those effects and don't like them just stop taking the meds (or continue in misery), because they assume that that's what 'meds' as a class do, and don't realise that different meds might have different effects on their particular brain.
Also, free information: people with neurotypical brains will have often similar med-responses (like other stimulous responses) to other people with neurotypical brains, and people with various flavours of neuroatypical brains will often have med-responses which are similar to those experienced by other people of the same flavour of neuroatypicality. So, when seeking anecdotal evidence of 'what meds do', ask people with similar brains - people who get migraines ask other people who get migraines, bipolar people ask other bipolar people, monopolar people ask other monopolar people, people with ADHD, &c. Trying to compare with people who have totally different brains tends to result in wacky confusion, rather than anything useful.
(Wondering what sort of response that last paragraph is going to get from the neuroatypical people on my f-list...)
Brilliant and Dull vs Dull and Stable.
This is the binary that my old doctor assumed to be the case, and why she refused to even consider meds for me. However, my experience of being on antidepressants is more use out of my brain, less low lows, and gaining the ability to think 'WTF self, that's silly, stop it and eat a biscuit' when experiencing suicidal ideation.
Yes I'm madder upwards, but my point is that it ISN'T a binary choice between being interesting or being sane, and even if it were, 'meds, y/n?' is not the decider. Brain wiring is. When you're sick, you have to work out the best way to deal with that in a way that you can live with, and telling people 'ho, mental health meds make you BORING' is a factor in people wanting to stay away from potential help, because they think that seeing a doctor about mental stuff = getting turned into a zombie.
Yes, some meds do do that. But that's another thing that normalising 'meds take away your emotions and make you into a society-drone' does - it means that people who do get those effects and don't like them just stop taking the meds (or continue in misery), because they assume that that's what 'meds' as a class do, and don't realise that different meds might have different effects on their particular brain.
Also, free information: people with neurotypical brains will have often similar med-responses (like other stimulous responses) to other people with neurotypical brains, and people with various flavours of neuroatypical brains will often have med-responses which are similar to those experienced by other people of the same flavour of neuroatypicality. So, when seeking anecdotal evidence of 'what meds do', ask people with similar brains - people who get migraines ask other people who get migraines, bipolar people ask other bipolar people, monopolar people ask other monopolar people, people with ADHD, &c. Trying to compare with people who have totally different brains tends to result in wacky confusion, rather than anything useful.
(Wondering what sort of response that last paragraph is going to get from the neuroatypical people on my f-list...)