Published on 12, July, 2020
Since graduating from college I've been strugglign to adapt to society, I've been unable to hold down a job and have been dealing with depression, mood swings and a whole host of mood swings. My wife pointed out to me a while back that I showed a lot of signs of autism, and rethinking about my childhood (I was always paranoid that people weren't telling me that there was something wrong with me. I wasn't like the other kids, I did well in school, but I didn't act like them, I didn't talk like them, and I didn't think like them), I couldn't read until I was in 4th grade, and the only solice outside of learning I ever took was video games. It was the world I understood best. My psychiatrist agrees that I might have autism but is telling me that a diagnosis would do nothing for me, and that kaiser, at least the one I go to, will only diagnos children and that they don't see a point to diagnosing adults because we should already have coping mechanisms. School was the only thing I ever understood. It made sense. I have a schedule, I attend, I learn at my own pace, I can leave and return, I gain knowledge, I grow in power, I move onto the next adventure. It was even easier to be social, I felt safe. It was an environment I knew. Anyways, I forgot what my point was. I guess I just wanted to be heard, realize I'm not crazy, that I do have this problem and that I can finally start finding resources to help me succeed.
Hi Laddie,
My opinions follow, you can exercise complete freedom of choice in deciding to agree or not with anything I say. Choice is a powerful thing for our wellbeing and we often don't realise what choices we do have.
Firstly, I apologise for seeming judgemental. I really don't mean to be but I know that I come across that way sometimes. I don't really know how to reliably make a post that presents my own opinion without it appearing to be critical. I struggle with this in the real world and the last straw prior to my diagnosis was to have a manager screaming at me saying that I was just negative and critical of everything. Another manager identified that I was Socratic and, having read Plato's Republic, I understand how my debating methods are similar to Socrates' and also how irritating that can be - Socrates' autistic traits may have lead to his demise in my opinion.
One of the things I do consciously do in these posts is try to challenge, with alternative views, if I think that someone's views are leading them into difficulties. How can I prevent a challenge, that presents some alternatives, from becoming a judgement? I can't tell anyone what to think but I can reflect a person's position back to them to say "Is this how you think you might appear to other people?"
I don't know what drugs can be prescribed to get someone off alcohol. A lot of alcohol abuse stems from some other unresolved difficulty. Prescribing someone drugs, when that person might benefit from tackling some other issue, would make the drug companies richer without fixing the root cause of the issue.
I understand now, your point about infiltration. In the context, I did take it to be a reference to the OP's nationality but misunderstandings are easy when we try to boil our thoughts down to a few words.
I understand, too, your references to the Nye Bevan era. The vested interests opposed the new system at that time. I don't think that is such a major issue these days - I know a lot of doctors and they are mostly compassionate and intelligent people who think of their patients first and the money second. There is a major issue that MH is largely invisible and very poorly understood by the vast majority of people (the general public, doctors, politicians) I don't know how that gets solved but the increasing recognition that the Police spend more time with MH problems than with "criminal types" can only help to push things in the right direction. Mostly, situations like the bad funding of MH services arise from ***-ups rather than conspiracies but it is all too easy to look for conspiracies and then struggle to decide that a conspiracy does not exist.
Have you read Being Wrong www.amazon.co.uk/.../184627074X ? I have just finished reading this and it makes many points that resonated with me (particulary the autistic bits of me) It is a challenging book (there are good bits and bad bits in it) and I didn't agree with all of it (I tend to disagree with a lot of things) but being challenged and learning how to accept and respond positively to people that disagree with one is a pretty vital life skill that I am only lately beginning to learn.