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.
I must have the opposite of what you have, unless it's gone very off I have eaten a bit too much bad food but never gotten sick from it.
Moldy bread, fruits in a container with a rotting fruit or two, bad yogurt. Yet my stomach held strong and made nary a sound
Same here, iron stomach when it comes to questionable food. I have never had food poisoning, and I generally double most "how long will this last?" advice.
Cooked Beans? 2 weeks in the fridge is fine! are they slimey? Well is it good slime or bad slime because maybe the natto I was storing next to it inoculated it. Oh it's disgustingly sour? Curry powder and a long hot cook in the microwave can fix that!
My food aversion seems to be so random. I fucking love bananas, I eat bananas every day, then one day, I'll be halfway through a perfectly good banana and my body will just go "nope" and the texture, taste and smell of the banana makes me dry heave. I won't even be able to look at the banana, and it will last a few days. The worst part being that I'm still craving the idea of eating a banana!!!
Damn, actual spider sense. Did you have any food tasters in your lineage?
Not that I know of but I have no idea if I'd be any good at sensing actual poison versus like... mold. Or whatever was wrong with the fudge.
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.
I just think it's interesting. It's thought processes like this that creates treatments for said disabilities.
Oh definitely, thinking outside the box is how we develop the accommodations we need to thrive.
But the idea that there is the potential for a "cure" or 100% treatment (at this moment in time) if we just shift our perspective is damaging.
It leads to situations where bosses ask why you still need accommodations when you're on medication, because they wrongly assume the medication cures you fully.
Cons: pretty much everything.
Pros: fuck off with that shit.
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.
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.
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!
you mean specifically "people with ADHD", i assure you that you won't see this response from someone with anxiety disorders
There will always be people with severe mental health issues that will melt down during a crisis. Bluntly, there's a lot of neurotypical people who will also do the same.
I know of several people on the autism spectrum that I would want to be by my side in a crisis. ADHD is one that's usually great in a crisis, autistic spectrum brethren are going to be good depending on where in the spectrum they land, and neurotypicals are going to be all over the place in terms of helpfulness.
Bluntly, most neurodivergent people are so diversified in their interests that they have a larger breadth of skills due to their underlying conditions, making them really good improvisers.
Other disorders like anxiety or something, or anyone low functioning, is a bit like saying that paraplegic persons are bad at running up a hill, or climbing stairs. The same way you wouldn't ask a wheelchair bound person to climb a mountain.
I'd love to see you navigate a crisis with 10 low functioning autistic people, that sounds like a great plan.
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
The meme is based on the hunter vs farmers hypothesis, which defends the idea that ADHD has a lot of traits that were pretty useful before the neolithic revolution, but progressively became a disadvantage as the most productive activities for humans changed. You could make an argument that in order for people with ADHD to live their best lives, they'd have to have their home lives and workplaces adapted to work differently, which is however going to be met with resistance by an economic system that tries to make workers fit like interchangeable clogs in a machine regardless of their individual traits in the name of "efficiency".
I totally buy it.
When I set my mind to something, I will doggedly pursue that goal at all costs. When something doesn't stimulate me, it's torture.
Went camping, nobody wanted to gather firewood except me and my other ADHD friend. We were in heaven. Got to collect sticks and chop up dead trees. Watching the wood pile stack higher was incredibly rewarding and fun.
I have thought many times before how helpful ADHD can be. My curiosity is unending and the hyperfocus/flow state is like being high.
I've also thought about how hard ADHD can be in our modern society. Bums me out.
Overthinking is a super power, and dopamine is our kryptonite
