ADHD healthcare in the UK is very hard to come by. You can only get It on govt insurance (NHS) basically via something akin to a loophole (Right to Choose), and the prices of private relative to median wage and disposable income render It inaccessible for most.
To put this into context for non-brits I was diagnosed in January after around a 10 month wait after my GP referred me, and still waiting on titration, I was quoted a waiting time of 6 months, and I’ve been following up every month since through every contact form available and still no sign of when this will be okay. I work in the tech sector (software development company) as a mid-level cybersecurity engineer. My salary is in the 70th or so percentile for the UK, and paying private would easily take a quarter of my disposable income after rent and bills.
It sucks to see how people just suffer endlessly waiting. But there is a way to have your cake and eat it too and its called self-medicating. It’s not a perfect solution but we don’t live in a perfect world/system, and for me the benefits to life quality make the hassle well-worth it.
However I was banned by /r/ADHDUK when someone asked whether self-medicating was a good idea and I responded with a list of pros and cons in what at least I thought was an extremely sensitive, dispassionate and balanced manner, and the thread was locked shortly after, with the mods lock comment putting in a final word that self-medicating is “always a bad idea” - a narrative that seems not at all accurate in my view.
To my shock though this didn’t seem to be just a case of power tripping mods, but an overwhelming community consensus as well.
Coming from the trans community where self-medicating to transition is arguably almost more common than receiving genuine medical care due to various failures and malice on behalf of the government and the healthcare system in the UK, I am somewhat shocked people had such a negative view of even the idea, and that it seemed fairly common even across the ADHD space as a whole. Honestly I started self-medicating about as soon as I put the referral in, I knew I had ADHD, the diagnosis etc. is just hoops for me to jump through.
So I’m curious what is the outlook in this community? Positive? Negative? Neither? What do you think of self-medicating and why?
I personally think self medicating should be strongly discouraged in the community. Obviously, people who are already diagnosed and are dealing with medication shortages is one thing.
People diagnosing themselves is another. I not only understand mods not allowing it but support it. Taking stimulant medication can have a variety of health implications and require monitoring; especially when determining dosage and the proper medication regime. Fostering a sentiment of “I know my body == I have a degree in medicine” shouldn’t be done here (or anywhere imo).
I’ve already seen T mentioned in comparison. Which is a class C drug (2 years in prison). Amphetamines are class B (5 years). That’s just in uk, in Aus it’s a a schedule 8 (highly controlled drug with serious penalties for possession). Allowing a community to advocate for self medication, especially in a community where our treatment is amphetamine, is just a bad idea and would be a great way to get a real unhealthy community real quick.
You can take the risk of possible health complications if you’re an extreme edge case physically and negative societal consequences of you’re unlucky or unskilled, or you can suffer. Same equation as being trans really.
The choice is yours, and we should be free to discuss it openly and honestly because while I feel sorry for those who can’t get treatment for whatever reason (I am diagnosed, but never titrated, so I never legally had any treatment or actual medical personnel), I also feel it’s kind of pathetic to wait on some distant system that exists to benefit big pharma kkkartels and little else without at least exploring your options.
In my experience - as anecdotal and limited as it may be - most doctors are genuinely the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever met and I know better every. single. time. I don’t just trust myself, I trust myself far more than some doctors to work out an Amph dosage.
(Only exception being surgeons, they are great)
I know whatever monitoring they do will be a checkbox exercise done to half-assedly comply with some contractual obligation by nurses who probably give themselves bleach enemas on the reg. Because of survival instinct - I actually give a shit about my own body, which puts me far ahead of them.
I was following along with some of your other comments and whatnot, but this diatribe tells me a lot about your intentions behind this post.
I have ADHD, and I’m a medical student. I suppose in your mind that makes me one of the “dumbest motherfuckers” in training, but I will speak from the education and authority that I do have. There are many health conditions and comorbidities that can make stimulants a bigger risk than they’re worth. Personally, I have idiopathic sinus tachycardia, so my psychiatrist had me get a consultation with Cardiology before she would prescribe a stimulant because one of the major risks of stimulant medications is Sudden Cardiac Death Syndrome (which is exactly what it sounds like) and if you have a high heart rate or other cardiac or electrophysiological abnormalities, it drastically increases your risk.
I get that getting by without medication is extremely difficult for some people. I had to do my first semester of medical school on hard mode while I got my official diagnosis and medical clearance for treatment sorted out. Healthcare access, particularly mental healthcare access in America (and pretty much everywhere else for mental health) is criminally abysmal, but that is not an excuse to encourage people to ignore medical advice and consensus regarding medication safety.
(And as a side note: Surgeons are really good…at anatomy. Most of the surgeons I have worked with would really prefer it if the primary care/family med/internal med/literally-anyone-else doctors did the pre- and post-op medication management. Anesthesiologists are the ones that are intimately acquainted with pharmacology when considering physicians in the OR)