I can’t tell if things have gotten worse, or if they’ve stayed the same. I lean toward worse.
4 years ago, I asked a psychiatrist about my soul-crushing Akrasia issues. He prescribed Focalin, at 5mg/day for the first week, then 10mg/day for the second. The first week saw improvements—I didn’t feel like I had much choice over what I wound up focusing on, but I actually finished things—the second week did not work at all, and a pile of unpleasant things all hit at once on one of those nights. So we switched to Prozac, nothing came of it, and here we are.
Forreasons, skills that are basic and trainable for most people are down-right mutant to me. (It’s almost as though any problems that aren’t sheltered-nerd problems amplified by blindness are blindness problems amplified by sheltered nerdiness. There exist blind nerds without this suite of doom-problems, but on investigation nothing seems to generalize.)
I didn’t mention psychiatric problems in the 2012 post because all the psych professionals I’ve spoken to don’t seem to believe I have them. But I’m pretty sure I have symptoms of ADHD-PI. And Schizoid Personality. And Avoidant Personality. And Social Anxiety. And Atypical Depression but I’m pretty sure that’s a response to everything else. Whether any of these is actually the case is unknown to me, and all of the above mean that finding a professional to ask (then actually telling them everything) is stupidly difficult. Then they need to be competent.
I really have no idea what the best starting place would be. I’m trying to find another psychiatrist (though I dunno if I can actually communicate the problems), I’ve exhausted the less dramatic training facility and the return-to-college option, and am considering one of the National Federation of the Blind training centers (as a general rule, everyone who is not a member finds the NFB offputting, but it’s pretty much their programs or nothing, if the internet is to be believed).
TL;DR: My life sucks and if I can’t fix it soon, I will start complaining that decent wireheading is not yet available.
Have you considered the idea of learning echolocation? Here is the beginning of a series of blog posts from blind programmer Austin Seraphim about how he learned to use echolocation to navigate the environment and get a spatial sense of things without touching them. He learned it from a teacher from World Access for the Blind.
It came to mind because you mentioned a National Federation of the Blind training center, and I’m not sure what you would learn there, but I’m pretty sure they don’t offer echolocation training.
Two years ago, I wrote this cringe-worthy thing.
I can’t tell if things have gotten worse, or if they’ve stayed the same. I lean toward worse.
4 years ago, I asked a psychiatrist about my soul-crushing Akrasia issues. He prescribed Focalin, at 5mg/day for the first week, then 10mg/day for the second. The first week saw improvements—I didn’t feel like I had much choice over what I wound up focusing on, but I actually finished things—the second week did not work at all, and a pile of unpleasant things all hit at once on one of those nights. So we switched to Prozac, nothing came of it, and here we are.
For reasons, skills that are basic and trainable for most people are down-right mutant to me. (It’s almost as though any problems that aren’t sheltered-nerd problems amplified by blindness are blindness problems amplified by sheltered nerdiness. There exist blind nerds without this suite of doom-problems, but on investigation nothing seems to generalize.)
I didn’t mention psychiatric problems in the 2012 post because all the psych professionals I’ve spoken to don’t seem to believe I have them. But I’m pretty sure I have symptoms of ADHD-PI. And Schizoid Personality. And Avoidant Personality. And Social Anxiety. And Atypical Depression but I’m pretty sure that’s a response to everything else. Whether any of these is actually the case is unknown to me, and all of the above mean that finding a professional to ask (then actually telling them everything) is stupidly difficult. Then they need to be competent.
I really have no idea what the best starting place would be. I’m trying to find another psychiatrist (though I dunno if I can actually communicate the problems), I’ve exhausted the less dramatic training facility and the return-to-college option, and am considering one of the National Federation of the Blind training centers (as a general rule, everyone who is not a member finds the NFB offputting, but it’s pretty much their programs or nothing, if the internet is to be believed).
TL;DR: My life sucks and if I can’t fix it soon, I will start complaining that decent wireheading is not yet available.
Instead of a psychiatrist maybe a psychologist might be the better option?
Have you considered the idea of learning echolocation? Here is the beginning of a series of blog posts from blind programmer Austin Seraphim about how he learned to use echolocation to navigate the environment and get a spatial sense of things without touching them. He learned it from a teacher from World Access for the Blind.
It came to mind because you mentioned a National Federation of the Blind training center, and I’m not sure what you would learn there, but I’m pretty sure they don’t offer echolocation training.