May, 2021 - Emergent Divergence

May 26 2021

Autism, addiction, and my need for control

I have learned a great deal about myself through self-reflection over the last 5 years of sobriety, but one lesson was considerably difficult to learn.

I like to think of myself as a friendly and generally happy and fun person to be around, but the truth is that I need control. I need control over everything. When things in my life are out of my control, I experience a deep-rooted anxiety and panic that can push me into a self-destructive spiral if left unchecked.

This is what made substance use so attractive to me. My life was chaotic and terrifying thanks to my worsening mental health. Substance use gave me control over my feelings and reactions. As an addict, I quickly learned that when things got too much to handle, I could essentially switch myself off.

Not only did it give me control over my emotions, it gave me control 9ver my identity. In previous articles I have spoken about how I was unhappy with my identity, and it’s just as relevant here. I wanted to be someone or something else. Drugs and alcohol gave me that. I was “Dave the Rave”.

I was the guy that by all definitions of the word, should have been dead.

Of course what I failed to see was that I was not controlling my identity, the substances were in fact controlling me. I was not choosing to be David the Addict. It was inescapable.

The final point to consider was that as my mental health deteriorated, so did my routine. My life was chaos. This was horrific to me as an autistic person, which subsequently caused me to deteriorate further. It was a vicious circle that span in perpetuity. Drugs and alcohol actually gave me some semblance of routine. Yet another insidious way that I fooled myself into thinking I was doing okay.

Even now at 5 years sober, I still struggle with my need for control. I catch myself trying to engineer every aspect and every moment of my life. Meditation helps me sit with my experiences, but truthfully the only thing that stops me from manipulating everyone is knowing that it’s wrong. If it was a socially acceptable thing to do, I would absolutely engineer and manipulate everything about my life.

That’s how much I need control over my life.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

May 21 2021

Autistically medicated: the journey to find what works

My name is David, and I have to take a ton of medication to stay healthy.

It’s taken years to find the balance, and recently, one of the main medications has had to be changed.

Currently I am taking aripiprazole, paliperidone, mirtazapine, trazodone, promethazine and propranolol for my mental health (although the paliperidone will soon be discontinued, and the aripiprazole dose increased).

I also take procyclidine and rosuvastatin for the side effects of my medications.

I’m autistic and have complex mental health conditions. I’m stable, but it’s taken a long journey through various medications and talking therapies to get here. My autistic brain is sensitive to changes, so I have endured a lot of side effects.

Why did I endure it?

I wanted to get better.

I realised that if I wanted to feel better and be better, I had to listen to what the experts were telling me. There has been a lot of trial and error, but I am now in a place where, even though difficult things are still happening due to outside forces, I am happy.

I have walked away from people who shame me for taking meds. I don’t need them in my life. For some of us, medication is a prerequisite of life. Finding that balance however, can be a nightmare.

My autistic brain doesn’t react typically to anything, and there is little to no research on many of these medications in autistic people. For this reason, it’s taken me over a decade to get to where I am.

My psychiatrist deserves a bloody Nobel prize. He has worked in the dark to make me well again. What we have achieved together is nothing short of a miracle.

My advice for anyone struggling with mental health is to work with your doctor. Use their expertise. Discuss how it makes you feel. It’s tricky, but you have to give a certain level of trust.

Medication is a lifeline that everyone should have access to, and I will never allow people to be shamed for it on my platforms.

We need to work together to destroy the stigma surrounding medication.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

May 6 2021

Neurodiversity and the power of collective activism

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

This quote has echoed around my mind for many years. Much like the Revelation of Sonmi-451 (also from Cloud Atlas), it has been a driving force in the work that I do today.

It’s a simple but powerful concept. How can a single drop change the ocean?

Every drop, makes a minute change to the ocean, when thousands or millions of drops fall on that ocean, it can have a big impact. This is the power of collective activism. Every drop has unique power. We each bring something to the ocean that wasn’t there before.

Is this not the beauty of what the neurodiversity movement is doing? Every drop in this ocean is giving what it can. Some, like me, speak on wider platforms, others make the intricate and targeted changes that people like me don’t have the spoons to do.

Together, we are shifting paradigms. The world is undeniably changed by our existence. We have power, and we have to be respectful with that power. Every single thing we do changes the ocean.

Please don’t ever think that you are not making a difference, have respect for your power in this world. Every part of your existence has changed our world. Society at large is entering a new era, and that is just as much because of the followers as it is the influencers.

I thank everyone of my followers for reading, listening to, and sharing my words. I would have no power to make change without you. You are the reason I can do what I do.

Please never forget how vitally important you are.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments