Sheesh, who can read all that verbal diarrhea?! He just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. I'm obsessive-compulsive, yet I couldn't get through it all. I almost quit, then I pushed myself to continue; then I quit, but refused to be a quitter, so I forced myself on. Then I was about to stop, but I thought that surely we're about done here; it just is impossible to go on longer, and I've been reading for days already. But it did, so I quit.
Henry James called Tolstoy's novels "loose, baggy monsters." In that sense, this essay is Tolstoyan.
But I don't believe in free will, so the writer had no choice, and neither do I for criticizing it. None of us deserve praise or blame; however, those behavioral reinforcers are good and necessary for society: We should praise children, for instance, for learning to read; and we should punish violent career criminals with incarceration, because they can't control their destructive ways.
"The thing you have to remember is that human beings are kind. Beneath it all, past all the terrible structures we’ve built to subsidize cruelty, away from the force of social pressure and the insecurity that always prompts our wounded aggression, people are kind. Not always, not to everyone, I know, I know, I know. But the human heart wants to be kind; it takes all the weight of our immense pathologies to render it cruel. "
Sometimes. And sometimes they can be pointlessly cruel.
"For the record, if Kanye West had been in his prime, if he was still making music that everyone loved, they would have forgiven everything. It all gets filtered through the lens of who people do and don’t like. There’s no principles with any of this shit. It’s all just jerry-rigging for what people already think. Trust me."
Have I not said that real life is basically glorified high school?
"Have I not said that real life is basically glorified high school?"
If you have, it just means you've not found a new way to be wrong. No surprise there; few do.
Oh, they're similar, sure - but only in the ways that any large collection of humans selected without regard for mutual comity will be like that. We're primates. You can easily make too much of it, though. It's easy to forget sometimes that's not the only thing we can be.
And then too, in the many years since, I've come to learn some of the ways some of the people who hurt me back then were hurt themselves first. That doesn't make it okay; I did that myself. But it does make it understandable, and I believe part of the point here today is that that counts for something too.
Someone else earlier said the same thing in more concise terms:
"Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being."
I'm sure that was said by a wiser man than I. How sure do you really feel yourself able to be that it wasn't said by a wiser cat than you?
"Someone else earlier said the same thing in more concise terms:
"Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.""
Not arguing that, but it does sort of prove my point.
No, it doesn't. You didn't bother to think till you were told to about why people might choose to be cruel, beyond simply that it's in their nature - which, again, is true of all of us; we're primates. To say that we can be cruel, and no more than that, is perhaps the least novel statement possible short of that we live and die.
There's no shame in the omission, but there would be in trying to pretend it was other than what it plainly was.
"Height is so socially valuable and so utterly outside of our control that it feels like God invented it to demonstrate the folly of meritocracy." True, perhaps, but young 5'5" me found that it only pointed up the vital need to crack the world's other hierarchies.
Halfway through or less and this reminds me both of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and of Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” You are not without precedent.
This is an excellent essay, Freddie, and I agree with most of your observations about the current mental health crisis. I'm also very "weird" and struggled socially in elementary school, but once I realized that it was my own insecurities driving my unpopularity (and a tendency to interpret neutral or even friendly interactions negatively), I had no problem making friends after that. I've never had a problem finding romantic partners, more the opposite. I've had a number of diagnoses tossed my way: "gifted", "generalized anxiety disorder", "ADHD", "bipolar disorder", and high functioning "autism", but when I was young I just thought I was screwed up because I came from a dysfunctional home and had a serious brain injury as a toddler from falling off (yes, off not down) a staircase onto a cement floor (at least now I have a cool bump to show off). I've found that the vast majority of people are extremely kind about my weirdness, especially after learning about the head injury, including those who quite reasonably can only tolerate my intensity in small doses.
However, you're wrong about ARFID. It's more than just picky eating. I was a picky eater as a kid and couldn't stand strong tastes and many textures, but got better as I got older. Then, in 2017, I was prescribed a strong round of antibiotics for a skin infection ... and I developed full-blown ARFID. Suddenly I couldn't eat foods I used to like. They made me gag, or even throw up. I didn't want to eat, and started losing a lot of weight, which alarmed my friends and family because I was already thin. There was something wrong with my gut microbiome, and even though I knew what healthy eating looked like, I couldn't bring myself to do it. My mental health, naturally, spiralled downward. I became more autistic and "ADHD"-y, and was diagnosed with the latter in 2019.
I fully recovered from ARFID, as well as chronic migraines and chronic nausea and gut issues, by hero-dosing magic mushrooms multiple times in a row in 2020. I essentially puked (and otherwise purged) my gut microbiome and reset it. Within weeks I was able to eat foods I hadn't touched in at least a year before that, and, even better, many of the food aversions I'd had prior to 2017 also disappeared. I was also able to stop taking ADHD medication and my mental health dramatically improved, as did my traits that could be called "autistic."
I don't like "ARFID" online communities, which present it as a static disability to be tolerated and discourage trying to recover from it. It's a dangerous disorder. But it's also real. And it can be treated. I got better because I forced myself to eat something I'd always hated (mushrooms) and they saved me.
Refined sugar and alcohol both disrupt the gut microbiome. I think sugar addiction and processed food consumption is a major factor in ARFID.
I'm not the only one with a story like this. Here's an article by another woman with a very similar tale, who healed her ARFID with psychedelics as well.
No doubt there exist profoundly serious cases of food aversion like yours; but we can’t seriously imagine people will restrict themselves from applying the same label when they just don’t feel like trying Ethiopian food. See: celiac disease versus “gluten intolerance”.
Oh, totally. Using the label is ridiculous even if it's serious. The reason I got better is because I refused to apply labels to myself and was determined to try anything to recover, including force-feeding myself. But I do think a microbiome issue underlies the condition in most people ... the problem is they don't recognize that and just pull the whole "this is who I am, it's part of my identity!" crap.
I should probably clarify that I mean the experience being described as "ARFID" is real, but I don't put much stock in the diagnostic label. I feel the same way about most diagnostic labels.
"The concept of ‘mental illness’ obviously exists, as do the concepts of witches, ghosts and God – but the idea that the very real experiences subsumed under this term are best explained as medical disorders does not have, and has never had, any evidence to support it." -- Lucy Johnstone
See: my reply to Jenn. Tl;dr gluten-intolerance is a verifiable condition and you can read about it in the scientific literature if you don't believe me. It causes genuine problems for people. It's not as serious as celiac disease, but whoever said it was? You see the double bind here. If I lean on the seriousness of the problems it can cause I'll be accused of stolen valor, and if I take pains to distinguish it from celiac by saying it's less severe people will infer it's trivial or psychosomatic.
People with gluten intolerance *don't* apply the same label. That's why it's called "gluten intolerance" and not "also celiac disease". Why is this everybody's favorite punching bag? I have plenty of educated guesses but maybe someone who is still beating this exhausted drum in 2024 can explain it to me.
I think a lot of it is people just can't stand the idea that other people are "getting away" with something. They universalize the idea that people who are picky eaters (or ADHD, or gluten sensitive, or whatever) are doing it for attention, and they simply can't be allowed to "get away with it" - because they, as people, also want attention, but are not willing to exaggerate their own conditions to get attention (which is what they assume others are doing, because we always assume other people's bad behaviors are result of their personal failings, whereas all of our own conditions are 100% legitimate and not like those other people). It's a way to feel morally superior to people that you've convinced yourself are lying for attention - and the Internet lets you immediately find dozens of people who agree with you, so your personal bugbear becomes a legitimate Social Problem that warrants discussion and intervention.
With gluten sensitivity it's especially funny, because the thing they're "getting away with" is... eating less bread. Like, there is simply no universe in which it matters.
There's a common scenario: Person claims to be gluten intolerant, they refuse to eat the bread, or complain about the restaurant, or whatever. But then, you watch them, and they're eating pasta and drinking beer. I think this scenario is near-universally irritating, even though it is at worst a minor irritation - it simply doesn't matter. I think if we understood better why so many people have such a strong reaction to that kind of scenario, even when it doesn't matter at all to their own lives (who cares if another person wants to make their life harder by having a fake allergy?) we would probably understand a lot more about human psychology in general.
That's insightful. I think this tendency falls under the heading of fairness-sensitivity, which is probably a way to ensure that you personally get an adequate amount of resources while maintaining plausible deniability about the (deep evolutionary) selfish motivation. "That's not fair" goes over better than "give me more," when the same adjustment is made in practice. People do seem sensitive to whether outcomes are fair, to the point of (the economic kind of) irrationality. People will pay to punish unfairness in experimental games, and many would prefer to reduce the gap between payouts to themself and another player even if they receive less as a result.
Thank you for posting this--I was wondering about what truly intense presentations of disordered eating might have pushed clinicians to come up with this label (even if there are people on the internet who might want to use it in an identitarian sense). I still get FdB's point though
Me too. But it's a real thing. I wanted to eat, and I didn't want to lose weight (I was on two ice hockey teams and two dodgeball teams at the time and needed my muscle). But it was difficult to eat. Especially meat and seafood. My diet ended up being mostly fruit and it was awful. But oh man were magic mushrooms effective.
But I also see a lot of online activist types talk about ARFID (usually in relation to autism) like it's a cool identity label that justifies living off chips and chicken nuggets.
The ARFID thing confused me because, as a "picky eater," while I wouldn't go so far as to say that I think I have an actual disorder, no amount of ridicule or reminders that I'm "missing out" on things I don't like are going to change the way my taste buds react to specific foods. It's weird as hell to me that anyone thinks people *decide* to become picky eaters, as though we can turn our taste buds on and off on a whim. Is that what other people do? I doubt it. I am also not "missing out" on something if I know I don't like it, lol. It's like when people get unhinged about someone else eating well-done steak and screeching about how they ruined or wasted the meat. Like, how? They are enjoying their food that is prepared exactly how they like it. My only actual problem with being a picky eater is the fact that so many idiots insist on commenting on it as if it affects them in any way.
I mean, as long as you eat a reasonably varied and healthy diet, I don't think it matters at all (to your health) if you eat the same foods all the time and don't want to try new stuff. But I kind of suspect even regular ol' picky eating can be treated with magic mushrooms, for those who are so inclined. Post-mushrooms, I was a WAY less picky eater than I had been before the antibiotics turned my picky eating into a scary disorder. But as a "picky eater" I still ate pretty healthy. Actually, there's a bunch of not-so-healthy foods I like now that I used to not like, e.g. bacon and mayonnaise.
I'm a picky eater in the sense that I simply do not like a lot of popular foods. I am not a picky eater in the sense that I won't TRY new foods, but "new foods" does not mean "the food you already know you hate, but prepared slightly differently than usual," like so many people who are not picky eaters seem to think. No, I will not magically develop a fondness for shrimp just because someone poured a different sauce on it, lol.
Maybe my definition of "picky" is different from most others, because I love a variety of cuisine types and have a healthy diet, and I'm a pretty good cook. But when I don't like a flavor or a texture, I don't like it. And it's weird and annoying as hell that anyone else thinks there's anything at all wrong with that since I am not in any way restricted enough to be unhealthy. I get a lot of crap from some people in my life about some of the things I just don't like, and it's one of my biggest pet peeves as a result.
Mushrooms are great for a number of conditions, and I'm thrilled to learn that they can be used for severe food restrictive diets, as well!
100%. There is absolutely NO WAY that all the foods I don't like taste the same way to everyone else. If they did, they wouldn't eat them either. Saying I am missing out is literally the equivalent of telling me I'm missing out on eating cat vomit just bc dogs will happily eat a pile of another animal's puke. Because it smells just as gross to me as some of things people like to eat. So no, I'm not remotely tempted and I'm not missing out, it would be horrifying if I was forced to eat it.
I used to eat virtually no meat, then in my 30s only very well done meat, and now I finally enjoy a medium steak. It would never cross my mind to rant about how someone else likes their meat (or worse, in some high end restaurants they'll actually refuse to cook it that way even if you ask). But some people are very concerned with what others eat.
I'm not a parent, but I wonder how people parent with all this swirling. The talisman of a term isn't just useful if you're a kid. It's useful to say to other parents (to yourself) as a signal that you are using the system correctly and recognizing that your kid is different. But what is kindness to the term? What is pain under the term? It seems like it would be such a continuous battle.
Oh good lord....I had not heard of ARFID until just now. Your larger point needs to be pulled out and emphasized more....the medicalization and labeling of personality quirks and let’s be honest, sometimes character deficiencies that entitles people to “reasonable accommodations” and insulates them from the social disapproval that can arise from their behaviors is probably because most of the time most people care about others and want to be as inclusive as possible. More and more people are claiming some kind of condition that in the past used to be considered just a personal preference. I have a couple of theories about why everybody seems to have some kind of “condition” these days. The first is that the bell curve of “normal” is getting narrower and narrower so a bigger percentage of the population is falling outside the standard distribution. The easiest way to understand this is in terms of schools and ADHD. As recess gets cut, academic demands get pushed into lower and lower grades, and PE and other outdoor play diminishes, more and more kids fall under the definition of ADHD, when maybe a generation ago they would have been told to go outside and run laps until they could settle down and read a book. We are squeezing people into a very narrow chute into successful life. Success is defined much more narrowly than it ever has been--the “college for everybody” insanity is a perfect example.
Picky eating could be more common today because our diets are much more varied, and it is seen as “picky” to want to eat plain, unseasoned, repetitive diets..you know...the diets that most of humanity subsists on today, and what our culture subsisted on until about 1970. Nobody thought it was weird in the ‘60’s to never have eaten tacos, or pizza, or sushi, or any one of a number of foods that you can now get at any food court in America.
My second theory is that as more and more people claim some kind of condition that requires the group to accommodate them, others in the group start thinking “well, what about MY needs and preferences?” The little things you need to do or not to just gets exhausting, and in my experience people try really hard to remember who in the group is gluten free, who has a sensory issue and can’t stand loud music, who has a panic or other issue in crowds, etc. etc. etc. What are personal preferences, what are just character defects like selfishness, and what are genuine disabilities? Who knows? We can’t ask that and we have to treat all requests or demands for accommodations as genuine disabilities. If I’m in a group that is organizing a dinner at a restaurant, I can’t just say I hate fish and so the sushi joint is out...but if I dress up my fish hatred as “ARFID,” then I get a level of deference that I wouldn’t get if I just said I preferred the Italian joint. As a professional chef, the most obnoxious group to cook for are affluent white people who live in big cities. It’s like dancing through a mine field to get a meal on the table that everybody will eat. Gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, and everybody expects that the entire meal will be edible for them. When I moved to a farming community and I was planning a big event and I asked about dietary restrictions, I got blank stares and one woman said “I eat what is set before me.” Now the gluten free fad is seeping into even this little town. It’s a preference, not a medical condition. I’ve cooked for celiac people and I know the difference because celiacs don’t expect the cook to accommodate them. Even the most well meaning cook can accidentally stick the wrong spoon into the gluten free rice, or set the gluten free cheese on a cutting board that had bread on it. Cooking for others used to be a joyful experience and it is getting less and less so.
ARFID is real, but activists are wrong (and dangerous) to paint it as a static disability to be tolerated and affirmed instead of something to be treated. I developed ARFID as an adult after a strong round of antibiotics. I couldn't eat foods I used to love. I lost a lot of weight. I got very sick. I was able to fully recover with high doses of magic mushrooms. Sugar addiction, antibiotics, and other disruptions to the gut microbiome probably underly the condition in most people. It can be treated. And it should be, because it's dangerous to one's health.
Non-celiac gluten intolerance is a real thing, ask me how I know, whether I've placebo tested it, how many times I've checked "just in case" in went away, and how long I've been at it. Okay, the last one you won't guess, so I'll tell you. I've been participating in this embarrassing (because I sure do know what people think about it) and onerous "fad diet" for 14 years. For a long time I was too humiliated to ask for accommodations at all, thanks to the attitude on display here. Then I decided not to let others' ignorant and judgmental tendencies prevent me participating in group meals or getting something I can actually eat at a conference.
People with gluten intolerance can typically handle a trace amount just fine, which is why they don't fuss about errant spoons and cutting board residue. It's not dishonesty or inconsistency. It's just not the same condition as celiac disease. That's not to say that some people keep gluten free for entirely mysterious and faddish reasons. For those people, it's a preference. For others, it's a clinical entity that can be confirmed with placebo-challenge and is a subject to ongoing scientific inquiry. Read any of these, and tell me otherwise then.
"The ones that didn’t went on to go to the local Catholic high school, which served a convenient function as a kind of warehouse for the worst dudes you ever went to school with."
Oh, there are Catholic schools and Catholic schools. There was one like you describe in my town; I went to the other one. Came out as gay there, too, and that turned out to be the best choice I could possibly have made. It wouldn't everywhere, but it was there and I wouldn't be who I am if it hadn't been.
It was the same Jubilee school my mother had attended. It isn't there any more. Time is a motherfucker.
"A stray word will make me think of a lecture I once attended that will make me think of a political argument I once had that will make me think of a person I once met and then in my head I’m having it out with that person, suddenly, without having chosen to."
I empathized with this so much lol. I like to call it the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' of my ditzy brain meanderings, although it's usually more than six. The fun (and rather sad) part is snapping out of it at the end and trying to find your way back to the original thought by retracing all the connections.
This, of course, happens somewhat naturally in group conversations and such...if only in a more deliberate and slower fashion. But the sheer speed and scope by which it takes my brain on its fanciful journey is often discombobulating to say the least.
It's worth considering that people abandoned Kanye not only because he was past his prime artistically, but because he vocally identified with political conservatism. Amiri Baraka said far worse things about Jews, women, and gays throughout his career, never self-described as mentally ill, and gets to have this ideological commitment which appears constantly in his work relegated to a "Controversies" section on his Wikipedia page.
Thank you for such a personal post. I hope that you can continue to find people who are kind and compassionate in their relationship with you, not because you are "crazy" or "mentally ill" but because you are a human being.
No, you sure don't
Spoken like someone who never had to fear the sight of his brokenness reflected in someone else's eyes.
You're lucky to only know how hard it can be from the one side.
It would be twice as good if it was half as long.
Sheesh, who can read all that verbal diarrhea?! He just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. I'm obsessive-compulsive, yet I couldn't get through it all. I almost quit, then I pushed myself to continue; then I quit, but refused to be a quitter, so I forced myself on. Then I was about to stop, but I thought that surely we're about done here; it just is impossible to go on longer, and I've been reading for days already. But it did, so I quit.
Henry James called Tolstoy's novels "loose, baggy monsters." In that sense, this essay is Tolstoyan.
But I don't believe in free will, so the writer had no choice, and neither do I for criticizing it. None of us deserve praise or blame; however, those behavioral reinforcers are good and necessary for society: We should praise children, for instance, for learning to read; and we should punish violent career criminals with incarceration, because they can't control their destructive ways.
"The thing you have to remember is that human beings are kind. Beneath it all, past all the terrible structures we’ve built to subsidize cruelty, away from the force of social pressure and the insecurity that always prompts our wounded aggression, people are kind. Not always, not to everyone, I know, I know, I know. But the human heart wants to be kind; it takes all the weight of our immense pathologies to render it cruel. "
Sometimes. And sometimes they can be pointlessly cruel.
"For the record, if Kanye West had been in his prime, if he was still making music that everyone loved, they would have forgiven everything. It all gets filtered through the lens of who people do and don’t like. There’s no principles with any of this shit. It’s all just jerry-rigging for what people already think. Trust me."
Have I not said that real life is basically glorified high school?
"Have I not said that real life is basically glorified high school?"
If you have, it just means you've not found a new way to be wrong. No surprise there; few do.
Oh, they're similar, sure - but only in the ways that any large collection of humans selected without regard for mutual comity will be like that. We're primates. You can easily make too much of it, though. It's easy to forget sometimes that's not the only thing we can be.
And then too, in the many years since, I've come to learn some of the ways some of the people who hurt me back then were hurt themselves first. That doesn't make it okay; I did that myself. But it does make it understandable, and I believe part of the point here today is that that counts for something too.
Someone else earlier said the same thing in more concise terms:
"Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being."
I'm sure that was said by a wiser man than I. How sure do you really feel yourself able to be that it wasn't said by a wiser cat than you?
"Someone else earlier said the same thing in more concise terms:
"Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.""
Not arguing that, but it does sort of prove my point.
No, it doesn't. You didn't bother to think till you were told to about why people might choose to be cruel, beyond simply that it's in their nature - which, again, is true of all of us; we're primates. To say that we can be cruel, and no more than that, is perhaps the least novel statement possible short of that we live and die.
There's no shame in the omission, but there would be in trying to pretend it was other than what it plainly was.
You appear to be putting words in my mouth. And I am not a primate.
They're your words; only the reading is mine, and its accuracy is for neither of us to judge.
Well, your gloss on my words is very much your own.
"Height is so socially valuable and so utterly outside of our control that it feels like God invented it to demonstrate the folly of meritocracy." True, perhaps, but young 5'5" me found that it only pointed up the vital need to crack the world's other hierarchies.
Halfway through or less and this reminds me both of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and of Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” You are not without precedent.
Would you be the writer you are without the frenzied mind?
This is such a funny question
The real question is, would you give up the frenzied mind if it meant giving up writing?
This is an excellent essay, Freddie, and I agree with most of your observations about the current mental health crisis. I'm also very "weird" and struggled socially in elementary school, but once I realized that it was my own insecurities driving my unpopularity (and a tendency to interpret neutral or even friendly interactions negatively), I had no problem making friends after that. I've never had a problem finding romantic partners, more the opposite. I've had a number of diagnoses tossed my way: "gifted", "generalized anxiety disorder", "ADHD", "bipolar disorder", and high functioning "autism", but when I was young I just thought I was screwed up because I came from a dysfunctional home and had a serious brain injury as a toddler from falling off (yes, off not down) a staircase onto a cement floor (at least now I have a cool bump to show off). I've found that the vast majority of people are extremely kind about my weirdness, especially after learning about the head injury, including those who quite reasonably can only tolerate my intensity in small doses.
However, you're wrong about ARFID. It's more than just picky eating. I was a picky eater as a kid and couldn't stand strong tastes and many textures, but got better as I got older. Then, in 2017, I was prescribed a strong round of antibiotics for a skin infection ... and I developed full-blown ARFID. Suddenly I couldn't eat foods I used to like. They made me gag, or even throw up. I didn't want to eat, and started losing a lot of weight, which alarmed my friends and family because I was already thin. There was something wrong with my gut microbiome, and even though I knew what healthy eating looked like, I couldn't bring myself to do it. My mental health, naturally, spiralled downward. I became more autistic and "ADHD"-y, and was diagnosed with the latter in 2019.
I fully recovered from ARFID, as well as chronic migraines and chronic nausea and gut issues, by hero-dosing magic mushrooms multiple times in a row in 2020. I essentially puked (and otherwise purged) my gut microbiome and reset it. Within weeks I was able to eat foods I hadn't touched in at least a year before that, and, even better, many of the food aversions I'd had prior to 2017 also disappeared. I was also able to stop taking ADHD medication and my mental health dramatically improved, as did my traits that could be called "autistic."
I don't like "ARFID" online communities, which present it as a static disability to be tolerated and discourage trying to recover from it. It's a dangerous disorder. But it's also real. And it can be treated. I got better because I forced myself to eat something I'd always hated (mushrooms) and they saved me.
Refined sugar and alcohol both disrupt the gut microbiome. I think sugar addiction and processed food consumption is a major factor in ARFID.
I'm not the only one with a story like this. Here's an article by another woman with a very similar tale, who healed her ARFID with psychedelics as well.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/09/06/arfid-psychedelic-treatment-psilocybin/
Here's another woman who experienced an exacerbation of her autistic traits after antibiotics.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/04/when-modern-medicine-made-me-more-autistic/
I wrote about my experience with magic mushrooms here:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/psilocybin-magic-mushroom-tea-recipe
No doubt there exist profoundly serious cases of food aversion like yours; but we can’t seriously imagine people will restrict themselves from applying the same label when they just don’t feel like trying Ethiopian food. See: celiac disease versus “gluten intolerance”.
Oh, totally. Using the label is ridiculous even if it's serious. The reason I got better is because I refused to apply labels to myself and was determined to try anything to recover, including force-feeding myself. But I do think a microbiome issue underlies the condition in most people ... the problem is they don't recognize that and just pull the whole "this is who I am, it's part of my identity!" crap.
I should probably clarify that I mean the experience being described as "ARFID" is real, but I don't put much stock in the diagnostic label. I feel the same way about most diagnostic labels.
https://iai.tv/articles/does-mental-illness-exist-auid-1280
"The concept of ‘mental illness’ obviously exists, as do the concepts of witches, ghosts and God – but the idea that the very real experiences subsumed under this term are best explained as medical disorders does not have, and has never had, any evidence to support it." -- Lucy Johnstone
See: my reply to Jenn. Tl;dr gluten-intolerance is a verifiable condition and you can read about it in the scientific literature if you don't believe me. It causes genuine problems for people. It's not as serious as celiac disease, but whoever said it was? You see the double bind here. If I lean on the seriousness of the problems it can cause I'll be accused of stolen valor, and if I take pains to distinguish it from celiac by saying it's less severe people will infer it's trivial or psychosomatic.
People with gluten intolerance *don't* apply the same label. That's why it's called "gluten intolerance" and not "also celiac disease". Why is this everybody's favorite punching bag? I have plenty of educated guesses but maybe someone who is still beating this exhausted drum in 2024 can explain it to me.
Oh yeah, I know, a good friend breaks out in eczema whenever she eats gluten but is not celiac.
I think a lot of it is people just can't stand the idea that other people are "getting away" with something. They universalize the idea that people who are picky eaters (or ADHD, or gluten sensitive, or whatever) are doing it for attention, and they simply can't be allowed to "get away with it" - because they, as people, also want attention, but are not willing to exaggerate their own conditions to get attention (which is what they assume others are doing, because we always assume other people's bad behaviors are result of their personal failings, whereas all of our own conditions are 100% legitimate and not like those other people). It's a way to feel morally superior to people that you've convinced yourself are lying for attention - and the Internet lets you immediately find dozens of people who agree with you, so your personal bugbear becomes a legitimate Social Problem that warrants discussion and intervention.
With gluten sensitivity it's especially funny, because the thing they're "getting away with" is... eating less bread. Like, there is simply no universe in which it matters.
There's a common scenario: Person claims to be gluten intolerant, they refuse to eat the bread, or complain about the restaurant, or whatever. But then, you watch them, and they're eating pasta and drinking beer. I think this scenario is near-universally irritating, even though it is at worst a minor irritation - it simply doesn't matter. I think if we understood better why so many people have such a strong reaction to that kind of scenario, even when it doesn't matter at all to their own lives (who cares if another person wants to make their life harder by having a fake allergy?) we would probably understand a lot more about human psychology in general.
That's insightful. I think this tendency falls under the heading of fairness-sensitivity, which is probably a way to ensure that you personally get an adequate amount of resources while maintaining plausible deniability about the (deep evolutionary) selfish motivation. "That's not fair" goes over better than "give me more," when the same adjustment is made in practice. People do seem sensitive to whether outcomes are fair, to the point of (the economic kind of) irrationality. People will pay to punish unfairness in experimental games, and many would prefer to reduce the gap between payouts to themself and another player even if they receive less as a result.
Thank you for posting this--I was wondering about what truly intense presentations of disordered eating might have pushed clinicians to come up with this label (even if there are people on the internet who might want to use it in an identitarian sense). I still get FdB's point though
Me too. But it's a real thing. I wanted to eat, and I didn't want to lose weight (I was on two ice hockey teams and two dodgeball teams at the time and needed my muscle). But it was difficult to eat. Especially meat and seafood. My diet ended up being mostly fruit and it was awful. But oh man were magic mushrooms effective.
But I also see a lot of online activist types talk about ARFID (usually in relation to autism) like it's a cool identity label that justifies living off chips and chicken nuggets.
The ARFID thing confused me because, as a "picky eater," while I wouldn't go so far as to say that I think I have an actual disorder, no amount of ridicule or reminders that I'm "missing out" on things I don't like are going to change the way my taste buds react to specific foods. It's weird as hell to me that anyone thinks people *decide* to become picky eaters, as though we can turn our taste buds on and off on a whim. Is that what other people do? I doubt it. I am also not "missing out" on something if I know I don't like it, lol. It's like when people get unhinged about someone else eating well-done steak and screeching about how they ruined or wasted the meat. Like, how? They are enjoying their food that is prepared exactly how they like it. My only actual problem with being a picky eater is the fact that so many idiots insist on commenting on it as if it affects them in any way.
I mean, as long as you eat a reasonably varied and healthy diet, I don't think it matters at all (to your health) if you eat the same foods all the time and don't want to try new stuff. But I kind of suspect even regular ol' picky eating can be treated with magic mushrooms, for those who are so inclined. Post-mushrooms, I was a WAY less picky eater than I had been before the antibiotics turned my picky eating into a scary disorder. But as a "picky eater" I still ate pretty healthy. Actually, there's a bunch of not-so-healthy foods I like now that I used to not like, e.g. bacon and mayonnaise.
I'm a picky eater in the sense that I simply do not like a lot of popular foods. I am not a picky eater in the sense that I won't TRY new foods, but "new foods" does not mean "the food you already know you hate, but prepared slightly differently than usual," like so many people who are not picky eaters seem to think. No, I will not magically develop a fondness for shrimp just because someone poured a different sauce on it, lol.
Maybe my definition of "picky" is different from most others, because I love a variety of cuisine types and have a healthy diet, and I'm a pretty good cook. But when I don't like a flavor or a texture, I don't like it. And it's weird and annoying as hell that anyone else thinks there's anything at all wrong with that since I am not in any way restricted enough to be unhealthy. I get a lot of crap from some people in my life about some of the things I just don't like, and it's one of my biggest pet peeves as a result.
Mushrooms are great for a number of conditions, and I'm thrilled to learn that they can be used for severe food restrictive diets, as well!
100%. There is absolutely NO WAY that all the foods I don't like taste the same way to everyone else. If they did, they wouldn't eat them either. Saying I am missing out is literally the equivalent of telling me I'm missing out on eating cat vomit just bc dogs will happily eat a pile of another animal's puke. Because it smells just as gross to me as some of things people like to eat. So no, I'm not remotely tempted and I'm not missing out, it would be horrifying if I was forced to eat it.
I used to eat virtually no meat, then in my 30s only very well done meat, and now I finally enjoy a medium steak. It would never cross my mind to rant about how someone else likes their meat (or worse, in some high end restaurants they'll actually refuse to cook it that way even if you ask). But some people are very concerned with what others eat.
I'm not a parent, but I wonder how people parent with all this swirling. The talisman of a term isn't just useful if you're a kid. It's useful to say to other parents (to yourself) as a signal that you are using the system correctly and recognizing that your kid is different. But what is kindness to the term? What is pain under the term? It seems like it would be such a continuous battle.
Oh good lord....I had not heard of ARFID until just now. Your larger point needs to be pulled out and emphasized more....the medicalization and labeling of personality quirks and let’s be honest, sometimes character deficiencies that entitles people to “reasonable accommodations” and insulates them from the social disapproval that can arise from their behaviors is probably because most of the time most people care about others and want to be as inclusive as possible. More and more people are claiming some kind of condition that in the past used to be considered just a personal preference. I have a couple of theories about why everybody seems to have some kind of “condition” these days. The first is that the bell curve of “normal” is getting narrower and narrower so a bigger percentage of the population is falling outside the standard distribution. The easiest way to understand this is in terms of schools and ADHD. As recess gets cut, academic demands get pushed into lower and lower grades, and PE and other outdoor play diminishes, more and more kids fall under the definition of ADHD, when maybe a generation ago they would have been told to go outside and run laps until they could settle down and read a book. We are squeezing people into a very narrow chute into successful life. Success is defined much more narrowly than it ever has been--the “college for everybody” insanity is a perfect example.
Picky eating could be more common today because our diets are much more varied, and it is seen as “picky” to want to eat plain, unseasoned, repetitive diets..you know...the diets that most of humanity subsists on today, and what our culture subsisted on until about 1970. Nobody thought it was weird in the ‘60’s to never have eaten tacos, or pizza, or sushi, or any one of a number of foods that you can now get at any food court in America.
My second theory is that as more and more people claim some kind of condition that requires the group to accommodate them, others in the group start thinking “well, what about MY needs and preferences?” The little things you need to do or not to just gets exhausting, and in my experience people try really hard to remember who in the group is gluten free, who has a sensory issue and can’t stand loud music, who has a panic or other issue in crowds, etc. etc. etc. What are personal preferences, what are just character defects like selfishness, and what are genuine disabilities? Who knows? We can’t ask that and we have to treat all requests or demands for accommodations as genuine disabilities. If I’m in a group that is organizing a dinner at a restaurant, I can’t just say I hate fish and so the sushi joint is out...but if I dress up my fish hatred as “ARFID,” then I get a level of deference that I wouldn’t get if I just said I preferred the Italian joint. As a professional chef, the most obnoxious group to cook for are affluent white people who live in big cities. It’s like dancing through a mine field to get a meal on the table that everybody will eat. Gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, and everybody expects that the entire meal will be edible for them. When I moved to a farming community and I was planning a big event and I asked about dietary restrictions, I got blank stares and one woman said “I eat what is set before me.” Now the gluten free fad is seeping into even this little town. It’s a preference, not a medical condition. I’ve cooked for celiac people and I know the difference because celiacs don’t expect the cook to accommodate them. Even the most well meaning cook can accidentally stick the wrong spoon into the gluten free rice, or set the gluten free cheese on a cutting board that had bread on it. Cooking for others used to be a joyful experience and it is getting less and less so.
ARFID is real, but activists are wrong (and dangerous) to paint it as a static disability to be tolerated and affirmed instead of something to be treated. I developed ARFID as an adult after a strong round of antibiotics. I couldn't eat foods I used to love. I lost a lot of weight. I got very sick. I was able to fully recover with high doses of magic mushrooms. Sugar addiction, antibiotics, and other disruptions to the gut microbiome probably underly the condition in most people. It can be treated. And it should be, because it's dangerous to one's health.
Non-celiac gluten intolerance is a real thing, ask me how I know, whether I've placebo tested it, how many times I've checked "just in case" in went away, and how long I've been at it. Okay, the last one you won't guess, so I'll tell you. I've been participating in this embarrassing (because I sure do know what people think about it) and onerous "fad diet" for 14 years. For a long time I was too humiliated to ask for accommodations at all, thanks to the attitude on display here. Then I decided not to let others' ignorant and judgmental tendencies prevent me participating in group meals or getting something I can actually eat at a conference.
People with gluten intolerance can typically handle a trace amount just fine, which is why they don't fuss about errant spoons and cutting board residue. It's not dishonesty or inconsistency. It's just not the same condition as celiac disease. That's not to say that some people keep gluten free for entirely mysterious and faddish reasons. For those people, it's a preference. For others, it's a clinical entity that can be confirmed with placebo-challenge and is a subject to ongoing scientific inquiry. Read any of these, and tell me otherwise then.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146412/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8224613/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6630947/
These are very good points. Everyone is expected to be a cosmopolitan now.
"The ones that didn’t went on to go to the local Catholic high school, which served a convenient function as a kind of warehouse for the worst dudes you ever went to school with."
Oh, there are Catholic schools and Catholic schools. There was one like you describe in my town; I went to the other one. Came out as gay there, too, and that turned out to be the best choice I could possibly have made. It wouldn't everywhere, but it was there and I wouldn't be who I am if it hadn't been.
It was the same Jubilee school my mother had attended. It isn't there any more. Time is a motherfucker.
"There was never any rigid popularity hierarchy (and I suspect people think there always is merely because of the influence of Hollywood)"
No. I went to one school where that didn't exist, and many where it did. You're luckier than you know.
"A stray word will make me think of a lecture I once attended that will make me think of a political argument I once had that will make me think of a person I once met and then in my head I’m having it out with that person, suddenly, without having chosen to."
I empathized with this so much lol. I like to call it the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' of my ditzy brain meanderings, although it's usually more than six. The fun (and rather sad) part is snapping out of it at the end and trying to find your way back to the original thought by retracing all the connections.
This, of course, happens somewhat naturally in group conversations and such...if only in a more deliberate and slower fashion. But the sheer speed and scope by which it takes my brain on its fanciful journey is often discombobulating to say the least.
It's worth considering that people abandoned Kanye not only because he was past his prime artistically, but because he vocally identified with political conservatism. Amiri Baraka said far worse things about Jews, women, and gays throughout his career, never self-described as mentally ill, and gets to have this ideological commitment which appears constantly in his work relegated to a "Controversies" section on his Wikipedia page.
Loving the longer form stuff you’re doing lately.
Wow. Thank you.
Thank you for such a personal post. I hope that you can continue to find people who are kind and compassionate in their relationship with you, not because you are "crazy" or "mentally ill" but because you are a human being.