The giving tree isn’t so giving

So I had been wanting to practice painting real people with real lighting and stuff and then my friend ifeana posted the CUTEST AND MOST GORGEOUS SELFIE and I. couldn’t help myself.

The original if anyone’s curious:

It’s not perfect or anything but it was good practice and she’s SO CUTE AAAaaaaa

God, Kuwabara, don’t you know anything about demons? 

Dives back into YYH fandom–immediately kicked out of YYH fandom

Alter Egos

Created by Coran “Kizer” Stone.

I’m sick of temporal plans. I don’t want to hang out next Wednesday, let’s chill after the next thunderstorm. Meet me when it’s 75 degrees. Time isn’t real.

So my brother texted me

i didnt give a shit while making this i spammed the color transform affect to make it look less like i made it in 3 hours but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

song is The Future by the Mystery skulls 

Tang, this is fantastic!!

And it just gets worse as it keeps going.

deactivated tumblr theme

this theme is basically for people who need to get away with people but feel free to do whatever with it. no follow buttons, no anything, no one can view your blog unless they see your posts on their dash in real time or on mobile.

live preview | code | version with no gif background

it looks like this:

the tab on chrome looks like this:

you can edit it to make a joke theme if you change the script:

have fun

Dumbledore don’t give a fuck.

TDS, May 13, 2015

“But you don’t look like you have an eating disorder...”

People with eating disorders look like this:

People with eating disorders look like this:

People with eating disorders also look like this:

And this:

People with eating disorders can also appear like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Bottom Line: Eating disorders are mental illnesses, with weight as a side effect. Just like someone cannot “look OCD,” or “look like they have bipolar disorder.” So please, next time you interact with someone regarding this topic, please be considerate of the fact that you do not have to “look sick” to be sick.

I hate living in a world that is more worried about people becoming addicted to pain killers than about people being in actual pain.

#i don’t understand what this means?#my mother is a painkiller addict#and it’s horrible and definitely something to be concerned about???#and pretty much ruined my life my siblings lives and HER life???

As I understand, it’s an enormous issue for people who are in chronic pain to get the pain relief they need on a daily basis, due to abuses of the system ruining it for everyone. There are a lot of people who are in excruciating pain all the time because any attempt to manage their actual level of pain is treated as drug-seeking.

Okay, I absolutely get that, but maybe let’s not focus on the people actually taking prescription drug addiction seriously (because it is serious, is an ongoing problem affecting many, many people, and needs to be taken seriously) and instead focus on the fact that the system desperately needs to be reformed so that people who need the medications have access without addiction being further enabled. 

Long story short, the people who “care about people becoming addicted to pain killers” are not the problem.  I grew up with an addict.  We need more people who care about that.  It’s a very complicated issue without an easy solution.  I’m all for finding one, but blaming the efforts to curb addiction definitely isn’t it.  Tweaking those efforts?  Sure.  I absolutely want people who are in pain to get the help they need, but as someone who’s seen the other side of the issue, I also don’t want more little girls to have to grow up with mothers addicted to painkillers and all the horrible shit that comes along with that.  Or for any of those people struggling with chronic pain to have to add the nightmare that is addiction to everything they’re already dealing with.

I didn’t quite read the OP that way, but I fully agree. It’s not the people who are legitimately concerned about drug addiction, it’s the system which both cannot differentiate between drug addiction and legitimate need, in part because it disbelieves disabled people about their experiences and needs, and which also considers addiction to be in itself a purely moral failing and therefore fails to treat it properly. Both issues are absolutely serious, and deserving of attention; I think the OP means to highlight the effects of the system itself being so very bad at handling both addiction and chronic pain that it pits the issues against each other.

I didn’t mean to imply that addiction is not as serious or that the people who are concerned about it are wrong; I apologize that I implied both those things.

It looks to me like the post itself is pitting the two issues against each other.  I agree with your assessment above regarding the two issues, but I’m reading the exact opposite in the post, which is what concerns me.  I think it’s a very one-sided and dangerous way to look at the issue.  Maybe you’re just reading a lot more into it than I am, but it’s very short and clear to me.  Your commentary above is excellent, but this is being reblogged without that context, which is why I felt the need to comment.  I’m glad that’s what you saw in it, but it’s not what I saw, and I have a feeling it’s not what some of the people reblogging did, either.  Maybe it could just be worded better.  “I hate that I live in a world that cannot differentiate between chronic pain and addiction” would have gotten the point you’re making across.  What I’m seeing says something very different.  It says that the world prioritizes preventing addiction over treating chronic pain, which is something I definitely do not agree with.  Neither is being made a priority, and that’s the whole problem. 

This is just something very serious to me and it’s a little upsetting to see it presented this way.

OP here.

First of all? My mother is also a drug addict. Mind you, she prefers uppers, and spent most of my life stealing my Ritalin from me and making me lie about how much I take to my psychiatrist. She’s gone so far as to go searching through my room to find my medication after I found out what she was doing with it, and starting hiding it from her. By the time I left home, I was keeping my meds in a locked box, with the key hidden inside a small box holding a bottle of perfume.

So maybe learn a bit about me first before you judge me.

Second, the world does prioritize preventing addiction over treating chronic pain. It prioritizes it over treating a lot of things. But that doesn’t mean it actually addresses the problem with anything remotely resembling real, genuine concern. Society’s idea of “preventing addiction” is to go “Let’s not give this person the medication they need, they could become addicted to it!” and that very attitude often causes people to self-medicate, and thus become addicts. I do not forgive my mother for what she did, but I also know she didn’t get adequate treatment for type two bipolar and her addiction was born of self-medication. I too have recently received that diagnosis, and I can understand how she got the way she is.

Then I think, what if they had assigned her a small dose of methylphenidate, enough to help her fight the overwhelming fatigue and depression she got from the bipolar. What if we did that instead of being so hyperalarmed that someone might get addicted to something? New research on addiction indicates that addiction grows more than anything from people not having what they need, especially for their mental health (and physical pain absolutely affects mental health). 

So no, I’m not saying society actually cares about preventing addiction, it just thinks it does, and goes about it in all the wrong ways. And if you think it doesn’t prioritize it’s idea of prevention over treating chronic pain, then you clearly have never experienced chronic pain, or much physical pain at all.

Most places in the world will not give you pain killers for a sprained ankle, even though it’s actually often more painful and can take longer to heal than a broken bone. 

In America and numerous other countries, people can’t get painkillers when they have a slipped disc. I live with three different chronic pain syndromes, I am utterly used to being in pain, and the way I’ve heard a slipped disc described, I am terrified of it ever happening to me.

Hell, I have an absolutely sparkly clean record. I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke cigarettes. You know how much pain medication I get to treat those three chronic pain syndromes? Twenty pills that I have to make last two freaking months. I dread having a bad period where my pain levels are really high, because what if I can’t get my medication refilled and then I have another bad period?

And I’m one of the lucky ones. Most people do not get painkillers for the syndromes I have. I honestly don’t know how they stay alive with that kind of pain.

And yes, that is born from society’s obsession with stopping addiction. That doesn’t mean that the way they go about it isn’t all wrong–it is completely and utterly wrong–but that is what causes it. I mean Christ, haven’t you ever had a D.A.R.E. class? My sister literally had to do a skit when she was younger depicting herself taking one hit of marijuana and dying from it. 

Incidentally, back when I was still taking a methylphenidate-based ADHD medication, I had to be tested for other drugs regularly. Hell, before I could start taking my bipolar meds, they wanted to test me for other drugs. And you know what? Just like they found that drug-testing welfare recipients was a waste of time and money because they usually came up negative, pretty much no one tests positive in these cases. My psychiatrist straight up admitted that to me. 

I have just as much reason as you do to take addiction very seriously, as I stated above. But it is the privilege of the able-bodied not to realize just how much our society’s “concerns” for drug addiction harm those in very real pain. 

I never said anything about you, your experiences, or your life at all.  I was referring to a post that I felt didn’t adequately address a very complicated issue, and my concern that people were reblogging it without understanding the full issue, which is one very close to me.  My apologies if you felt this was a personal attack on you.  It wasn’t.  I never said anything of the sort.

Second, you did say something very specific about me, while in the same breath accusing me of talking about you while knowing nothing about you.  I have never felt much physical pain?  I am very familiar with chronic pain.  I didn’t feel it necessary to mention it in the above posts, because the post itself was clearly on the side of chronic pain, so why defend it further?  But I suffered with undiagnosed gallbladder disease for four years.  Do you know what gallstone attacks feel like?  Several times I laid in bed and very seriously considered cutting open my own stomach, because I was in so much pain that I was certain that would make it feel better.  I had so many days that I couldn’t go to class, couldn’t go to work, because I was in too much pain, and no one helped me or even really believed anything was wrong with me.  Even when I wasn’t dealing with attacks, I dealt with almost constant nausea, particularly any time I tried to eat.  This resulted in weight loss and vitamin deficiencies, which only caused more problems.  So while, thank goodness, chronic pain is no longer a part of my life, I have experienced it and am very sympathetic to anyone who has to live in that hell.  Also, for the record, my mother was given painkillers in the first place to deal with chronic pain.  It is frighteningly easy for people suffering with chronic pain to become addicted to painkillers, purely because of what they’re dealing with and sometimes the painkillers are the only thing that helps.  But once they become addicted, it makes an already horrible problem even worse for them.  And when I say my mother was addicted, I don’t just mean she was stealing pain medication I desperately needed from me after one of my surgeries.  I mean as a child I had to feed my brothers peanut butter because painkillers and alcohol were more important to her than food for her children.  I mean horrible things happened to me and my siblings because of the people she associated with and the places she took us.  

So, let me start by saying BOTH issues are very close to me.  I was just concerned about seeing something that seemed to make a very complicated issue a little too simple.  My concern was that addiction is already not taken seriously enough, and I hate to see anything take away from what very, very little progress is being made.  I’m not sure why you feel that became a personal attack against you.  I don’t even know you.

You talked about society’s idea of “preventing addiction,” with preventing addiction in quotation marks.  That leads me to believe you and I are on the same page.  Society thinks it is prioritizing prescription medication addiction.  It is not.  And it is attempting to do so for all the wrong reasons.  

D.A.R.E. classes are really not the best example of society’s efforts at curbing addiction, as your own example shows.  They’re a pretty good example of how sloppy and halfhearted any attempts are.  I never once had a class talk about prescription medications.  You’re right, though - I had several explain to me in great detail about how marijuana would DEFINITELY ruin my life.  I won’t even go into how beneficial marijuana could actually be for chronic pain sufferers and how ridiculous it is that medical utilization is even still an issue, because that’s another argument for another time.  There has been nothing my entire life teaching about the issues with prescription medications, aside from my own experiences, word of mouth, and whatever I could find on the internet.  So no, that’s really, really not prioritizing addiction issues.  Especially considering the huge amounts of young people currently in rehabilitation centers for prescription meds.  I hope that maybe things have changed on that front since I was in school, but I have a feeling they haven’t.

I’m sorry about your experiences with addiction.  I’m right there with you, trust me.  I’m also sorry that you experience chronic pain.  It’s horrible and debilitating and most people don’t realize just how much if affects someone’s life every fucking day.  Or don’t care.  That’s why when I saw a post like this that I felt wasn’t adequately discussing a really complicated issue, I felt the need to comment.  Let’s talk about better ways to address chronic pain.  Let’s talk about better ways to address addiction.  They’re conversations that desperately need to be had.  Let’s not pit them against each other.  Chronic pain isn’t being thrown by the wayside because of addiction.  Chronic pain is being thrown by the wayside because addiction is being handled inadequately and halfheartedly by people who don’t really understand or care about either.  If addiction was being taken more seriously and actual efforts being made to control it, as opposed to slapping a band-aid on it and calling it fixed, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I was not trying to insult you in any way.  This isn’t about you or about me.  I literally just wanted to clarify a post that I found concerning because it was talking about something very serious and I felt it could be worded better.  That’s not a personal attack against you, that’s legitimate concern, which I think is what you’re asking for.

Except you made it sound like I said things I absolutely did not say. I was not pitting the two things against each other, or dismissing drug abuse. I was referring to a very specific problem: The refusal to give patients the treatment they need because they might become addicted.

And I do mean might. Your assertion that people with chronic pain are so susceptible to drug addiction is pretty insulting. In point of fact, the numbers on chronic pain and addiction vary wildly, from as little to 3% to as much as 40%, and this is dependent upon numerous factors of the situation. There are not actually solid numbers on how people who weren’t already addicts react to treatment with painkillers, but from what I can find, they’re actually not prone to addiction. 

So what do physicians do to deal with chronic pain sufferers who already have addiction issues? Take medication away from everyone. 

Like I said, my mom liked uppers. And not just my Ritalin, either. She liked cocaine, among other things. There were drug dealers coming by my house all the time while I was growing up. We were always low on money, unable to pay the bills, going to a foodbank to be able to eat. We had to file for bankruptcy and lost our house. She stole from me, lied to me, invaded my privacy, and I still would not ever deny someone what they needed because of that.

You seem to think prescription drugs are the problem. They’re not, though. It’s society that’s the issue. Lack of willingness to treat people, unwillingness to even diagnose people, those are just two of the problems. The pressure on people, the hopelessness they feel, especially the young and those who live in poverty. So many people put themselves through the expense and pressure of college only to end up working with a spatula and a useless Masters Degree, and it’s not much wonder they turn to drugs. It’s a pattern that’s shown before. 

To say “the problem is prescription drugs, take them away” is to entirely miss the point, and will in the end do nothing to treat addiction. Assuming anyone without a history of addiction will for any reason be more susceptible to addiction is completely unfair, and a pretty good way to ensure more self-medicating and addiction will occur. Because people are not doctors. They don’t know what appropriate doses are. They need help with treatment so they don’t take too much, and it makes no sense whatsoever to deny them that help in an effort to stop them from addiction. 

My husband had just come home with my tiny little packet of painkillers that need to last me until July when I made that post. I was feeling really upset, because I had just talked to my doctor, again, about my fears of having my pain meds taking away, and about how I often don’t take them when I really, really need to, because I can’t risk not having them when I really, really, really need them. You assumed people reblogging the post are ignorant of prescription drug abuse; has it occurred to you that many of them perhaps have had the same experiences and knew exactly what I meant? There are quite a few chronic pain suffers here on Tumblr.

And here’s the thing: You lived with it for four years. I will live with this for the rest of my life. It’s never going away. I have fibromyalgia, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, and I’m hypermobile. That will never stop being true, and if society’s attitude continues as it is, I will never stop having to fight to be treated. Now I have to deal with you butting in and insisting you know what my post meant better than I do?

You’re right, it is a complex issue. But none of that makes my point invalid. The so-called effort to stop addiction takes medication away from people who actually need it, and I will never be okay with that. 

I’m going to start by saying that after this, I’m not going to respond to this anymore, because as much as I would like to discuss this and think it needs to be discussed, I don’t think I should have to keep defending myself against claims that I’m judging you/attacking you/etc when I literally said not one word about you.  How could I possibly assert that you said something you didn’t when the post is right up there, large and in bold for everyone to see?  Anyone who sees this post is very aware of what you said.  They can take my interpretation of it with a grain of salt, if they’d like.  

My exact words were: “What I’m seeing says something very different.  It says that the world prioritizes preventing addiction over treating chronic pain, which is something I definitely do not agree with.”  Not only did I say this is what I’M seeing (and repeatedly stress that others might interpret it differently), you then went on to AGREE with my interpretation in your response: “Second, the world does prioritize preventing addiction over treating chronic pain.”  So I’m not sure what I said that made it sound like you said things you didn’t.  That was not my intention, and I don’t think I did that.  I’m incredibly confused at this point, which is why I think after this I’m going to have to bow out.  I interpreted your post exactly as you’re saying you meant for it to be interpreted.  You went on to make several assumptions from that point, purely because I disagreed with you.

I’m also not saying chronic pain sufferers are SO inclined to addiction.  I’m saying that painkillers (most of them, not all) ARE very addictive substances.  This does not in any way make them “bad,” and also doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be prescribed.  I don’t know how many times I can stress that I actually never said anything remotely close to that, and wouldn’t because that’s the exact opposite of how I feel.  Painkillers are addictive.  Someone who needs a painkiller for a broken arm doesn’t have to take it indefinitely.  The chances of addiction, based SOLELY on those factors, are lower for them than for someone who needs that medication for longer, possibly indefinitely.  It has absolutely nothing to do with chronic pain sufferers, their constitution, or their inclination towards addiction.  I would never imply that chronic pain sufferers are somehow, what, genetically more likely to be addicted?  That makes no sense and is just kind of shitty, to be honest.  I would also never imply that the very fact that extended use makes addiction more likely means they SHOULDN’T be prescribed for extended use.  There are a lot of things that can and should be done to mitigate this, and none of them involve taking drugs away from chronic pain sufferers.  Not a damn one.

Again, if anyone is putting words in someone’s mouth here, it is not me.  I never said to deny anyone medication.  I never said that you hadn’t experienced addiction.  I never said prescription drugs are the problem.  I never even IMPLIED any of those things, because I don’t believe them. I feel like you’re having an argument with someone else, here.  Prescription drugs are an important tool that many people need.  Society is ABSOLUTELY the issue, I agree with you.  In fact, that’s what I said repeatedly.  I didn’t assume that people reblogging the post had no experience with prescription drug abuse - I said I was concerned some didn’t, and wanted to clarify, as I felt the post didn’t explain the entire issue.  I could just as easily say you’re assuming everyone reblogging the post DOES have experience with prescription drug abuse.  But I wouldn’t, because that would be pointless and most likely isn’t true.  

Let me make it as clear as possible.  Literally the only thing I am saying is: I am concerned that this post doesn’t address the entire issue.  I don’t think that the world prioritizes prescription drug addiction over chronic pain sufferers.  I think BOTH aren’t receiving the help that they need and that’s sad.  I also think the two can overlap purely because they’re both being handled badly, and that’s why we desperately need more help in both areas.  And it’s not like I hunted you down to say that and demanded you change the post.  I was commenting on a post that was relevant to me and had several hundred reblogs.  In fact, I was originally commenting in the TAGS.  I wasn’t expecting you to change anything.  I had no expectations of you at all.  Again, and I don’t know how many times I can stress this, I don’t know you and was not expecting you to do anything, say anything, or change your opinion.  If you wanted to discuss, and I was completely open for that though I wasn’t expecting it, I was happy to do so.  But again, not loving the repeated assertions about me personally or putting words in my mouth.  I take this issue very seriously, and I’d LOVE to talk about it, but this isn’t talking about it.  This is me constantly defending, what, my RIGHT to talk about it?  

I don’t know where you’re getting the rest, and I’m sorry if I somehow implied any of it.  The only thing we appear to disagree on (because you keep telling me things that I already know and absolutely agree with) is whether or not the world prioritizes one over the other, and I’m happy to agree to disagree with you on that.  I made the clarification I felt like needed to be made, and that’s all I wanted to do.  I never insisted I knew what your post meant better than you did.  In fact, until you responded to me, I wasn’t even talking to you, so it would have been pretty hard to make that assertion (despite the fact that you’ve already expressly stated that I was CORRECT in the way I was interpreting it).  I was expressing my concern that it could be interpreted differently.  That I personally had interpreted it differently.  

I reblogged a post that was relevant to me in a lot of ways and engaged in a discussion about a topic that we both agree NEEDS to be discussed.  I have not made any assertions about you personally, though you’ve made several about me.  I haven’t even actually disagreed with you on anything except one point.  So I’m really not quite sure what’s happening here.  I get that it’s a sensitive topic - trust me, the entire reason I responded is because I’m sensitive about it.  But I really don’t appreciate the assertion that I’m attacking you or your experiences in any way.  I would never do that, and I haven’t done that.

People talk a lot about how Harry Potter taught them about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil etc and of course I think that’s very important but like…

Harry Potter also taught an entire generation of kids that the news media can’t always be trusted to tell the truth, that the government can often be corrupt or incompetent, that the legal system isn’t always right, that the people in power don’t always have your best interests at heart. That bad things sometimes happen to good people, that your heroes aren’t always as perfect as you think they are, that even those with the best intentions can be wrong, that everyone can make mistakes and that often in order to make things right it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.

…and I think in a way that’s every bit as important as the more positive messages.

Do you ever think about how different your view of everything would be if you thought in a numerical system that wasn’t base 10

“Wow, 823543. What a nice, round number!”

This is an interesting knob to twist in...

SCARY MOVIES SET IN HOUSES ARE THE WORST

I LIVE IN A HOUSE