The app for independent voices
An excellent essay (I don’t agree with everything Freddie says, but find his observations about the mental health crisis to typically be on-point).
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, he’s 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.
Here's another woman who experienced an exacerbation of her autistic traits after antibiotics.
I wrote about my experience with magic mushrooms here:
