cause like the information leaflets they give out are good, im not denying that, they have great information for people who need it but at the same time there are many faults and things i am being nitpicky about. because i can.

I use sumatriptan injections for cluster headaches, for that it's considered unethical to deny a patient triptans even if they already have MOH, so the restrictions don't make sense like they do for people with just migraine.

The max 10 per month rule should never be applied to cluster headaches. But the meds are still restricted in many countries without exceptions for us and it kills people.

There's a high risk of CH sufferers resorting to less effective & way more dangerous drugs like opiods/hard street drugs. Also, there's a good reason why they're called "suicide headaches". I talked to a guy who, before he had medical treatments for his attacks, would have to handcuff himself to a radiator during his bouts so he physically couldn't stick a knife in his eye or jump out the window.

Mind you, it's possible to get up to 8 cluster headache attacks per day during a bout. I get up to 3. Per day.

I get it. Things aren't perfect. You want them to be perfect. You want every thing to work the way you think it should work. The rest of the world has to fucking live with how the world actually exists.

I am trying to recruit queer folks to be volunteer drivers for a federal program being administered by the local public transportation company of this rural area. I'm trying to do this so that there's a chance that elderly or disabled queer folk who could benefit from being able to just call to arrange a ride from door to door can just fucking do that while having a shot at getting a queer driver who may treat them more sympathetically.

I'm trying to diversify their volunteer driver pool because I think it'll be an overall good.

Every time I post about this in queer spaces on signal I get some young person (they're all young to me, I'm sixty one years old) shitting on it. The most recent was "the background checks weed out good people while letting abusive people and cops through". One of their family members who was absolutely lovely who got denied the chance to drive for this program because they have a record. Followed by the absolute scare tactic of "I personally don't want a screw or pig coming near me."

Great, thanks. Now every young person who might qualify for rides from this program are going to be scared they're going to end up having a pig know where they live.

I have asked them what they think a better way of handling all this might be. What would they suggest get done differently or get added to the process? I didn't scream at them "How can anyone know which people with records are actually lovely and which aren't? What fucking criteria would you use?"

No, it's not a perfect system. Yes, some lovely people are precluded from it. Yes, some deeply unpleasant people can make it through. There has to be objective criteria for this shit. This is a federally funded program, which means there's rules and procedures that have been developed over the years. The local bus company doesn't have the luxury of making its own rules, they don't have the money to fund this program themselves.

Maybe we should just... never use our tax dollars to give rides to the elderly and disabled people who need rides until someone willing to do the work and finance the changes comes up with a better system for vetting the drivers so the bus company isn't relying on tax dollars that require some sort of legally defensible accountability.

like yeah coping skills and positive affirmations are great & effective for some things, but unfortunately life is filled with manmade horrors beyond our collective comprehension.

you cant positive affirmation and box breathe your way out of life threatening crises. you can't "check the facts" when the facts really are just that horrific and life altering. you can't DEARMAN and pray for the best when someone has shown you they do not care, while they have somehow convinced everyone else that they are just misguided (*cough* my sperm donor of a father *cough*)

sometimes people act crazy because what's happening to them, or happened to them in the past, is crazy making. at that point, harm reduction is what saves lives. pop psych therapy and the new age spirituality market are not the solutions to systemic issues affecting individual people's lives.

and when we cant fix the problem immediately (the system/community around the individual) the next course of action is protecting the individuals affected. in mental health care/recovery, that's what harm reduction is. and i fucking love it.