Tag: neurodiversity

The Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68? (Prose)

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Two men in suits shaking hands exchanging money with a pile of prescription medication bottles in the background

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com (i.e. all emails welcome!)

We live in strange times.

Let me explain succinctly and simply.

Not too long ago, annoying people were just called “assholes”.

Nowadays we have the “DSM V”, which sells for profit a whole range of ‘psych disorders’.

You see they ‘grandfathered’ the calling of someone an ‘asshole’ for actually being one,

And replaced it with the ‘psych-o-pharmacological industrial complex’.

All parties to the conspiracy became filthy rich or party-drugged to their eyeballs in the process.

You see now said ‘former asshole’ now has ADHD, Narcissism, Autism or is Neuro-diverse,

You can then put a ‘tap’ on his wallet for life.

(And as a guy who often thinks he has ADHD – I can tell you – I’d rather just be an asshole).

Moreover – a tap can be installed on the tens or hundreds of millions of ‘unlimited tax chumps’ out there.

Now said ‘former asshole-but-now-neuro-diverse’ has the quid-pro-quo of higher self esteem & no guilt to ‘change his ways’.

So in that way it was really a ‘conspiracy’ between the lifelong money men and the lifelong assholes.

This ‘conspiracy’ can be called the Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68 –

For that was the year that the mega-expanded second DSM was published.

And I mean ‘conspiracy’ in the truest sense of the word –

‘When at least two parties agree – often clandestinely – to act together for some mutual benefit or outcome’.

Yes if you put is some toast and ask your wife to hand you the margarine, and the cat doesn’t know –

You are indeed a couple of ‘conspiracy theorists’ and indeed ‘conspiracy practitioners’.

It is a good analogy – because ‘conspiracies’ – both benign and evil happen every second of every day.

So perhaps fifty years later after DSM 2, that’s what we see with the ‘neuro-diversity’ craze.

All we are seeing is the now Andes-like summit of decades growing ‘asshole-medico-pact mountain range’,

Towering above us all, blotting out the sun, and dare I say spiting in our very faces,

Calling us a cacophony of rude names, and lightening our wallets.

Of course – if this assessment is indeed fact – it has ramifications.

We ‘Neurodivergents et al’ will all have to start calling ourselves and others around us simply ‘assholes’ again.

We will also have to apologize more for bad behavior and attempt to make amends and/or reparations.

We will agree that we won’t tap the good folks wallets so to prop up our penchants for ‘lifelong party drugs’.

This I believe is a step to far for all of those of us who were signee’s to the ‘Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68’.

I mean after all why would we?

It’s not at all in our interests!

We’ve been making out like bandits all this time!

It’s been a guiltless seventy year party of high-jerkism, party uppers and stolen taxpayer cash!

Narcissistic Lobsters have been flying everywhere!

I’ll say it again – ‘why would be destroy the Andes’ of our own volution?

The only way to end the madness (pun intended) is if the nice & highly fleeced rise up,

Hide their wallets and simply start calling us ‘assholes’ again and demand better behavior from us.

Personally – I’m all for it!

Yes I was a former drugged-up member of the Asshole-Medico-Pact of ’68,

But I stopped being a signatory to the pact in Twenty-Thirteen at age thirty-five.

So I now have anti-transmogrified back to being ‘good’ again.

So let’s all now agree to call a spade a spade and lets start calling assholes assholes again.

Of course in this piece, I admit that I have highly exaggerated for effect –

But that’s ok, after all my ‘artistic license’ only expired a few days ago –

And only a ‘total asshole’ would pull me up for still using it ‘on the roads’ –

AKA this quasi-drunk-misshapen-literature-town that I sometimes call my own mind,

That you have all had the misfortune of sitting through.

I can only hope the the myriad of legalized black-market pharmaceuticals you are all on,

Have turned it from a boredom-filled hell-scape to an quasi-interesting fun-trip.

By & the way when I said I’d rather be an ‘asshole’ than have ADHD that was a boldface lie.

As if!

“I Was Once ‘Unhappily Labelled’ – But Now I’m Clean-Skinned” (Prose + Bonus Material)

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Whiteboard listing ADHD treatment options and a man looking puzzled in a home office

By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

These days I am wondering if I have adhd.

I mean it is ‘all the rage’ these days.

It’s all so tempting to join the conga lines.

But I am in a quandry.

I cannot decide whether I am:

A – Delusional (just an ‘attention seeker’).

B – Partially Correct (I am only a ‘half-pie’ ADHD).

C – Totally Correct (I am full blown ADHD).

D – Not ADHD (but am some type of ‘Neurodiversity’).

E – A Hypercondriac ( aka version of option ‘A’ – Delusional)

And here’s the interesting thing:

I hate the idea of being ‘diagnosed’.

BY SOME FUCKING QUACK (Ok I added this line simply for schoolboy-crass-charm)

You see – I think I can think my way to the best solution.

And I know via reflexivity (thinking about thinking) that this kind thought might just mean that I am.

(PRONE TO BEING NEUROTIC THAT IS).

Oh and I forgot – I also think I may be an ‘Avoidant Attachment’ type.

However it’s not all bad.

You see as I am now old – I know myself to know all these things are a mirage.

A GIANT GREAT BIG FUCKING MIRAGE THAT IRONICALLY YOU CANNOT IGNORE.

I know that even if YES you are all of these things, you still have to make life work for yourself.

For example let’s say I have all of these things and I go see the local factory-issued big-pharma doc (they all are).

They (of course) robotically dish out said Class A drugs in disguise as a fake remedy.

I take them and they are basically just ‘party uppers’ I take to sweep everything under the rug (always are).

P.s. I’ve been down this route between age twenty and thirty-two with Scam-Stress-Pills TM).

Now I’m pushing fifty I know all that to be a giant swindle:

That’s all a game of fakeness to make mules of everyone for cash.

Now with hindsight I know this deduction to be cromulant:

We’ve been around many many thousands of years.

The design has not changed.

The only solutions to make you feel better from the African savannahs to the Melbourne office are:

A. Stop hanging with a-holes that pick on you (you can tribe hop).

B. Get the right mix of exercise & rest (avoid flourescent lighting).

C. Eat better natural foods (Pick a nut-bush when needed).

D. Express your creativity (Draw on a cave-wall-equivalent).

E. Have a change of Environment once in a while (Go visit the next watering hole).

You see what we’ve always had available to us must be the only real solution.,

To any and all chronic feelings of dissatisfaction mental (& most physical) disarray.

And if the seconds set of A – E’s can’t fix all the feelings of anguish in the first set of A-E’s nothing will.

(And you don’t need to go to A & E to know that either!)

And the drug pushers with certificates on their walls of course will call me a ‘witch doctor’.

But who now twenty-five years into the twenty-first century trusts any one them these days anyway?

I’ll go with what has always been & what I’ve seen work for me over the last fifteen years.

How can that be wrong?

Yes when you lack wisdom ‘being miserable can be addictive’ –

But what can I say Joe – ‘that ain’t it babe, that ain’t it’.

For yes – I was once ‘happily labelled’ – but now I’m just a clean skinned beer drinker.

What more could I ask for?

(SO AM I LIVING IN A FUCKING PARADISE ALREADY ???)

BONUS MATERIAL: Let’s see what the WordPress AI Bot thinks of this Prose!

“My Friend Kaboosekov”. (A Prose Poem/Open Letter + Bonus Material)

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By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

My Friend Kaboosekov

He’s over six foot and is not just as lanky as a bean pole .

well to be more true, he is as lanky as a bean pole that’s been whittled to javelin-like proportions.

He is in his late forties.

Perhaps this ‘whittled-javelin’ look he’s cultivating is about ‘getting into character’.

Only the character is the guy on the news who was ‘just arrested for putting a mirror on you shoes and going up an elevator’.

Never mind Kaboosekov – ‘ya canny win ’em all’, as my Scottish forebears said between whisky glugs.

Now Kaboosekov lives in an empty (formerly goat filled) paddock at the very bottom of his parents hobby farm.

This where he feels safely insulated from the calamity-filled outside world.

He might say that the exigencies of the hard-nosed and not at all anodyne 21st century reality specifically demand this orientation.

But he wouldn’t do this because his vocabulary couldn’t muster it – he’s not at all reader of books.

Of course he says he works everyday but I highly doubt that.

I think like the office worker who endlessly reads his newspaper in the lavatory – he to is running a good cover story.

He came to visit today and I’d I quizzed him with ‘pointed questions about his laboring duties’ –

To see if he had done anything at all on that day in question.

You see percentage wise, I think he’s mostly just ‘pretending to work’.

In answer to the pointed questions he umm’ed and ahh’d and I picked up ‘sheepish deception’ (excuse the pun).

I think to talk like the revered NZ dirt digger of yesteryear- ‘He’s clearly had done F all’.

I reckon he must only do one hour a day on average, perhaps two or three during ‘lambing time’ tops.

He’s almost certainly quasi-autistic – he can’t really communicate properly in conversation –

Eye contact is indeed a problem.

And when talking to him you have to pry out the answers and he so often answers a totally different question you never asked.

He does all these highly technical electronics things which are quite impressive in themselves (more autism evidence?).

He is as cheap as an old Scotsman – and he feels no wider social compunction to support local businesses etc.

I’m not calling him a ‘parasite’ but let’s just say if he was a parasite – his kinfolk would harass him for not pitching in enough.

His main trick is going to a Supermarket to buy a single can of bens – and nothing more.

If everyone was as cheap as him there would be a dire unending Great Depression probably ending in cannabilism.

Alas with more Kaboosekovs, the world would resemble what the Nazis did to the Russian POW’s.

On another level sometimes I conjecturize if he has that thing called “temporary prison homo-sexuality”,

But then again this kind of thing is probably rife in every small rural town where men are punished for talking to women.

Kaboosekov is a bit too ‘clingy’ and sometimes I wonder about his vibes – & no I am not ‘projecting’.

I am pretty sure ‘I am not gay’ but you never know – after all I do like Italian architecture (p.s. I’m not gay).

Kaboosekov studied Computer Sci at Uni and did ONLY computer related courses – not a single liberal arts or business paper.

After university he went into the world for 18 months, and it was all too much for him –

He was soon scampering back in a beaten up rusted honda-civic to his safe womb-like parent’s lower paddock,

Where he has been ‘paddock-maxxing’ (as the kids say these days) for the last twenty five years.

Consequently he has never benefitted from a ‘layer of real world programming’ to help combat autistic behaviors.

I would say – to hazard a guess that Kaboosekov has a mental age of perhaps twenty five (he’s now pushing fifty).

Perhaps he’s not quasi-Autistic – perhaps its ‘only’ Asperger’s.

Alas, perhaps my diagnosis is an overdone one.

Maybe he’s just ultra-ultra-eccentric.

After all we all know the field of Psychiatry has been inflated syndromes to make more cash at least since the DSM 2.

Kaboosekov – He’s not a bad guy of course, BUT if you’re stuck mentally at twenty five – you are going to stay ‘too selfish’ (autistic or not).

Of course I am not perfect, and there are some parallels with how I’ve lived my live and I have some similar odd/life avoidant traits.

BUT

I’ve always realized (after many psychic crash outs) you have to fight those internal programmings that socially hold you back.

Life is so much about fighting your bad human traits and doing it on a daily basis.

I won’t say I’ve succeeded in winning the ‘war for your own mind’,

But I’ve had a few ‘battlefield wins’ at least – I will not bore you with a list – lest it fall into enemy hands.

I do try to be a good influence on ol’ javelin joe when he visits me, which is clockwork-twice weekly.

I don’t mind, as life in these tiny towns we both live in are by their very nature ‘isolating old-world alternate realities’.

Kaboosekov does have some interesting socio-political views, albeit very naïve ones.

This is why he voted for the very insane Green Party at the last election.

Pretty soon they’ll be stuffing crayons in various orifices and calling themselves post-modern art pieces.

So executive decision made!: I’ll keep sociio-culturally looking after him for a while.

Alas all-in-all – Kaboosekov is not a bad egg.

And being a ‘normal office blat-blah-clack-boob’ would be infinitely much worse than a paddock-grown-quasi-autist-asperger.

And besides,

He’s very good to ‘casually pick on’ on account of his schoolboy-ish naivety.

And a friend that takes being ‘casually picked on’ is priceless no matter what.

I guess in that way I am half-Australian after all – born with a bent to pick on/be picked on (in equal spades).

That decade in Melbourne has infected me or perhaps just amplified me that way.

So long live my cheap-ass weirdo friend Kaboosekov – ‘the closet-quasi-autist-asperger’,

Who is probably not suffering ‘prison-gay-syndrome’ but you never really know for sure (and if he is that’s ok).

And ‘the skinny prick’ (as we say in the woods in NZ) will probably live to be a hundred too –

That is prob thanks to his father’s overly restricted calorific diet regimen he is shackled to.

And also thanks entirely to his now elderly farmer parents – he’ll be probably a multi-millionaire soon.

Which reminds me of that like by Bukowski (Life’s funny – some people get rich and others get to east s**t).

And what of the future you wisely ask?

When I finally meet a new woman (or return to the a back catalogue item female #56-00-ASP/B) yes – I’ll tire of him somewhat.

But until then, I’ll keep him on as a patient with with his ‘weekly psychiatrist visit’ intact.

The prescription will be as always ‘listen to my wisdom fool & take my casual picking on you with good humor’d warmth’.

Yes friends – It would be mean to kick Kaboosekov to the silt-filled-apple-containing-kerbs.

I agree – that would be Treasonous.

After all I’ve known the freak Kaboosekov since we were thirteen.

Since he was standing at PE class hugging and rocking himself to reduce psychological stress overload.

And I have always been way too overly loyal to a flaw.

But that’s probably a good thing overall.

It is far better to be too loyal that too disloyal.

And these is why we live in the faded grandeur ruins of some poorly resurrected Roman Empire.

But I am not here to talk of Rome.

Back to Kaboosekov.

Sometimes in life’s relationships – you’ve just got to give the baby their bottle.

And bedsides,

Excuse me if I talk like a fridge salesman for a moment:

Isn’t the feeling of being better than your friends just so flippin’ fantastic?

For is it not just ‘the other side’ of the famed Australasian sport called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’?

Yes I know what you are saying – YES I am indeed guilty – of soaking in ones own crapulence.

But all the same in this letter I hope I have raised a few ideas and at least one bushy literary eyebrow.

Ahh Isn’t it great to not just wallow but to crawl on all fours militarily style in these shallow delightful social quagmires?

This the low-brow delights of being ‘better than your friends’.

Like alcoholism that fiend called Reverse Tall Poppy Syndrome (RTPS) is a hard illness to shake off.

So Kaboosekov better not move out of his giant green paddock or start acting his age,

Lest I lose my sense of being ‘better than him’ – I couldn’t take the blow to my ego.

Consider his execution stayed indefinitely.

P.S. In touting my superiority I am discounting my quasi-bankruptcy (inter alia) of course, as you do.

P.P.S I hope dear reader, that I don’t sound to much like an arrogant solipsistic bastard (for I usually hide it so well).

BONUS MATERIAL: Here is what the new WordPress AI Podcast Bot thinks of this poem: