Hello! We’re the Ironwood Collective. You can call us Talon; that’s our collective name. If you’re reading this, you’ve stumbled across our Tumblr. This is a sort of journal for the whole system. We consist of the host and six alters, plus a subsystem with two additional headmates.
Important things to know:
🎵 A piece of (admittedly unrequested, but this is my blog) advice, especially for younger folks just starting your professional lives: When someone corrects you, say thank you. Even if what they’re telling you is something you already know. Even if it chafes. Unless what they’re telling you is incorrect (in which case, exercise your best judgment in whether or not to gently correct them), tell them thank you.
That sticks in people’s memories. It makes you seem agreeable and easy to work with. It tells them you’re wise enough to see a lesson when it’s presented to you and both wise and humble enough to not cave to your own pride. That’s a very valuable thing. Yes, people in power tend to be arrogant and loud with their opinions, even when those opinions are bullshit. But if you are not one of those people who has power, the best thing you can do for yourself is demonstrate to those who outrank you that you are smart and level-headed. That makes you valuable for your intelligence and wisdom. It also makes you trustworthy. That in itself can garner you power. It can also gain you independence, and that can be just as valuable. It can give rise to opportunities to further prove yourself and to thereby further increase your standing.
That’s the quiet way of rising through the ranks, for sure. And there is most certainly a time and place for the loud rejection of stupidity in power. But that time and place is not necessarily your workplace (although, as all the recent strikes have demonstrated, sometimes it is) and the quiet, patient path can be the most stable and the most fruitful.
And that humility does chafe at times. I still find myself having to bite my tongue sometimes. But people listen to me. It’s not just saying thank you when I’m told something the person speaking to me may not realize I already know. I also take notes. When I’m told something I don’t know, I write it down. You’d be amazed what a difference that makes, too. It shows, again, you’re wise enough to recognize a lesson for its value. It also means you can pull that out later when other people are asking about the same thing. Which makes you the person who knows all the stuff. And that’s a very good thing to be.
All of that can work in your favor. And it’s all stuff I’ve learned through experience or from my father, who demonstrated a lot of that to me when I was younger and reiterated it as I got older and started working. It has turned out to be one of the best things he’s taught me. So I feel it definitely bears passing on.
do any other systems introjects have “regular” alternate names?
for context: we have a couple headmates who, due to their names, it would be VERY obvious that they’re an introject by it, and in some circumstances, even if we’re openly talking as a system and not our “singletsona”, we don’t feel comfortable sharing that info
for example: our Tubbo uses “Toby”, Crowley uses “AJ”, and a couple others have similar. it’s not the name they prefer to use the majority of the time, but it’s something they’ve chosen that they feel comfortable with when needed
is this a thing that anyone else experiences?
-the host (he/they), writing/asking on the behalf of Crowley (he/it)
💎 A couple of us do. I go by Atty. That one… It’s part ‘cause I don’t want the whole world realizing I’m Angel Dust. Probably wouldn’t be good for Rowan. And I could’ve gone by Anthony, but they’ve got a relative with that name and it was weird for them. I like Antoni better anyway. But with me being… me, it was still easy to guess that one. Alastor goes by Al when he don’t want people knowing who he is. And Mustang goes by Roy when he’s trying to be subtle. Sarow kinda made it worse instead of better with their name, but nobody knows their source anyway, so it’s okay. Blysse stopped using Firekeeper so people wouldn’t mistake her for an introject. Blue just… That was his name before Blind Seer, I guess. But for me and Alastor and Mustang, using a different name is definitely at least in part to make us less recognizeable.
🌳 We’re trying out a new collective name. We used the name RowanWolf since we rejoined the alterhuman community. But that doesn’t fit us as now that we know we’re more than one person. So we’re trying out the name Talon Ironwood. Ironwood is our system name and we’ve liked the name Talon for a long time. So. New collective name.
caretaker culture is holy shit drink water. oh my god dont fucking trigger yourself. youre the fucking host id hope youd have better life skills dude -remus
Fr, havin to always chase after them shoving self care down their throat /lh
-Jirou
🎵 This is Blue with me all the time.
a little thing based on something i had to do for class
🌳 Casually tagging all my coining posts with “pro endo” and “endo friendly” and “endo safe” to piss off the anti endos. Oh, you can use the terms. I can’t stop you using the terms. But you’re gonna have to deal with the fact that they come from a pro endo blog.
it’s just too fucking much! because of course there’s a national shortage on your adhd meds so now you need to figure out how to resolve that except that the pharmacy never picks up their phone and their online portal is absolute dogshit and one time you drove an hour out of your way because they said they had it, but they didn’t have it, and they tell you “well we can’t transfer the meds, you need to call your doctor to do that” but your doctor only works very specific hours so by the time you call your doctor the meds have scampered off to a different pharmacy and the pharmacy kind of shrugs because you should just psychically know if they got a medicine shipment and all of this is the exact kind of thing that your adhd fucking hates.
so great! your quality of life has fucking dematerialized! within the span of this week, your apartment is a pigsty. you keep having racing thoughts that slam you awake at 2 in the morning, and then the next day you collapse in a brain fog by 3PM. but you need to go to your fucking job anyway so that you can have the insurance to pay for the meds that you’re not even getting but you need the meds so you can do your fucking job! you need to make money to pay for the apartment you can barely afford as it is! so good luck. your negative coping mechanisms have started to creep back in. you find yourself loud, annoying, vapid. you fucking hate it.
and here’s the thing - these meds are life changing, but not necessarily life saving. it’s like going through life without your glasses on - you’re struggling, but it probably won’t kill you. it’s just fucking annoying because the solution exists, and you can’t obtain it. and the whole time you are begging the pharmacist to please just fucking fill the prescription all you can think is - holy shit. i’m so fucking lucky that i don’t need these to actually survive.
like, are you miserable, sinking quickly into suicidal? sure. but you keep picturing the people who aren’t okay-without-it, and it makes you so fucking sad and angry and disgusted with the whole thing that fire-and-static start running up and down your limbs because of course you want to help, of course you’d cut your hair off and hold out your own body, but what are you going to do about it? because fuck! remember the first time they accidentally filed your insurance wrong and said that your meds would be three hundred fucking dollars per-fucking-month? you stood there, shaking, your hand on your credit card, thinking - i have no idea how to make that work. and how you felt like the world was laughing, big and loud and long.
because it didn’t matter! they can just say whatever fucking number they want! they could say any number, and you’d pay it, because you have to pay it. they figured out long ago what the landlords are just-now starting to recognize: profiteering in the age of capitalism isn’t ever punished. if it’s food or housing or medicine, you’re going to pay for it, aren’t you, darling.
god bless america! does it hurt? does it hurt, are you going to cry about it, in one massive, horrible sob?
and of course this is an incredibly busy week at your job. of course your life is currently falling apart. the life you’re fighting so hard to cling to is in a world where it’s an obscene luxury to own a fucking dog. you still have outstanding medical debt because you dared to experience hardship. don’t mention the student debt. don’t mention the price of groceries. don’t mention how we have been through at least two life-changing recessions and nobody in the middle class has actually recovered from that yet.
be good, be an adult, handle your shit. call them again. feel like you want to scream, don’t scream. feel your brain getting further and further from you. god, how the fuck did you ever live like this?
you tell your mom on the phone today while you drive to the fucking pharmacy again for the third time in the last 24 hours: if they don’t have it i’m just hopping the counter and grabbing the first arm i see with my teeth. i’m going full alka seltzer with this one. they’re going to need a rabies shot. and you realize you’re not even mad you’re just fucking desperate; the kind of beg that sounds like a whimper.
home of the free and the brave! it’s not that you feel trapped, it’s that they’ve taken you hostage.
it’s not a healthcare system anymore. it’s just a fucking mugging.
I don’t take ADHD meds. I’d probably benefit from them, but I can’t have one more med to chase.
There are four medications that are both hard to find in forms I’m not allergic to and pretty essential to my quality of life.
Metformin…. Every pill version I could take was recalled years ago and never came back to market. I went from very well controlled prediabetic to needing insulin to failing insulin to extremely insulin resistant and needing liraglutide. We eventually found a compounded topical version because liraglutide alone wasn’t enough.
Liraglutide was an insurance battle. There, but so expensive i couldn’t afford it out of pocket. Six months without it damaged me permanently.
There is one form of duloxetine that I’ve found that does not contain inactive ingredients I’m allergic to. One tiny pharmacy was willing to order it for me.
But the worst is fondaparinux.
See, I need anticoagulants to live. I have three different clotting issues. And I don’t process warfarin correctly. The amount of lovenox I would have to take is so high that i was having to do two syringes per dose twice a day and the volume burned like fire. I’m allergic to something in the oral anticoagulants and so fondaparinux is the only med that works consistently for me without horrible side effects and no one carries it normally and every once in a while the pharmacy that orders it can’t order it and then I have to find a new one to order it but most pharmacies flat out can’t even get it from their wholesaler. I’ve had four pulmonary embolisms. Going without anticoagulants is terrifying.
Multiple drugs I’ve taken for ra have been approved for use in covid and that’s its own brand of terrifying because it means supply issues happen. Hell, oxycodone supply issues mean filling that is chancy and fraught.
But the ADHD thing is happening specifically by design because of government action, which makes it even more frustrating. (Oxycodone has the same issue. These are not difficult drugs to make and supply except for artificially imposed volume limits that primarily hurt legitimate users.)
The issue is systemic.
Specifically, ADHD meds (Adderall and generic versions of the same thing) are in a shortage- and have been for like a year now- because they are under the jurisdiction of the DEA.
Most medication is regulated by the FDA- the guys in charge of making sure food and drugs are consumed safely.
But Adderall, and anything else considered a scheduled drug (testosterone, for example; which I am also on), is controlled by the people whose job it is to make sure people don’t get drugs.
The DEA strictly regulates how much of a medication can be manufactured, and when ADHD diagnoses increased during the pandemic (because telehealth made healthcare as a whole more accessible), manufacturers were not allowed to keep up with demand.
They still aren’t. The DEA has blamed just about everything they can for the shortage, from one manufacturer’s issues with production now years ago, to the accused “overdiagnosis” of ADHD.
The DEA has also, more recently, set restrictions on how much pharmacies are allowed to dispense. These numbers are not adjusted for local population counts, and they are also not being communicated to the pharmacists, so often pharmacies are running into those limits suddenly and without warning.
Just to say that it’s the “war on drugs”; not pharmacies, and not even really manufacturers, causing these problems.
Also, just because I’ve been dealing with this too: the best way of navigating this issue I’ve been able to find has been to, in this order:
- Call pharmacies until you find one with your meds in stock. Make sure they have the right dose and enough to fill the whole scrip. (Call big pharmacies first; Costco has been a safe bet for me so far. Then the rural ones, if you can get to them.)
- Call your doctor to refill your meds, and tell them they need to send it to that pharmacy, ASAP, or you will not be able to get your meds. Communicate how much you have left/how long you’ve been off your meds. (But y'know, be cool about it)
- If your doctor’s office isn’t responding to your calls, show up in person, if you can. This goes for your pharmacy as well. My experience has been that they rarely respond to anything in text, they usually respond to calls, and they can’t ignore you if you’re physically there.
- Get a timeframe from them on when you can expect that the pharmacy will have heard from them.
- Call your pharmacy after that amount of time and ask if they have the scrip, and when you can pick it up if so.
- If they don’t have it yet, call your doctor again.
- Repeat steps 5 & 6 as needed.
I doubt most of this is super new to most people, but figuring this out has been a nightmare, and this is how I’ve been able to get my partner’s and my own scrips filled relatively quickly these last few months. Hopefully it saves someone some trouble.
(Also, pick pharmacies that are regularly open when you’re available to call. I have spent multiple consecutive hours on the phone. It’s worth it.)
🎵 As someone who works in a pharmacy, has ADHD (diagnosed 30 years ago and been hearing the “overdiagnosis” bullshit that whole 30 years), and has finally gotten back on ADHD meds after years of declining quality of life off them, a few tips:
I really wish all of you out here trying to keep your ADHD managed the absolute best of luck.
🎵 Our newest headmate is a harpy. That is all.
And he is an entomate. I found his being a harpy a little weird until I considered that we’re a folklorist…. I really shouldn’t be surprised when the brain pulls this sort of thing.
🎵 Somebody asked if I would post pictures of my cat, so. This is my baby! She’s very sweet. The shelter told me when I adopted her that it might take a while for her to warm up, but I had nose prints all over my glasses within 10 minutes of letting her out of the carrier when we got home. She has no sense of personal space and I’ve never been more okay with that. XD
Fun fact, she’s named after the source of one of our fictives. (Her name is Lila, after Lila Bard, Sarow’s source character.)
And my other baby for good measure. This is my orange boy!
He did take a bit to warm up. It took 3 weeks before he would lete pet him. But I’m now his favorite place to nap. He’s a very good boy. (And is named after another character from the same series. XD)
