u/Midnight_Sun_BR

I got vaccinated against dengue today, and I’m much happier about it than I expected to be. I’m Brazilian, and dengue is not some exotic disease we only read about in health articles. It is part of the atmosphere here. When the rainy season comes, so do the mosquitoes, the public health campaigns, the warnings, the stories of someone’s neighbor, coworker, aunt, patient, friend getting sick. In 2024 and 2025, the first months of the year were especially frightening in many parts of the country. This year has felt calmer where I live, thankfully, but dengue is still always there in the background.

I’ve had dengue before, and it was horrible. Not “a bad flu” horrible. More like: your whole body becomes heavy, painful, wrong. You feel drained in a way that is hard to explain until it happens to you. It is one of those diseases that people sometimes underestimate until it knocks them flat. The strange thing about dengue is that there are four serotypes. Having had one type does not make you safely immune to the others. So even though I had dengue once, I was still vulnerable. That is why getting a tetravalent vaccine, one designed to protect against all four types, feels like a very real layer of protection.

And Brazil is now doing something genuinely historic with this single-dose dengue vaccine. As someone who works in healthcare, being able to receive it through SUS, our public health system, felt deeply meaningful. A vaccine is not just a product. It is science, logistics, public policy, nurses, researchers, cold chains, paperwork, appointments, trust. It is a whole invisible structure turning into one small needle in your arm.

That matters even more because Brazil has a long and beautiful history of mass vaccination. We know how to do this. We have one of the most important public immunization traditions in the world. But in recent years, far-right science denial and antivaccine rhetoric damaged that culture badly. A country that used to be proud of vaccination had to watch misinformation make people afraid of one of the most effective public health tools we have.

So yes, I am proud today. Proud to be vaccinated. Proud not to be part of fear-driven denialism. Proud to trust science, public health, and the people who keep these systems alive even when politics tries to poison them. Today I don’t just feel protected. I feel grateful.

_ Update _

The thing about dengue is that it does not feel distant when you live here. It comes from mosquitoes — specifically infected female Aedes mosquitoes — and whenever heat and rain arrive together, any forgotten little pool of standing water can become a nursery. A plant pot, a bottle cap, a gutter, a backyard, a construction site. And then they find you. At work, at home, on the street, in a mall, anywhere. Brazil is urbanized, but it is also still very green in many places, and in the countryside and smaller inland cities that mix of heat, rain, trees, houses and standing water makes dengue prevention a constant battle. We do campaigns, we clean yards, we empty containers, we warn people, and still the mosquitoes are always there somehow. And when dengue hits, it is not gentle: high fever, crushing fatigue, headache, pain behind the eyes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, body pain, and sometimes a drop in platelets, which is part of why bleeding risk becomes such a concern. You cannot just take any painkiller either. Anti-inflammatory drugs are avoided when dengue is suspected or confirmed, because they can make bleeding risk worse. So you are basically left with things like dipyrone, which many countries do not even use or approve, or paracetamol/acetaminophen — which, in my case, I am allergic to. So yes, dengue is not just “mosquito fever.” It is miserable, restrictive, and scary in a very practical way.

I got vaccinated against dengue today, and I’m much happier about it than I expected to be. I’m Brazilian, and dengue is not some exotic disease we only read about in health articles. It is part of the atmosphere here. When the rainy season comes, so do the mosquitoes, the public health campaigns, the warnings, the stories of someone’s neighbor, coworker, aunt, patient, friend getting sick. In 2024 and 2025, the first months of the year were especially frightening in many parts of the country. This year has felt calmer where I live, thankfully, but dengue is still always there in the background.

I’ve had dengue before, and it was horrible. Not “a bad flu” horrible. More like: your whole body becomes heavy, painful, wrong. You feel drained in a way that is hard to explain until it happens to you. It is one of those diseases that people sometimes underestimate until it knocks them flat. The strange thing about dengue is that there are four serotypes. Having had one type does not make you safely immune to the others. So even though I had dengue once, I was still vulnerable. That is why getting a tetravalent vaccine, one designed to protect against all four types, feels like a very real layer of protection.

And Brazil is now doing something genuinely historic with this single-dose dengue vaccine. As someone who works in healthcare, being able to receive it through SUS, our public health system, felt deeply meaningful. A vaccine is not just a product. It is science, logistics, public policy, nurses, researchers, cold chains, paperwork, appointments, trust. It is a whole invisible structure turning into one small needle in your arm.

That matters even more because Brazil has a long and beautiful history of mass vaccination. We know how to do this. We have one of the most important public immunization traditions in the world. But in recent years, far-right science denial and antivaccine rhetoric damaged that culture badly. A country that used to be proud of vaccination had to watch misinformation make people afraid of one of the most effective public health tools we have.

So yes, I am proud today. Proud to be vaccinated. Proud not to be part of fear-driven denialism. Proud to trust science, public health, and the people who keep these systems alive even when politics tries to poison them. Today I don’t just feel protected. I feel grateful.

_ Update _

The thing about dengue is that it does not feel distant when you live here. It comes from mosquitoes — specifically infected female Aedes mosquitoes — and whenever heat and rain arrive together, any forgotten little pool of standing water can become a nursery. A plant pot, a bottle cap, a gutter, a backyard, a construction site. And then they find you. At work, at home, on the street, in a mall, anywhere. Brazil is urbanized, but it is also still very green in many places, and in the countryside and smaller inland cities that mix of heat, rain, trees, houses and standing water makes dengue prevention a constant battle. We do campaigns, we clean yards, we empty containers, we warn people, and still the mosquitoes are always there somehow. And when dengue hits, it is not gentle: high fever, crushing fatigue, headache, pain behind the eyes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, body pain, and sometimes a drop in platelets, which is part of why bleeding risk becomes such a concern. You cannot just take any painkiller either. Anti-inflammatory drugs are avoided when dengue is suspected or confirmed, because they can make bleeding risk worse. So you are basically left with things like dipyrone, which many countries do not even use or approve, or paracetamol/acetaminophen — which, in my case, I am allergic to. So yes, dengue is not just “mosquito fever.” It is miserable, restrictive, and scary in a very practical way.

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I’ve been thinking about this thing and I don’t even know if I’m explaining it right, but maybe someone here will get it.

For me ADHD is not only “I can’t focus.” Sometimes I can focus like a possessed librarian if the thing has enough texture. Enough emotion. Enough novelty. Enough meaning. Enough sparkle, I guess.

The problem is that normal life very often does not come with enough sparkle.

It’s not that I need everything to be exciting in a childish way. It’s more like my brain refuses to attach properly to things that feel too grey. I can do them, technically. I can go through the motions. But inside it feels like chewing cardboard politely.

Music helps a lot. I have tons of playlists, different moods, different little worlds. Shows help when I’m hyperfocused on one. Right now it’s Shameless, and I already know I’ll have to find another one when it ends, because my brain is ridiculous and apparently needs a fictional ecosystem to rent space inside.

My cats help too, but in a totally different way. Not dopamine casino, not screen, not noise. Just smell, warmth, weight, fur, presence. That kind of regulation that feels almost primitive, in a good way. Like my body remembers it is a body.

Gaming can help, but I’m more careful with that one. I used to play way more years ago. Now it’s usually just one short match, maybe two, and I get tired fast. So it feels more like a closing ritual than an actual addiction now.

I’m not asking for medical advice. I’m more asking if other ADHD people feel this same thing: that the real hunger is not only for stimulation, but for salience. For the world to feel alive enough that your attention can grab onto it.

Like, if something has color, story, rhythm, emotional charge, smell, sound, texture — my brain wakes up. If it doesn’t, everything becomes possible but weirdly flavorless.

Do you have non-destructive things that give your brain that brightness? Not just productivity hacks, please. I mean real things. Things that make the world feel less like a waiting room.

I’ve been thinking about this thing and I don’t even know if I’m explaining it right, but maybe someone here will get it.

For me ADHD is not only “I can’t focus.” Sometimes I can focus like a possessed librarian if the thing has enough texture. Enough emotion. Enough novelty. Enough meaning. Enough sparkle, I guess.

The problem is that normal life very often does not come with enough sparkle.

It’s not that I need everything to be exciting in a childish way. It’s more like my brain refuses to attach properly to things that feel too grey. I can do them, technically. I can go through the motions. But inside it feels like chewing cardboard politely.

Music helps a lot. I have tons of playlists, different moods, different little worlds. Shows help when I’m hyperfocused on one. Right now it’s Shameless, and I already know I’ll have to find another one when it ends, because my brain is ridiculous and apparently needs a fictional ecosystem to rent space inside.

My cats help too, but in a totally different way. Not dopamine casino, not screen, not noise. Just smell, warmth, weight, fur, presence. That kind of regulation that feels almost primitive, in a good way. Like my body remembers it is a body.

Gaming can help, but I’m more careful with that one. I used to play way more years ago. Now it’s usually just one short match, maybe two, and I get tired fast. So it feels more like a closing ritual than an actual addiction now.

I’m not asking for medical advice. I’m more asking if other ADHD people feel this same thing: that the real hunger is not only for stimulation, but for salience. For the world to feel alive enough that your attention can grab onto it.

Like, if something has color, story, rhythm, emotional charge, smell, sound, texture — my brain wakes up. If it doesn’t, everything becomes possible but weirdly flavorless.

Do you have non-destructive things that give your brain that brightness? Not just productivity hacks, please. I mean real things. Things that make the world feel less like a waiting room.

I don’t know exactly how to explain this without sounding like I’m either defending weed too much or being dramatic about it, but I’ll try.

I use cannabis in a pretty stable way. Usually once at night during weekdays, sometimes twice a day on weekends. It’s not an all-day thing, and my dose is not really going up. I can skip it. I don’t get angry, I don’t stop sleeping, I don’t feel like I’m physically falling apart.

But sober life gets… flat. Not always, not in every possible way, but a lot.

It’s like eating food without lemon, without pepper, without sauce. You can eat it. It’s food. You are not dying. But something is missing and your brain knows it.

I have ADHD, and I had anhedonia before cannabis was ever part of my life, so I don’t feel like weed created the problem. It feels more like weed found the problem and said “ok, I can put color here for a while.”

Music gets deeper. Shows get warmer. My cats feel even more comforting. Little rituals feel like rituals, not just random things I do to survive the evening. The world gets more magnetized, if that makes sense. Like things finally have texture again.

And that’s exactly why I’m trying to be careful.

Because it doesn’t feel chaotic. It doesn’t feel like “oh no, my life is ruined by weed.” It feels functional. Almost too functional. Like a very reliable emotional seasoning.

I still have things that give me brightness without cannabis: music, my cats, some shows, gaming sometimes. So it’s not like cannabis is the only source of joy. But it definitely makes joy louder. It makes everything more saturated.

So I guess I’m asking about this middle place. Not rock bottom, not “weed is my personality”, not denial either.

Has anyone here dealt with this kind of psychological dependence where the issue is not escalating use, but the fear that sober life feels under-seasoned?