A long term Twitter follower asked yesterday, out of concern, under my latest photo, if I had lost weight.

Yes, I replied, my ADHD pills screwed my appetite up and I lost a LOT of weight very fast, but I've worked around it and am now regaining it.

(There's a point to this.)

Several people replied underneath this brief exchange asking for the name of my pills, because they want to lose weight. They might have been joking, but I've thought about this quite hard since and I have Things To Say.

1. I have been reluctant to say anything about my frankly drastic, >2stone weight loss in public because although you can all see it with your own eyes, weight loss is often framed as something to congratulate, and that makes unintentional weight loss difficult to talk about.

2. I struggled with an eating disorder through my teens and was extremely thin. I have struggled not to go back to bad mad places as I have seen my bones poking out of my jeans recently, and it has triggered Bad Old Ways Of Thinking About Myself And Food And Self Worth Etc.

3. Even when I say, repeatedly, that it wasn't deliberate, I don't like it, I'm a bit scared, people say well done and tell me I look great anyway. It's a symptom of how sick we are as a society that our natural response is to treat weight loss as a 'reward' or an 'achievement'.

4. So for avoidance of any doubt, IT WAS NOT DELIBERATE AND IT'S ONE OF THE THINGS THAT TRIGGERED MY CURRENT BREAKDOWN.

5. This is where it gets messy, because I'm a messy human being and the last few months have been a LOT.

6. My personal life took a massive body blow just after I wrapped filming DKL. So i've slightly messily dealt with that by posting a lot of photos of myself, craving that feedback loop of positive reinforcement to cut into a black hole of loneliness and sadness and madness.

7. It might be a bit confusing that someone can simultaneously reach out for attention about how they look and also be horrified by things that are said when they emerge from the mental fog and review their behaviour with some clarity. People are complicated, who knew?

8. This is getting long, but basically I wanted to say that I deliberately don't talk about my meds precisely because I try to be responsible with them and with the information I have about them. But those posts activated something I've wanted to say for a while.

9. Those meds are a Schedule 2 restricted drug and in order to get them, I needed months of assessments by several medical professionals, including two psychiatrists. It was lengthy, expensive, and designed to root out people who seek to abuse the process.

10. The meds I need in order to function as a human being, that have reduced my risk of suicidal ideation, that have saved my job on several occasions, that formulate me into a functional parent, cost £135 every 4 weeks. I pay that, or my whole life falls to shit.

11. One of the reasons that cost is astronomical, is to prevent people trying to get hold of them for non-ADHD uses. So jokey tweets about wanting to know what they are hit a nerve when it's that kind of behaviour that makes them so bloody expensive for people who NEED them.

12. In short:
- Don't be a dick online
- Don't be a dick about other people's meds
- Stop congratulating people on being thinner
- I am more than a number
- So are you
- Have a nice day
- My mouth still hurts.

Addendum: The original commenter wasn't congratulating me, she was concerned. Don't all pile in at someone who actually approached it thoughtfully and kindly.

Second addendum: My blocking finger is ready for anyone who makes any comments here that are bloody unhelpful, fat-negative, body-shaming or similar. No exceptions. And I'd advise you not to engage with it, block, deprive the trolls of the attention, and forget about them.

Third addendum: if I've ever sent you a raunchy photo and you're tempted to flog it right now, I never send the same one twice so I'll always know who flogged it (this is genuinely true and I learned it from Prince Harry) and it's only decent to go halvesies on the xoxo

I can't even be bothered to explain the Prince Harry thing either. Have fun with that one I'm off to get Aloe Vera Juice for my ouchy gob and enjoy the rest of my day.