constructing the narrative of my disordered voice. this is gonna get weird

i was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia in may 2023 by an otolaryngologist. i have tried to seek help with my voice before. the first time was in high school, 2016 maybe. i talked to my primary care doctor. i described how my voice breaks. at the time i think i was experiencing physical discomfort / soreness with it, which is probably why she asked about my diet. anything spicy or acidic? i was like, i love hot cheetos. she was like, you have acid reflux. so they prescribed me some pills for acid reflux. i probably did have acid reflux. the pills did not help my voice though

i tried again in college at the student health center. that must have been 2019? damn. i remember it was while [] was in town because he wanted to record something and i had to say no. at this time i was mostly concerned about my voice from a singing perspective. i guess i didn't have to speak under stress much at all, i was just attending lectures and talking to friends. so any problems i noticed was while singing. in hindsight these problems must have had to do with the muscle tension dysphonia i developed in an attempt to compensate for the spasmodic dysphonia. MTD affects singing, SD does not

anyways the student health center doctor sent me away with THROAT SPRAY and some cough drops. THROAT SPRAY???

i didn't try again until early 2022. it was getting difficult to speak at work. that doctor touched around on my lymphnodes for a second and then told me to get tested for covid

at various points i tried self-medicating, without really knowing that that's what i was doing. in 2022 i was taking ashwaghanda and before that i was just like, drinking a lot

from the introduction to "Alcohol responsiveness in laryngeal dystonia: A survey study" by Kirke, Frucht, & Simonyan, 2015:

an interesting clinical observation in some LD and almost all VT patients is marked improvement of their symptoms after alcohol ingestion. LD and VT are not unique in this regard as several other movement disorders, including essential tremor, myoclonus-dystonia, and posthypoxic myoclonus, are known to improve with alcohol intake, which sometimes leads to the misuse of alcohol in order to self manage this range of disorders [22]. Despite the growing evidence of potential therapeutic effects of alcohol in dystonia [5, 9, 13, 15, 25, 34], our knowledge about its effects remains scarce.

(LD = larygneal dystonia = spasmodic dysphonia) (VT = vocal tremor)

and as far as ashwaghanda goes there is no literature on its effects on SD other than like a youtube vlog by an SD patient. i just tried it because it seemed to be solving other people's problems and also i was depressed