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I have connections to lobster fishermen and woodsmen working Irving woods here in Maine and neither have any experience like this. Does Irving spray defoliant in the US?

What we DO have is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_Frenchmen_of_Maine

Interestingly, that article massively downplays how much this affects my family, and how clearly genetic it is. I literally and physically struggle to not do something my girlfriend asks me to do, a la the plot of Bioshock. She will explicitly tell me "WHEN YOU HAVE TIME or WHEN YOU NEXT COME OUT, bring me some water" and I cannot wait to do it. This behavior generalizes across siblings and generations, including to my somewhat deadbeat father who did not raise me, and thus it cannot be a learned response.

This might seem quaint or just "nice", but both sides of my family have extreme ADHD in the form of complete executive dysfunction. I find it nearly impossible to force myself to do things that I WANT to do, but as soon as someone makes a suggestion I have absolutely no blocker to doing that thing (that I have no interest in doing). Unfortunately this effect doesn't counter my executive dysfunction. If I NEED to do something, the suggestion effect doesn't help nearly as much.

I believe this syndrome may be related to some weird form of ADHD that my family carries but that's entirely unfounded speculation based on this observation and how much overlap there is between many of our symptoms and symptoms found in standard Neurodivergences like ADHD and Autism.

The much funnier aspect of this syndrome is that my entire family, without coordination, has taught our significant others to warn us when they do something like pop a champagne cork, or open one of those Pillsbury crescent roll containers, and we have extreme aversions and startle responses when those two specific sound events are concerned. It's funny every time.



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