[AE.Personal, AE.ADHD] On the pill.
There's a bit of received wisdom around the area of cures and other medical treatments that suggests that the more complaints a supposed "miracle cure" addresses, the more spurious it is. There may be substances that help fight cancer and there may be substances that help fight Alzheimer's and there may be substances that help fight depression, but if a flower or root or molecule or mineral bath or whatever is sold to you under the idea that it will miraculously cure all of those problems and more, it's more than likely that someone's actually trying to cure you of your money.
The medicine I'm currently taking from ADHD isn't a folk remedy or a quack cure, but this truism has been on my mind the past few days as I have incorporated taking the pills into my daily life because dang if I they aren't playing the part of a miraculous cure-all in my life.
What I expected was that I might have a bit more focus, maybe a better working short-term memory and some of that ever-illusive executive function. I wasn't expecting it to solve all my problems, or even necessarily any of them... I was mainly hoping it would give me a fighting chance in solving them myself.
But as I said in reply to a very kind email: I feel like I've spent years trying to fly across the ocean by flapping my arms and then discovered the existence of airplanes. All of the rituals and routines I had built into my day to try to get a modicum of focus are now either supercharged or superfluous. All the barriers I had erected to try to guard my spoons and my fragile focus are evaporating.
Problems that have bedeviled me for months or years in my immediate environment, personal life, and work are falling one by one as I stop being hung up on the obstacles and begin looking at solutions I feel like I have unlocked another dimension of space through which I can consider logistical puzzles. I can do something by deciding to do it and then doing it.. I don't have to psych myself up, coax or cajole myself, set timer for when I'm going to definitely certainly 100% going to get up and go do it. I have the power now to simply do things.
And I feel good. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Not anxious or hyper or stressed. I feel very lucid and clear-headed. The ever-present fog in my brain is clear to a degree that hasn't happened in all the decades since I first became aware of the fog. I am more patient and understanding in my interactions with others, which is definitely not something I had expected; I had been braced for that kind of thing to get worse.
Today is my first semi-normal workday since I started taking them last Friday and it has been productive, but at this point in my journey, I am still playing catch-up with vital tasks around the house and in particular in my working and living areas that fell by the wayside due to logistical and motivational deficits, and also devoting a small but significant percentage of my time and attention to monitoring things relating to my state of being, the meds, and my daily routine. I have not yet found where my dose level will be going forward or when in the morning I will take them, and I am still watching myself for adverse reactions (mentally or physically)... in a lot of ways it feels, right now, like my life is "about" the meds, like my day revolves around them. I expect that to diminish over the course of October and, ideally, disappear after I have my second appointment at the start of November.
This likely won't be the last newsletter I send on the subject, and as I sat down to right it this afternoon I felt a momentary twinge of uncertainty if I wasn't talking about it too much or if I should perhaps find a different topic to write about rather than having two in a row on the same subject.
But rather than dithering back and forth while doing the menta equivalent of pacing a circular track into the carpet, I simply reminded myself that I signed the last one off with "more as this develops" and, well... it has developed? So here is more.
Barring anything big coming way out of left field, I have a high degree of confidence that I will be resuming daily Monday to Friday updates of this newsletter on varying topics starting this week and continuing for the foreseeable future.
I don't anticipate having more to say about my ADHD journey for at least the next few days, but I will keep you all posted if anything big happens, and my plan is to talk more about how I got here at the one month mark, when I am more firm in my understanding of where "here" is.