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Making better and worse life choices
So about a week ago I decided that, no really, for real, seriously this time, it is time to talk to my doctor about getting some ADHD meds. I have, uh, always been distractible? To say the least?
I don't know if I was ever formally evaluated for ADD - I found paperwork from the one evaluation I remember undergoing around age ten, which tagged me with sensory integration... something. Syndrome, I think. But my mom told me right around that age that I, like three of my four brothers, had ADD.
Then she told me that I didn't need medication or any other kind of treatment because I'm smart enough to compensate for it, which, like, is true? If we're only talking about my grades/ability to hold down a job/ability to crank out quantities of fic other people find slightly alarming. (The quantity, I mean. Although also the fic itself, sometimes.)
But doing all of that stuff is hard, and it's exhausting, and I am in an objective sense really shit at my day job and could be writing so much MORE if I could just. start. writing. when I look at the screen and I know what the next bit is and I have some time to write and I want to write, instead of looking at the blank screen and then veering off again and again to go refresh a news site to read more depressing headlines (that haven't changed in the last half hour) or go play Candy Crush (I'm on level 445, you guys, that has to be a clinically recognizable symptom of SOMETHING) or doing anything else except the thing I need to do and want to do and know how to do that is going to require me to focus for a little while.
I've obviously learned a lot of ways to manage this--lists and spreadsheets and phone timers and little mental tricks to make anything I really want to do something I have to do so I don't have to make a choice--but, you know. Sometimes the tricks work and sometimes they don't and sometimes they backfire and I refuse to do anything I need or want or am supposed to do and spend some number of hours staring dully at Tumblr because at least refreshing Tumblr doesn't commit me to paying attention to anything for three minutes straight.
Uh. So it's been a rough month for my executive functions, is what I'm saying, and ever since deciding to talk to my doctor it's been... worse? or just as bad as it's been since the end of March (when I upset my personal routines by going away for three days on a work conference and apparently just IRRETRIEVABLY UPSET MY MENTAL APPLECART FOREVER? or that could be a coincidence) or, I don't know, it's just like the caterpillar forgetting how to walk, you know? Managing my totally shit executive functions and attention span is something I've done semi-successfully for the last twenty or so years, and all of a sudden I'm constantly noticing how I do it and trying to flag what I'm going to tell my doctor in the stupidly short check-up appointment slot I'm going to try to cram this into and, uh, mostly what I'm doing is tripping over myself and failing at everything.
So. That's happening. That feels like the main thing that is happening right now. I'm afraid first that I won't get the meds, or that I'll have to go through some long process of getting evaluated before I can get the meds (I should say that all three of the aforementioned brothers have gotten onto some variety of ADHD meds as adults and, give or take one maybe-or-maybe-not-associated episode of atrial fibrillation (#4 brother is, generally speaking, about two steps up from pre-serum Steve Rogers in terms of his general health, so it could've been anything), they are all doing great on them, and my dad also had a good experience with them, so I feel like I have a reasonable expectation of a good result with medication for my specific brand of brain thing as long as sex differences in medication response don't totally fuck me over--eldest brother and I especially are pretty much brain twins, and Adderall's been great for him)... is this all one sentence?
Anyway, so my primary fear is not getting the drugs because it's only been a week and the prospect of maybe getting the drugs is already so fucking derailingly distracting that I don't know how I'm going to handle it if this process drags on for months or something.
And my other fear is getting the drugs and having them work great and being much happier and more productive, because that will mean that all the things that I haven't managed to do, and all the things that have been hard, and all the things that have made me unhappy over the course of my entire adulthood while I wasn't getting myself medicated for a condition I knew I had... it will have been fixable. And that means it will have been my own fault for not fixing it sooner.
But--that's a thing to write down on the list of things to tell fifteen-year-old me, along with "maybe read a book about asexuality" and "look, just don't tell your mom about your hobbies, it's just not worth it." The only thing to do now is try to fix the thing. So. Onward.
...Okay so I just meant for that to be an explanation that, yes, I know I have ADD and, yes, I have probably been in need of brain meds for it for a while, but. I guess I had some things to say?
Um, so, bullet point #2 for this post (the eponymous worse life choice, given how much I already have on my plate): I'm auctioning off a story at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fandomaid! To keep it simple for myself, and up the odds of the winner actually receiving their story sometime this year, I've limited it to a Steve/Bucky story, but if you want one of those from me (uh, and if you want to outbid the person who's currently got me at $50) my thread is here!
I don't know if I was ever formally evaluated for ADD - I found paperwork from the one evaluation I remember undergoing around age ten, which tagged me with sensory integration... something. Syndrome, I think. But my mom told me right around that age that I, like three of my four brothers, had ADD.
Then she told me that I didn't need medication or any other kind of treatment because I'm smart enough to compensate for it, which, like, is true? If we're only talking about my grades/ability to hold down a job/ability to crank out quantities of fic other people find slightly alarming. (The quantity, I mean. Although also the fic itself, sometimes.)
But doing all of that stuff is hard, and it's exhausting, and I am in an objective sense really shit at my day job and could be writing so much MORE if I could just. start. writing. when I look at the screen and I know what the next bit is and I have some time to write and I want to write, instead of looking at the blank screen and then veering off again and again to go refresh a news site to read more depressing headlines (that haven't changed in the last half hour) or go play Candy Crush (I'm on level 445, you guys, that has to be a clinically recognizable symptom of SOMETHING) or doing anything else except the thing I need to do and want to do and know how to do that is going to require me to focus for a little while.
I've obviously learned a lot of ways to manage this--lists and spreadsheets and phone timers and little mental tricks to make anything I really want to do something I have to do so I don't have to make a choice--but, you know. Sometimes the tricks work and sometimes they don't and sometimes they backfire and I refuse to do anything I need or want or am supposed to do and spend some number of hours staring dully at Tumblr because at least refreshing Tumblr doesn't commit me to paying attention to anything for three minutes straight.
Uh. So it's been a rough month for my executive functions, is what I'm saying, and ever since deciding to talk to my doctor it's been... worse? or just as bad as it's been since the end of March (when I upset my personal routines by going away for three days on a work conference and apparently just IRRETRIEVABLY UPSET MY MENTAL APPLECART FOREVER? or that could be a coincidence) or, I don't know, it's just like the caterpillar forgetting how to walk, you know? Managing my totally shit executive functions and attention span is something I've done semi-successfully for the last twenty or so years, and all of a sudden I'm constantly noticing how I do it and trying to flag what I'm going to tell my doctor in the stupidly short check-up appointment slot I'm going to try to cram this into and, uh, mostly what I'm doing is tripping over myself and failing at everything.
So. That's happening. That feels like the main thing that is happening right now. I'm afraid first that I won't get the meds, or that I'll have to go through some long process of getting evaluated before I can get the meds (I should say that all three of the aforementioned brothers have gotten onto some variety of ADHD meds as adults and, give or take one maybe-or-maybe-not-associated episode of atrial fibrillation (#4 brother is, generally speaking, about two steps up from pre-serum Steve Rogers in terms of his general health, so it could've been anything), they are all doing great on them, and my dad also had a good experience with them, so I feel like I have a reasonable expectation of a good result with medication for my specific brand of brain thing as long as sex differences in medication response don't totally fuck me over--eldest brother and I especially are pretty much brain twins, and Adderall's been great for him)... is this all one sentence?
Anyway, so my primary fear is not getting the drugs because it's only been a week and the prospect of maybe getting the drugs is already so fucking derailingly distracting that I don't know how I'm going to handle it if this process drags on for months or something.
And my other fear is getting the drugs and having them work great and being much happier and more productive, because that will mean that all the things that I haven't managed to do, and all the things that have been hard, and all the things that have made me unhappy over the course of my entire adulthood while I wasn't getting myself medicated for a condition I knew I had... it will have been fixable. And that means it will have been my own fault for not fixing it sooner.
But--that's a thing to write down on the list of things to tell fifteen-year-old me, along with "maybe read a book about asexuality" and "look, just don't tell your mom about your hobbies, it's just not worth it." The only thing to do now is try to fix the thing. So. Onward.
...Okay so I just meant for that to be an explanation that, yes, I know I have ADD and, yes, I have probably been in need of brain meds for it for a while, but. I guess I had some things to say?
Um, so, bullet point #2 for this post (the eponymous worse life choice, given how much I already have on my plate): I'm auctioning off a story at
fandomaid! To keep it simple for myself, and up the odds of the winner actually receiving their story sometime this year, I've limited it to a Steve/Bucky story, but if you want one of those from me (uh, and if you want to outbid the person who's currently got me at $50) my thread is here!
no subject
I HEAR you about the feeling of lost time. I'm still grieving for the years I spent depressed and unable to get anything done because I was so swamped and overwhelmed, all the while being told "oh, everyone has trouble with papers, don't worry, you'll do fine", thinking that probably meant that despite the fact that I rarely had trouble understanding the stuff presented in class, I was just too stupid for uni (and realised it way too late to drop out). It didn't help that doctors and therapists kept telling me "procrastination is a symptom of depression, it'll pass", whereas I was (and still am) 99% sure that procrastination and the inability to get ANYTHING done, and the resulting feelings of worthlessness, are what triggered the depression in the first place.
I only got properly diagnosed a month and a bit ago, and I'm still waiting for the paperwork that gives me the dx of "ADHD Type I -- Primarily Inattentive" black on white. I wasn't initially going for the diagnosis in order to get meds; I just desperately needed a professionally qualified someone to tell me I'm not just exceedingly lazy or stupid, and that it wasn't all in my head (or, well, that it is, but ... that I'm not imagining shit? that I actually find it harder to do this stuff than other people do? something like that).
I'm also having a bit of an identity crisis because a lot of stuff I always kind of jammed into the drawer labeled "my personality (some shitty some nice)" apparently is ADD related, and I'm not sure how to feel about that. Like a specimen, and not in a good way.
Regarding medication: the more I think about it, the more I figure I don't have much to lose. Worst case scenario, the side effects are too much for me, and I drop them. I'm in Germany, so thankfully insurance will not be an issue (though finding a GP who'll prescribe the meds might). Best case, I might actually learn to tidy my room without supervision, consistently remember to take my other meds, stop getting "OUT OF RAM -- PROCESSING -- PLEASE WAIT" shutdowns, learn to finish stuff (case in point: my housemate just yelled for me to get my pasta. It'd been on the hob for about thirty minutes at that point. I'd just meant to peek at DW really quick.), you name it. I guess it's worth a shot. I'll just have to keep reminding myself that second-guessing the way my life's gone so far won't change anything, and ... I dunno, embrace whatever comes next?
Sorry. This was rambly and long and probably way more ME ME ME than I meant it to turn out.
tl;dr: thank you for sharing this. In a way, it's a huge relief and help to see that and how other people deal with all this.
(Also I ADORE your fic and the icon on this post and ajkdshfasd am more than slightly AWED at the amount and quality of productive output you have despite ADHD. Just, kudos. Wow.)