My Experiment with ADHD Medication

Okay, so it's hard to think of life as experimental or a project, but that is what it has come down to.

Day eight off the Adderall and I am feeling happier, a bit more loopy and all over the board. Lots of movement but no end results, that is the real me.

Last night I was all wound up again and was sucked into the Internet world. I found myself cyber-shopping again, looking at all of the nice fall dresses on Banana Republic. Good thing I stopped myself when I looked at the prices, but then it was past midnight and once again I had broken a resolution.

I thought back to what a fellow adult ADD woman said to me once, "There is no future." In ADD land the future doesn't exist, meaning ideas come in the here and now.

I called up the psychiatrist woman this morning, and told her about the results of the scientific experiment of getting off the meds. I am less irritable, and somehow I feel better. For a month or so, I'd been doing the most mundane things like climbing a staircase or walking down the sidewalk, and feeling like the world was going to cave in. I'd have to tell myself, "It's okay Jane, it's OK, everything will be OK."

It's a horrible way to live. She told me that I should continue with the experiment, and that, if things changed, like I was becoming more anxious, depressed, and even more scattered, to call her. "I'm rooting for you," she said. There was a slant of sun.

Now that I'm in on the ADD workshop, I've decided to continue my attitude that this is all a science experiment. Life is one big lab and I'm here to play. I'm here to try all kinds of remedies from buying planners, to setting a trio of alarm clocks, to mixing a variety of drugs into my brain soup, into going to group meetings, self-help meetings and finding the answer to what is ultimately happiness.

I did learn something through my own journey too. I read somewhere that in human emotion there is a bell curve; on one end is low arousal, on the other end over-arousal and in the center the golden mean. In ADDers there is often a fireworks of arousal at the start, which quickly fizzles, which is why executing something and keeping track of all of the scraps and marbles of everyday life is so challenging. The trick is to find the key or keys to solve the puzzle.