Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Hi There! I Am the Personification of a First World Problem

I’ve been on the ADD med for a couple weeks, here are my thoughts.

Note: I will also stop talking about this, cease my incessant navel gazing and get back to whatever it is I actually do here, but this whole “Holy crap! I have ADD! Wow!” thing has been quite the revelation for me, so it’s been on my brain a fair amount. I actually do have some things in my “editing” pipeline and will get them going in the near future.

OK! Onward!

The Good Stuff:


  1. It works! And by that I mean, I can concentrate on things a lot better. The distinguishing characteristic of my ADD is that I feel like I have a million channels of TV in my head, all going at the same time and someone is pressing the remote’s channel button every 15 seconds. If you were to talk to me in person, you would see this in the way I tell a story. I bounce and wander in seven different tangential directions, possibly never coming back to my main point. That’s how it is to be in my head all the time. It’s sightly exhausting and endlessly frustrating and makes it tricky to get stuff done. “Tricky” being the understatement of the century. Usually I try and edit the wandering out of my my writing, but sometimes it is as plain as day. I also tend to be distracted by everything around me quite easily. Over the years I found that I’d adopted some habits to neutralize those tendencies as much as possible, i.e., noise canceling headphones coupled with music, fewer blinking things on my screen, shutting down my Internet, hiding ALL other open apps on my Mac, that sort of thing. I don’t seem to need those “crutches” as much.

  2. Even though this stuff is speed (an amphetamine), it makes me sleepy. Like, DEAD tired at the end of the day. Doc warned me that one of the side effects could be a touch of insomnia as my brain unwinds from the speed. Not! If anything, I realize that I was in DEEP sleep debt. I go to bed at around 9-10 and wake up at 8. Crazy. I also get to sleep faster. Usually, it takes me a good 45 minutes to get to sleep. The only way I could get to sleep was to read a book I’d already read a zillion times (or a much-watched movie on my iPod). That would put my brain on cruise control and allow me to drift off. Now I hit the pillow and I’m out. I’m liking that.

  3. When I sit for extended periods of time, (staff meeting being the prime example), I fidget. That’s diminished significantly. Less leg jiggling, finger flipping and random twitchy-ness.

  4. The Funny. This may sound weird, but I was very worried that being on this med would “take my funny away.” Doesn’t seem to have happened. Though I am more calm, I’m finding I can still be funny. I know that’s a strange thing to be worried about, and though I’m trying not to have “being funny” as the main thrust of my life these days, it’s still important to me. Have to see how that plays out in the long run as I start writing again.

The Less Than Optimal Things:

  1. The med is an amphetamine. (Duh.) It. Scares. Me. Though this dose is pretty tiny and I’m not abusing it, it still freaks me out. Hey, I saw that episode of M*A*S*H where Charles gives Radar’s pet rat some speed so it’ll run really fast in a race and then the poor little beast gets sick! I have seen the consequences! Seriously, this stuff scares me. I’m hesitant to be dependent on it.

  2. Dry mouth. This is especially true by the end of the day. It’s not bad breath, but it kind of feels like that “gummy, just woke up from a nap” mouth. I drink a lot of water and will start carrying a water bottle. Hard candy also helps. (I’m essentially becoming my grandfather, who always had hard candy squirreled away in a pocket somewhere. Oy. Vey.)

  3. I don’t eat. This could also land in the “good” column, as I’ve already lost a few pounds, but I’m putting it here. I forget to eat and then end up light headed at the end of the day. Eating a decent breakfast before the med kicks in is crucial now.

  4. Slight headache at the end of the day. Not bad, but kind of annoying.

  5. Hot flashes. Kinda. It’s weird. I just feel warm all the time. Though this may have less to do with the med and more to do with my entering early menopause.

I can see that there are more Bad Things, but the Good Stuff far outweighs the bad for me. We’ll see how it goes for a couple months.

Reha mentioned that she’s quite envious that I’m losing weight without lifting a finger. Though that was mitigated when I said, “Sure, but in the meantime, I’ll be jealous of your successful law career since we’ve determined I don’t really have much of a career at all because of this thing I’ve got and tack on the fact that it took me approximately 25 years to figure out what my problem is and your ability to function without pharmaceutical support.”

“Oh… yeah… right. Sorry about that. Though I’ll still be jealous because you are going to lose a bunch of weight. Nothing will change that, I’m afraid.”

Anyway, one thing I’ve learned through my short experience with “brain” drugs is that seemingly the only way to know if something is going to work is to give it a whirl. If it works, you are golden; if not, move to the next thing. It’s like diagnosis happens once you start treatment. Funky. Brains are weird.

And that’s enough about that.

Jon scribbled this mess on 12/03/08 at 01:48 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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