I made a post on here a while ago saying how uncanny the posts were to describing me near perfectly. I struggled with this disorder for 30 years. Nerfing myself for 30 years. Not being the best husband to my wife for 6 years. Not the best father to my son for nearly 2 years. All without knowing it.

I have now been on 20mg XR Adderall for a little over 3 months - it has been absolutely life changing.

I’m more attentive. Things are much more easily committed to memory. Menial tasks no longer feel like a huge burden anymore. I can actually read a page in a book I’m interested in without completely forgetting what I’ve read by the end of the page. I’ve had a small, but annoying headache for years every single day - chalked it up to genetics as my mom has a disorder than can cause the same thing. The headaches are gone. I can only assume they were brought on by the stress.

Gang, if you’re at all considering you might have some form of ADD/ADHD, please go see your doctor. I had a thousand reasons why I didn’t want to/need to go beforehand, but I’m so very glad I finally did.

  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    I had a friend who wasn’t sure whether to pursue a diagnosis, because he was already functioning well enough; he had tried some of my meds and found that they helped massively, but he felt weird about pursuing a diagnosis — he said it felt like it was like cheating.

    I’ll tell you what I told him: if you have ADHD, it’s like you’re trying to run a race with a weight shackled to your ankle. It’s been there all your life, so it doesn’t particularly bother you as long as you’re able to compete well enough in the race. Winning isn’t necessary, as long as you can keep up well enough to be relevant.

    The thing about races is that you’re not actually competing against other people, but against yourself. When we train, we compare our time to our previous times, and those affect which races we actually participate in. I’m not going to say that society’s expectations don’t matter, because they absolutely do (especially when we find ourselves struggling to keep up). However, if I saw someone with a weight shackled to them performing decently in a race, I would think “bloody hell, it’s impressive that they’re able to run with that weight holding them back. Imagine what they could do without it!”.

    Training for a race isn’t about other people, and it’s not about our past times. It’s about striving for our potential, and pushing ourselves to find that. If you’re keeping up with what society requires of you now, then that just means that the extra capacity you might get by removing the weight is mostly for you. No matter what a person’s level of functioning is, everyone should have the ability to see what they are capable of when they are unhindered by circumstance. You deserve the opportunity to see what you’re capable of — not for society’s sake, but your own. If you’re the least bit curious about this, you should go for it, and see how it turns out. Even if you don’t end up taking medication, it can be a relief to be able to acknowledge the extra weight you’ve been dragging along.

    • Mose13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      That’s really helpful. That makes me think a few things

      1. I’m already behind on a bunch of things: eye doctor, dentist, and I think I might need PT. Adding another thing to the mix overwhelms me. On one hand, writing this sounds like ADHD. On the other hand, I know health insurance is designed to make you feel as overwhelmed as possible because of greed. So idk if I’m the problem
      2. I’m worried meds will affect my creativity. But I don’t really see any harm in trying, see how I feel, and reevaluating. So this isn’t a big deal to me
      3. To expand on point 1, it feels very frustrating to me that I need to be medicated to function in a society whose values are very backwards. There are things that I wanna do (e.g, read, be more present in conversation, etc) where I think meds would help. But there are many things where I feel society is squeezing me into a box. The meds just make me fit into the box nicely instead of questioning why the box is even necessary. Does that make sense?