Folks, this is it.
After more than six months on Wellbutrin, being the unfocused mess I’ve always been, and being treated like a criminal and/or child by the most condescending, inconsiderate psychiatrist I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing, I decided to say fuck it and find another professional.
For six months, I’ve been made to wait by my health insurance provider for an ADHD test that never came. I’m on a mysterious waiting list that moves forward at a pace that is known only to the Nether Gods and in all likelihood I’ll never get to do this test anyways. All of this because apparently a psychiatrist does not have the authority to say “hey, I think you have ADHD, let’s try a first-line treatment and see if it works for you.” Silly me, thinking a psychiatrist would be able to diagnose a psychiatric disorder.
Well, my new psychiatrist decided to try a new approach: I’ve been on Lithium before, because a GP thought I might be bipolar. It didn’t work, because… I’m not bipolar. So let’s try ADHD medicine and if it works, then, well… in all likelihood, I truly do have ADHD.
Folks, it seems I do have ADHD. Vyvanse (actually Lisvenx, same medication, different name) works a treat. A goddamn treat, I say.
Yesterday felt like the first day of the rest of my life. Cheesy cliché, I know, but holy fucking shit it feels like an entirely new world has been opened to me. I taught five lessons without feeling like I was going to fall asleep for even a single moment. My mind is focused, and my internal monologue is only one audio track instead of four.
I have energy, I don’t feel my eyes trying to shut on their own. I can simply get up and fucking do things. Easy things are easy to do. Difficult things are difficult to do for the correct reasons. I defeated the Fromsoft ADHD field boss: I folded all my laundry and put it away.
How did I spend more than 30 years of my life not feeling like this? How many opportunities did I lose, how many things did I abandon because I felt like I wasn’t capable of doing them, not because of my lack of competence, but rather because there was an invisible wall of inability between me and even the simplest task? I now realize how much of a fucking legit disability ADHD is.
This is only my second day on this medication so I’m afraid that things might not always be like this from now on. I’m afraid that this effect may only be an initial honeymoon phase and I’ll eventually go back to how I was before. If that ever does happen, though, I’ll know that that disorganized mess of a human being is not all that I can be.
I can be better. There is hope.
This has been a life-changing experience for sure, and I hope that every single person who needs ADHD medication does get the opportunity to at least try it once, if only to realize that a better life is, in fact, possible.
Hell yeah comrade! I have a similar story. I was diagnosed by a psyc who couldn’t have cared less many years ago, was prescribed Ritalin and it never felt like it did anything. So I stopped taking it. I lived like that for another 7 years until I was cracking at the seams. I went back to my GP, asked to get back on medication, and Vyvance was their suggestion.
It really felt like the sky is the limit that first day. Hell that first week. You do eventually come down from that feeling but you can still get shit done. The thing you’re left with however are all the bad habits, rituals, routines, and bagade that’s a reflection of decades of living with ADHD.