ADHD and Me

I was diagnosed with ADHD this week. It came as a relief. Episodes of distractedness and short-term forgetfulness that I had lived with my whole life and that I thought were "just me" now have an explanation. A few of my friends are not surprised, but many others are, and my wife was also skeptical at first.

But only I know what it was like for me on the inside.

For that matter, I only know about it because the medicine I started taking immediately (Vyvanse--thanks Mindy!) began working quickly, and it made a tremendous difference. I thought all I was going to feel was more energetic, since the medicine is a stimulant. But that wasn't it at all.

Granted, I have noted that I don't have much of an appetite. I don't mean that food doesn't sound good--I just don't feel hungry. Fortunately, my eating habits are quite well established, so as long as the same amount of food keeps going in, I'm fine. And since I'm not used to the drug yet, by the time I took the second dose the next morning, I still felt the previous dose a bit, and an hour or so later felt a tiny bit wired, like I was over-caffeinated. But that feeling went away soon enough.

What really stood out for me was that, for the first time in as long as I can recall, I didn't feel rushed to do everything. The inappropriate sense of urgency was gone. Even at times when I had nothing that needed to be done, I would feel like time was of the essence, and that I had to hurry. But hurry as I would, I'd still get off-track and diddle around with distractions.

If my wife would call and ask me to pick something up on my way home from work, this used to seem like some kind of onerous task, and I just didn't think I had time for it, even though I had nothing pressing to do at home. But on Wednesday, which was the first day I took the Vyvanse, when Dorothy called and asked me to pick up her prescription, it didn't seem like an issue at all. I didn't feel that irritation that I was too rushed to do that on the way home. So I didn't feel like I had a right to be angry, either, which I would have felt but likely would not have acted on before.

So today, I finally went and got the oil changed in my car, which I have put off for many months because I just "didn't have time." And I even did it though it had slipped my mind earlier in the day and it was getting late. And on the way home, I picked up new windshield wipers, which I've needed for a couple of years, but somehow could never recall to do. And last night I brought all the soda cans to the store for refunds--and this was a FRIDAY night, mind you--because I had the time and it seemed the logical thing to do. That the trunk of my car had been jammed with cans for months and was unavailable for use didn't spur me on at all, but having that feeling gone....

Shit--I'd had no idea how impaired I was, until the impairment was removed. I didn't even know I was impaired that way.

Now the work begins--I have some reassessments to make about my life, about how people have reacted to me, about how I might have come off to them, when how I acted was so different from how I felt.

What can I say, but "Wow!"