The first week on ADHD medication
Wow.
I woke up Monday morning still not sure about this pill. I texted my sister for moral support.
Me: I’m nervous to take the medicine.
Sister: You got this! Be adventurous like Jeremy!
A few minutes go by.
Me: Tell me one more good reason.
Sister: I’m also taking it and have had more good things happen and zero bad things!
I swallowed the pill.
I proceeded to send check in text messages to family and close friends as the week progressed. No one asked for these. But I felt tectonic plates shifting beneath the ground of my life and I had to speak it out loud or I feared it would be a mirage.
A note on the layout of this essay today. I could reflect on deeper truths and how this new story is changing me, but today I’m going to offer a list of noticings from the first week on ADHD medication. Not because I don’t love a deep dive on the meaning under the meaning, but because all I wanted to read when researching ADHD medication was a summary of how the first week went. Future friends, this is for you! And anyone else who is intrigued by mental health and how we heal as human beings.
The first day
I took the medicine with food around 7:00 am and experienced a little nausea an hour later. Manageable. By mid-morning, I sat down in a chair and noticed something new.
My brain was quiet.
I heard music playing in the background but when I stopped moving, my brain was quiet. No pinging thoughts. Hmm.
Then I looked around and noticed something new. There were no emotions attached to anything. That’s odd. This is not something I walked around noticing about myself. Then it hit me. A big part of ADHD is emotional dysregulation. I’ve long been ashamed of my deeply sensitive nature. An intense inner emotional world is my norm. The medicine seemed to be helping me separate that a bit. Intriguing.
As my kids played that summer morning, I grew curious about task initiation, a big hang up for most ADHDers. Would this medication help my brain act on tasks that were important but not interesting to my dopamine deficient brain? Later in the morning, I bent down to pick up something off the floor in the kitchen and noticed a dirty baseboard. I stood up, got cleaning spray, a paper towel, and cleaned the baseboard.
This may seem easy to you. But normally I would have put that task on my to do list and felt shame over not doing it for several weeks. I would manipulate and hype myself up to finish the task, assuming it would take great amounts of energy to get started. Instead, I just cleaned it. No drama. No hype. It didn’t seem hard to my medicated brain. Wow.
I texted my sister, “So, how do we choose what to do? I’m so used to the effort it takes to get revved up. Do I just…choose something…and do it?”
I hear you laughing. But I didn’t know my brain had struggled with this my whole life. I assumed everyone felt overwhelmed to an extent. You mean everyone doesn’t have a million thoughts pinging around making it hard to focus and move forward?
I wondered what else I would learn in the days ahead?
The first week
It feels like I’m talking to my one actual self instead of ten versions of me having a conversation at the same time.
Big emotions are rolling through as I start to realize what I’ve been navigating for forty years. I make room for the anger. The rage. The grief. The loss.
I didn’t know I was fighting such an uphill battle. Going against the current. Zero idea. No wonder my self-esteem tanks. I thought I just wasn’t trying hard enough.
I’m noticing moments that used to bring me consistent frustration. Now I’m able to regulate my emotions and respond in a more grounded way accurate to the situation at hand.
I’m still feeling my emotions, but they’re not knocking me over. They enter slowly and I have a choice to deal with them now or wait a little bit. I never felt like I had a choice when the intensity made it impossible to ignore.
I don’t notice a crash or the medicine wearing off as I’ve heard can happen with stimulants. This non-stimulant feels more gentle. My appetite diminishes during the day a bit and returns at night. I keep eating at typical times, just sticking to foods that sound decent.
The medicine is giving me space to notice and choose my reactions. It doesn’t make me magically happy, but I have a few seconds to choose what to do. This is already improving my relationships.
I see the impulsive part of my ADHD brain running around and I can choose when to follow it, or when to let it go. Wow.
I made a few professional project decisions (booking a retreat in Ohio and starting this Substack!) that before I would have struggled with for a few days. I would have hyped myself up to get past the low self-esteem and shame. Now? I want to do them. I know I’d be good at it. So I’m doing it.
The vibe of day three? My body gently wept while I cleaned the house with a sense of ease. A weird combination of energy but it felt good.
My son needed some new clothing bins with labels on them. I made the labels, covered them with tape, punched holes, found string, and tied them to his new bins. All without distraction taking me to start five other projects and then shaming myself for not finishing the first one. I can focus.
Going on ADHD medication is like driving your car through a bumpy dusty paved gravel road and then finally hitting clean smooth quiet pavement.
I experienced many frustrating moments where I saw my scattered brain more clearly than ever. But I was able to regulate my emotions and bring self-compassion and empathy to the table.
I have a feeling I’ll be processing this past month for a long time. As it should be with the changes in our lives. It’s tempting to rush past the challenging intersections, in hopes of finding that elusive green grass.
An annoying truth: I’ve never found that green grass located in some other place, where if I could just get there, everything would finally be okay.
Instead, the only thing that’s ever brought me the green grass effect, is realizing I’m already standing on it. I already have what I need to see from a new angle. I’m just too preoccupied to notice. Or I’m wrapped up in shame and fear. Or I have a lot riding on never seeing the new perspective.
We have countless reasons to never pull the thread on the knots that haunt us. But maybe those reasons aren’t enough anymore. Maybe it’s time.
I have a sense this season on ADHD medication (however long it lasts) is going to enable me to unravel some knots I could never reach.
Resurrection.
My reader, what about you?
Where do you find new perspective when you get stuck? What changes your angle so you can see something you didn’t see before? Or even more — what’s riding on you not seeing something new because it will unravel something you’ve wanted to avoid?
There are moments and years where we stare at the same thing over and over, unable to see anything new. We hit our head against the wall in a relationship, an impossible family dynamic, or an old belief about ourselves. We don’t see a next step. The path is shrouded in fog. We don’t know whether to stand still and wait or take a step and explore.
Sometimes it’s a conversation with a friend that opens a viewpoint we hadn’t yet seen. Or meditation and mindfulness inviting us to sink into the present moment so we can more clearly hear our deepest wisdom. Maybe it’s traveling to a new place that gives us fresh eyes for an old situation.
It could be bravely feeling our way into emotions we’ve long pushed to the side, scared to pull those threads. Feeling into it enables us to access clarity and possibility.
Sometimes we finally succumb to the reality screaming in our bodies: this isn’t working. To save ourselves, we must go inward and listen.
And sometimes? It’s exploring a life-changing diagnosis and bravely trying a new-to-you treatment that gifts a brand new perspective.
Here’s to the invitations to unravel. May they surprise us out of our assumption we’ve got this life figured out. There’s far more awaiting us on the other side of our choice to pull that thread.