gekigengar gargant III!!! (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aestivalis) wrote2026-02-24 07:20 pm
aestivalis) wrote2026-02-24 07:20 pm
Setting new tracks in the snow
Whoa, another journal entry! It's only been, like, a month and a half! This is unprecedented work!
Let's talk drugs, motherlovers.
A year and a half ago, I wad diagnosed with ADD. I always write it as ADD because I don't have the hyperactivity element so much as the inattentive element, and I never would have considered this diagnosis as being possible for me because "I'm so lazy", "but I'm such a sleepy person", "but I'm not really active?", I was never really what you'd call a hyperactive or disruptive child, on and on and on. How could I have ADHD? You only have to meet me to know that isn't true!
When the idea was first brought to my attention, it was in response to various issues I've had for a long time but which seemed to be getting worse. I've always been disorganised; that's nothing new. 'Try being more organised,' is advice that has chased me my entire life, along with 'manage your time better'. It's never been that simple, though. I'm excellent at meeting a deadline at the deadline, but historically dreadful at working on things that haven't reached urgent status. If I have to be somewhere, I'm rarely ever late through any fault of my own, but if I simply want to be somewhere or do something? It's very difficult to get myself moving toward that place or that thing. If there is something that needs to be completed at a set time of day, I'll often find myself spending the hours prior in a state of near paralysis, hyper-conscious of The Thing and not being able to do anything else in case it compromises my successful initiation of The Thing at The Time.
There's other stuff as well. 'Out of sight, out of mind' is exceptionally true. I forget things so often, especially if they're not in plain view. If I've started doing something and then someone else asks me for assistance or something more urgent appears, that first thing might as well have never existed. I'll put dishes to soak, or spray a counter and intend to return and wipe it down, and it'll be hours later that I wander past and realise fucking damn it, I never went back! At work, I feel like I run twice as hard as anyone else to achieve the same amount of work. When I say I feel like I'm working harder than my colleagues I'm not saying I work better than them. If anything, it's kind of the opposite.
A personal mantra I've started using, which sounds derogatory but is actually kind of empowering, is: Work Hard, Not Smart. It's not good advice. They're not words to live by. But they are the reality I've been living for my whole life without really realising it. I'm not just stupider than everyone around me. I'm not slower because I'm dumb and lazy. I have a developmental difference, an actual biological distinction in the way my brain works and processes, and it changes how I function and engage. I don't care less because I forget things. If I'm inattentive or neglectful, it might not be a reflection of my moral standing. I work so fucking hard, but I don't work smart. That's just the way I'm built. Now that I know it, I can do something with it. Right?
Better had do something with it! None of this is an excuse to be a bad partner or a crappy colleague. I started down this road to diagnosis and discovery because Fel was brave enough to really sit down with me and talk to me about how it felt like I was drifting further away from her. Becoming less engaged, more difficult to engage with, "vaguer". It was a tough conversation! But it led to so many important results, and deepened so much understanding for both of us. And it really made me reflect on what I was doing, what I was accepting without thought, and what I might want to do about it. 'Be more organised'? That's never helped me. 'Manage your time better'? That doesn't give me anything to actually work with. But with an actual diagnosis and a better understanding of why things were difficult for me but seemingly easy for other people, I finally felt able to strategise. I could, like, actually seize on a meaningful direction instead of trying to grapple with this shapeless lump of putty called "Do Better, Idiot".
And I think it's gone well! I think it's still going well! I've learned some strategies that I actually deploy. I've learned to identify pitfalls and build ways to work around them, or over them, or even to embrace their existence and find ways to make them work for me instead of against. It's been interesting! At times it's been challenging. There are lots and lots of people in my everyday life I haven't told about my diagnosis because I have doubts about what they'll think. I'm not ashamed of them knowing I have ADD—I'm scared of them not believing it at all. Everyone's got something these days. These things are a scam; most people are fine, but they want to believe there's something wrong with them so they have an excuse for their behaviour. I've known you forever and you don't have ADHD; you just don't. How can you have ADHD? You're lazy! You're lazy.
You're lazy.
I don't know if I'm lazy. I'm not sure how to define myself in relation to that word any more. I've spent too many years (actual decades) using it as a bludgeon by which to beat myself down. How many things have I failed to even attempt because I simply knew I wouldn't be good enough? I wouldn't keep up? Wouldn't do well? Be too lazy to commit? I've been an anxious person for years. How much of the anxiety is kicked up by the ADD? How much has the ADD is exacerbated by the anxiety?
It's a lot to think about. Kinda paralysing if you're not careful. But that paralysis, that inability to take actions even when I want to, has been such an inhibiting factor in my life. It continues to be. There are entire days, regularly, where I feel so miserable and defeated by the end because my struggle to do one specific thing meant I actually did nothing. Can't do anything else until The One Thing is achieved, right? Can't have breakfast yet, didn't do The One Thing. Can't do something nice, I still haven't done The One Thing. Can't stop for lunch, The One Thing isn't done yet. Can't go to the bathroom until The One Thing, damn it. And then I've stolen another day from myself with nothing but stress and ineffectiveness and all that self-torture did not achieve The One Thing. It isn't even worth it! It doesn't help anyone!
Whew. I think I had somewhere I was going with this post when I started it, but in the end it's become a bit of a stream of consciousness about some of what I've been feeling and where I'm at with this whole thing. But let's actually get practical, after all that. It's been a little under a year and a half since I got this diagnosis, and although I've learned some strategies and have a way better understanding of how I work compared to how I always thought I "should" be, some issues definitely still persist. So, with assistance from my doctor, I have started! taking! drugs!!! One a day Vyvanse.
I was scared for ages about trying something like this. What if it changed everything? What if it changed nothing? Both were terrifying for different reasons. I didn't want to stop feeling like myself any more. I've always been a pretty happy person! I'm very positively reactive to my environment! I didn't want to stop being delighted by everyday whimsy! What if it changed me in a way that stopped me feeling like me. But what if it did absolutely nothing? What if it proved I was a lazy lying fraud this entire time? What if I don't even have ADD and I've been wasting everyone's time and making excuses? What then? WHAT THEN?
Well, I took the damn medicine. I was told it could take thirty to sixty minutes to come into effect, and it should have a sort of lower level steadying effect rather than being any sort of huge short-term burst in functionality. This wasn't going to be a miracle boost to turn me into Productivity Man for three hours before sending me crashing back to reality. It should be subtler than that. Something that might help me focus better. Help me retain things in my head. Maybe have a slightly easier time with paying attention to more than one thing exclusively at a time. Something to keep my thoughts from ping-ponging quite so much.
About forty minutes after taking it, I got overwhelmed by a sense of everything being quiet.
I've never felt like my brain was a noisy place. I wasn't seeking silence. It's not clamorous in there. I don't feel like I'm at war with my thoughts so much as my behaviours. That first experience with that sense of "everything's so quiet" absolutely freaked me out. It was such a stark moment, and not at all what I was expecting. I lay in Fel's lap and tried to explain what it felt like. She was amazing, because she always is. (What a bitch.)
I've been taking it every day for almost two weeks now. And I think... I LIKE IT? I think I like it! One of the most amazing things I can say about it is that I don't think I've had a self-described "bad day" at work ever since I started taking them. We've had short-staffed days, and tragic days, and there have been some moments of stress or anxiety or frustration. But none of it has felt anything like as overwhelming or crushing as it has done in the past. Another element of ADD I never knew about was trouble with emotional regulation—the highs hit way higher, and the lows way lower. Now that sounds like anxiety co-morbidity to me! But yeah—work still has its moments, but all in all it feels so much more positive and under control now. I'm sure I'm still Working Hard, Not Smart. But it doesn't seem so rough any more. I don't feel so defeated, even when there are still little defeats.
I do think I concentrate a little better, and I do think I remember things more or at least retain things in a more constructive way. I still very much feel like myself, which is huge. That's a huge deal. And I just sat here and wrote a veritable essay, so I guess you might say that counts for something! Not that I haven't always been unnecessarily verbose, mind you ╮(￣▽￣"")╭
In terms of things I don't like so much, I have a few suspicions about side effects. It's always hard to say if something is actually happening/if something is actually a side effect or if one is simply letting fear or overly intense scrutiny make something out of nothing. THAT SAID, I don't think I'm more anxious, but I do think it hits very abruptly and very sharply. Just sudden "actually I want to cry about how awful I feel about everything" that comes out of nowhere, feels tremendously powerful, and then settles within minutes. IS IT RELATED? I DO NOT KNOW. I feel like my heart rate elevates more easily, although never to a point where I feel uncomfortable or in danger. And I think it is suppressing my appetite? The interesting thing there is that I've been finding my stomach rumbling a lot more often, which feels counterintuitive to the idea of reduced appetite but I think is actually my body reacting to eating less overall. I'm not really finding myself all that hungry, even when my body is literally growling at me insisting otherwise, hahaha. I've been eating pretty much like normal, though! I've not started skipping meals or anything! But I have had to push myself a bit harder to eat breakfast and lunch in particular. Even my precious sweeties are being neglected... ૮₍ ˃̣̣̥ -˂̣̣̥ ₎ა
I think the sudden incursion of kaomoji may be a sign that this post has run its course, however. When I started writing this I thought it was going to be a few short paragraphs about the Vyvanse and then I was going to do, like, a Tekken character costume rating. Alas, I have now been typing this post for almost ten thousand years, and thus simply do not care to do something else. Sorry, Tekken Character As Yet Undecided. Perhaps next time I update, it will be to rank your costumes from across the various games. Or perhaps I will never do this at all.
Let's be real. I'm never going to do it. (Sorry FFVIII post I hinted at last time. Sorry everything I've ever considered ever.)
Let's talk drugs, motherlovers.
A year and a half ago, I wad diagnosed with ADD. I always write it as ADD because I don't have the hyperactivity element so much as the inattentive element, and I never would have considered this diagnosis as being possible for me because "I'm so lazy", "but I'm such a sleepy person", "but I'm not really active?", I was never really what you'd call a hyperactive or disruptive child, on and on and on. How could I have ADHD? You only have to meet me to know that isn't true!
When the idea was first brought to my attention, it was in response to various issues I've had for a long time but which seemed to be getting worse. I've always been disorganised; that's nothing new. 'Try being more organised,' is advice that has chased me my entire life, along with 'manage your time better'. It's never been that simple, though. I'm excellent at meeting a deadline at the deadline, but historically dreadful at working on things that haven't reached urgent status. If I have to be somewhere, I'm rarely ever late through any fault of my own, but if I simply want to be somewhere or do something? It's very difficult to get myself moving toward that place or that thing. If there is something that needs to be completed at a set time of day, I'll often find myself spending the hours prior in a state of near paralysis, hyper-conscious of The Thing and not being able to do anything else in case it compromises my successful initiation of The Thing at The Time.
There's other stuff as well. 'Out of sight, out of mind' is exceptionally true. I forget things so often, especially if they're not in plain view. If I've started doing something and then someone else asks me for assistance or something more urgent appears, that first thing might as well have never existed. I'll put dishes to soak, or spray a counter and intend to return and wipe it down, and it'll be hours later that I wander past and realise fucking damn it, I never went back! At work, I feel like I run twice as hard as anyone else to achieve the same amount of work. When I say I feel like I'm working harder than my colleagues I'm not saying I work better than them. If anything, it's kind of the opposite.
A personal mantra I've started using, which sounds derogatory but is actually kind of empowering, is: Work Hard, Not Smart. It's not good advice. They're not words to live by. But they are the reality I've been living for my whole life without really realising it. I'm not just stupider than everyone around me. I'm not slower because I'm dumb and lazy. I have a developmental difference, an actual biological distinction in the way my brain works and processes, and it changes how I function and engage. I don't care less because I forget things. If I'm inattentive or neglectful, it might not be a reflection of my moral standing. I work so fucking hard, but I don't work smart. That's just the way I'm built. Now that I know it, I can do something with it. Right?
Better had do something with it! None of this is an excuse to be a bad partner or a crappy colleague. I started down this road to diagnosis and discovery because Fel was brave enough to really sit down with me and talk to me about how it felt like I was drifting further away from her. Becoming less engaged, more difficult to engage with, "vaguer". It was a tough conversation! But it led to so many important results, and deepened so much understanding for both of us. And it really made me reflect on what I was doing, what I was accepting without thought, and what I might want to do about it. 'Be more organised'? That's never helped me. 'Manage your time better'? That doesn't give me anything to actually work with. But with an actual diagnosis and a better understanding of why things were difficult for me but seemingly easy for other people, I finally felt able to strategise. I could, like, actually seize on a meaningful direction instead of trying to grapple with this shapeless lump of putty called "Do Better, Idiot".
And I think it's gone well! I think it's still going well! I've learned some strategies that I actually deploy. I've learned to identify pitfalls and build ways to work around them, or over them, or even to embrace their existence and find ways to make them work for me instead of against. It's been interesting! At times it's been challenging. There are lots and lots of people in my everyday life I haven't told about my diagnosis because I have doubts about what they'll think. I'm not ashamed of them knowing I have ADD—I'm scared of them not believing it at all. Everyone's got something these days. These things are a scam; most people are fine, but they want to believe there's something wrong with them so they have an excuse for their behaviour. I've known you forever and you don't have ADHD; you just don't. How can you have ADHD? You're lazy! You're lazy.
You're lazy.
I don't know if I'm lazy. I'm not sure how to define myself in relation to that word any more. I've spent too many years (actual decades) using it as a bludgeon by which to beat myself down. How many things have I failed to even attempt because I simply knew I wouldn't be good enough? I wouldn't keep up? Wouldn't do well? Be too lazy to commit? I've been an anxious person for years. How much of the anxiety is kicked up by the ADD? How much has the ADD is exacerbated by the anxiety?
It's a lot to think about. Kinda paralysing if you're not careful. But that paralysis, that inability to take actions even when I want to, has been such an inhibiting factor in my life. It continues to be. There are entire days, regularly, where I feel so miserable and defeated by the end because my struggle to do one specific thing meant I actually did nothing. Can't do anything else until The One Thing is achieved, right? Can't have breakfast yet, didn't do The One Thing. Can't do something nice, I still haven't done The One Thing. Can't stop for lunch, The One Thing isn't done yet. Can't go to the bathroom until The One Thing, damn it. And then I've stolen another day from myself with nothing but stress and ineffectiveness and all that self-torture did not achieve The One Thing. It isn't even worth it! It doesn't help anyone!
Whew. I think I had somewhere I was going with this post when I started it, but in the end it's become a bit of a stream of consciousness about some of what I've been feeling and where I'm at with this whole thing. But let's actually get practical, after all that. It's been a little under a year and a half since I got this diagnosis, and although I've learned some strategies and have a way better understanding of how I work compared to how I always thought I "should" be, some issues definitely still persist. So, with assistance from my doctor, I have started! taking! drugs!!! One a day Vyvanse.
I was scared for ages about trying something like this. What if it changed everything? What if it changed nothing? Both were terrifying for different reasons. I didn't want to stop feeling like myself any more. I've always been a pretty happy person! I'm very positively reactive to my environment! I didn't want to stop being delighted by everyday whimsy! What if it changed me in a way that stopped me feeling like me. But what if it did absolutely nothing? What if it proved I was a lazy lying fraud this entire time? What if I don't even have ADD and I've been wasting everyone's time and making excuses? What then? WHAT THEN?
Well, I took the damn medicine. I was told it could take thirty to sixty minutes to come into effect, and it should have a sort of lower level steadying effect rather than being any sort of huge short-term burst in functionality. This wasn't going to be a miracle boost to turn me into Productivity Man for three hours before sending me crashing back to reality. It should be subtler than that. Something that might help me focus better. Help me retain things in my head. Maybe have a slightly easier time with paying attention to more than one thing exclusively at a time. Something to keep my thoughts from ping-ponging quite so much.
About forty minutes after taking it, I got overwhelmed by a sense of everything being quiet.
I've never felt like my brain was a noisy place. I wasn't seeking silence. It's not clamorous in there. I don't feel like I'm at war with my thoughts so much as my behaviours. That first experience with that sense of "everything's so quiet" absolutely freaked me out. It was such a stark moment, and not at all what I was expecting. I lay in Fel's lap and tried to explain what it felt like. She was amazing, because she always is. (What a bitch.)
I've been taking it every day for almost two weeks now. And I think... I LIKE IT? I think I like it! One of the most amazing things I can say about it is that I don't think I've had a self-described "bad day" at work ever since I started taking them. We've had short-staffed days, and tragic days, and there have been some moments of stress or anxiety or frustration. But none of it has felt anything like as overwhelming or crushing as it has done in the past. Another element of ADD I never knew about was trouble with emotional regulation—the highs hit way higher, and the lows way lower. Now that sounds like anxiety co-morbidity to me! But yeah—work still has its moments, but all in all it feels so much more positive and under control now. I'm sure I'm still Working Hard, Not Smart. But it doesn't seem so rough any more. I don't feel so defeated, even when there are still little defeats.
I do think I concentrate a little better, and I do think I remember things more or at least retain things in a more constructive way. I still very much feel like myself, which is huge. That's a huge deal. And I just sat here and wrote a veritable essay, so I guess you might say that counts for something! Not that I haven't always been unnecessarily verbose, mind you ╮(￣▽￣"")╭
In terms of things I don't like so much, I have a few suspicions about side effects. It's always hard to say if something is actually happening/if something is actually a side effect or if one is simply letting fear or overly intense scrutiny make something out of nothing. THAT SAID, I don't think I'm more anxious, but I do think it hits very abruptly and very sharply. Just sudden "actually I want to cry about how awful I feel about everything" that comes out of nowhere, feels tremendously powerful, and then settles within minutes. IS IT RELATED? I DO NOT KNOW. I feel like my heart rate elevates more easily, although never to a point where I feel uncomfortable or in danger. And I think it is suppressing my appetite? The interesting thing there is that I've been finding my stomach rumbling a lot more often, which feels counterintuitive to the idea of reduced appetite but I think is actually my body reacting to eating less overall. I'm not really finding myself all that hungry, even when my body is literally growling at me insisting otherwise, hahaha. I've been eating pretty much like normal, though! I've not started skipping meals or anything! But I have had to push myself a bit harder to eat breakfast and lunch in particular. Even my precious sweeties are being neglected... ૮₍ ˃̣̣̥ -˂̣̣̥ ₎ა
I think the sudden incursion of kaomoji may be a sign that this post has run its course, however. When I started writing this I thought it was going to be a few short paragraphs about the Vyvanse and then I was going to do, like, a Tekken character costume rating. Alas, I have now been typing this post for almost ten thousand years, and thus simply do not care to do something else. Sorry, Tekken Character As Yet Undecided. Perhaps next time I update, it will be to rank your costumes from across the various games. Or perhaps I will never do this at all.
Let's be real. I'm never going to do it. (Sorry FFVIII post I hinted at last time. Sorry everything I've ever considered ever.)
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