Three years since my ADHD diagnosis & what have I learned?
Still not a lot, unfortunately! And also RFK Jr. want to send me to a camp.
Next week will be three years since I was diagnosed with “chronic and pervasive” (which makes it sound like a weed) ADHD. I’ve yet to have any major breakthroughs in how to best address it. After a failed attempt at finding professional help right after I was diagnosed, I’ve now put that off to a vague “later,” after I’ve recovered from my kidney transplant, which could happen any time between now and next year.
I’m raw-dogging it, as the kids say, going without meds (save for the occasional Xanax) and relying mostly on “to do” lists to help me manage. The lists are invaluable, but I need something even more precise than that, maybe “do this now, bitch” reminders on my phone, with follow-up alerts every 15 minutes until I finally do it. If a “Virtual Nagging Wife” app exists, that would be helpful.
The good news is, despite feeling like I’m mostly flailing in a sea of unfinished (or ignored) tasks, I managed to finish a lengthy manuscript, and just started the first round of editing. The bad news is, I still far too often give in to the siren’s call of just putting everything aside and going on Facebook or BlueSky for a while. Nothing good comes out of this, especially right now, when the news is so relentlessly bad. I am in an eternal struggle between wanting to stay informed, and being so informed that I fall into despair, which happens all too easily these days. Then, of course, despair makes me less eager to get anything done (because what is the point when everything is so terrible), which in turn means I’m more likely to just sit around looking at my phone.
Are the dirty little dopamine hits I get from spending time on social media addictive? Maybe. Is it hard to avoid the temptation? Definitely. It’s not meth or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you either. There’s plenty of other stuff I could, should, and want to be doing instead, but a loud, pushy part of my brain insists why don’t you go read this article about how a Congressman is sponsoring a bill to put Trump’s face on the nickel instead? It’s easy. It’s effortless. All it does is chip away another bit of my will to live.
Oh, and speaking of which, four iguanas under a trenchcoat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a grand plan for people like me, who are just trying to survive in the world with a weird brain that doesn’t process things in the most optimal way. The former heroin addict1 and animal corpse enthusiast is so anti-prescription medication that he’d rather have neurodivergent people abandon their jobs (because we do have jobs, really!) and families (those too!) for an indefinite time to go pick fruits and vegetables, presumably to replace everyone the Trump Administration has deported. Kennedy, so loaded with steroids his skin looks like it’s about to split open like a sausage, believes that fresh air and hard labor is the answer to rewiring someone’s faulty brain.
See, I can’t read about stuff like that for too long, because it makes me angry and despondent, at both the idea of it, and people’s reactions to it. I don’t know what’s less helpful, people shrugging it off, as if his even just floating the idea publicly isn’t fucking horrifying, or people convinced that it’s a done deal and that we should all give up and accept our fates. None of it is helpful, not one little bit.
But! Maybe I won’t have to worry about it much longer. After struggling for what feels like my entire life with poor sleep and everything that comes with that, I have an appointment with a sleep disorders doctor next week. I’ve concluded that all of this shit — ADHD, depression, anxiety, sleeping problems — is intrinsically tied together, and in any case not sleeping well just exacerbates everything else. Is it weird that I’m kind of hoping I get to do one of those overnight sleep studies, where they monitor my brainwaves while I confront Freddy Krueger or whatever? Maybe the doctor will look at my test results and say, in a very grave voice, “My god, this the worst sleeping anyone has ever done. How have you survived all these years?” Indeed, doctor, indeed.
Anyway, hope RFK Jr. doesn’t mind if I show up for my stint at the health farm with a CPAP strapped to my face!
I don’t have anything against heroin addicts in general, just that one.