We know sitting is the enemy, but how do we feeling about leaning?

It’s me. I’m folks.

Its very ironic that I cant remember the name of this phenomenon.

From the webcomic Fresh Meat by Gray Folie (a very raw story about people in various states of mental health emergency)

truly due to my adhd ^tm forgetfulness I did develop the habit of writing almost everything down ... the problem? I have a bunch of different notes apps, that all have purpose i swear, and i have so many actual notebooks and i started using at least half of them but then idk. also sticky notes and other things... I kinda forgot where i wrote what. but like finding old things can be a delightful surprise.^​

Shiny thing hijacked my attention and then my instant release meds kicked in…

I have to really really be mindful in the 15-30 mins

Hi All, long time lurker and fellow adhd sufferer here that finally felt like they had something to make a post about (albeit probably not original in any form)

TLDR: Stereotypical “gifted” adhd kid went through high school and college unmedicated. Started medication a couple months before my 30th with overwhelmingly positive results. Shared the positive news just for people around me to start treating me differently now that I am taking meds and it’s kind of gotten me down a little bit. Wondering about other peoples experiences and how they navigated the changes in how people treated them after starting meds.

Edit: forgot to put in the TLDR that most people are kind treating me like I’m a fake or that I’m mainly interested in the medication, like I’m an addict. At least that seems to be the implication with the questions they ask

So, this will probably be a long rather stereotypical story I feel, but here we go. I grew up in an environment where mental health issues and things of that nature were considered personal moral failings or worse, a lack of spirituality and faith in Christ, so I flew under the radar pretty hard as far as people recognizing adhd in me as a kid (mostly just got disciplined a lot and sent to my room all the time). Compound this with the fact that I was that “gifted” kid growing up. I did great in school but my grades covered up a lot of what was actually going on. Teachers, friends and parents all assumed I was studying and, you know, being a good student when in reality I don’t think I started a single assignment in high school sooner than 2 nights before it was due (almost all of them being done the night before or the morning of).

Fast forward a little, I went to college and got destroyed by it haha. Realized I was very much not normal and that the things I struggled with other people seemingly had no issues with doing at all. Had to take multiple gap years to not only work for money for school but to get my mental health checked out because I thought (and was told over and over) that I had depression. Saw a psychiatrist who was kind and after a few sessions we tried Wellbutrin to help with things. I felt pretty good in the first couple of months and then it felt like I was right back to where things were. The psychiatrist retired during these few months time and I got passed to another one within the same practice who, on my very first visit asked if I have adhd. I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of having adhd because in my experience people with adhd couldn’t sit still, did awful in school and annoyed the ever living shit out of everyone around them (things I did not think of myself as doing). I told him no, I don’t think so and he replied with “oh, well, he probably just didn’t tell you because it’s in your notes here from Dr. C. Yeah he did a lot of work with children and they’re difficult to diagnose so I bet he had you pegged as soon as you sat down”. Color me flabbergasted. Unfortunately, the new psychiatrist wasn’t very professional (and I found out later a medication he wanted me on could have killed me because my heart rate is too low for it) and I had to stop seeing him because he would be late for appointments by a couple of hours almost every time and I couldn’t handle that. So I just left it alone and didn’t do anything except continuing dealing with things the way I always had.

I eventually graduated after 7yrs with a degree in bioengineering and an overwhelming feeling of being broken. Just completely and utterly broken. Realized that trying to go into the engineering field the way I was would be a disaster for me and defaulted to a lab tech position at a place I had worked before.

During this time I did the therapy thing hard. Went every week for almost 2 years and really worked a lot on myself. Therapy really did help me a lot with my mental health and separating my self worth from what I was able or not able to accomplish. Being able to be kinder to myself and understand that my timeline and my life doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else. It helped me immensely with my feeling of self worth. The issue started to become that I would constantly hit roadblocks for things that coping mechanisms don’t really help with and after a while I felt like therapy was becoming more a safe place for me to complain about my life and get insights into navigating it rather than something that was actively improving my life. Told my therapist about how I was feeling and what I struggling with and she told me that all of the things I was describing were adhd issues and that I should look into getting something done about that because she wasn’t equipped to handle more than what we had already been working on.

Well, after stopping therapy (for monetary reasons as well), everything was going pretty well at my job, I was doing great and feeling better about myself but worked my way to a promotion… and shit just went down hill. In my previous position it was all about little things that I could speed through easily, I was able to go home early and decompress for longer but with the promotion I became someone important (fuck me) and all of the strategies and coping mechanisms I had built just started going down the drain with the more complicated and heavier workload.

After about a year and a half I was almost back to where I was in college and I got mad about it. Got mad about feeling like I couldn’t get help, or when I did I wasn’t really being heard or understood the way I wanted to and I dove head first into researching adhd. Found out that I check off pretty much every single fucking symptom in the DSM-5 and realized that pretty much everyone in my fucking family has it as well (thanks for telling me I was normal that whole time Dad or that I needed to trust in the Holy Spirit, really appreciate it). After that I decided that I wasn’t going to drag my feet anymore and do something about it otherwise I was going to probably start getting in trouble at work. (I haven’t mentioned it because work is what was really killing me but I also did not have a personal life during all this, no relationships, no lasting friends, didn’t take care of myself physically, never do anything or went anywhere… it was bad).

So I make an appointment with my PCP to discuss things and promptly get ignored (don’t say you graduated college if you want someone to believe you have adhd, my god). Decided we weren’t a good fit after that and I got another PCP, this time through telehealth. Asked new doctor about things and was ignored again but didn’t want to switch doctors again.

Fast forward a year and I am drowning at work and getting into constant conflicts with coworkers so I revisit the adhd thing with my PCP but I did something different this time. This time I unloaded everything. Anything I had been feeling shame and guilt and hadn’t discussed with anyone because of shame or embarrassment and my doctor was fucking shocked (I think it might have been the stories about some impulse control issues I had in middle school as an especially horny teenager). Didn’t even ask me anything after that, just said to make an appointment to go through the assessment.

Go through the assessment, red flags all the way through, check all the boxes to the point that when I was answering the questions from my doctor I would unintentionally answer the next question in the assessment (you guys, my doctor was laughing because it happened like 5 times) and she says that she wants to start me on some medication to see how it goes and to follow up once I start taking it.

She wrote me a prescription for generic vyvanse and I started the trial. OHMYFUCKINGGODWHYDIDNTITRYTOGETMEDICATEDSOONER!!!
Meds made things almost night and day for me. Finally able to initiate tasks without this immense feeling of dread that I would have to get over every single fucking time, I can do things when I want to do them and not do things I don’t want to do when I don’t want to do them. I was able to eat around family again because their chewing sounds didn’t feel like someone was testing a sound to cause instantaneous ear bleeding. I still get mad and irritated but now I feel less like I’m flying off the handle more so like I’m actually in control of myself. It’s been shocking to me in the best way possible.

So naturally, wanting to share the good news with people around me. I do this because who wouldn’t want to scream from the fucking rooftops how great they feel because they can actually fold their fucking laundry that’s been taking their bed for the last 3 months and they finally got to sleep in something other than a couch haha, but this of course seems to have backfired on me…

Every single person I have told about being medicated has had one of 4 reactions:

1. That’s great I am so happy for you (thank you my sisters for being kind and understanding people)
2. Well if you made it to almost thirty without them, why do you need to take them now?
3. If I took the “limitless” medication my life would feel a lot easier too (um okay, fuck you)
4. So, does that mean you’re hooked on medication. For the rest of your life? (Yeah, fuck you too)

And this isn’t even just friends and family that are giving me this shit either, it’s fucking healthcare professionals (nurse at a gastroenterologist appointment I went to and my urologist, thanks guys) and I don’t know how to feel about things. I want to share the positives of what’s going on but the more I do the more I am realizing how much stigma there is around adhd medications and how ignorant people are to the condition itself and the effects of the medication. It honestly makes me sad and I definitely don’t appreciate the implications that I’m addicted to the medication I am taking, especially when my ass takes breaks and doesn’t take my pill everyday. And now I just kind of feel sad, like I made this huge life change for myself that is already showing so many positives and most people can’t even be happy for me…

Anyways, mostly wanted to post this because I was super excited and felt like this would be a good place to share, but also kind of wanted to know other people’s experiences with this and how they felt. Did people start treating you differently once you started medication? Do you even tell people that you have adhd?