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[commodorified]

So this is why at the tender age of 40-odd I started taking amphetamines.

Oddly, I WAS diagnosed as a child. I was also overmedicated, in retrospect—you know what, it was the 70s and from all I can find out everyone on Ritalin was getting too much of the stuff; I don't even know my exact dosage but it was 4-6 Ritalin/day—which led to a 30-year refusal to try again, and also, probably to my benefit, a life-long wariness of recreational drugs, on the grounds that if my experience of speed was so very very different from what other people described, I was not interested in finding out what happened if I took, say, psychedelics.


This is my brain on drugs, probably. If this were a spinning .gif with the saturation hiked up and the goat sheep invoking ancient gods.

"...[G]irls’ symptoms include:

a tendency toward daydreaming
trouble following instructions
making careless mistakes on homework and tests."

Oh man, so you know how I turned into such a good proofreader? ABJECT TERROR. Which is NOT the way to develop a life skill, really.

Most of the things I'm really good at I acquired through a combination of a) hyperfocus and b) fear of being screamed at.

Comments

[recessional]

IIRC, part of the overmedicating was trying to get the effects to LAST, prior to them figuring out Long Acting and then Extended Release formulas. I remember they were still struggling with that when my cousin was young, in the eighties, because yeah, he was on three to five a day; he hated it for how it made him feel, while at the same time the difference in behaviour was SO MARKED that you could tell that the important effects were wearing off after about four hours . . . but just because the focus-effects were wearing off didn't mean that the actual whole dose was wearing off, you know?

And of course the too-high amount was standard dosage guidelines, so it was just a mess. First the Ritalin LA and then Concerta have made a biiiiig difference. It's actually kind of fascinating how pharmacology knowledge has changed.

[commodorified]

Well, that's it - I'm not holding grudges, because what I was on was the best available treatment at the time. The best available treatment just wasn't very good.

[recessional]

Yeeeeah. It sucks when that happens. And the legacy of it also sucks, because I know a lot of people my age and younger STILL who have that image of treatment in their heads, and either don't look for it when they need it, or go on about how Awful Meds Are and create that wonderful culture of anti-medication.

(Medication isn't right for Everyone Everytime obviously and etc - but especially with the ADHD stuff I've seen the right dose almost seem to be magic in terms of what people can suddenly do. I mean then the honey-moon period ends and one has to deal with the accumulated crap of years of trying to limp through etc etc, but still.)

[commodorified]

To be fair, I was having to deal wth the messed-up legacy issues already, so there's that. :-/

[mmegaera]

That's how I feel about the braces I endured as a kid that messed my jaw up permanently, alas.

[julian]

*waves, as one of those diagnosed at 30 or so*

[azurelunatic]

*burnishes shiny half-year-old diagnosis* 35 here.

[niqaeli]

I remember I did a whole IQ test thing as a kid that was part of how my parents got me jumped a grade when we moved. The guy suggested that while I was very intelligent in certain dimensions that I might also have a learning disability and/or attentional issues. So, like, it wasn't that it didn't exist... my parents just dismissed it as not something that needed anything done about it.

Probably in part because of the legacy of over-medication (which, as you say, was mostly of kids who DID need medication, but were getting doses too high), honestly. I was functional enough, you know? I just needed to learn to be more careful at maths. (I did. I learned to triple check everything. It didn't stop the errors, which is why I'm pretty sure dyscalculia is the problem, not JUST ADHD. I only survived calculus and physics with good grades because of professors valuing conceptual understanding and giving partial credit.)

I'm not bitter, but I do still wonder what life would've been like. God knows I will give up my methylphenidate (ie, Concerta) when you pry it from my cold dead hands, as with it I CAN ACTUALLY THINK AND MAKE MY BRAIN WORK AND I DON'T HAVE TO MAKE MYSELF SHAKY FROM CAFFEINE OVERDOSE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN AT WILL.

[amazon_syren]

"...[G]irls’ symptoms include:

a tendency toward daydreaming
trouble following instructions
making careless mistakes on homework and tests."

...'Cause that's not every socially isolated teenaged girl I ever knew...

And, no, not a great way to develope life skills. :-(

[commodorified]

It's possible that adhd generates social isolation in a number of teenaged girls, actually.

I mean, yes, there are other causes of those things but if you fix the social isolation of someone with adhd they will still have life-damaging concentration issues, just in pleasanter company and circumstances.

ETA I mean, would you describe me in the years you've known me as socially isolated? And yet getting stuff done was an ongoing, grinding issue.

Also, and this is one of the reasons I've always been reasonably pro-meds even when I didn't want to try them again myself, if you give someone a short-acting amphetamine they will either feel calmer and more focussed, or they won't. If they don't, they don't have adhd and you should be able to peel them off the curtain shortly.

[gale_storm]

Ho. Ly. Sh!t.

Reading this all (including the stuff you linked to) now, I think that the only thing that "saved" me from ending up on this was my parents' not having enough money to spend on pharmaceutical stuff in those days.

Yowza.

[commodorified]

Well, for you it might have been great. It worked really well for a lot of people; the problem was that when it didn't, there was no Plan B — either the med worked or it didn't, there wasn't really any support system in place beyond it.

[gale_storm]

Understood, very well at that.

[fallconsmate]

my mother developed narcolepsy in her mid 50's. she was put on medication, and found that she could finally concentrate on things. her therapist told her after doing some testing "yes, you have ADD also, so don't stop taking your medicaiton."

she's also a PITA to her insurance company because she CANNOT take the generics, due to the "inert" additives. one of the medications they wanted her to take had a known side effect of causing drowsiness...not exactly what one wishes to use for narcolepsy!