| meds only help so much...
I was diagnosed with ADHD without Hyperactivity when I was 6. They put me on Ritalin soon after. I was a little better in school but still, not all of my work was getting done. The work I did complete was all A’s, though. The dosage continued to rise throughout elementary school. Soon it was 10 mg three times a day, or was it 15mg? I cannot recall. Junior High, my mother decided to home schools me and also decided to stop the medication. I used herbal supplements only for those two years, and they were very little help at all. My motivation was deplorable. I was sleeping excessively even for a teenager. I was still very withdrawn, especially now that I didn’t have school to force me to interact with other children. I was put on Zoloft, but a week into it, I refused to take anymore. For ninth grade I was returned to public school, and began taking Adderall XR. I was taking the maximum dose before Christmas. That was exponentially better than Ritalin. And yet I was still lacking. I was so used to being ADD, that I didn’t know how to get out of the habits. I never saw a pdoc for ADD after I was diagnosed.
What happened was that I knew that I had ADD, and was given medication for it. So therefore anything that was wrong with my behavior while taking my medication was my fault. Of course, by the time I get hope the medication stopped working. Since my ADD was being treated, I must be choosing to never take out the trash on trash day, and just pretending to not remember the simplest things, and not doing my homework because I had a head ache, and forgetting what I was told only moments after my parent finished talking. You know what really was happening? I was still very easily distracted, and once my mind was on a tangent, there was no getting it back. This made it very difficult for me to focus on something long enough to remember it for longer than a couple of hours. Trying so hard to focus on things when there were so many things begging for my attention exhausted my mental reserves unto the point that my brain shut down and I felt this uncomfortable sensation in my brain just behind my forehead. So by the time my parents get home, my brain is waving the white flag, and I’m being yelled at for not doing my chores, so by that point when they asked if I did my homework, I lied and said yes just so I could retreat to my room and no longer have to think. By my senior year I was no longer taking medication because the cost of the doctor and medication was not worth it when my stepfather thinks ADD is just a BS cop-out.
Now that I am finally learning just what part of me is made up of a neurological disorder, and not personality flaws, I have to figure out how to deal with what medication couldn’t fix. I am now on the generic version of Wellbutrin XR 300 mg for depression and motivation as well as Concerta XR 36 mg whenever I need the power of a stimulate. Problem is, I don’t know what else to do, now that I’m on meds. What do I do to make up for the rest of my ADD-ness that the medication doesn’t fix?
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