Nonsequitur Life

I was supposed to go back to the psychiatrist tomorrow (today?) for my med-check on the Ritalin experiment. But I got a voicemail from Dr. Meyers’ office today saying that they’d had a death in the family and all of their appointments for Friday, July 30th were being moved to Wednesday, August 4th. That’s unfortunate. In more ways than one.

It just prolongs my frustration with the failure of the Ritalin. I quit taking it altogether a few days ago. It wasn’t doing me any good anyway. The only reason to keep taking it would be for the sake of finishing off the pills. And on a $10 prescription, I’m not going to worry about it. There aren’t that many left at this point. I haven’t had any withdrawal symptoms, which is an even bigger indicator that the drug wasn’t doing jack for me anyway. And while the negative side effects weren’t nearly as awful as the ones I experienced from the Vyvanse, they were still there. The constant feeling of my heart racing, even when it wasn’t was enough to make me want to scream. And I’m pretty sure my head felt foggier most days on the medication than off it.

If I was smart, I’d used the few extra days until my postponed appointment to look into other treatment options, be it other drugs or something else entirely, but every time I go the Google route, I end up wanting to huck rocks at people because all I find are articles written by people proclaiming they “CURED” their ADHD with these “EASY! NATURAL! METHODS!!!”

No. No you didn’t.

ADHD is NOT CURABLE. It’s treatable. It’s manageable. But it is NOT CURABLE.

So please, stop telling me you cured yourself. And please, go stab yourself in the face.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2008. I’ve gone through six prescriptions for five different medications. None of them have worked. The first three drugs I couldn’t even tell I was taking them. The last two had negative side effects. There have been no positive results from any of them. If I didn’t get the lengthy speech about them being controlled substances with street value with each and every prescription, I would have been convinced I was getting sugar pills.

At this point, I’m almost convinced that my system is never going to respond to any medication where the symptoms of ADHD are involved. And the complete and utter failure of all of these medications leads me to believe that maybe there is something else wrong with me. Maybe it’s not ADHD, it’s just something that presents itself like ADHD. Though it’s kind of hard to ignore the pile of evaluations that made my psychologist and my family doctor review them and say, “How in the hell did we miss THAT!?” Everything fits. And from everything I’ve read, and everything I’ve been told by three different licensed professionals, taking ADHD meds when you don’t have ADHD has some pretty adverse effects on you.

So where does that leave me?

Right back where I started.

Everything I read, everywhere I look, everything brings me right back to where I’m at. Everything points to what I already know, to what I’ve already been diagnosed with. When I think, “maybe there’s something else…” I start looking, and I end up finding what I already know.

I have depression: Dysthymia.

I have anxiety: Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia.

I have ADHD: Predominately Inattentive Type.

Either that or I’m dying from Crohn’s Disease and having a miscarriage because WebMD’s symptom checker has no idea what the hell it’s talking about.

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