medication

I'm going to do what online recipes do, I promise just this once. I want to talk about why I stopped medication, but first I have to complete my Epilogue travel anxiety post.

This is the puzzle that started the blog

If you click back now, you can see my own photo while standing in the same spot. I guess, this jigsaw puzzle and my interest in puzzles has been a thing that made me think, that I cannot possibly have ADHD. I probably only do a jigsaw every 3 years, but I hyper focus on and push through. Almost like a compensation mechanism I guess. I have a question. What is your compensation mechanism for maintaining your own self worth amid the malaise of ADHD doubts?

Meds

I am drug averse. I avoid, it's just I do not like the idea that chemicals can change me. My Aunt took an OD, when I was around 10, so that perhaps also informs my view. I rarely use paracetamol for example, although I often do have headaches. I once went through a phase where I polished off a bottle of 50. It just happened without me knowing, bottle empty in just a few months. A wake-up call, even if mostly harmless. But along with seeing what it could do to people, I was never going to be a fan of even the milder stuff. Very unnatural for me to even remember to take anything, so when my GP gave me Sertraline, I worried it would affect me badly. It did, but it also helped me immensely. I needed something to calm my anxiety, anxiety which was driving fear, which came out as anger and irrational behaviour. And it worked. I stopped the meds entirely last year, primarily because I felt I was in a safe enough space to do so. Often I wish I could keep going on a low dose, but news items like this keep popping up https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce948d9gxevo , and I'm reminded why I hate medication. Anyone with ADHD will tell you, remembering to take your meds is a huge problem, luckily all sorts of things can help you, like those pill sorter and electronic pill timers, designed for people with dementia, well they work for ADHD really well. To get off the medication again, you must consult your GP, and they explain how to reduce your dose. That was always going to be easy, mainly because reducing the does is the same thing as sometimes forgetting. I planned to start in November, wrote it on the calendar, and then I forgot 2 days in a row, and just said oh buggerit and started reducing.

When you start on meds, they take a while to kick in, I went through a very wolly stage I was sleepy all the time for about 2 months and I knew that going off was going to be just as unpleasant. I dealt with the sleepiness by taking the stuff in the evening only, but it also had a libido effect. The side effects on the packaging insert are like gamble of their own. You do not get to choose which ones you get, and the ones you get are always going to be one of the common ones as well as one of the rare ones. Mental illness always seems to hit you with doubles. 

Not looking back, without some chemical help to ground me, the training and counselling would not have helped much.

Easter Egg

so I'll leave you with the one thing that helped my name my new blog. I got given this by someone, who has an ADHD kid, I want to say thank you for the support that you have given. You know who you are.