I'm So Grateful for Medication

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I've been taking medication for ADHD for 6-8 weeks now. When I started looking for people talking about their experience with starting meds, I inadvertently caused myself extra anxiety. No surprise there.

It was helpful to listen to other people’s experiences, but some stories were really extreme. Because, of course, extreme or sensationalist stories are always the ones that float to the top of the stack.

In most of the scary stories, people started on a pretty high dose for their first time trying medication. I think I'm lucky to have a doctor who thinks it’s better to start really low and work your way up to an appropriate dose. 

So I think my experiences starting meds was not as dramatic as some people’s. On my first day with the meds, I did notice a significant eye-opening difference in how my brain functioned, but it wasn't dramatic enough to make me cry or anything. Now, several weeks in, I'm noticing more and more positive effects about being on the meds. So I'm still improving, but it’s not been quite as much of a roller coaster as some people’s experiences. 

Even so, I do definitely notice differences in dose changes to my medication immediately. That’s just the nature of the type of medication it is. When we bumped my dose up last time, the first couple of days on the new dose, I almost called the doctor and was like, "THIS IS MAKING IT WORSE!" because it did for the first few days. 

It’s hard to be patient and wait for your body to adjust. The first couple of days, it felt like it actually exacerbated my inability to focus and my scattered thoughts and restlessness. Now, two weeks into the new dose, it’s a lot better.

Recently on the weekend, I managed to get 8-9 big tasks done in one day. That's unheard of. Before the pandemic, I could probably get 3-4 tasks done in one day on the weekend. So being able to do that many now is pretty mindblowing. Possibly the most amazing thing, to me, is that I don't even take the meds on the weekend. I only take them on workdays. 

So there are residual effects as well. Whether it’s from the medication specifically or just from finally understanding myself and learning how to manage ADHD, I don't care. I'm happy to just be able to function again. 

I'm able to just steadily work away at things now. And I can also leave a task to do something else and then come back and finish the initial task later. Which is even more mindblowing to me. 

I have another follow-up appointment in a week. We'll see what my doctor says about whether or not I need to adjust my dose again. Either way, I'm so grateful for medication. 

I recently read So This Is What 'Normal' Feels Like, an article on ADDitudeMag.com, about a single mom who recently started medication. My experience hasn't been quite as dramatic, but it has mirrored her's quite a bit. I encourage you to read it.