Showing posts with label Ritalin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ritalin. Show all posts

Friday, July 20, 2012

Blogging about blogging and ADHD

So...

I've got an ever growing list of blog post ideas, but I'm struggling to find my words tonight. I'm sure I read somewhere, sometime ago, that if you just type the first thing that comes to your mind the words will come. Maybe I have bloggers block. Maybe I've just spilled my guts too much this week already. Maybe I'm just dying to sit down and catch up on True Blood. Maybe.

The response to my post on Monday was overwhelming. The beautiful comments both here on the blog and through Twitter were humbling in their show of support. The number of page hits I received was encouraging. Encouraging me to (over)share, encouraging me that I have a voice worth publishing online here, in my little corner of the interwebs.

I feel I am spending an ever growing amount of time online (if it was possible to spend any more time than I already was!). As I click from page to page, link to link, I get an enormous sense of community here amongst the blogosphere. This is a place I want to be. There are so many amazing voices out there! It makes me think how lucky we are to live in this time where people can connect, at times at such a deep level, with people we have never met. May never meet.

In the past couple of weeks I have also read a lot of blog bashing in the traditional media and on other websites. I don't understand why blogging bothers some people. I am not trying to be a journo here. This is just little old me typing a few words on the 'puter as an outlet for my crazy brain. And anyway, you have the power blog-hating people! Choose not to click that link, choose to close that browser window, choose to move onto something else. Don't troll, bitch and moan, and carry on. It is unbecoming. It looks desperate and ridiculous because why do it? Nobody is hurting you. Oh, and setting up a pseudo blog that's sole purpose is to take the piss and ridicule is just downright sad.

Anyway, 'nuff said about that. Back to me! This is a blog about ME after all.

Last week I wrote how Shrink had diagnosed me with ADHD. I spent the week on Ritalin, working up from half a tab, to three days on one whole 10mg tab three times a day, then 3 days on 1.5 tabs three times a day. It was pretty weird shit.

The stuff made me feel focused, energised, less forgetful, more motivated, more confident, more creative, more happy, more positive about the future. Fucken bonus! Dream drug, you'd reckon. But that was only from when I first swallowed the little white pill til about 5ish. Then things changed.

By the time 6 o'clock came around anxiety had fully set it. I felt cold and slightly paranoid. I found it harder to speak in my usual volume, my breathing became laboured and I started searching my brain for something to feel bad about. I did not like it. Not. At. All. The first few days were ok. The anxiety only lasted about half an hour but as the days wore on it got harder to see the benefit of taking the medication at all. The positives must outweigh the side effects is my golden rule to drug taking these days.

On Wednesday night I had an anxious episode that lasted three and a half hours! Awful. That was the night I cooked the chicken pie (see Wordless Wednesday for pics). My parents were down from the Mountains and I asked them to look after Noo's evening time stuff (feed/bathe) while I cooked dinner. I just focused on the recipe and the job at hand. Several times I wanted to lay down and do my usual mantras (I will not die, I will not die, I will not die. This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.) until I felt ok again. I pushed on and by 7.30pm, like magic I was through to the other side. Weird. Beyond weird.

Had my weekly appointment with Shrink on Thursday and told him everything I felt. I told him I thought the best days were the ones I was only taking a single 10mg pill three times a day. He told me that this was only a trial week to find out what the right dose for me was. Then he moved me to a slow release form of methylphenidate called Concerta: one 36mg tab a day, taken in the morning. The first day of that pill was today.

How did I feel? Better than Wednesday, that is for sure. I liked only having to take one pill in the morning. The clock watching for the Ritalin was annoying and too reminiscent of my cocaine days. Feeling the up and the down and then gagging for the next up to avoid any down. Bloody hell! I do not want to be on that rollercoaster! I just want to be normal, damn it!

Noo was home with me today. I felt slightly agitated in the morning, not long after taking my first Concerta, but this could just have been because getting Noo dressed and out the door always agitates me. We went to the Entertainment Quarter to see the new Thomas and Friends movie. It was awesome! We had an entire massive cinema to ourselves! We got lollies and popcorn and sat right in the middle of the cinema. Noo could talk and scream and run around all he liked and I could relax! It almost made it worth the enormous amount of cash I haemorrhaged at the candy bar, just to have this huge massive room to ourselves.

Noo, looking so worried that Thomas might fall over the cliff.

Later we met my sister and a friend for coffee and everything was ok but I started to feel a little edgy as the day wore on. My thought processes continued to be more linear and my memory was amazing really. (Although I did forget to pack clean undies and trousers for Noo and he had an accident that required a major clean up but I won't go into that lest an anti parenting blog person reads this and declares all we blog about is our kid's poo!)

The anxiety at the end of the day was still present with Concerta but less so than on the Ritalin. The drug tappered off at around 5ish again but much more gradually. At that time I initially felt quite tired but that passed. I've actually felt kind of energised from about 7ish but I'm now (at past 11pm) feeling like it is time to go to bed. Except for one night I haven't had any trouble sleeping on the Ritalin. Tonight will be the test for Concerta.

I'm now buggered. I'm off to brush my teeth and climb the ladder to my loft bed and snuggle in for a lovely eight hours sleep (fingers crossed).

Good night lovely blogosphere. And thank you.

V.







Thursday, July 12, 2012

Move it, bite it, sit with it, medicate it

Daft Punk - Techologic
Sing the title of my post to this song


I saw Shrink today. We talked more about my mental head shit and basically the message is this:

1. Move out of home. Living with my parents is bad for my mental health.

There are a few reasons why this isn't happening any time soon.

I am not moving out of home while my income is as low as it is right now. And I depend on my parent's company on the few nights a week that they are actually here. The thought of living alone with Noo seven days a week just seems too unbearable. Not because of Noo, of course, but because of being lonely for adult company.

It is so safe here. I live in a secured building with 24 hour door staff. There's a screen for me to look at who is buzzing down stairs and CCTV everywhere. We are high enough up so it is impossible to get in our windows or balcony. I need this feeling of security. When you've lived with that constant hum of fear that someone is going to get you in your bed, like I have in the past, and then you find a way to make it stop, the feeling of relief is palpable. You never want to feel that fear again.

2. Try to catch myself putting myself down. Bite my tongue.

I have a terrible habit of putting myself down to people in some sort of pre emptive move to beat them to it. But who is going to say mean things to me? Why do I have such a low opinion of myself that I think most all other people I come into contact with must think the same. Except for Noo. I know he thinks I rock.

3. Notice anxiety, sit with it, accept that it is ok. It will not kill me.

Anxiety sucks. I've noticed a lot of bloggers have been talking about it lately. It is so common! Especially among women, I think. What has happened that we are all nervous wrecks just trying to get about our daily lives? I have been pretty good in recent weeks, especially since I had my iron infusion. And I've created this little comfortable world where I don't get challenged too much by people I don't know that well. By their expectations or needs. Like a boss or a boyfriend. Too many expectations!

4. I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Take Ritalin.

So adult ADHD, hey. Comes as both a surprise and "ah, that makes sense". I did this test and I scored 77 the first time and then I went through it with my sister and scored 66 which is still considered high. 

It would explain why my school teachers always said on my reports that I distracted easily, that I 'lived in a vacuum', daydreamed a lot, vagued out. I have trouble focusing my attention on anything for too long. I get overwhelmed when I have too many things on but I always sign myself up for everything and end up doing nothing. I constantly walk into rooms and totally forget why I'm there. I forget what I'm saying mid conversation. It is so annoying!


Controlled drug! Sounds full on, which I suppose it is.
Photo from here.


So I'm on Ritalin. Or kiddie coke, as I found out it is also called when I Googled it today. It is kind of weird being on such a stimulant drug considering I used to take speed and coke recreationally all the time. This doesn't feel the same as the illegal ones though. I don't feel that wired excited arrogance that I loved so much with cocaine. Or that intense clarity that can come with speed. I feel kind of normal. So far anyway. I've only taken two very low doses to get started. I have to monitor how it makes me feel as I up the dose slowly over the next week and then I'm back with Shrink again next Thursday.


So there you (or I) have it. Analysis of analysis.

I'm overwhelmingly tired this evening so I'm off to bed.

Good night.

V.