Discursive thoughts on ADHD.

[jackofallgeeks]

So my biggest issue with ADHD is really with how it's treated. Across the board it seems to me that the solution applied is drugs. Even when behavioral therapy, something I'm a lot more comfortable with, is used, drugs are often applied as well. I don't trust drugs in general. I'm especially wary of drugs that alter the way a person's brain function. The way their mind functions.

But that's the problem, isn't it? Those with ADHD have problems with the way their brains function, so of course a solution to it is going to alter that. And I'll concede that maybe, sometimes, it's valid. Maybe, sometimes, someone's brain is missing chemicals, for whatever reason, that it ought to have. Not unlike how my eyes are misshaped, and I need glasses to correct how I see the world. Probably not really unlike that at all.

And maybe the simple fact is that it's just something I'm uncomfortable with, something that's just taboo to me, the way insulin shots for diabetics squick me out, or the way some people can't stand to watch me put contacts in. But...

A friend once related a story where a girl was talking about her ADHD and her medication. And she said that after a while, you wanted to stay on the medication, even if it was causing other side issues, because you didn't want people to see who you were without them. And in a way I can't really express, that really bothered me. The thought that someone was, I don't know, less-herself without medication. The who she was when she was drugged was more her than when she wasn't. That makes me very, very uncomfortable because I want to say, no, you are who you are without the drugs. The medication fixes a problem the way my glasses fix my vision, sure, but the difference is the medication alters how you behave. and what's to say one way is 'fixed' and the other is 'broken'? Societal norms? You need medication because society needs you to behave a certain way?

I minimize the issue my comparing it to my near-sightedness, but that's something I can understand. ADHD medication, right now, is something I can't. It changes how you act, who you are, and I'm not comfortable with that. It strikes me as almost insulting... An invasion of self that's so deep.

I don't know. like I said, I don't understand. I'm just talking.

Comments

[metis2be.livejournal.com]

I remember being more full of life in highschool, I was more outgoing and more energetic. I wish I was still that way, but I don't know how much of that was my daily dose of adderall and how much was me. I guess I was like that without the medication, I remember enjoying mosh pits back in freshman year before I was drugged up, but I don't know if it stopped when i went off the medication.

Either way, I try to stay the hell away from that stuff, so I guess I'll never know.