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| menace64 |
 Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:02 am |
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
Location: Wichita, Kansas
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All right. Get ready for another of my personal-life-revealing threads that tries to also teach a valuable lesson.
A few weeks ago I was finally diagnosed with ADD. I say finally because it was always obvious to me and anyone who’d spoken with me for more than 10 minutes; it just never dawned on anybody that it could be the reason behind a lot of the problems I’ve faced in my life.
But I’m not going to get into that part of this tale. What I want to speak about is the horror I experienced this week as I began taking a pill for ADD. A pill called Vyvanse.
Vyvanse came out late last year, after being tested on a group of 1,000 people. It’s highly-experimental. Little is currently known about side-effects. But it’s the only medicine on the market that has promised to not alter the way an ADD person thinks, which is how I was convinced by my doctor to try it instead of something that would have turned me into a zombie.
I picked up my first prescription on Monday. At that time, I was feeling great. I was happy with my life, the people in it, and just about everything I was doing. Tuesday morning.... and I took the first pill.
By that evening, depression was setting in and I had no idea why. I felt emotionally stripped.
Wednesday rolled around. In sharp contrast to the day before, the medicine took away all emotional barriers I had. I felt everything with a cruel intensity. The slightest problem sent me spiraling into a sobbing stupor. For the first time in my life, I had to physically restrain myself from attacking someone. And, by Wednesday night, I felt that I was lost.
This dominating thought rose to the surface, the thought that I could potentially be ’alone’ for the rest of my life. I freaked out. I went over to my parents’ house at midnight and pretty much made my mom sit with me at the kitchen table as I became an emotional dump truck.
Thursday was even worse. By then, I had resigned to be ’alone’ forever. I had been convinced by my brain that Monday was going to be my last chance to get married and start a family. If I couldn’t achieve that by Monday, I reasoned, it would be too late.
So yeah, this stuff - Vyvanse - is whack. Tonight I got extremely lucky; one of my closest friends helped me realize that working through ADD (honestly a relatively minor inconvenience when compared to the more extreme hazards I’ve faced) is preferable to melting down through counter-productive medication.
The lesson here? Listen to your past. I told myself for years that ADD wasn’t something that you could just take a pill for and cure. I considered ADD and all those conditions to be a tool to sub-classify a group of people who happen to behave in similar ways. Now that I’ve walked through to the other side, I see that I was probably right all along.
I actually have another lesson-learned, too. Don’t take medicine just because a doctor tells you to. It’s your body. Know what you’re putting into it. If I’d done my research *before* starting Vyvanse, I would have laughed and thrown it in the doctor’s face. I would have been offended that he’d offered me such a silly, unpredictable drug.
So yeah, never never again. I’m going to be me.  |
Riddle 9
When I came to Abraham I let him live just a moment longer. When I came to Moses I saved his life more than once. But the salmon... I regret to say I had a hand in its death.
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| Celebrimbor |
| Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 4:56 pm |
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Joined: 12 Sep 2006
Posts: 953
Location: UNKNOWN
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I agree that doctors sometimes don’t have a clue what the real problem is...especially for problems with the mental.
Dude, I’m still keeping you in my prayers.  |
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Popcorn is not gooey like fat, and also not crunchy like potato chips, but crispy like lettuce which makes it a healthy snack.  |
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| MR. Lurtzy |
| Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:58 am |
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Joined: 30 May 2007
Posts: 423
Location: Living with the Governator
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Ah, so you are going to be one less.  |
'On and on old war shall go,
Without respite my blood will flow
O’er your eyes ‘til they cannot see
The impossibility of victory.'
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