Tag: health

The Grief of ADHD

I’m still trying to get together that podcast episode on grief, isolation, capitalism, and health insurance, and I’m finding myself stuck in a familiar ADHD-paralysis-glitch. Which led me to write the following journal entry.

I want to be happy. I do not know how to walk toward that. Everything I do, I lose interest in within a fairly short amount of time — two to three months maxes out my sustained enjoyment of most things. And I cannot make myself do something if I don’t have that joyful drive, that dopaminergic power propelling my activity. I have no executive function myself, and I’m too broke to hire a CEO…

I cannot achieve true proficiency in anything because I cannot maintain focus long enough to progress beyond a superficial understanding. I am an incredible pancake. Although, that may be an insult to the depth of pancakes. Perhaps I’m more of a flimsy, roadside diner crepe?

I can create interesting first drafts of songs, catchy little snippets, fun turns of lyrical phrase, but cannot pursue music because I cannot focus on the nuts and bolts of music theory or recording or mixing or editing or developing any real musical skills because I get distracted; I lose interest. By the time my interest is reignited by the unseen and unknowable forces governing my brain, I forget what I had learned and wind up needing to review the basics. I cannot even settle on a primary instrument; I flit from piano to guitar to MIDI instruments in rapid succession, never really gaining mastery in anything.

I can create interesting draft ideas for novels and stories, but I cannot complete them. I cannot make myself focus to finish after the joy of the initial idea has fizzled out. My computer is a graveyard for would-be great American novels. I physically cannot make myself type out the words I know I would write. And I cannot understand this.

I can generate one or two paintings that get accepted into a gallery show… but then… I can’t find the focus to paint again for so long that my skills degenerate and I can’t remember how to sketch out an underpainting at all. 

Now that I understand that my inherent, basic restlessness, my propensity to aimlessness in all things, and my inability to complete any task that cannot be done in one sustained moment of hyper-focus is all ADHD, at least I have a name to put to it all. At least I have a reason other than just the ramshackle cathedral of my own personality flaws. I truly cannot focus. Not in the moment. Not in the long run. 

Medication is a bandaid on a cancerous tumor. It’s crutches, and I have no feet to speak of, only little pegs strapped to what should be my knees. Medication grants a few hours wherein my mind is not a crowded high school cafeteria, and I am able to accomplish some of the daily tasks that need doing: laundry, grocery shopping, sweeping. I can shower without it being a battle. I can go to work, because work is urgent. (It is boring, but it is urgent, especially when my visa depends on it.)

But brushing my teeth will never be an automatic habit. Doing yoga in the morning will never be consistent. Nothing will ever be a habit. Nothing will ever be easy or routine or done without intent. Everything will always be a task (a great series of tasks, in fact) which requires executive function I do not have and some degree of willpower to accomplish. 

I am tired. I am tired of my brain racing around, brimming with creative possibilities and no ability to accomplish them. I am tired of seeing, of knowing. I am tired of thinking. 

My brother asked me a while back what my “North Star” was — trying to help me get a handle on what I was doing. I said that it was to get to a place financially where I could have a little land, a little cabin in the woods, some chickens and ducks and a garden. Solar panels and rainwater collection and my bike.

And that is partially true. I’ve always held that as a dream, and in fits and spurts, worked toward it with things like a permaculture certificate, living on a subsistence farm in Belize, working on random people’s properties. But I also know that I will get bored. I will want something more. I think I will always come back to that… but what happens to the birds when I am off gallivanting because I absolutely had to get away? Well, OK, what’s my true “North Star” then? Maybe I want to “be” an artist (whatever that means)… but that requires skill and focused pursuit. And money. OK, I certainly enjoy traveling — particularly the sort of dirtbag travel that entails wandering around by loaded bicycle or through-hiking. But that requires money. That’s not a profession. And “content creator” is not a job I’m likely to pursue—I am, at heart, a Luddite. I hold a deep suspicion of technology. Besides, I’m so consistently inconsistent, who would join my Patreon? Who would put up with my irregular production schedule?

Everything requires money. And I have about the same level of skill with managing money as I do with managing time.

Which is to say, none at all. I am utterly time-blind. I do not experience the passage of time. Period. All my memories, spread across three continents and close to five decades all exist in an ephemeral not-now that is simultaneously a few minutes ago and aeons ago. I do not experience how long I’ve sat here typing. Or how long I’ve been back in Taiwan. I do not know how long it’s been since anything. I live in the eternal half-present, which is simultaneously pregnant and aged, just-born and long-buried.

Time and money are mysterious forces that seem to have inordinate power over my life, that I can neither comprehend nor control.

Much like focus. Or task switching. Or transitions from work to home. Or transitions of any activity. 

I hate this. 

I’m tired. 

A Hard Spring

If you’re one of the approximately 16 million Americans who take a daily stimulant medication, you’re well aware of the impact the ongoing shortages/supply chain issues/general bullshittery and fuckwittery is having on our lives.

If you don’t have ADHD or narcolepsy or another condition for which you are prescribed Ritalin or Concerta or Adderall or another related medication, congratulations. I’m officially jealous of you.

If you do have one of these conditions, particularly ADHD, fuckin’-a friend. What the actual fuck?

I won’t bore you with the truly long and fabulously convoluted story, in part because it’s so long and so steeped in Bible Belt fuckwittery and so convoluted that I don’t even remember all of it (small mercy?). But let’s summarize by saying that due to insurance fuckery, I had to see a new PCP. This Doc was displaying a bible and lots of scripture prominently in the office, and they essentially decided that although Adult ADHD has a billing code for the insurance company, it’s not really a thing that an upright and moral human might need medication for… or perhaps more accurately, that stimulant medications are evidence of evil in this world, adults seeking to take their prescribed stimulant meds are clearly drug seeking, and I was obviously a meth addict.

Now, they drug tested me in the office, presumably because I looked like I was speeding my titties off. And I had no amphetamines in my system. See, THAT WAS THE PROBLEM. Because if I have amphetamines in my system, I am calm, focused, collected, low stress, pretty able to sit still and carry on a conversation. WITHOUT meds, I can’t sleep. I can’t stop moving. I can’t stop talking… I look like I’m speeding my titties off.

But I did have THC in my system. Which was legally purchased. With a credit card. From a brick-and-mortar store. That pays sales tax. So obviously… I’m a meth addict. And a drug seeker. Very dangerous individual, me.

Bible Belt logic.

I’m just lucky they didn’t try to involuntarily commit me. Because I am 100% certain that if the cops here saw a grown woman, apparently on speed, with “drugs” in her system they’d happily drag me off. And psychiatrists STILL, if they see an adult woman presenting like me, they assume bipolar mania. And those drugs have zero effect on me… so they keep me. They keep me and keep giving me the wrong drugs. And…

I’m pretty sure American mental healthcare is actual hell.

So, back to the main story. Combined with an older prescription that had been written for a dosage that the pharmacy simply could not get (due to the shortages) and all the fuckwittery of insurance and Bible Belt doctors, it took me a solid SIX WEEKS to get in to see a new Doc (who, thankfully, was sane and immediately re-started my meds).

And shock of all shocks, 20 minutes after swallowing my Concerta, I was immediately calm. Quiet. Still. Relaxed. I went and finally took a fucking nap.

But like, seriously. Fuck you, American healthcare. And fuck you, American health insurance system. And fuck you, weird religious freaks practicing your weird version of a weird religion instead of medicine.

And fuck you, stigma against adults with ADHD.

Fuck the lack of research done on adult women generally and particularly women and women’s hormones in ADHD. Fuck the decades-long notion that only little boys have ADHD. AND FUCK THE POPULAR IDEAS OF WHAT ADHD EVEN IS. Little boys vibrating off the walls in class is a tiny, tiny fraction of the issue, m’kay? And if you’re a healthcare provider, you should know that.

End rant.

______________________

So, it was a really hard spring.

But it did get me thinking this:

All natural systems are diverse. A forest isn’t made of one species of tree, or one species of bird or beast. Most trees depend on at least a few potential fungal partners. The vast majority of plants depend on multiple pollinators. Those that specialize risk extinction. Soil isn’t dirt, but rather a vast cooperative ecosystem of bacteria, nematodes, fungi, and more.

The human body is more bacteria than human cells by weight, no?

The notion that there is one neurotype that is “right” and all other neurotypes are “disordered” flies in the face of all evidence from the natural world.

Each “disorder” carries with it advantages — in context. Advantages that modern industrial systems and end stage capitalism have seen fit to pathologize because “mental health care” is a multibillion dollar industry.

And I’m not saying I don’t need Concerta to function in modern society. I do. I’m saying that in another context — in the context of 4.5 billion years of evolution — there’s nothing particularly wrong with me. Or you.

Also, that dual truth thing, the apparent contradiction, that’s also something that is evident throughout natural systems. And it’s a capital-T Truth that modernity cannot fucking cope with.

Context is the determiner of meaning. Context is perspective. And context is (almost) always the determiner of “good” or “bad” or “healthy” or “disordered.” Modernity has distorted and contorted and modified and manipulated 4.5 billion years of context. And then declared that some of the products of that evolution are a moral failing to be fixed.

And I’m tired of that shit.

Can we smash this bullshit system already? It fucking sucks.