Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Quantitative progress

Here's what they don't tell you when they say "try meds": it might take months or years to really adjust.

Not only adjust to the medication, but to NEW ways of feeling, new ways of being, and new ways of acting. And that's if you don't resist because it feels too different!

It has taken me...seems like about 2.5 years to find the right dosages, meds, behavior adjustments. This may not be typical, but for me, it is simply the way of things.

I now go to bed at between 10pm and 12am...which is soooo much better than between 1am and 3am.

I am way more laid back. I manage to find my motivation these days most of the time, when I need it.

I can have conversations usually without feeling like my heart is going to explode out of my chest.

I can make myself STOP TALKING more easily when I notice that it's probably time for that to happen.

I get intensely annoyed, irritated and pissy FAR less often.

My ambient general anxiety level is MUCH lower.

I am better at editing my thought processes, particularly in the area of starting new projects. Sometimes this makes me sad...sometimes I think I over edit these days...and so I'm seeking smaller ways to inject fun, without formulating additional world domination plans (to run concurrently to the plan already in progress). For example, I can make a Barbie dress for my stepdaughter in an hour and it's a fun, creative diversion that can leave me refreshed to do more boring shit afterward. Ah ha! Instead of, you know...writing a novel in an afternoon or something.

Now then, new challenges in life have brought me, well, new challenges to how I deal with certain life situations. But I think that's progress. I'm not stuck on the same old shit. I'm moving forward. Some of the new challenges are bigger than the old ones...but part of the reason for that is that being stuck on some little shit prevented me from encountering the bigger shit. Well fine...I'll take that.

And so the thought hit me...the other day...that I really do believe that my life is better than it was. That it's all been worth it. That deciding to be treated for anxiety and ADHD was a good idea.

It's a mildly bittersweet satisfaction...if only because the experiences along the way have really been very intense. But the net result is a good one.

2 comments:

  1. Sometimes I think that I've had more bad than good since starting stimulants, but then I realize that I can't even remember most of what happened to me before I started taking medication. There's almost like a very clear line in my memory, starting in late 2008, where my memory gets more linear and less patchy and nonexistent. So, really, it's not that things are worse now, it's that I'm now totally cognizant of everything that's happening, good AND bad. Which is actually sort of frightening, the fact that I've lived the majority of my life in a lobotomized haze. Honestly, it's these memory malfunctions that keep me coming back to the meth more than anything else. I DON'T want to sleepwalk through the next 29 years of my life.

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  2. Oh yes, that's another thing they don't tell you: that progress might bring downs as well as ups! D'oh!

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