Side effects are a risk with any medication, and those targeting mental health are no exception. Thankfully I’ve avoided anything that would traditionally be considered in this category.
This is not to say there have been no effects. About two years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I’m in my mid-30s, meaning I’d gotten through all of regular school, college, and grad school without a diagnosis. It was something I’d joked about, but since I didn’t have trouble sitting through classes without getting up and walking around, it was never something I’d considered seriously. I underwent a neuropsychological evaluation (basically testing memory, concentration, and IQ) about a year before diagnosis, which was inconsistent with ADHD. But then my regular counselor brought it back up. I couldn’t deny the possibility, and was increasingly eager to find some kind of change. Once I was diagnosed and started on meds, it was amazing: my brain was quiet for the first time ever. I would go on to try a couple different stimulants before eventually giving them up about six months ago.
In the case of stimulants, it was simply the mood crash. I would get super excited and motivated about life in general, but I could feel it slip away as the stimulants wore off. This got harder and harder to deal with, and I started not taking the meds because I didn’t want to deal with that. Meanwhile, my underlying mood got worse and worse, and so we finally switched me to an antidepressant. Once we found the right one for me, things have gotten a lot smoother.
I think a lot of this came from the fact that, with meds making such a massive difference at first, I suddenly felt like I could change all these things that frustrate me about myself and about how my brain works. It’s taken me a couple of years to realize that this isn’t really true, and that I’m still stuck with me as me.
Even once I figured this out, I still kept hoping I’d be able to make some changes. I kept hoping that I could “learn” to do certain things better and not to do others. Ultimately this proved not to be true, at least to the degree I was hoping. Then it was a matter of agonizing over the degree to which I should just roll with me as-is and still try to find some semblance of self-improvement. I’m still not entirely sure I know the answer, I’m just trying to worry about it less.
So now I’m trying to simply ride with who I am a little better. Rather than spending all this time to force myself into some other mold, I’m just accepting what I like and what I want to do with my time and hoping that’s enough.
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