ADHD is not a quirk. It is ruining my life. I am disorganized, I am in debt, I am paralyzed. I can’t even get help; I have tried navigating the maze of finding a doctor who will accept my crappy exchange insurance but I always end up throwing in the towel. I thought I found one, once, but sike, he’s an addiction counselor who refuses to prescribe stimulant medication on principle.
Not that I’m opposed to trying nonstims again, but I was prescribed Strattera in high school and it made me so drowsy I failed chemistry because I couldn’t stay awake even with a full night of sleep. Also, bonus, his profile on the site I used to find him lied, and he doesn’t actually accept my insurance. Here’s a $500 bill for our 45 minute zoom call where I accused you of drug seeking. I got his practice to cancel the charge but still.
ADHD is ugly; ADHD looks like every chair in my apartment being full of clutter (and me subsequently freaking out because I hate clutter). it looks like brushing my teeth every two or three or five days. It looks like being able to hold on to my job as a waiter nothing else. It looks like me having the money to pay my bills, me wanting to pay those bills, and then me getting sent to collections anyway. ADHD looks like ghosting an old best friend because I’m too embarrassed to keep up with him. It looks like my partner shouldering more of the housework than is fair. And I get to look back on all this behavior, identify and accept that I am the problem, and then I get to do fuck all to fix it. ADHD looks like a horizon that gets narrower and narrower every day.
And I feel alone. ADHD is not cute. It sucks to suck.
Husband of ADHD person here, a second-person perspective if you wanna call it this way.
It kinda feels like I have two wives, because it’s very hard to internalize that one person can both be pedantic perfectionist in things they like and then lose their keys three to five times a day and leave clutter everywhere. She does complex physical activities and meditation without issue… but then documentation and complex IT systems look like random noise to her. The moment she finishes her task, all tools used vanish from her mind and are left wherever she finished that task. Nothing is ever back where it belongs and I act as mother from memes every day (the one that can always find what you lost).
Luckily we live in Poland, she got diagnosed in an hour (I like to imagine the doctors took one good look at her and said “yup”) and week later got confirmation and prescription for drugs. Drugs work silly - she can’t do her hobbies after taking drugs, but she can do her 9-5 job. Thus schedule was made so that she can have time for hobbies in the morning, and then take the drugs before work.
This is why I stopped taking adderall and drink a lot of coffee instead. When I need to focus on something unfun, like chores, I gulp down a coffee. It wears off in a couple hours but helps me focus for a while when I need it. The down-side is that it makes me feel a little sleepy.