Trigger warning: Suicide, Overdose
Mental health is a real bitch. I’ve been struggling with depression since I was an early teen for sure and possibly longer. As a middle schooler, I made two suicide “attempts” although it’s really obvious to me that they were cries for help because they weren’t truly dangerous tries. Growing up in a traditional Mexican family, mental health was always brushed aside as being “in your head” and even after expressing that I just wasn’t okay, my parents never got me the help I very obviously needed. I don’t hold this against them. I know they were doing the best they could with what they had and although it was really crappy parenting, I don’t resent them for it. After my youngest, Emmett, was born, I knew again that I was not okay. I would go days on end crying for no reason. I recall telling a doctor at an urgent care that my life was perfect, but I couldn’t stop crying and feeling devastated. That began my long mental health journey. I’m still on that journey and will be writing about it, but I’d like to fast-forward to my ADHD diagnosis and my feelings about Adderall for this particular blog post.
After struggling to take my anti-depressant regularly for a year or so, I finally realized I needed to take the next step and get some talk therapy and find a med provider rather than just taking a pill prescribed by a doctor who saw me for 10 minutes in a crisis. Through my evaluations, it became clear that depression wasn’t the only major disorder wreaking havoc in my life. Among the different disorders, the most surprising was ADHD. To this day, I struggle with the diagnosis and tell myself there’s no way I actually have it and I fight taking my meds because of it. To be frank. I don’t know what my holdup is regarding the Adderall, but I have some suspicions and I’m working on it in therapy because it really does feel like a magic pill for my brain.
I’ve heard from people using it recreationally that it makes them feel cracked out and have tons of energy, but that isn’t the case for me. For me, Adderall makes my brain feel like an organized google drive. One of the biggest symptoms of my ADHD is executive dysfunction. It seems so stupid, but sometimes it feels impossible to do the simplest things. I’m talking things like taking a shower, replying to texts/emails/comments on socials, or even just filling up my water cup. You can imagine the much harder things like oil changes or doctor’s appointments are much MUCH harder to accomplish. When I take my Adderall, those no longer feel like insurmountable feats and I can just go through my to-do list quickly and efficiently. Often, I feel like shit when I’m finally getting those simple things done because I just can’t understand why they seemed so hard in the first place which sends me into a self-esteem spiral. I’m telling you, this brain is a bitch.
On its own, destroying the executive dysfunction would be a miracle, but Adderall also has the effect of curbing my appetite and raising my blood pressure. Since my cancer diagnosis, weight loss has taken a huge step back in my priorities, but there was a time that I was really concerned about my weight and really would’ve loved the opportunity to take a pill that curbed my appetite and made me thirsty af so I would chug water all day. These days, I’m losing weight from not being able to eat many safe foods and from being sick and tired, so the weight loss doesn’t seem so motivating to take the pill. My blood pressure, however, is something my doctors are concerned about and it truly is an easy fix: take the damn pill. Low blood pressure causes me to feel generally unwell, but it also makes me dizzy and causes me to occasionally pass out. It can be managed, but it limits my activities even further and probably makes it trickier for my body to fight this shit cancer in my body.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a pill that could make my brain work that would in turn improve my depressive symptoms while also having pleasant side effects that support my overall health goals? If I found it, I would gladly swallow the tiny, affordable pill, right? WRONG. I won’t take the fucking thing and I don’t understand why. My therapist and I have explored some possible reasons:
-substance abuse is really terrifying for me and I’ve never experimented with recreational drugs
-a family member overdosed while I was a young kid and it was really traumatizing
-I don’t believe I have ADHD
-my dad told me to be careful because he has watched Adderall ruin people’s lives
All of these could be valid reasons and we’re working on identifying my hesitation. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get regular on it soon because my productivity could use a little bit of a boost even though I’m in a season of rest. I’m already exhausted, so the dysfunction makes every single task so much fucking harder. Wish me luck, I guess.
