A Review of One Week on ADHD Medication

What's it like being on vyvanse?

Among the other problems that have molded my brain, I have ADHD. Before medication, I didn't have a baseline of what it's like with the disorder because I didn't know what normalcy feels like. What the brain feels like without being - excuse the drama - cursed.

I finally got my ass kicked into high gear and got on ADHD medication from a very nice psychiatrist who understood the assignment: get me on medication, and get me on FAST. It only took a day or so before the prescription was ready for me to pick up, and now I can say I've been on it for a week.

And holy hell, now I've got my baseline.

I would describe having ADHD as seeing possibilities floating by, but not feeling the spark to reach out and catch them. You try - you reach out with both arms, sometimes you even grab it, but some sinking feeling prevents you from taking hold and gripping it to your chest, and that possibility floats away. You listen to your parents wonder what's wrong with you, you feel a growing jealousy in your stomach as you see your sister being successful - having a career with skills she honed in and post college, earning money, living independently - and you wonder if the dreams you had were just that, only dreams.

Sometimes you get lucky and you catch a possibility. You grip it tight with both hands, and you work with it. You ride it into the sunshine.

Have you seen horseback riders? They got them big strong thigh muscles, because riding a horse ain't easy when you have to work on gripping, stability, balance, posture, and control.

Similarly, it's not easy to ride the idea. You have to muster the energy and drive for every step, and then you have to use more energy to keep focus on the road ahead instead of sitting down on the couch watching youtube or taking a nap. The bed is always a temptation. If you've got a cat, there's always the chance you just give up on everything and resign to spending the whole day petting them.

When I think of success, I think of my mom. She has that inner drive, and she had that since she was eighteen and pregnant, a single mother who had to work her ass off to provide for herself and her daughter. Through hard work, luck, and sheer stubborness and determination she is now very established in her career, wife to a man who works to take care of the family, and has two daughters who did not fall off the wayside into drugs or gangs or whatever the hell she feared we'd get into growing up. Our pets are a bonus.

She had to reach for that success with an internal drive, a spark that with a little bit of oxygen could grow into a fire, burning her way through. I didn't feel that spark in myself. It was like I had two flintstones and was perpetually clanking them together, trying to start that spark. Trying to find that something to launch myself; to start off on that journey; to burn.

And for the longest time, no spark would appear. I was wondering how the hell I could get it, which took some dark turns in my mental health. I used to think about accidents that needed to happen for me to feel it. A car crash, some threat to my life that would jolt me into action? Maybe I had to fall pregnant too? Or maybe I just had to wait for luck, for an opportunity to fall before me. I waited for that opportunity, too. I waited, working on my academic journey through high school, undergraduate, then graduate school. I waited while I worked at my first job, then my second, then having to learn more to try to get a third job. I waited, wondering if that spark would come because of some luck, or because I finally got into an accident that would start my life - start my success.

I wondered if I was ever going to stop being a disappointment to my parents because I just didn't have that spark yet.

Now being on vyvanse, I can tell you that missing spark may be part of the problem for some people with ADHD. But I'm not generalizing my statements. Hell no. I've got plenty of problems of my own, and I've got the qualifications to tell you that my experience may match with others but also fall with some. But vyvanse seems to give me that spark, or maybe add fuel and oxygen to the teeny, tiny sparks I already had but just didn't see from my flintstones. I have more energy, more drive, to actually do what I want - whether that's crocheting a new dragon, reading a new book about dragons, or making an author's website with a dragon on the front page.

I have that oxygen in me to burn.

Now I feel more able to focus on probabilities rather than possibilities - or whatever the hell Fourth Wing said. And though it's true that my heartbeat is a little louder to me, and I've got to take the medication before 12 pm or slumber will be difficult to fall into once I lay in bed at night, I still wouldn't trade it off.

I really like this feeling, this hopeful feeling that I can actually do things. That I can catch possibilities that are floating by, and I may even be able to chase them.

Holy hell, why didn't I take this sooner?

ADHD brain, that's why.