Adderall

Hello all! Sorry I haven't posted as of late; I have been overwhelmed with work and school. Today I started taking Adderall for ADHD. I'm only going to be taking it on days that I have school, to help me focus, but today was my day off so I took one today to see how the dose affected me. As the meds were starting to wear off, I wrote a little blurb about it, and I thought maybe y'all would be interested. I hope you enjoy! Hoping to go back to regular updates soon!

I feel like my world is beginning to fracture. All day, I was vaguely aware of stimuli that normally would have been neigh unbearable to me: the whirring of my cat's toy mouse, a honking car horn, bright colors in windows that I pass on the street. All distractions, all set aside without any real difficulty. For the first time in my life, I could focus on one task and one task only. It was surreal and almost terrifying. The world felt flat and boring. The world has never seemed boring to me before.

But the medication is starting to wear off now. I catch myself tilting my head more, the temptations to open a new tab, start a new conversation, try out a new project, are getting stronger. My impulses are starting to flare up in protest at being dampened down all day. Even writing this is a compulsion I have patiently ignored and now have finally given in to. I should be working on my final essay. But this seems important. My first time coming off the meds. My first day of being on medication. The amount of focus I have had for most of the day has been incredible. I have never felt like that before.

I'm becoming more aware of sounds now. The hum of my refrigerator, the clicking of my laptop's keys, the shifting and settling of ice in the freezer. The scrape of my toenails against the hardwood as I curl them up in thought. All things I had not really paid any mind to today, when yesterday they would have driven me to distraction. My awareness to them is slowly returning.

And the colors. They are so much more interesting now than they've been all day. More and more, I find myself distracted by the burnt-out bulb in the ceiling light above me; I've been meaning to replace it for months and every time I think of it, another thought pops up and the concept of lighting is dismissed. But now it's becoming bigger in my mind. It wasn't even an issue today beyond a gentle dismissal earlier. I think I'll have to run to Target to buy more bulbs before this night is over.

See? They're coming back. It was so nice to sit for hours and work on my paper without a million extra tabs open, without music playing, without my brain jumping from task to task like a little wild thing. It has been at peace all day, sleepy. But it's waking now, and demanding to know why it has not been stuffed full of the stimulation that it normally gorges itself on. I do not have an answer to please it.

I can see why people think the world is boring. If I thought like this, if my perspective was like it was today all the time, I would probably be the same way: hardworking, careful, determined to succeed. But I'm not. My mind loves beauty, and it finds beauty everywhere. Adventures are easy to find, easy to conquer. Magic seems a reasonable possibility and the amount of wonder in my day-to-day life, something I take so much for granted, is faded today. Oh, I can still enjoy the pleasantness of a warm breeze, but I cannot hear its whispers. I can still smile at a cloudless sky, but the wonder of its sheer vastness does not overwhelm me today. The world is flat. Flat and boring.

I'm glad I'm not normal.

I am very, very glad my parents did not put me on Adderall as a child.

I am glad these small blue pills only last so long, and soon I will be able to take part in wonder again.

But hopefully I can finish my paper first.