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This week we will start to talk about the impact Ursula’s new medicine for ADHD is having on her, how it feels in her head and the initial impact on her work and productivity. We will then follow up with letters sent in by listeners!
Links for this Episode:
- Vyvance
- Steam
- Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
- ADHD MRI Scans
- Writing Excuses
- Writer Beware
- Ditch Diggers
- Cat Rambo
- Captain Awkward
- The Absolute Write
- I Should Be Writing
- Algernon Blackwood
I’m so glad to hear from someone else with an Anxiety Dog! I think of my anxiety as a very well-meaning, very intelligent, but very poorly-trained working dog whose job it is to keep me safe. But in the absence of literal bears to defend me from it’s completely overwhelmed by all these weird invisible stressors that it doesn’t know how to deal with.
So it’s doing the mental equivalent of chewing on the couch and barking at my friends because it’s scared and confused. Sometimes literally just mentally saying to the dog, “hey, I got this; I know how to deal with this situation and you don’t need to defend me” is remarkably effective at calming me down.
So curious on your take I have heard from friends resisting ADD drugs that maybe Ursula can address
Is/was there a fear that people live the hyper ADD you and if you medicate they won’t like you anymore?
Is/was there a fear that your creativity would go away?
I previously thought that the dozens of conversations I was having with myself at all times were symptoms of anxiety, but maybe not so much, given that an amphetamine clears them out like cobwebs.
Also, for anyone who’s interested, ADHD testing is not particularly standardized even by region — one of my friends got diagnosed via a battery of neuropsych tests over the course of four hours at a special testing center, and I basically talked to two different mental health professionals for an hour each. We both live in the same city in Massachusetts but have different insurance.
I still sometimes trip myself up on the question of whether I really have a brain thing or if modern life is just unspeakably difficult for everyone without chemical assistance, but given that the chemical assistance works and my insurance pays for it, it probably doesn’t matter.
I’ve commented a lot about my ADHD diagnosis as I’ve done my blitz listen-through this month, but i feel like this is an audience who can appreciate how magical getting the brain wrangled feels.
(I cast myself as Tigger in the stage adaptation of A.A. Milne I wrote and forced my friends to perform in with me in the fifth grade, so there is that.)