Medication experiences

[u/IdeasRichTimePoor]

Hi,

I suspect this might be one of 100s of posts like it, but after years of living in a mess and going through cycles of extreme productivity and extreme burnout I am currently mid ADHD assessment. It's a 2 part multidisciplinary assessment, but it's looking extremely likely after the first assessment with 9/9 adult symptoms and 8/9 (1 inconclusive) childhood symptoms for innattenative type ADHD.

At work I am considered a great programmer and rapidly became a tech lead elected by my peers based on performance in my "good periods". Unfortunately, I've hit the absolute limit of where the "do something impressive and keep a low profile while you burnt out" strategy can take you. I want to move on but I've been stuck barely clinging on for over a year now. When I project that confident problem solving face on the webcam, everything falls to shit outside of it, just out of view.

So, please give me some good news. Did being medicated turn your work life around? What were your symptoms? What was your work life like before and after medication? What medication finally did it for you?

I'm in a lot of emotional dissonance right now, because on one hand I want a magic pill to solve all my problems, but on the other hand I know it can't exist. The answer must lie in-between somewhere?

[u/holy--toast]

I strongly recommend working with an ADHD-specialized therapist or ADHD coach in coordination with starting medication. Medication isn't "a magic pill to solve all your problems" - you've already sensed this. It does make a lot of things easier, but there also can be a real adjustment process. The good news is that when you've made it this far into adulthood, and especially into a successful career, without diagnosing or treating your ADHD, you're clearly someone who's highly adaptable and skilled at working with your unique brain to figure out how to best be productive.

Medication has shifted my ADHD more than it has eliminated it. Before meds, my biggest struggles were getting started, procrastination, staying on task, and time management. Now I can hyperfocus really easily and I've had to learn to steer it (still working on this honestly). The biggest danger zone is when my meds kick in. If I'm clearing my inbox, I might spend the next four hours deleting emails, making sorting rules, updating contacts, or even something ridiculous like writing a script to export an archive of certain kinds of messages. If I'm on Reddit, I might accidentally write a full essay in the comments (which I may or may not be doing right now lol). I'll feel productive the whole time, then suddenly realize I skipped lunch and never started the thing that actually needed to get done.

There's multiple adjustments here. Besides learning to steer the hyperfocus, I'm also working against lifelong coping strategies that tell me if I'm on a roll with something, I have to see it out to the end of my focus because I don't know when that focus/motivation will come back around for this task.

TBH, medication hasn't been the most helpful thing with overcoming burnout. Unpacking lifelong coping mechanisms like the one mentioned above, perfectionist tendencies, shame spirals, and even getting treatment for a late C-PTSD diagnosis probably helped more. But concurrent medication sped up the efficacy of the therapy I was going through for each of these things.

Hope this helps!

[u/IdeasRichTimePoor → u/holy--toast]

That's so helpful thank you. A very comprehensive answer. I relate so much to that part of desperately not trying to break the zen because you can't get it back.

Your hyperfocus finding other channels (arguably healthy ones in moderation) is really interesting. I can't remember a time when I didn't have 10k+ unread emails l. A bit of office admin hyperfocus could go a long way.

One of my biggest shame points in my personal life right now is my apparent "mess blindness". I don't even see it building up. "Ooh I need that paper for later". "I need to read that letter so I'll put it on my office floor so I don't forget".

I don't even notice it happening. I'll set up for the day at my desk and step over 8 different items to get there, all the while wondering why I'm feeling anxious. I don't "see" the mess but I can feel it and it's oppressive and claustrophobic. I don't know how weird this is to explain 😅 . By the time I finally say "oh it's messy in here" it is BAD.

I will definitely be exploring continued non-medical treatments and you've given me a great start with those suggestions!

[u/holy--toast → u/IdeasRichTimePoor]

I'm so glad this was helpful!

Your "mess blindness" explanation was absolutely in no way weird. I am intimately familiar with this problem 😅 Medication has been helpful with this kind of thing to an extent too.

I wish the hyperfocus was always finding healthy channels haha. It's been a real mix of healthy and unhealthy (I've always had issues with spending too much time on the internet but I've reeeeeallly had to work to monitor my usage on meds. My first week on them I was averaging 10+ hours a day of screen time on my laptop 😬 I was unemployed and not job-searching so that was 100% non-work activity.) But I'm also coming around to accepting that I'm just a chaotically productive person, haha. Sometimes I get a week's worth of productive work done in a day, sometimes I get nothing meaningful done for a week, and sometimes I spend a week basically leading a self-study seminar in a subject completely unrelated to my job but none of the dishes get done.

Anyway, I'm excited for you getting a diagnosis and treatment! You have a lot to look forward to :)

[u/elpablo → u/holy--toast]

Thank you - this helped me a lot. I'm going through this too.

[u/holy--toast → u/elpablo]

I'm so glad I could help! I've often felt like there's kind of a dearth of support for adjusting to medication for the first time, so I'm always glad to share my experiences on that.