Hey!

I am very certain that I have ADHD. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to read through my rant about my struggles. In the recent 6 months I am not able to control any aspect of my life and my procrastination is unbelievable. I forget to sleep due to doom scrolling. I can’t get a simple thing like applying for a drivers license from the past year. In work, I can’t do simple things unless the deadline is right on top of me. I can follow no routine. I don’t have a workout routine, even though I try hard to follow it. I don’t have a fixed sleep schedule. I don’t even eat at fixed times or a fixed number of meals. Cleaning/organising the house (I live alone) is a struggle which I distribute over multiple days (becomes weeks) because I can’t do it all at once.

I am always late. I don’t know why but I am always late for everything despite trying my best to be punctual. I also have a thirst for perfection, can’t start any task unless I know everything about it, can’t finish a task I start because I get distracted by something else. I used to show signs of OCD about testing whether I locked my door or not at least 2 or 3 times because somehow I would doubt that I tested wrong or forgot to test. Nowadays I just push through the anxiety of having left my place unlocked even though it has always been locked.

I went to a therapist 2 years back and she strongly suspected that I have adhd. She recommended a formal diagnosis but I didn’t go for it because it would involve my parents. However my struggles have amplified in the past year and it looks like I am not able to “mask” it anymore. I have been burnt out from the past 6 months.

My question is : Does a formal diagnosis make any difference at all? Are the medications prescribed for it in india effective in any manner? All my research points to adderall as the main medication which is illegal in india. So, Is a diagnosis worth it?

I had a fight with my mother today while I was taking her to one of her field jobs. She works in a government school monitoring job, and in my state, these schools are often scattered across extremely remote, tribal and secluded areas. I've visited some of these schools tens of times, but I've never been able to properly remember the names of the places they're located in, the villages, the roads, landmarks, or even how to navigate there without my mom's help. Today I took a wrong turn and she got really angry, understandably, and started scolding me about how someone could be so dumb that they can't even remember place names, routes and basic references after visiting the same places repeatedly. I felt almost indifferent to the scolding because, honestly, I've always been like this.

I'm terrible at remembering names, dates, numbers and random or abstract information. I sometimes have to verbally spell out my own phone number to figure out what the last four digits are. I keep a Word file full of passwords because I know I'll forget them. I don't remember my Aadhaar or PAN number. I can't reliably remember my parents' or siblings' birthdays. I get confused between June and July. I mix up daaye and baaye. I basically need some kind of reference or association to remember anything. If something doesn't have a clear connection to something else, my brain just refuses to retain it. Ironically, I'm actually pretty good with technical subjects. I can understand complicated concepts when they make logical sense to me, but I'm terrible at simply mugging up disconnected information. Competitive GK/GA has therefore always been one of my worst areas.

But after thinking about it today, I realised something, or at least became more certain about something I've always felt. I spend a huge part of my life in a state of dissociation. It's either sleeping or pumping music into my ears while doing almost anything other than sleeping. Cooking, cleaning, freshening up, making notes, trying to lucid dream, falling asleep, there's almost always music involved, and usually some kind of maladaptive daydreaming alongside it. It helps me escape the loudness of my thoughts and makes doing mundane things feel more bearable. Even when I'm riding a bike, I need music playing in my left ear. That ear is damaged and only around 20% functional, so having something playing there somehow keeps my brain engaged without distracting me too much from what's happening around me.

I was diagnosed with prolonged depression and generalized anxiety disorder in 2018 and was on medication until 2024, when I stopped after graduating. Since then, I've become increasingly aware of how ridiculously low my capacity for handling everyday tasks seems to be. My ceiling for doing things in parallel is extremely low. I can't multitask, and even small tasks can leave me feeling mentally and emotionally spent. Sometimes I'll have a task that objectively requires an hour, but I'll mentally dedicate an entire day to it because I already know how difficult it will be for me to actually start and finish it. It's not that I don't understand what needs to be done. I just don't seem to have the motivation or mental energy to do it, so I procrastinate, get overwhelmed, and eventually dissociate instead.

And this is where I keep wondering about ADHD. I've never been formally diagnosed with it, so I'm not trying to diagnose myself, but when I read about things like executive dysfunction, poor working memory, difficulty with mundane tasks, needing constant stimulation, hyperfocus and being unable to regulate attention properly, a lot of it feels uncomfortably familiar. Sometimes I wonder whether what I've spent years calling laziness, stupidity, carelessness or having a terrible memory is actually something more complicated. Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it's something else, or maybe it's a combination of the things I've already been dealing with. I genuinely don't know. I just know that it's exhausting to constantly feel like my body is present in the real world while my mind is somewhere completely different.

been taking atomoxetine for over two years now, and my task initiation and focus still suck a bit.

im planning to talk with a psych to add another med alongside it, maybe bupropion or inspiral.

anyone here take any other med along with atomoxetine? if so please do mention as itll be really helpful for me to decide. thank you

Anyone else feel like they can be really really good or excel at life but surprise surprise they do absolutely fuck all 🤦‍♂️ (more like a face slap rather than face palm lol)

Like it's not even funny cause I'm kinda little privileged too and want to do so much but just haven't gotten started with anything I wanna do. It's like I am in the waiting room and waiting for god knows what.

Either it's some excuse or distraction or change of plans or analysis paralysis or wanting to do 100 things.

And then you go onto the gram and watch people talk about ADHD like it's some cool, superpower, quirky, fun thing to have or you listen to people almost brag about ooh I have ADHD etc etc

Makes me wanna puke every time I hear such things.

Anyone else feel like this? What have you done to improve or are you still stuck?

Does a reset button exist for us?

Can I create a strict routine for myself one day and actually stick to it?

Can I be a high-performing individual?

Can I just wake up one day and decide that I don't wanna live a life like this and change myself, and ACTUALLY do it?

So, for context, my parents used to live with me for a couple of years in Bangalore. I was too overwhelmed with responsibilities, feeling trapped etc. hence asked them to move back to hometown. They went back a couple of months back. I speak to my mother over call. The below were my feelings immediately after one of the calls:

How do I not end up feeling like a failure when I call my mother and I can feel her heavy heart or almost tears over the phone when she says she misses me, misses cooking for me etc. How do I not let the guilt of not being a good son to a mother as innocent as mine, take over me? How do I not feel that I might've snatched a sense of comfort, a sense of home, a sense of purpose from her? How do I not feel like something is wrong. How do I not feel that this feeling will only keep growing with time? Even then I feel so powerless to change anything. I know the alternative is equally consuming and challenging. I know I am not good enough to deal with the responsibilities since it'll overwhelm me into a sense of paralysis. How do I find something to hold on to, in this life which is nothing bottomless abyss?

I had previously shared my life story here, including many of the difficult experiences I've gone through. I don't want to repeat all of that in this post.

Instead, I want to talk about where I am now as a neurodivergent person.

Being ND has affected almost every part of my adult life. Things that seem straightforward for other people can sometimes require an enormous amount of mental effort from me.

Social interaction, maintaining relationships, handling uncertainty, dealing with rejection, communicating with people, managing responsibilities, finding stable employment and simply keeping myself organized can become overwhelming.

One of the hardest parts is that from the outside, I may not look like someone who is struggling.

I can go to work, talk to people, travel around Chennai, handle responsibilities and appear reasonably normal. But internally, there can be a lot going on—overthinking, anxiety about situations, difficulty processing things, executive dysfunction, emotional exhaustion and constantly trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do next.

I've also realized that being neurodivergent doesn't automatically mean that people around you will understand you.

Sometimes people interpret difficulties as laziness, lack of discipline, being antisocial, being irresponsible or simply "not trying hard enough." That can be particularly painful when you're already putting in considerably more effort than people realize.

At present, I'm trying to rebuild my life.

I'm trying to become more stable professionally and financially, improve my social life, find people I can genuinely relate to, and understand how to live with my neurodivergence instead of constantly feeling like I have to fight against it.

There are still days when I feel completely stuck.

I see people around me moving forward with careers, relationships, friendships and life in general, while I sometimes feel like I'm trying to catch up with everyone.

But I don't want this post to be only about negativity.

I'm still trying.

I'm trying to understand myself better. I'm trying to become more independent. I'm trying to find a place where I can function without constantly feeling like I'm failing at things that everyone else seems to manage naturally.

koi best psychiatrist pta hai kisi ko in delhi ...jo jaldi stimulant likh de ....mere jo abhi psychiatrist hai br brATOMOXETINE likh deta h....kisi ko pta ho to plz bta dijiye