Ritalin Diaries - Week 3, Day 2-4
Got word back from the nurse that since they weren't able to find information on my baseline pulse rate, we're not gonna be raising my dosage.
This is fine except I am absolutely starting to notice that the effect is not as strong as it once was. I think I mentioned this earlier but it's even more true. I'm not back to falling asleep but I'm absolutely noticing a bit more restlessness if only in my legs doing that restless-moving in place thing they do when I'm sitting still and trying to listen. I'm still listening a lot better than I sometimes to but at the same time, the sharpness and clarity I had that first couple days is just dropping off much more noticeably and it's frustrating. Getting myself to do physical things is relatively easy but getting myself to do mental work is still a pain. Too much of one.
I'm deathly worried that I'm finding out that underneath all the ADHD-inspired procrastination, I might just be an exceedingly lazy person.
On the upside, with some amphetamines kicking my shriveled forebrain into gear, I am hoping I can fix that.
But, well, the other thing is worrying that my heart will suffer extreme damage and explode in my chest and nobody needs that.
Okay, okay, that's MY worry, not one the doctors have expressed. Which is good because if that was their worry, I daresay they'd have told me to suck it up and deal with a lack of executive function.
But on that front, I'm also figuring out how to attack that side of things through getting into an exercise habit. Three days a week of free weights and copious amounts of stretching and the like. I think I've mentioned it before but I mention it again because I'm starting to feel like I've got some gun show going on. Just a bit, of course, but enough that I feel pretty snazz about the whole thing. The fervent hope is that if I keep it up long enough, it'll buff up my heart a bit so I can have a lower heartrate and, thus, accommodate enough of whatever thing they wanna put me on so that I can just be mad-clever and driven and whatnot.
I mean, I say it like that and it sounds like I just want them to pump me full of drugs so I can burn out instead of fade away.
I mean, I don't WANNA do either but I'd really rather get into a space where I can easily enter a frenzy of activity than having a state where I am just in a constant frenzy of no-activities in particular but trying to do them all.
Also, as a side note, I'm noticing myself getting more... I dunno quite how to say it. Pedant-y? Lots of very long rants about how annoyed I am when a word is used in a way I don't like. I am hoping it's just because that sort of shit is a LOT easier to deal with but, well, it's a thing that's going on. We joke that it might be a bit to do with how I've also got a bit of what used to be called Asperger's and is now considered a place on the Autism spectrum and now that the ADHD isn't taking some of the edge off of it, the more stereotypical stuff is coming through.
It's hard to say. I don't feel a ton different except that for all I complain about it not being sharp enough, my brain is absolutely sharper than it's been in years overall, even if it doesn't feel as transcendently so as it did that first week.
This is fine except I am absolutely starting to notice that the effect is not as strong as it once was. I think I mentioned this earlier but it's even more true. I'm not back to falling asleep but I'm absolutely noticing a bit more restlessness if only in my legs doing that restless-moving in place thing they do when I'm sitting still and trying to listen. I'm still listening a lot better than I sometimes to but at the same time, the sharpness and clarity I had that first couple days is just dropping off much more noticeably and it's frustrating. Getting myself to do physical things is relatively easy but getting myself to do mental work is still a pain. Too much of one.
I'm deathly worried that I'm finding out that underneath all the ADHD-inspired procrastination, I might just be an exceedingly lazy person.
On the upside, with some amphetamines kicking my shriveled forebrain into gear, I am hoping I can fix that.
But, well, the other thing is worrying that my heart will suffer extreme damage and explode in my chest and nobody needs that.
Okay, okay, that's MY worry, not one the doctors have expressed. Which is good because if that was their worry, I daresay they'd have told me to suck it up and deal with a lack of executive function.
But on that front, I'm also figuring out how to attack that side of things through getting into an exercise habit. Three days a week of free weights and copious amounts of stretching and the like. I think I've mentioned it before but I mention it again because I'm starting to feel like I've got some gun show going on. Just a bit, of course, but enough that I feel pretty snazz about the whole thing. The fervent hope is that if I keep it up long enough, it'll buff up my heart a bit so I can have a lower heartrate and, thus, accommodate enough of whatever thing they wanna put me on so that I can just be mad-clever and driven and whatnot.
I mean, I say it like that and it sounds like I just want them to pump me full of drugs so I can burn out instead of fade away.
I mean, I don't WANNA do either but I'd really rather get into a space where I can easily enter a frenzy of activity than having a state where I am just in a constant frenzy of no-activities in particular but trying to do them all.
Also, as a side note, I'm noticing myself getting more... I dunno quite how to say it. Pedant-y? Lots of very long rants about how annoyed I am when a word is used in a way I don't like. I am hoping it's just because that sort of shit is a LOT easier to deal with but, well, it's a thing that's going on. We joke that it might be a bit to do with how I've also got a bit of what used to be called Asperger's and is now considered a place on the Autism spectrum and now that the ADHD isn't taking some of the edge off of it, the more stereotypical stuff is coming through.
It's hard to say. I don't feel a ton different except that for all I complain about it not being sharp enough, my brain is absolutely sharper than it's been in years overall, even if it doesn't feel as transcendently so as it did that first week.