A good place to take stock after 8 months on daily amphetamine. For most of that time, I’ve taken the equivalent of 40mg dexamphetamine daily (this is complicated by half of my usual daily intake being in its prodrug form as lisdexamphetamine)

The first thing that strikes me is that at that level of usage, I’m pretty sure a neurotypical person would be considered an addict.

So am I an addict? I joke that I am, but no, I’m not. If anything, the opposite. I now admit that 8 months ago I absolutely had a substance misuse problem.

But that substance was alcohol.

Since the time I took my first pill, I think I’ve drunk maybe 8 units. That’s 1 shot a month.

I was self medicating on alcohol and it was destroying my health. Now I feel no compulsion towards the stuff at all. Initially I felt repulsion towards it, as I did towards sugary snacks. That repulsion has largely gone as the damage done to my body by prolonged abuse of both fades.

My attitude towards both alcohol and snacks is now a more nuanced “meh”. I don’t drink it, and my diet is better than it’s ever been.

The honeymoon period lasted a few months. In that time the apartment was spotless, dishes and laundry were done instantly, bins were emptied promptly, stuff just got done.

That’s settled a bit as well. I have now discovered the glory of “I can’t be arsed”. This, it should be noted, is entirely different to executive dysfunction; the latter is WANTING to sort my environment out and literally being unable to. The former is “meh, it’s ok if I do the thing later”, because I do actually do it later.

This deserves an asterisk. It works better with things like housework that have an instant visible payoff because that hits the dopamine thing. Stuff requiring delayed gratification … I’m working on it, ok?

Emotional regulation: the first few weeks I was Full Vulcan. Nobody and nothing got to me. I was so used to the dysregulated baseline that ordinarily modulated emotions were barely noticeable.

Since then I’ve become used to feeling emotions at what is, I guess, a more neurotypical level. This means that yes, I cab still get pissed off. I’m just a lot less likely to go straight to DEFCOM 2, or throw a full on temper tantrum.

Which brings me to the thing that is probably the single most hated thing about having ADHD: rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).

Not only does psychiatry not regard RSD as a symptom of ADHD (nor does it regard executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation as symptoms, because psychiatry is not sending its best and brightest and still thinks this is about fidgeting and squirrels); it doesn’t even acknowledge it exists.

It exists. It’s pervasive. Lots, if not most ADHDers live in constant fear of it. The nuclear bomb lurking in your own brain waiting to just go off because someone used the wrong tone of voice with you when talking about whether you want tea or coffee or something stupid like that.

It’s still there medicated, but it’s turned down to its absolute lowest setting, and that is such a relief.

There is a downside to emotions being regulated and RSD being tamed though; I am able to get to emotional places that simply were not accessible before.

And those places are full of the horror of realisation of what this hateful condition has done to me, and the depth of the generational trauma of being the child of multiple generations of chaos goblins who never received help or recognition. It’s even allowed me a modicum of compassion towards my father who, I must add, is still my first bully, still the bogeyman in my head, and still someone I can’t quite forgive.

But I do understand him now. And I understand, probably better than he does, what he goes though on a daily basis. I was plucked from hell. He’s still there.

And always will be.

Lol

Ok. Look. My sympathy has limits.

For the first 2 decades of my life I do not have a single memory of anyone ever showing me any kindness. At all. Ever.

I have a therapist now. Her name is Hannah. She is late diagnosed ADHD like me, and like me is a member of the Cult of Amphetamine. Those were basic requirements because unless you’ve been there, I really don’t think you can appreciate what a weird and utterly messed up existence this is. She’s utterly lovely and really rather good at her job.

I’m making more progress with her than I dared think possible, but I very much feel like I’m exploring completely new ground with no map or compass and few supplies and provisions and I don’t know which of the weird native plants are edible.

It is bloody hard work, but once one sees how utterly maladaptive the way one used to cope was, it becomes impossible to keep doing that to oneself.

But dear god, it’s painful. At times I will grudgingly allow some upsides to being born like this (hyper fantasia, amazing balance, a mind that has no coice but to be a runaway inference engine, which turned out to be quite lucrative), but I can’t bring myself to be grateful for it. The damage it has done is unspeakable.

And none of this is a cure. I am still that person. I will always have ADHD and I am under no illusions that without powerful CNS stimulants, within weeks I will be exactly what I was before with any concept of the ability to work as a functioning adult being a distant and dim memory.

I am at the mercy of the precarious supply of controlled substances in a society that shows people like us no understanding or compassion, and thinks we can “just snap out of it and try harder”.

They have no idea how hard most of us had to try our entire lives. It has broken me, utterly.

I need amphetamine to function.

I need amphetamine to function.

I won’t leave the house without it. This is not a chemical dependency. This is because I now understand the astonishing levels of stress just existing unmedicated in the world involved, and I can’t subject myself to that any more.

I’m not an addict, but in some ways I live like one. Want to meet for lunch or coffee (yes, I still drink caffeine)? Sure. As long as I can guarantee I’m hone within the 12 hours window I can guarantee that the meds are working for.

Some ADHDers with meds will go out into the world in “messy” mode. I’m not one of them. I’ve done it under duress. I don’t enjoy it. At all.

And as long as I’m big having a bad meds day, because they happen. And when they do, I’m not really all that functional then either.

Because I’m disabled. Always have been. To see me now, you might conclude diagnosis and medication have been negative for me. You might see someone who has been reduced, constrained.

You would be wrong. You probably never saw how hard I was paddling to pretend to be something I wasn’t, and how much damage that was doing to me. I was staring to enter a death spiral that wild have led to chronic ill health, type II diabetes, alcoholism and death.

And that is before further inevitable burnouts, each one taking more and more from me. They had already taken nearly everything. So much wasted potential. So much joy that hard to be in my heart that has just … gone. Taken by this hateful thing that I was born with; born AS. A brain that can’t stop arguing amongst itself about what to do, and results in doing nothing instead.

What amphetamine did is let me look at the full horror of the wreckage of my life, something I was in total denial about before, sigh, cry, and then start cleaning the mess up as best I can.

But it also gives me clarity of focus; precision of movement, reduction of sensory overload, and the ability to just shut the fuck up and listen to people sometimes.

And perhaps the ability to finally stop hating myself.

I had no idea where this road led back in early April when, together with Zoe, I took my first Elvanse pill. Well, ok, I had some ideas.

But I was not prepared for the sheer enormity of it.

Another day, another 12 precious precious hours.