The Big Plunge

(Full disclosure: this one is not that funny. Please feel free to stop reading here if all you want from me is humor. I get a little wordy in the beginning and most of the big jokes are toward the middle and end, but they all tie to the first third of the piece, so if you want the fun stuff at the end, you’ll have to deal with the start and the middle. Good-bye you lazy readers, the monkey will dance for you next time.)

Many of you that know me or have read all these blogs (10) of mine, probably know that I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. If you are a psychologist and met me before 1995, you knew I had it before you knew my name. It’s been a blessing and a curse, but I don’t hide it from anyone and I do my best to control it more than it controls me.

After 1995 though, the ADHD would have been harder to spot. That’s the year I realized something was wrong and I went to a mental health professional to get help. After the diagnosis, I decided to share with most people that I had the disorder. Most of my friends weren’t shocked. Several of my friends said, and this is a direct quote, “I just thought you were an ass.” Dear…dear friends, because what kind of person continues to hang out with you even if they think you’re an ass?

I was open about it because the diagnosis really changed my life for the better. The sky opened up and offered me a better life. I learned so much about myself in those sessions that I was excited to work on controlling this “thing” that had been really messing up how I approached life. It really was that big of a deal.

To give you a very general idea of what it’s like to be diagnosed with a treatable behavior disorder when you’re an adult, imagine waking up, driving to work, sitting down at your job and working for a few hours filing papers into two different sets of file cabinets. The boss comes by and introduces you to the person that is going to be working next to you, and as they shake your hand, they casually ask why you have been putting one set of meticulously organized files into a cabinet that empties directly into an incinerator. To which you finally realize that half the work you have been doing has been a waste of your time and you didn’t realize what was obvious to everyone else at your company, including this smug knew guy (who, I might add is wearing TENNIS SHOES in a BUSINESS CASUAL workplace). Now imagine you’ve been doing that job for 21 years. BAM! It’s like an ending to one of the lesser episodes of The Twilight Zone!

It is a complicated set of feelings to deal with when you get the news that your brain has only been getting what amounts to basic cable when all along you’ve been paying for the premium platinum package and there is no way you’re going to get credit back from the brain cable company. Even if there was such a thing as a metaphorical brain cable company, if they were anything like real cable companies, you wouldn’t be getting that credit either. AND you’d probably have to turn in your brain for a new model every time you moved.

So I was 21 when I learned I had ADHD and BONUS, an unhealthy side of depression that often accompanies ADHD (BONUS is not an acronym for a kind of depression, I simply capitalize some words to give them a little extra zing, but you were right to question it after I placed it right after the ADHD acronym). There are many reasons why depression goes hand-in-hand with ADHD, some chemical and some psychological. Think of it simply as getting depressed because you feel like you’re bright enough to do amazing things but lack the focus to get anything done. It becomes a vicious cycle of ADHD and depression, ups and downs and much confusion over why.

This is why adults are often treated first with anti-depressants as I was. I first became medicated with an anti-depressant called Wellbutrin that had a very mild stimulant in it. It stimulated my brain enough for me to focus more and the anti-depressant stopped most of the private crying I had been doing (Cue Oscar winning flashback clips of me crying alone through the years with dated clothing and bad haircuts).

Wellbutrin really tightened things up for me emotionally…almost too much really. My friends told me I was like a zombie and wasn’t funny anymore. This isn’t true though. It turns out I had just ratcheted my jokes back by quite a large margin. I think I went from something like an average of 33 or 34 jokes per conversational hour down to around 7 or 8 per conversational hour. Wellbutrin helped me stress quality over quantity as I was now able to LISTEN to what people were saying to me and make jokes relevant to the conversation.

After a week on the medication I sat down and read my first book in one sitting. NEVER in my life could I have conceived of finishing a book that quickly. It may have also been the first book I read all the way through (sorry every teacher I had up until 1995). I ignored the stigma of taking anti-depressants and medication for ADHD because I was changed. My new-found coping skills and dampened impulsivity allowed me to excel at school and collect my thoughts much better.

To give you an example of what ADHD is like, imagine listening to a friend tell you about how one of their parents are sick. Important, right? You would listen to them with concern, because they are your friend and showing empathy and asking what you can do to help is the right thing to do. Now imagine that you are having that conversation with them at a U2 concert and you’re up by the stage. Your friend’s back is to the stage and you’re facing your friend…and the stage. Your friend just gets to the line about the heart attack and over her shoulder you see Bono pointing to you and waving, trying to get your attention. Then some fireworks go off and up on their mega screen, you see a glimpse of your old gym coach trying to jump a mini-bike over some flaming buses and “Coach” definitely doesn’t have enough speed to clear them. Yep, un-medicated, that’s how distracted you are. Really. Medication doesn’t stop all of that from happening but it might dampen the brain noise to something along the lines of a Jack Johnson coffee house show.

Impulsivity is worse and can get you into trouble just as fast. Bad ideas seem like good ideas. This is why so many undiagnosed people with ADHD are in prison. Ask them and you’ll hear the phrase: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Medication for ADHD is incredibly effective in stopping this kind of behavior.

When I first started taking the medicine, it was as if a tiny lawyer appeared in my head that I ran all my impulsive business through. I would get the same impulsive thoughts, thinking what I was about to do was a good idea, because it would be funny or entertaining to everyone. But then the lawyer would look at me with trepidation over what I was about to do. I would pause before acting and either redirect the idea until the lawyer approved, or just kill the idea altogether. The internal conversation would go something like this:

Conscious thought: If I yell something slightly embarrassing in this restaurant, people will probably laugh.

Tiny Lawyer: (shaking his head a little) You know what? I’m going to advise against that.

Conscious thought: Interesting. Why shouldn’t I, I bet it would be very funny.

Tiny Lawyer: Although it would be funny to some people, not many of them are here in this restaurant at this moment, the people here won’t respond well to what you are about to say.

Conscious thought: How do YOU know what I’m about to say?

Tiny Lawyer: Steve, I live in your mind with you. I know everything that goes through here. It all comes across my desk and although you have final approval, I have the ability to create serious doubt in here. And if you do override my advice, I have the ability to apply as much guilt as you can handle.

Conscious thought: You’re no fun, you know that?

Tiny Lawyer: I’m not here for fun. I’m here to keep you from killing yourself or even worse, jail.

Conscious thought: Whatever, I’m doing it. It’s going to be funny.

Tiny Lawyer: Three packs.

Conscious thought: Pardon me? Three packs what?

Tiny Lawyer: Three packs of cigarettes. That’s what I estimate your average price will be as you’re sold from inmate to inmate inside the prison system.

Conscious thought: No way, I wouldn’t go to jail over shouting something in a restaurant.

Tiny Lawyer: If you yell something and the police are called, you’ll have to answer questions. The police will ask you if you have any weapons and you’ll say “no”. But then you’ll remember you have your Swiss Army knife and reach into your pocket to give it to the officer. When you try to hand it to the officer, they will mistake it for a knife attack and you’ll either be shot or pepper sprayed. Now you’re charged with threatening an officer with a deadly weapon. At the trial, you’ll say the knife was shut, the officer will say it was a sword and at that point it’s just your word against the police. Three to five years in the state penitentiary, although I think you’ll probably die in the first two weeks from not using the toilet in your prison cell because it doesn’t have a seat or is “owned” by your cellmate.

Conscious thought: You’re a real drag sometimes but alright.

Tiny Lawyer: If you don’t like me, stop taking the pill. Have fun in Walla Walla! Make me a nice personalized license plate. Oh, by the way, look around. Where are we?

Conscious thought: (looking around) Hey, I’m driving home! What happened to the restaurant?

Tiny Lawyer: Well, if I can’t convince you not to incriminate yourself, I’ll do what lawyers do best…stall until I’m ready for you to proceed.

And this type of interaction happens all day long.

Okay, I’ve just given you a ton of information. Let’s take a quick break and go get something to drink, maybe something to nibble. When we return, I’ll get to the bottom of what this “plunge” is and what it means to me and society in general.

(Intermission)

You needed to know all that before I told you the news. Remember twenty minutes ago when I told you about how the medication was like a tiny lawyer that edited my behavior? Well, in recent years that lawyer has been taking more and more sick days (at least that’s what he says he’s doing. Interviewing for a new mind is more like it). At any rate, I have started feeling like I’m not in control anymore. So I started eating better and exercising and seeing a counselor. These pieces, along with medication, are all part of taking control of ADHD and working to lessen the effects of the symptoms of ADHD. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been enough.

I’ve decided to give the Ritalin a try. Not that I’m going to walk up to the Ritalin store and say “I’ll try some of that grape flavored Ritalin* please.” No, I worked with three different healthcare professionals and they were all in favor of me setting aside my worries (of regularly taking what kids are calling “Zoom Zoom” on the street when they crush it up and snort it up their nose), and giving my frontal lobe the stimulation I need to operate like a normal human being. Normal, although subjective, I would love to feel what it’s like and if Ritalin gets me there or close to it, I’m now happy to try it. Also, I don’t know if kid’s call crushed up Ritalin, “Zoom Zoom,” I made that up. I hope to see it as an urban myth someday though.

It was a tough call, but in the end, I need to model good coping skills for ADHD for my son, who also has it. Showing him that Daddy can be mildly successful despite a condition that literally feels like a monkey on your back was all the motivation I needed to make the tough choice to move to this type of medication. That and they tell me I’m going to lose weight.

My wife, who knows a thing or two about behavior disorders (she could write a book on them if she wanted to. She might have too, I don’t know, I haven’t been paying attention lately), tells me that when I take the Ritalin, it will be a little like the Robert De Niro/Bradley Cooper film Limitless. Although the pill I’ll be taking won’t make me smarter like the one in the film, she does say that it will make a huge difference. I will slow down, focus, and become much more effective at everything I do. The fog will lift. Heck, I’m just excited because I’ve always wanted to meet Robert DeNiro.

But if I take it and everything speeds up, then we have a problem. It means that I don’t actually have ADHD and I’m just an asshole.

Our neighborhood pharmacy just called to tell me the prescription is ready. Did I detect a hint of judgment in her voice when she realized that one of her customers was making a change from mild anti-depressant to Grade A trucker speed? I don’t know, but I AM excited about the prospect of becoming more effective. Maybe I’ll even get around to posting these more often. Either way, life is about to get more interesting, and that’s the Damm truth.

*Now that I mention it, I really do hope it comes in grape.