News For Thought

This New York Times Magazine article, "Self Non-Medication," is one of the best examples of science journalism I have seen in quite some time. It is a personal story of a man trying to go off of depression medicine, which I should note is not at all necessarily reflective of ADD medicine. What is great is the mix of personal and science. It is an interesting look at the quesiton of taking medicine, though admittedly for a different disorder.

It's a bit long but well worth the read.

Enjoy.

A Preliminary, Personal Decision

Part 1 in a series on medicine and the thought processes that go into deciding to take it.

It's been a while since I wrote a post here and even longer since I wrote a post of substance. So here goes. A lot of the books I have been using are sitting in a box in my parents' house, so I am going to try my best to write about medicine without the books and will write an updated or new post when I unpack that box. Because it seems I have a lot to say, this post will just be about deciding whether or not to take medication and later posts will cover the options. I'm trying out this bolding key sentences style as a way of breaking up huge blocks of text.

First off, there is a lot of bad information on the Internet. By bad I mean either patently false or very biased. There are people who don't believe in taking medication ever, there are those who don't believe that Attention Deficit Disorder is in fact a disorder and therefore don't believe in treating it, and there are people who are paid by drug companies to promote specific drugs. Know that and do not self medicate. It's not worth the risks, and even with the medicine that says there are "no side effects" there can still be side effects because each person reacts to medication differently (I had horrible side effects with a med I tried, even after being assured by a top doctor that side effects with that medicine were extremely rare) and there are ALWAYS risks if you are self-medicating.

I firmly believe that the decision about taking medication for ADD is an extremely personal decision, one that should be made with your doctor and whoever else you choose to consult. No one else, not even if you are still on your parents' health insurance, should be allowed to weigh in without your consent. (Keep in mind, this is a blog directed at adults with ADD, it might be different when the person in question is a small child, but I am not commenting at all here about medicating children. That's a whole different discussion that does not have a place on this blog). For that reason, I will not write here anything about whether or not I am currently taking medicine or which ones, if any, I am taking.

When I first considered whether or not to take medicine, my primary concern was that my personality would change. I didn't want to lose the speed at which I talk, the sharpness of my sarcasm, my ability to be interested in multiple conversations and topics at once, or my creativity. That's not to say that there is any medicine for ADD or ADHD out there that does that, but there were things I was worried about. I had heard descriptions of high-schoolers complaining that their friends were so much more fun -- funny, loud, all around goofy and more active--when they didn't take their medication. And I didn't want that to be me, even though I had been told by more than one doctor that those effects were common in people who have the hyperactive subset and in children, neither of which I was, I was still nervous. But this quote of a mother describing her child on medication : "She's still my dreamer, but now it's on purpose that she dreams" (Hallowell, 40). In short, the medication didn't stop her ability to dream, only let her choose when to do it.

When I considered taking medication, I decided that I would tell a few very close friends, friends who knew me very well and would see me in varying situations. These would be the only people I would tell at first--three or four people total--and I would let them know that I expected them to be honest with me. Did I seem less distracted? Was the change noticeable? Was the change positive? Were there personality differences? Were there things that were missing, and if so were those things that they were glad to see go (like, walking into the middle of the street with out looking, temper bursts, too much anxiety) or quirks that were part of who I am?

Pay attention to things that irk other people. Are those things that you want to change about yourself? Are those things that medicine could help you change?

One more thing to think about: You should be able to tell if the medicine is having an effect, so with people with more mild forms of ADD or ADHD, you might want to take your environment into account. About to leave school and start a job? Switching from one job to another? About to go on vacation? Do you want the extra boost (and I mean this in an entirely positive, way. Taking ADD medicine is not cheating or giving you an unfair leg up. It's leveling the playing field) as you start a new job, or are the demands on your attention so different that you need to be able to see what lack of attention feels like before you can decide if it needs to be remedied? In other words, are you going to be able to tell what changes are caused by medicine and what are caused by a new environment? Is that something that you are concerned about?

This post is full of questions, many of which people might want to bring to the doctor who is prescribing the medicine, but they are also questions to ask yourself, because as I said before and will say again, taking medicine should be an informed, safe, and intensely personal decision.

NEXT: On the different medicines. What is out there? What are the differences?