I’m proper jealous at the moment. I was talking with someone over the weekend about ADHD, something which this old codger has finally been diagnosed with just in time for the descent into old age. His mother, who I would estimate to be younger than me (who isn’t, these days?), has also had a late-in-life diagnosis and a far better outcome than mine. Upon diagnosis, she was prescribed with what was presumably a similar kind of drug I was recommended to take, but was told not to by a GP because it wouldn’t go well with the mountain of meds I am already on. In a very short period of time it had worked and life, for the first time, made sense. Now I am lumbered once again with that most wretched of all wretched questions: what if?
Apologies (well, not really) if you have already come across a version of what follows on this blog, but to me it’s important. At the same time the GP at our local health centre told me I should not take the ADHD combating drug (or whatever it does), the same GP and a member of the Prescribing Team, whatever the fuck that is, had told me to cut back on my antidepressants because they are bad for me.
I am now in a place where I don’t know what’s a symptom of my depression, withdrawal effects from lowering my depression meds (by 50%) or part of my ADHD. The whole thing is mightily confusing in many ways. The antidepressants apparently can simultaneously bring about weight loss and weight gain, not least by altering one’s bathroom habits. Before you counter that I have always been full of shit, my GP has confirmed the latter – weight gain, that is – has been an issue so at least now I might lose some weight, even if I end up feeling even more depressed and, who knows, suicidal. Being dead I suppose would be as good a weight loss tool as anything as I have observed on television when Silent Witness’s Emilia Fox removes vast sections of a person’s insides in an effort to establish what they died of.
However, most of my issues are self-inflicted. Given my time all over again, I would certainly avoid having night terrors and panic attacks as a child and introducing clinical depression to my head once the other two had buggered off. I don’t know what I was thinking of. My grandad kept saying to me to “Stop fidgeting!” when I couldn’t stop fidgeting and for what it’s worth I still can’t stop and to “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” when I was probably depressed. In his defence, clinical depression and ADHD probably hadn’t been invented back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so he was probably doing his best to guide my life a little better. And at least he had the disadvantage of knowing precisely fuck all about mental health, unlike so-called medical professionals today who seem to just pretend to know something.
So, a better day is coming. Possibly. Or not. My depression will improve because I am taking less drugs and my ADHD will disappear because I’m not allowed to take any at all. I don’t understand that at all, but maybe that’s the whole idea?
