[sathackr]

I'm probably in the same boat. I see myself as a firefighter, things don't get my attention until their burning down, then I perform miracles to save them. Every few months my utility bills don't get paid until they turn it off.

Personal relationships degrade until the point they are about to fall apart, then a blast of attention brings them back to normal. I'm a disorganized mess but when the right moment hits, I can do in a day what would take someone else a month to do.

Unfortunately I have nearly zero trust in the psychiatric community, and little trust in the medical community. There's too much overmedication/overdiagnosis in a attempt to CYA, limit liability, and in some cases, profit. I'm always suspicious of anyone who could be motivated to prescribe medication or treatment by a factor other than solely my well being(I reworded that sentence several times trying to decrease ambiguity...hopefully it makes sense). Full courses of antibiotics are prescribed for a runny nose, hearing tests ordered for mild congestion. I've seen kids diagnosed with ADHD and medicated into submission when all they needed was good parenting and a structured environment. A family member adopted 3 children from 3 different families. Wouldn't you know all 3 of them 'had' ADHD. If they started making noise or acting like kids, she would say 'oh, it must be time for their medication'. I've mentioned this to a couple of MD acquaintances. One of their responses were "She's convinced something is wrong. If I don't prescribe something, she will just go down the list of doctors until she finds one that will. Then I'll be the bad doctor for not doing something. The buck might as well stop here."

In any case of my condition being real, I have a fear of dependency. I'm scared that if I finally do submit and take medication, I will become dependent on it. I know my propensity to addiction and have vigorously avoided all drugs, including alcohol, except OTC painkillers and occasionally some cold symptom medication my entire life. I'm not concerned with becoming addicted to adderall/ritalin/etc... -- I'm concerned that it will eliminate what little control I've managed to exert over the issue and I don't want to take it for the rest of my life.

Your story about being able to wean yourself from it with little negatives while still maintaining the benefits may have given me the confidence to take the next step and try to get help.

[lfowles]

The common thing I see on /r/adhd is that medication can be useful as a crutch while you develop good habits. Going off of medication does bring you back to the old norm, but you've got some good coping methods built up by that point.

[lfowles]

I've been browsing your comments in this thread some more and just have to reply to this point:

> In any case of my condition being real, I have a fear of dependency. I'm scared that if I finally do submit and take medication, I will become dependent on it.

One of the hallmarks of unmedicated ADHD is poor impulse control and addiction. Getting proper medication makes a world of difference, be wary of inadvertently making your life worse due to internal bias.

[sathackr]

thank you for the sound advice. I'm checkout out bulletjournal and will likely at least try the medication route, assuming a doctor agrees and officially diagnoses me.

I was on Ritalin for a short time when I was around 14, I was as anti-medication then as I am now, didn't notice a difference and started refusing to take it after a month or so. I remember depression being mentioned at the time, although I don't know what the official diagnosis was.

The one medication that did seem to have great effect scared me so bad that I stopped taking it and refused to take any more -- percocet. I was prescribed some after oral surgery and threw it out after taking it for a couple of days. During that time, the house was cleaned spotless, laundry done and folded, even ironed my shirts and hung them (as opposed to my typical pattern of snatching them from the dryer and ironing them immediately before I wear them), and many other things were done that I would have normally procrastinated and waited until the very last minute. From talking to others, this doesn't appear to be a normal reaction to opioids.