Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by k__ 1310 days ago
I thought about getting diagnosed too, but to be frank, while I certainly wanna try those meds, I don't wanna take them for the rest of my life, let alone pay for them on a regular basis.
4 comments

Yeah. Also, some countries still treat anyone with any kind of official mental "unusualness" as needing to be thrown in a looney bin. :(

Additionally, it's an unknown how long the current acceptance of ADHD (etc) will last in modern / western countries. We could just be going through a limited-time golden period.

> I don't wanna take them for the rest of my life

That's not the biggest worry. The largest psychological hurdle is seeing how much better your brain is with an illegal medication, and accepting the very uncomfortable truth that a pill that's often maligned, misunderstood, abused, and controlled is the difference between a fulfilling life and a slow spiral into the Abyss. Your fortune is not completely in your control.

As someone that has relied on himself all of his life, this idea still is very hard to live with.

I'm of two minds on this. Having taken them before and quitting, I know that you definitely can. But also once you see the kind of person you can be with medication, the really low unmedicated days feel extra hard compared to the effortlessness of the best medicated days.
I took them for a few months and then stopped. It felt restorative.
There's so many different meds though... with different effects. And for some people it takes time to figure out which one works best.
I tried just one medicine at different dose levels for a few months and then stopped. Never figured out a long-term solution because I didn't take it long-term.