Living with ADHD, Adderall free

Saturday, May 10, I’ll be graduating — with honors, with severe ADHD and completely Adderall-free.

I no longer pop the oblong orange capsules in my tired mouth every morning or even the little blue ones in between yawns for extra coverage in the evenings.
No, for the past four years, I have abandoned the drugs that made my life functional and my presence bearable to others during my days of primary education.

That decision has turned out to be one of the most rewarding challenges I’ve ever taken on in my life.

As a child, I was restless, overeager and, to put it mildly, odd. I preferred to roughly play “dragons” and dig hibernating cicadas out of the sandbox with my bare hands than skip rope with my peers.

I read Tamora Pierce novels under the table during class, disruptively squirmed and shouted out answers and opinions, failed my tests and left my desk in constant disorder.

Before taking me to a psychiatrist, my parents even tried experimental treatment for my abundant energy — a weird method that involved literally brushing me like an overexcited dog on a Cesar Millan show.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD and heavily medicated with Adderall, taking 30 milligrams in the morning and 10 milligrams after school.

Slowly, but surely, my behavior improved with regular doses.

I was able to focus, to control my urges, to engage in calm pleasantries and not
wreak havoc on my teachers’ existences.

Though my grades also improved, it was only because I was now able to actually finish the tests I took, rather than getting distracted by one question and running completely out of time.

In college, however, I swiftly realized the drug I had come to depend on was one with a serious stigma.

I came to this harsh awareness on the day that my freshman roommate stole my entire prescription bottle — almost a month’s worth — and sold it among her friends to study for finals.

When I confronted her, she said it “didn’t matter” because I “didn’t really need them, and if everyone took performance enhancers like (me), they’d also get good grades.”

As someone who takes her studies very seriously, hearing my successful schoolwork attributed merely to my having the privilege of taking the equivalent of mental steroids seriously shook me up.

So I quit.

Everything immediately became much harder: classes dragged, getting out of bed was impossible and my mind now worked at 1,000 miles a minute, making distraction inevitable.

However, after my professors in the English department started expressing academic interest in me outside of the classroom, I gained confidence in my abilities, and my motivation superseded most difficulties my ADHD created for me.

I’m not going to say the journey to this moment hasn’t been insanely difficult at times. My brain still works too fast. I constantly get distracted. I have to actively stop myself from yelling things out in class or acting otherwise disruptively. But knowing that I can still write an honors thesis while battling my shortcomings daily gives me an immense sense of pride.

I can’t say I won’t ever be reevaluated for a prescription, as I truly do believe that my mind and body function optimally when medicated. What is more important to me, however, is changing the ways in which we thoughtlessly and mistakenly label medicated ADHD sufferers. Adderall doesn’t generate pure motivation or higher intelligence in anyone who takes it — those qualities are determined by our own efforts and attributes.

All we can do is be understanding and actually give our classes the old college try.

mcaranna@indiana.edu
@Marissa_Caranna