Concerta Downers

14/01/24

Some days I feel unable to get excited about anything. Today I’m crossing on the car ferry to the South Island. Wellington to Picton. I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. Actually since yesterday. Since I booked it. But there’s nothing, no excitement today, just a strange sense of indifference. In the last few months, I’ve come to notice these days of ‘flatness’, or whatever it might be, coincide with my taking Concerta. It’s a wee pill similar in effect to Aderol, and also used to manage adhd. I was prescribed it several years ago when out of the blue a university professor approached me after class to question: ‘How do you manage your adhd? Are you on medication?’ And a ‘my wife has adhd so I’m used to recognising the symptoms in girls’. This is true, adhd can be more hidden in women and so more difficult to diagnose, but there was a slightly mistimed, ‘you’re doing awfully well’ at the end of his barrage of questions, probably when he saw how taken aback I was. I had no idea, nor had it ever crossed my mind. I was a scattered child and the reports from my teachers always came back with, ‘she has potential but doesn’t apply herself’. But I passed exams fine, made university entrance, and no one ever mentioned anything.

I owe a lot to that professor and shamefully perhaps I owe the success of my university degree to that drug. Arduous hours in the library writing my dissertation would have been impossible without. It is difficult to concentrate on the effect of rap music on the Arab Uprisings in Tunisia when staring out to sea and dreaming of being in the water. But I’ve too often been told that adhd is a ‘craze’ and too easily diagnosed that I feel torn on the problem myself. But regardless of the naming of something, medication helped me immensely when my life necessitated me spending long hours behind a laptop.

That time has thankfully passed and I’m taking it less and less, not loving its effects either. Life happens in phases. This one may be Concerta free, which would be great since I’m always forgetting to take it in the morning, or lose the damn bottle, not to mention trying to arrange a doctors visit in New Zealand for a new prescription. All those are a part of adhd, and sometimes it’s just too much. I need to go outside, it’s the best thing for me.

Me trying to get out and about despite looking like a dork on my bike.