I know that the title sounds insane, but I promise I’m not crazy.
Okay, maybe I’m a little crazy.
It’s been about a month since I decided to stop taking Vyvanse; the recent medication I was on titration for my diagnosed Inattentive type ADHD.
From the beginning I told my psychiatrist and therapist that medication was going to be a temporary thing for me until I establish healthy routines that I could follow even without medication. However, the decision to quit would’ve appeared sudden through their perspective.
I actually wasn’t expecting to quit my medication so soon, but the decision was heavily influenced by my changing perspective of the world, among other things.
As a disclaimer, I don’t deny that modern medicine has helped save many lives. I’m not against vaccines and I definitely don’t take the hard work of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals for granted.
When I first got the job I have now, I was optimistic about having decent health insurance that would let me begin my journey into mental health.
For a very long time, I thought that I didn’t really belong anywhere and stuck out like a sore thumb. There were many factors that made me feel this way throughout my life, but strictly sticking to the topic of mental health, I would make very stupid mistakes in at work, school, and my personal life that couldn’t be explained by mere clumsiness.
Initially, the goal for me was to finally feel like I belonged within society. My being yearned to feel like a cog in the machine. After all, I finally had a fulfilling job at an office and really wanted everything else that came with my vision of a job like that: a mortgage, coffee in the morning from the convenience store, etc.
But after a couple of years, I’m realizing that this isn’t what I wanted at all.
Why was I taking stimulant medication to try to fit into what society expects me to become?
I’ve heard talk about how ADHD used to play a bigger role before modern times. Because of how modern society is heavily structured people with ADHD feel the burden more heavily. Or at least that’s what I understand.
This, along with the bit of spiritual reading I’ve been doing as research for my story allowed me to reach a conclusion: That I’d rather reject the mold that society wants me to fit into and be free. Even knowing that this modern world was not made for my ADHD brain, I would feel more comfortable living as myself.
It doesn’t really end there, though. There’s a lot I reject about the modern world. My biggest fear is that people will misinterpret my rejection of certain aspects of modern society as ignorance, or acting in bad-faith.
One example is that I refuse taking sides in politics because it’s not a matter of red guy vs blue guy for me anymore. The entire political system is built to be as inefficient as possible to prevent any kind of real change from happening.
The direction of the country is decided by whatever small group of driven zealots are in control at the time. And the Elite are the ones who benefit from any kind of political decision no matter who’s in charge.
So, I’ve decided to not play the game.
I know some people will heavily disagree with me on this issue, but I hope they can at least recognize my perspective. Exercising my free will according to how I want to live (even if the Government finds something I do, “illegal”) is my ultimate goal. To be caught up in the arbitrary rules created by people who I have never met feels like an unhealthy way to live.
The truth of the matter is that anything humans ever created only has value because we decided to give it value. If we all decide tomorrow that money isn’t real and the Government doesn’t exist, then most of our problems will have disappeared overnight.
After a month, I gotta say … this really sucks, haha. But it’s getting better. I’ve lived most of my life with ADHD so there’s nothing new here except for a greater sense of compassion for myself. And I think that makes things a little bit more bearable.