Still Untethered

It’s been a year and then some, and I’m still adrift with untethered ADD. Unmoored in marriage (recently divorced), and nearly in lodging, thanks to my hobbled career and zero savings. The lack of marriage led to a lack of health insurance, and I’m looking for affordable generic ADD drugs, and sliding scale therapists and psychiatrists. 

I’m a 53 year-old boat, without a sail or motor, drifting, springing leaks. 

Vyvance Day Who Knows, Let’s Call it 2 Weeks

It doesn’t seem to be doing much. It MIGHT be lending me a small amount of calm in the morning, if something goes wrong. But there’s nothing electrifying, or stupefying about it. It works about as well as Concerta did.

Vyvance Day 6

Or is it 7?

It might actually be less, if I factor in the symptoms of inadvertent Cymbalta withdrawal for the last few days — a fall into the hellish chasm of anger and personality change that results when I run out of the pills before the next shipment arrives. The alteration is Hyde-like, if Mr.Hyde were equally prone to weeping.

I’m feeling more like Jekyll today, my inner-beast sedated with Cymbalta, and a Vyvance chaser.

(though that’s not precisely true — I don’t have an inner-beast, independent of Cymbalta. A more accurate title would be Dr. Cymbaltataker and Mr. Cymbaltaless. Mr. Hyde appeared because of a drug. My evil twin appears without it.)

Not Finding Love in All the Wrong Places

It’s not an ADD cartoon. But it addresses misplaced love.

Vyvance Day 4

Today I had a computer snafu, and I didn’t yell, grumble, or whine. I considered the problem, worked to solve it, and didn’t feel a thing.

When my ADD is fully weaponized, I’m like a land mine. The slightest pressure sets me off.

When I’m topped off with Ritalin — and now, it appears, Vyvance — I’m able to endure setbacks and misfires with a dreamy calm.

Of course, this is only Day 4, and it’s possible I’ll toss my computer out the window tomorrow.

Onward.

 

Vyvance Day 2

Nothing yet. I think. Tomorrow will be a better test when I work my way through Monday’s list.

I Like the Sound of This

I came across this phrase while reading a post about zinc as a life-saving cure for childhood pneumonia*:

double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

As I read it, I heard a cadence:

Double-blind

Randomized

Placebo-controlled Trial

I don’t know what to call this style of poem. It might not be a poem at all. The reader needs to fudge the rhythm to make it work. Controlled barely fits between its bookends. (Would Placebo-‘trolled work?) But I like the sound of double-blind as it hands off to randomized.

I especially like the sound of the poem in the final line — a recognition that the experience of one should never be taken for the experience of many. Science is a challenge to anecdote. It recognizes that your cure might be my disappointment.

Today I started Vyvance. I’m not part of a double-blind study (though I can’t rule out that I’m part of a triple-blind study, completely in the dark), and I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay $50 for a placebo (though it’s not impossible.)

Either way, it will work or it won’t, and I’ll offer my anecdotal evidence once I have it.

*keeping in mind that it’s been at least five minutes since I read that post and I honestly can’t remember if pneumonia was the illness. But it was definitely about zinc, and sick kids, and a solicitous arrangement.

Nothing From Nothing: Another Semi-ADD Cartoon

Here’s another cartoon that qualifies for an ADDict post. It’s been on my mind for months, resisting creation because I thought the drawing would be difficult. In time difficult segued into impossible.

I drew it in the spirit of my ADD-slowed Mr. Cthulu cartoon.  I realized that I’d wasted most of a morning — reading this, reading that — felt horrible, useless, in need of a remedy. I lunged into research, gathering pictures of Billy Preston and his afro, propping myself and my lapdesk on the office cot, and just drew the damn thing.

(JDTDT: an acronym I’m likely to repeat if I remember to repeat it. I should print it backwards on a t-shirt.)

I finished the drawing after a few hours, and felt triumphant.

I savored the feeling for a full thirty minutes before it sublimated into something more sustainable.

Picture ice. Me on it, cautiously optimistic, slowly moving, braced for the inevitable fall.

As it stands — even if I don’t — I’ll submit it to magazines (well, I hope I do — the submission will probably require another of those desperate, unplanned lunges.) If I send it to Neatorama’s Neato Shop, I’ll redraw it; t-shirt art encourages scrutiny —  magazine cartoons encourage brevity.

This just occurred to me.

There’s a second ADD connection to this post.

Some people believe that ADD is amenable to homeopathy. “No side effects!” is the usual brag. I don’t disagree. Water is like that.  Unless it’s a flood, or poisoned, or breeding mosquitoes; dropping roof icicles on your head, or filling your lungs with too little oxygen, water is a genial element.

But like oil and water, or me and parties, ADD and homeopathy don’t mix. Their paths never cross.

With this exception. Drink water. Lots of it. Wear the above-mentioned t-shirt. Pause to read its message when you pass by the bathroom mirror.

I’m not sure if it qualifies as homeopathy, but it works.*

 

*Until the slogan, read too often, begins to lose meaning. It’s potency diminishes. Fades to nothing. Much like water diluted by water diluted by water diluted by water. The t-shirt is homeopathic, after all.

Nothing to Read Here

But I’ve left a few comments at Addled, the blog with the title I wish I could steal.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Logic

I posted this at my Nobrow Cartoons blog, and then wondered if it belonged over here.

I haven’t produced an ADD t-shirt yet; not intentionally. But this one might qualify. If there’s any sort of logic to my thinking, it’s a fuzzy one; a never-ending flowchart of associations, where everything is eventually connected.