> mentally I already was on "medication for life" bandwagon.
I was the other way around for most of my life, from diagnosis as child, through to my early 30s. I was surrounded by people telling me it wasn’t real, didn’t need drugs, and that if it was real, that instead I could just eat/sleep/exercise/meditate it away, that I just had to “try” harder. “It’s a scam from doctors to get you hooked on drugs you don’t need bro.”
And so that’s what I did, I tried harder and I tried harder right into an eventual psych breakdown at a hospital at what my life had become despite all I was doing and had been doing for years.
Since being medicated, my life has been fundamentally altered in ways that leave me with significant regret in not having more seriously medically addressed it earlier. I’ve lost years of capability and capacity for growth and education I’ll never get back. Years of unstable emotions and outbursts and associated outcomes that could have instead been avoided.
It’s now going on almost eight years of being able to have stable relationships, stable emotions, stable capacity to learn and grow, etc. Without what the meds have done for me, I was on the road to suicide. I was broken, battered and constantly disgusted and ashamed that no matter how hard I tried, or what I did, I simply couldn’t do what others around me could. And every increase in effort, to only see the same failures drove me further into that spiral of shame and depression.
> low carb diet
Already been on one for years as an attempt to control an inflammatory autoimmune disease. I don’t know if it helps the ADHD to be honest, but it became easier to stick too at least once drug treatment for ADHD began. When I’m not drugged, my craving for carbs is beyond what I could even describe. Along with the huge addiction I had to “non prescribed” stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine. (Apparently I was effectively without realising it attempting to self medicate.)
> don’t be afraid to stop your meds
I take holidays all the time (to which the professionals don’t love). If I don’t have to work/learn/be productive, I don’t take them. Aka weekends, holidays, etc. I try to minimise how much and how often, but I do that for all my medical issues. (For instance I’m prescribed permanent high level dosages of lyrica/opiates/valium for a spinal cord injury, but for which I take considerably less than I’m prescribed, and from which I take as many holidays from as I can humanly tolerate.)
I didn’t mean to infer that drugs are the ONLY option, to the exclusion of anything else and to do nothing else. You should focus on sleep, diet, exercise, building yourself coping systems etc, but really, that’s applicable to everything, and in many cases, it’s going to be a lot easier to build these things if your treated and stable first.
Before and after medication, I run my life with what’s effectively a running “blog” that is also my todo list/life goal tracker. I write down everything I hear/see that I think I’ll need to remember/action/do in the future. This blog runs my life and serves to provide a function that my own brain often can not. A stable memory of what’s important, and what’s not.
Anyway, sorry for the blog I suppose. Currently in Vegas, ironically, un-medicated because it’s a holiday and when unmedicated, I tend to have a tendency to drone on and on.