terminalchaos

[terminalchaos]

Hiya!

I thought for my second post, I’d do a bit about my symptoms and what lead me to getting my diagnosis. Obviously it’s different for everyone, and I got extremely lucky. So bare that in mind! Warning: I get a bit sweary in this one. I have a lot of feelings about it.

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The city I live in, Melbourne, is officially the most locked-down city in the world in relation to COVID-19. After what has been a fucking exhausting few years, we are well and truly over it at this point. But what I didn’t realise going into the first lockdown (last year at some point) was how much I would suffer, and how badly this whole crock of absolute bullshite would affect me. 

Last year in the first lockdown, I was a full-time university student, working as a medical transcriber and at an acting studio, facilitating workshops with directors, casting directors, etc. This was fine for about 2 weeks. Then everything started to fall apart, very slowly. I stopped going to my lectures and my tutorials. I started asking for extensions, more and more often. I had always been a last-minute student, starting essays on the day they were due, with about 3-5 hours set aside to sit and do the whole thing. Throughout school I do not think I did a single bit of homework on time, unless it was something I genuinely wanted to do. I often just didn’t do it, copped a detention, and moved on with my life. 

This is extremely aggravating to me now, seeing that I was around hundreds of educated adults, and. Not. A. Single. Fucking. One. Either knew I was displaying symptoms of ADHD, or cared enough to try and help me. I don’t know what’s worse. It was simply punish the bad student, who never did their homework, and never studied, and never revised, and always forgot the in-class tests, and always struggled with remembering things. So, I adjusted. I still never did my homework, but I stopped caring about classes. I was rude to teachers who were rude to me, and would snap back at any teacher who didn’t show me the same respect they expected from me.

I was so, so angry.

It was completely unfair. I didn’t know why I was the only person who couldn’t do these basic things, like getting my planner signed after every week. So I resorted back to the things society told me I was: stupid, incompetent, lazy. That lead to a not great mindset, which lasted from the ages of about 13-20. I still struggle with a lot of these things, but in different contexts.

Anyway, the ways I coped at school started to fall apart at university. And they really fell apart with lockdown. Being in my house for 23 hours a day, with incredibly stringent rules, meant my ADHD just pent up. I couldn’t do anything. Not even things I wanted to do, and the pressure of deadlines weren’t enough to prod my brain into action. I just couldn’t do anything.

I figured this wasn’t normal, and one day I saw a post on ADHD in AFAB people. I read through it, and it resonated with me. Odd, I don’t have excess energy. In fact, I would oversleep constantly. Often, 12 hours a night wasn’t enough for me, and I would fall asleep at 2am. Caffeine would put me to sleep! My partner at the time would be on my back about how much I slept, constantly. He didn’t understand my ADHD presentation, which is reasonable, because I didn’t either. He would get irritated because the second I got any money, I wouldn’t save it. I’d buy things. I’d constantly put on weight because I would buy sugary snacks whenever I could. I would say yes to anything that would give me a second of joy.

When you have ADHD, your dopamine is running on empty. So everything you do is to try and boost your dopamine. It leads to a lot of behaviours that people see as irresponsible and reckless, because they can be. But it’s because our brains are screaming out for dopamine hits, however big, however long lasting. Now I know this, and can stop myself before doing these dopamine-seeking behaviours (the medications obviously help).

Reading this post about ADHD, I didn’t immediately do a deep-dive of research. I forgot about it for a while. I remembered my mum telling me when I was young that I “probably had some form of ADD, or something like that” after I spilled my guts about something that had been on my mind. I would start talking, and not stop. More and more of these little pieces started clicking. Then, I started doing actual research. I can’t remember details because, y’know, ADHD. But these symptoms started making sense. Not being able to control my impulses? Check. I am obscenely impulsive. Not being able to keep relationships? Check. Half of my friends from school in England I wanted to keep in contact with, I had completely deserted. Memory issues, not being able to keep a routine, missing deadlines, having slightly “kooky” interests, hyperfocusing, the paralysis I would feel when there were so many things to do, and I just sat in bed for 6 hours doing nothing, not eating.

I sat and cried on my partner’s bed while he comforted me. I cried over the fact I had an answer. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t lazy. 

From there, I pursued a diagnosis. This was tricky: I tried three different clinics (one of which lost my referral 4 times! Shout out Alfred Road Clinic lol), and emailed different ADHD psychiatrists like crazy. I got no responses.

6 months after my initial referral, I cried to my family about how frustrating it was, knowing what was wrong with me, knowing there was treatment, but not being able to access it. Imagine how frustrating it is not being able to do anything, knowing there is a way to help, but not having access to it.

Eventually, a few strings were tugged, and I got an appointment in June 2021. July 2021, I was put on Vyvanse 30mg by my psychiatrist.

The first day I took my medication, I sat and did my Korean homework for 2 hours. Then, I sat and cried. I have never concentrated for 2 hours on demand like that.

I was furious, relieved, and incredibly sad for the 23 years I had lost, feeling like my body and mind were two separate entities. Having all these things I wanted to achieve, and achieving none. I learnt so many things were coping mechanisms I used to balance my ADHD brain: trying to be early as possible to avoid being late. Notes on my phone reminding me of everything I need to do. Double checking things three, four times.

All these things I wanted to try, and having tried none. Not being able to exercise as it made me sleepy and I never felt the benefits. Finding certain things unbearable for no reason. Getting in trouble for stupid things just because I couldn’t convince myself the dopamine payoff would be worth it. Having built nearly no skills as a young person because I had no direction. This was compounded by my want to achieve, but feeling that I couldn’t do anything, because this invisible barrier kept me in a snowglobe of my own shame and frustration. All because my stupid fucking brain was too busy trying to get hits of dopamine whenever and wherever it could. 

I thought about how my A Level results would have been different if any of the adults in my life had clocked this when I was 13.

I thought about the things I could have achieved if anyone had thought to investigate just a little further.

I still cry about these things. The me that was prevented from living by ADHD taunts me from another dimension. Cow.

I needed to start to get to know myself without the dopamine addict brain. What I want to achieve, what was now possible, and how to avoid feeling like I will never achieve anything I want to. My main goal is to start having 3 meals a day, something I have never, ever been able to sustainably do. I’m still working on this.

[terminalchaos]

Hi Hun!

I'm Chaz. Seeing as you've fortuitously ended up here, I'll give you a super speedy rundown on the most important/basic parts of me as a human person.

I'm a 23 year old living in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia. The past year has given me a really volatile relationship with nearly everything.

I use she/they pronouns and identify as non-binary. This is because I don't really believe humans are binary beings (I'm definitely not), and want to expand my horizons without a label. I find them a little restrictive, and don't love the commitment of having to choose one.

I love acting, Lorde, drag, axolotls, plants that are really hard to kill, surrealism, Joe Lycett, Noel Fielding, Trixie and/or Katya, and language learning (currently Japanese and Korean, so apparently I also love making my life really easy lol).

I don't love capitalism, meat, Tories, James Corden, the South African accent, Ricky Gervais, people calling ADHD "ADD" (it was changed in 1987!!!), and people who don't put the toilet seat down (both lids, please, gross).

I have a chronic skin condition named rosacea. It sucks. I'll probably (definitely) mention it more. It interacts with my ADHD and it's an absolute pain in the bum.

And finally, I was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) at 22, and started on medication just before my 23rd birthday. I am predominantly inattentive, but can have some hyperactive symptoms. So far, I have been on Vyvanse (I call this my concentration meth) for around 4 months (I think, but the nature of the beast is that I can’t remember shit). It's been really, really weird. I went into lockdown thinking I was neurotypical, and emerged certified neurodivergent with an axolotl rescue. 

I started this blog to help me document my journey with ADHD. I haven't blogged since the golden age of Tumblr, but wanted to give myself a small commitment to do each week which will be enjoyable, easily achievable, and feed into my terminal need to overshare online. Prepare for a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness without the success, literary impact, and funky accents. And really, completely different content. :)

I figured a blog was a low-commitment way to cut my teeth with my writing while I take an intermission from my university course. It also provides me with my favourite type of social interaction: me oversharing and talking as much as I want with no interruptions. Thanks, lack of social awareness!

When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I thought that it was the end of a lot of struggle, and it was! In some ways. It was absolute blessing to finally know that I'm not a lost cause, and that medication can help (to an extent). But trying to reconcile these weird fragments of the person I never was, the person I didn't like, the person I want to be, and the person I actually am, has been the most frustrating thing I have ever had to do. I can finally begin to deal with everything, but the more I catch glimpses into life as people without ADHD have been experiencing it, the more it stings that I was struggling like this for 23 years. But it's like, fine guys!! Really!!!! I only cry when I think about it. :)

ADHD in AFAB people (assigned female at birth) can manifest in ways that means it often goes unnoticed by schools, parents, friends, pretty much everyone, including the ADHDer. We're often dismissed as ditzy, clumsy, lazy, stupid, absent minded, uncommitted, you know, all the great adjectives you really want to be associated with. When people mention ADHD, it's associated with young boys bouncing off the walls and disrupting class, sometimes being violent, sometimes just annoying. That sucks. Medical sexism (complete lack of research into how medical conditions affect people who aren't cis-male) has lead to ADHD being criminally underdiagnosed in people who don't fit this tiny box of criteria. This leads to a grieving period when you receive your diagnosis/start meds, for the life you could have lived, the things you could have achieved, the friendships you could have made and maintained, all the possibilities if it hadn't been for ADHD.

I want to help people understand what this condition is, why we do the things we do, what it's like to live with, and hopefully explain how you can help make the ADHDers around you feel a little less like a burden.

I will explain what ADHD is like to live with in depth in the very near future, but for now, I will leave you with a quick moment of sincerity: thank you so much for reading this far. It's not easy for me to do things like this, and I appreciate people taking the time to read my words: they're all I have at the moment.

Lots of love from lockdown, and remember to wear SPF. X