There’s this frustration, this anxiousness, not knowing who I actually am without the medication. When I go off it now, I can’t get through simple chores, errands, tasks, anything.
The biggest thing I hate about it is that I’m a drug addict. If I’m being completely honest, I’m dependent on it. There’s a lot of anger and self-loathing that comes with that.
Trying to go off it is so hard. I’m afraid of being fired from my job, not being able to support myself. It’s truly terrifying.
It’s not like I was ever an all-star in everything. I felt like just to be average I had to take these stimulants. Who would I have been if I could have just been left to my own devices and figured it out? I don’t know.
These are the thoughts that plague the medicated, the adults in their twenties who take prescription stimulants for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and have done so since childhood. By some accounts, the number of 26- to 34-year-olds taking ADHD medication rose roughly 84 percent between 2008 and 2012 alone. “Basically we have millions of people in a society-wide experiment,” saysLawrence Diller, a behavioral and developmental pediatrician and family therapist based in Walnut Creek, California.
[For more of this story, written by Madeleine Thomas, go to https://psmag.com/the-addicted...7290bd171#.qsmblgyij]
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