Strange Mind Musing + ADHD
A conversation that involved my use of provigil for ADHD had me thinking about some weird stuff with my childhood brain.
I did not learn to read until I was put on Ritalin in second grade.
But I was a straight A student that did amazing at anything but spelling tests.
Eventually one of my teachers realized that I could read but I didn't understand letters.
Written English was a pictographic language to me in until Ritalin came along. I linked whole words with meaning but each word was basically its own rune, I couldn't deconstruct it into component letters in my mind..
My second grade teacher figured this out because we had a project to write our on dictionary and use it for writing tasks.... mine was enormous... and included a mix of written definitions and stick figure sketches of concepts.
Which... as an adult I'm pretty impressed by. Kid me was faking "reading" my memorizing thousands of words as single glyphs of meaning.
It wasn't until my ADHD started getting treatment that I could really break things down into letters and really grasp the alphabet.
re: Strange Mind Musing + ADHD
I've been on half dozen drugs for ADHD... most of them worked but had really nasty side effects for me.
So when I turned 18 I stopped taking anything for it and went unmedicated. This was not good for my higher education. Even 13 years later, I can clearly remember the inability to control the ebb and flow of my focus and creativity and it sucked.
Like not just in work and school but in my social life and things done for pleasure. Sometimes I could lose myself in a game or book for hours... other days I was listless and unfocused, unable to muster the attention to do anything.
I've been on provigil now since early 2013.. it works for really well for me.
On it, I feel... Sharp all the time.. like if something needs to be done or I want something done I easily muster the mental attention to see it through. Something I've never been able to do on demand off medication.
Maybe we'll have a good understanding of the human mind to prevent children from going through what I went through with Ritalin, Adderal, Straterra and Concerta... before an adult finding out that Provigil worked for me... because I got diagnosed with Shift-Work Sleep Disorder while working night shift.