I felt guilty about taking adderall at first, about how it helps me shift between tasks and things. I talked to a friend who has known me for a long time and knew me during college, when my life was complete hell, and he said he could see a positive difference in me since starting the medication. He also said that it isn’t a super drug - “It’s just helping you do what you would be doing anyway.”
That really hit me. It’s true that adderall can’t make me an artist, or a good student, or good at chores - those were, and are, all things I still have to decide to do and work at. But on the medication, finding out after all these years I have ADHD-PI and that I just don’t present in a stereotypical way, I am able to get things done much more efficiently without some outside force looming over and saying “okay switch now!” I’m taking control again over my executive functions - that’s all it is.
Having a disability like ADHD never be noticed by the professionals I’d seen was, and is, frustrating - why didn’t anyone notice? How didn’t anyone see it? But it doesn’t mean I need to be angry with myself for having it, or for benefiting from medication. A world that taught me I wasn’t allowed to get help when I needed it so badly is the thing I should be angry with - not my brain for having a developmental disorder. Because I’m not different when I take my ADHD medication. I’m just better able to do what I would already be doing. That’s what psychiatric medications do for us - when prescribed properly, they don’t give us new personalities or false happiness, but instead they help us be us. And I’m thankful for that.
If you’re struggling today with guilt because you take medication - whether it be for ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a number of other things - don’t feel guilty. The world has taught us that we don’t deserve help, but the world is wrong. We deserve to be functioning. We deserve to be able to do what we already want to do. We deserve to be able to be ourselves.
