I’m not the sort of person that needs to be coddled. I take my medicine when I’m told to. And, though I don’t always admit the need, when there’s no denying the need, I don’t.

The sugar, for me, is the curing of whatever the medicine was prescribed to cure. A bitter pill is not so hard to swallow if there is a resultant healing in the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, my ADHD is not curable, at least not yet. My meds are a temporary fix, and only a partial one at that. They help me keep calm-minded, but I must direct my own focus. Being mindful is only part of the plan, I have to be vigilant of what I am mindful of.

Flashback – three years ago

I have memories of discovering that I started something the day before, that I never finished. I would go over the days events, trying to figure out what went wrong. I’d have started to clean up a mess, my office or the garden shed perhaps, and been sidetracked by a phone call or the discovery of an undone project. Back then, I would simply say “Ahh, that’s where I went off track.”

I’d shake my head and smile or even chuckle, and start back at the task I’d dropped the ball on. I swear I didn’t see a pattern, I never noticed a perpetual repetition.

Now I know …

Back then I was in need of medicine, but I was blissfully ignorant of it. My pain didn’t come from day to day repetition of distraction and inappropriate action, my pain came from examination of a life that I thought should have contained more success, more advancement. It was a superficial examination, I never dug deeper into my analysis of that life, I always assumed I wasn’t trying hard enough. I always thought I ought to just do that, just try harder.

True confessions

I must admit that I felt oppressed. I was rarely the beneficiary of good luck. But I thought my luck would change. Someday all my hard work and dedication would pay off. I didn’t know that dedication required focus, I thought it just meant being dedicated to the idea of succeeding.

Meanwhile, here in the present …

I’m doing things differently these days. Now, whenever I think of success, I rededicate my focus to my writing and to maintaining my home. I’m not looking at becoming famous by 50 or able to retire by 55. The ship has sailed for that first goal and the second is two years away with little hope in sight. That’s okay. I’ve retired from two jobs already and quit numerous others. Retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, though I would like to try it once with financial security …

My medicine is to focus on the intermediate picture, don’t let the minutia distract me and let the long term take care of itself with some direction from myself and maybe a financial planner.

And the sugar?

The spoonful of sugar that I’m trying to use to help me “take my medicine” is the lessening of my trepidation of the future. I hope not to spend my declining years in an institution.

If I have to, though, I’ll be trying for a long term situation in a minimum security facility with internet access. I’d like to keep up my work here at Psych Central.

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    Last reviewed: 11 Jan 2012