It made getting everything done so much easier. It was amazing. And it was awful

The first thing I did after coming to terms with my diagnosis was fill my prescription for Concerta.

To quote Charles Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times.

It was as if I’d put glasses on my brain. Usually the items on my mental to-do list spun around in a blur in my brain. On Concerta, everything I had to do magically slotted itself into a list in order of priority. It made getting everything done so much easier.

It was amazing.

And it was awful.

I couldn’t look at food. I could taste and smell my stomach acid. And once the medication wore off in the evening, I was shaking from hunger, wanted to devour a box of cookies, a whole package of sour sticks, anything that could give me a sugar rush.

But worse was the anxiety. I felt like I’d drunk ten cups of espresso in a row. I was in overdrive, as if I was an antelope on the savanna, twitching my head from side to side trying to figure out from which direction the lion was roaring, in which direction to run.