I guess the ADHD meds are working

Due to a camping mishap that sent me to the emergency room yesterday morning (a part of our tent infrastructure ended up embedded in my thumb, but I’m okay), I forgot to take my Methylphenidate pill.

I started taking this med a couple years ago, and I’ve never been 100% sure if I really need it. I wasn’t struggling with ADHD in any overt way at the time. Rather, my motivation was curiosity and solidarity with my son, who was struggling in school and about to start taking the medication as an experiment. I’m fairly certain my mom and I are the genetic source of my son’s ADHD, though I suspect he and my mom are more impacted than I am. Anyway, it seemed like something my son might benefit from, so I figured, why not give a shot myself. If nothing else, maybe he’d feel better about it if dad was taking it, too.

Back to yesterday. I’m post-ER, sitting in the car for the 90-minute drive home, realizing I never took the pill. “I feel … fine?” I thought. “I wonder if I even need it.”

No more than five or ten minutes later, my wife asked me, “Did you forget to take your pill this morning?”

LOL.

I asked her what she noticed. She said I was much slower on the uptake when people around me were talking and asking questions. I was more lost in my head, less present.

Yep, that tracks. And I realized that I felt it, too. I was lost in thought about the ER visit, about an upcoming trip for work, about whatever else popped into my head.

Many years ago I saw a description of the “thinking introvert” and thought, “Aha, that’s what I am.”

The thinking introvert is someone often lost in thought. They are the daydreamers who spend lots of time reflecting on things. For the thinking introvert, their introversion is driven by their minds typically turning inward, regardless of the social setting they find themselves in. You may see a thinking introvert staring off into the distance, not because they are bored or rude but because they’re contemplating something that has just popped into their head.

Thinking introverts have vivid imaginations and can spend hours working on creative projects and pondering over life’s great mysteries. They are drawn to anything that lets them take a deep dive into their mind.¹

It might be ADHD, it might be thinking introversion, or some cocktail of the two. But it now seems clear that the medication helps me stay more present with my family. I was quite happy to get that feedback from my wife, because now I can stop wondering whether that little pill is helping and just take it.