In this episode of Translating ADHD, hosts Ash and Dusty explore the complex relationship between ADHD coaching and medication. They emphasize the importance of coaches maintaining ethical boundaries while still acknowledging the role medication plays in many clients’ lives. The discussion covers the nuances of medication experiences, including how individual responses can vary significantly and the need for self-advocacy when navigating treatment options. Both hosts share personal anecdotes to illustrate the impact of medication on their own lives and those of their clients, stressing that medication is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
The conversation also delves into common misconceptions about ADHD medication, addressing stigma and the societal pressures that often accompany discussions about treatment. Ash and Dusty highlight the importance of curiosity in coaching, encouraging clients to examine their experiences with medication thoughtfully. By fostering an open dialogue, they aim to empower listeners to approach their medication journey with a better understanding and a willingness to advocate for their own needs.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:03] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Just a reminder that there are two group coaching offerings coming up in January, both offered by me. The first is Purpose, which begins January 13th. The second is Project X, which begins January 14th. They both meet at 8:30 PM Eastern time on Mondays and Tuesdays, respectively. For pricing and more information, and to apply for these courses, visit the website, TranslatingADHD.com and click on the group coaching tab.So Dusty, we’re going to talk about something this week that is a little bit of a gray area for us as coaches, and that is medication. We are not diagnosticians, we are not prescribing clinicians. So, what is our role as a coach, as an ADHD coach, when it comes to medication?
[00:00:57] Dusty: Yeah, it’s a good question. And I feel like each coach might vary in their comfort level talking about medication. I think probably, like, ethically, a good coach should not give any kind of advice about, like, what medication people should take, because we’re not trained medical professionals, so we don’t know.However, at the same time we do have that, like, lived experience and knowledge of, of, like, what using medication is like for all of our clients, right? So, when I say we shouldn’t give advice, we can still maybe give suggestions or feedback about like how to maybe advocate for yourself how to research different medications.
I don’t think it’s as black and white as like, we should never talk about meds at all. That’s just not reasonable. At the same time, we have to be really careful that what we’re doing couldn’t, you know, sneak over a line into any kind of like liability issue or, you know, giving medical advice type of an issue.
So it’s, it is like you say, it’s a gray area. It’s, I think it’s really important that coaches are, very mindful about this are very like that they treat it with a lot of thoughtfulness but I just don’t think it’s reasonable for coaches to never address the question of medication with their clients because like that’s sort of like the whole thing
[00:02:12] Ash: Well, coaching is whole-person coaching, right? So I often say if ADHD coaching and whole-person coaching are a Venn diagram, it would be a circle, and your context matters. And so medication is part of your context. I find in my coaching practice, I just do a lot of what I’m otherwise doing, a lot of awareness work, helping my clients sort of come to what is true and not true about medication.For me, for a number of my clients, we’ve coached around things like stigma: the stigma of a diagnosis, the stigma of taking or needing ADHD medication. The fear mongering that goes on about ADHD medication being speed or basically meth or whatever.
[00:03:00] Dusty: Legal meth. [00:03:01] Ash: Right. Right. Right. All of that. You know, so a lot of the work that I do with a typical client around medication, if they’re not already medicated on a medication that’s working for them, is just coming to that decision point of, do I want to try medication or not, which sometimes also includes the question, do I want to pursue a formal diagnosis or not if they haven’t already.And so an opportunity there to just get really curious about what’s true and not true for them. As their coach, an opportunity to share my experiences with medication, some other clients’ experiences with medication, but I think there’s also an opportunity once a client has started medication, or if a client is unhappy with their relationship with medication, to do the same thing.
I had a client who, so he took medication, but not every day. It was sort of a look at my day and make a decision based on that because he didn’t love the side effects. And in particular, he noticed that he was having a crash on medication days. He actually took a month off of medication in order to suss out what was going on here.
And the first time he took it again after that found himself really frustrated with how bad his crashes were on medication days. He was like, I come home and I’m just done. I’m just done. There’s nothing left in the tank. There’s no chance that I’m going to have social plans or anything that night, or if I do, I’m going to be cancelling because I’m just so done. I just hit a wall, and I’m done.
And so we got kind of curious about what’s different on a medication day versus a non medication day, because his assumption is it’s the medication itself. And we all know that crashes are something that can come alongside ADHD meds. But for this client, interestingly enough, when we got into the anatomy of a medication day, we realized that a lot of the supportive structure that we’d worked on over the years wasn’t happening on medication days.
He would get into hyper focus and just work, work, work all day long. No breaks, not stopping to eat, not stopping to take a walk or change environments. Those are two things that we talked about over the years that have been really good supportive structures for that client. Just go, go, go all day. And no wonder you’re so depleted at the end of the day. If you’re just sitting down and hyper focusing for eight hours, that’s going to drain your executive function.
And so for this client, it wasn’t necessarily meds or no meds, which is the question that he thought he was asking. It was how do I bring my supportive structures and supportive habits into a day that I’m taking medication? Because when I don’t, that’s when I get depleted and I crash.
[00:06:05] Dusty: Yeah, and that’s, it’s so interesting, you know, to hear you say that, because it’s true. I think people have one expectation of what medication is going to be like, and they also have a lot of, like, fears and misconceptions.And so, like, one of the things that I hear about – and again, I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t comment on on how effective this is or not – is this idea of like med holidays or like not taking your meds on certain days so that you don’t, you know, like, develop a tolerance. And my understanding is that it is normal for people to need to titrate up over time with stimulant use.
But I know for me, I used to take Ritalin, and now I take something else. But I took just short acting Ritalin, like the kind that’s, you know, in and out of your system in four hours, I would take it twice a day, and I wouldn’t take it on weekends. And I found that I had, I would just wake up in the morning, first thing on a Saturday. I would think of about 20 things I wanted to do. I wouldn’t be able to decide which of those I wanted to do. I was still sleepy. So then I was like, oh my God, I want to do all these things, but I also don’t feel like doing any of those things.
And within like 30 minutes of opening my eyes, I’d be having like a terrible day. And the rest of the weekend would usually proceed like that. I would try to do way too many things, start them, not be able to finish them, not know what I was in the mood to do. And finally, I was like, why do I only get to have a good day like when I’m working? I should get to have good days on weekends too.
So then I started taking my meds on the weekend, and it made like such a huge difference because like sometimes I just want to be able to sit down and read a book, you know? So I know like for me personally, yeah, just like realizing that I should probably be taking this medication every day was really important.
[00:07:44] Ash: That begs an interesting question, Dusty. And I know this is something my clients ask me, particularly if they’re grappling with, do I try medication for the first time? Meaning I’ve never been on an ADHD medication and I don’t know what to expect. My clients will often ask me, how does medication affect me?And you just kind of alluded to that in talking about what your weekends were like unmedicated versus medicated. But I am curious, what does medication do for you do you think?
[00:08:14] Dusty: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I feel like that’s one of the questions that we also deal with when helping clients, because I’ve had clients go on meds, and they’ll come to coaching, they’ll say the meds aren’t working, and I’ll go what does that mean? And they go, well, I’m still struggling with, like, all this stuff, right? Like, they’re hoping that it essentially is like this magic pill and all the things that they’ve struggled with their whole life, they’re just going to be like a different person. And that’s not what it does, right?I think certainly a lot of people will describe it as like glasses for your brain. So if you’ve ever had the experience of like, not having great vision, and then you put on glasses for the first time, you’re like, oh, right? So I think, That’s one way to know if your meds are working, like you should you should probably notice something different.
For me, the way I described it was like, you know there’s like all these TVs in your brain, like a whole pile of TVs and radios all on different channels. And then all of a sudden it’s like somebody switched all those TVs off, and you could actually just pay attention to what’s in front of you. That was certainly my experience. So I feel like your meds working or not working isn’t necessarily a like, all the problems in your life are solved thing. It’s more of a like, what does it feel like to be able to be in the present moment and to attend to what you’re attending to type of thing.
And, you know, when my clients are like, oh, I feel like it’s not working because, like, everything in my life is still a hot mess. Like, yeah, it would be cool if, like, pills could fix all of that. But it just starts with, like, it just sets the tone for you to be able to go in and kind of, like, develop the habits you want to develop. Or develop the routines you want to develop. Or sit down and get the work you need to get done done. But it’s also not necessarily like a wonder drug. So I feel like it’s in that Goldilocks zone, right? I don’t know. What would you say?
[00:09:58] Ash: I would say something very similar. What I say to my clients is two things. Number one, one of my ADHD symptoms is really foggy brain in the mornings. It just feels like it takes, or it used to feel like pre medication, that it took me a couple of hours in the morning to really get my cognition going all of the way. And that is irrespective of how well slept I was or how well I was otherwise taking care of myself. It just was.And so that was a huge difference for me off the bat and something that was the very first thing I noticed when I started taking medication. And I currently take Adderall XR. I started on Vyvanse. I actually switched because my health insurance switched, not because I was having problems, but because Adderall XR comes in a generic, and I’m self employed. But that’s the biggest difference that I noticed right off the bat is kind of that brain fog clearing when the medication kicks in. I know when my medication kicks in in the mornings because I can feel that fog, like I can actually physically feel it clearing. And I feel more clear-headed than I did before.
And other than that, yeah, I tell my clients kind of the same thing, is it enables the ability to focus. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to focus in the right directions, right? Ari Tuckman’s statement of “pills don’t teach skills” I think is just one of those super relevant things to people with ADHD, because it’s absolutely true. It can help, it can support, it can enable. But they’re still learning how to work with your uniquely wired brain because it doesn’t make the ADHD go away. It just enables the ability to be more singularly focused than you are unmedicated, or at least that’s what’s true for me.
[00:11:55] Dusty: Yeah. Can I go on a little rant here about something that really bothers me about the conversation about medication? [00:12:00] Ash: Absolutely. [00:12:01] Dusty: So there’s lots of reasons to take or not take meds. And it’s, you know, extremely personal. Some people can’t take them. Too many side effects. I had a client who had a heart condition, so he couldn’t take stimulants.But there’s also like this big group of people out there – and a lot of them don’t have ADHD – they just have a lot of opinions that like, the best way to manage your ADHD is quote unquote, like naturally. Right. And what they mean by naturally is like managing your diet, getting a lot of exercise, doing lots of mindfulness. And like don’t get me wrong, all of those things sound wonderful. I love all of those things.
And it bothers me to know – and that is even a thing we talked about -because it’s like have you ever heard of a person with ADHD? Do you know what they struggle with? Like, if it was so easy, or even possible for some people to like, get exercise, mindfulness, and like, feeding themselves down without ADHD medication, I would argue that like, a lot of those people probably didn’t need ADHD medication in the first place, right?
And I know that’s a sweeping statement, but here’s the thing, like, some people can do it. It all depends on, you know, your support structure, your disposable income. You know, what that journey is going to look like for an older man with a wife and a settled job and lots of disposable income is really different than what it’s going to look like for a person with chronic illness who’s on disability and who maybe lives alone, right?
And even outside of the parameters of sort of people’s, you know, life supports, everybody’s got a different flavor of ADHD, it might be possible for some people with ADHD, and other people with ADHD are like so disabled by their ADHD, they’re going to lose their jobs, right? And getting on medication can so often make it possible to, like, implement a workout routine and a mindfulness routine and like, manage your food, right?
And again, like, I’m not making sweeping statements. Either, or, again, some people can do it, some people can’t. But just the idea that like, oh, you know, like if you did all these things, you wouldn’t need medication. It’s like, it aggravates me to no end because it’s like, that’s literally the crux of what people are struggling with. Like, you know, it’s like, oh, are you drowning? Maybe you should just, have you considered learning to swim.
It just, it boggles my mind and here’s, this is the last thing I’m gonna say about it. I feel like there’s kind of a, there’s a link between this idea of natural and dietary management of ADHD and like deeply inherent ableism. And here’s why I think that. I feel like when it comes to other conditions, whether they’re physical or mental, we kind of accept and believe that they’re true, right? Like we know that like diabetes is a real thing. So if I said to you, oh, you know, I’ve got diabetes, I’m taking insulin. You wouldn’t be like, oh, maybe you should manage that naturally. You’d be like, oh, right, you know.
And there’s lots of mental health conditions which we accept as needing medication, but I feel like there’s still this like skepticism in the general public of like, is ADHD really real? And don’t get me wrong, I get it because a person with ADHD so often can function at a normal level, you know, here and there, and they can seem sort of, you know, just like everybody else. It’s not, I feel like ADHD is not always as obvious, especially because it has to do with having a variable capacity.
So if I’m your coworker and I have ADHD, maybe you’ve seen me start really strong, right, because it was new job, lots of novelty. And there are times when I perform really well. And then there’s times where I’m not, I just seem really inconsistent. So it makes sense to me that people think, oh, like that person is just lazy. That person just doesn’t care. Because they can’t see what’s going on behind the scenes.
It’s probably really hard to believe that it’s actually not an issue of willpower. And so I feel like because people don’t really believe that ADHD is real, they’re still skeptical that like medication is necessary. And so it becomes a lot easier to buy into this, like, oh, you know, big pharma legal meth, like the pharmaceutical companies are just trying to, like, you know, get rich kind of a thing.
And then it’s, you know, from there over to like, oh, you know, well, people with ADHD are just like, not really, they’re not trying hard enough with like diet and exercise there. You know, it’s this whole circle of just like invalidation. And I feel like it all links back to this core idea that like maybe ADHD is not that real. I don’t know that, so that’s my little rant.
I feel like if you believe that ADHD is real, there’s absolutely no reason, like again, lots of good reasons that lots of people can’t or won’t take medication, but if you have ADHD or you know someone with ADHD, and you’re like suspicious of medication, I feel like there’s something going on there. Because there are so many, there’s study after study after study after study, not only validating how safe the use of stimulant medication is, but that actually proper use of stimulant medication in children can prevent substance use disorder in late life, can actually lessen the need for like ADD medication when they get older.
I saw a study saying that, like basically like, we know that kids who start on meds early have way better outcomes. They’re less likely to die early, right? Like, and so there’s so many good things that we know, so many studies, and yet this like, this weird, like, misinformation is still so prevalent. Anyway, okay, rant over. Over to you, Asher.
[00:17:11] Ash: You know, I miss a good rant. Cam would have one of those every once in a while. So I’m glad that you are bringing that to the show as well. And what a rant worthy topic really, because you’re right. It is absolutely at the end of the day, it’s ableism, and I’ll build on that. There’s a reason the show is called Translating ADHD, is not only is there ableism from the outside, oh, everybody has a little ADHD or, oh, have you tried this? Or if you just did that, well, if I could just, I would just, but I can’t.And not only is that the perception coming from the outside, meaning the neurotypicals around us see and are confused by our behavior as people with ADHD, we ourselves often don’t have great explanations as to why we can’t just.
That’s a huge part of the coaching process. That’s the entire fabric of this show, is getting beyond the symptoms of lateness, procrastination, putting things off, putting our attention in the wrong places. And getting to, and why is it that I do that? What is actually driving that behavior? Because when others look at us and look to us for an explanation, we don’t have one either.
Then it’s kind of easy to buy into that narrative, isn’t it? Of, oh, it’s just me. It must be some moral failing on my part. I must just not. I, for so long, thought that I was just lazier and less motivated than most people. That’s what I believed to be true for a very long time before I got diagnosed with ADHD. And even in the early days of diagnosis, I wasn’t really hopeful that this diagnosis would change anything for me. I thought it just was, and I was going to be stuck like this for the rest of my life because I didn’t have great answers as to why I didn’t do what I knew I ought to do.
[00:19:27] Dusty: Yeah and, and that’s it. Like, I saw a TikTok recently from Casey Davis, which I really loved, because she was talking about in the TikTok, how, like, careless mistakes are part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. And she gave an example of a story where she, I think she, like, read an email and she read it very carefully. And even though she tried to read it carefully, she still, like, mixed up some info.And this literally happened to me the other day with a client. I booked a client for, like, an early morning. coaching session. And I knew I had that client. I had set an alarm the night before. I looked at my schedule several times, like I’d be like, oh yeah, I’m seeing this guy, you know, on the 17th at you know, this time in the morning. And so I a hundred percent knew it was coming.
And then the night before, I can’t remember what happened. Like, I don’t exactly remember at what point it changed, but at some point in my brain, it just changed from 6am to 6:30. Like I just, my brain just like slid off that data. It was like, oh yeah, we’re meeting that guy at 6:30, right. So, you know, I’m up at six, and I’m puttering around and I, around 6:15, I send him a text, ’cause I’m like, this is pretty early for him, too. He was in a different time zone, you know, just to remind him not to forget the session.
And then I have this sinking feeling, and I’m like, oh, wait. And I look at the schedule, and I’m like, oh my God. It’s not that I’m 15 minutes early. He’s been waiting for 15 minutes. And I was so embarrassed because I was like, he’s gonna assume that I just like overslept or something. But I hadn’t. I just like, first I knew it was six, then all of a sudden I thought it was 6:30.
And that happens to me. Not, I mean, it doesn’t happen super regularly, but especially with times, my brain just like swaps them, especially if I’ve done something else that’s similar on a different day. Like it’ll get confused. Like it was 6:30 this day and 6 a different day.
And so I love that TikTok from Casey Davis because it helped even for me personally to dispel so much shame. Because, you know what? I’m medicated. I’m an ADHD coach and careless mistakes still happen to me sometimes because that’s the disability, right? That’s the brain. It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s not that I didn’t try. I knew on so many days that I was supposed to meet that guy at six, and then all of a sudden I didn’t know.
And that’s really frustrating for both of us, but it’s also really frustrating for me because I did not intend to mix up the times. And so it helps me as a coach to be able to like model and just own it, and be like, well, I ADHD’d that. Like, let’s reschedule, you know,
So here’s a question for you, Ash. So then when clients come to you and they aren’t sure if their meds are working or they have questions around medication, like, how do you handle that as a coach or like, what kinds of conversations are you having?
[00:21:58] Ash: It’s a good question, Dusty. And again, it’s about building awareness. So like with my client who is crashing at the end of the day, we start by just not assuming anything. So much of my coaching is ground in journey thinking – this idea, let’s detach from outcome. Let’s detach from what we think we know about this situation. And let’s just get really curious.Because his assumption was it’s the meds. The meds are known to cause a crash at the end of the day, and on the days that I take meds, I crash. And what we discovered was, yes, you do crash, but that’s not cause, that’s effect. The cause is how you’re behaving differently on medications.
I have another client who’s a long term client who has just started experimenting with medication. I think maybe he was on a particular medication and again, maybe only taking it sometimes for quite a while, but just started working with a new psychologist with the goal of finding a medication that works really well for him.
And same idea there, getting really curious. One medication he tried, it was really interesting, because at first he was delighted with the results. He felt like he had a lot more energy and a lot more focus. And something he wasn’t noticing until he, until he was, was that his mood was a lot different, that he was a lot more irritable, a lot more short tempered. And because we had already been approaching this with curiosity in coaching, when his partner said something to him about his behavior and how she wondered if it might be the medication change, rather than kind of taking that as an affront or getting defensive, he came to our next coaching session curious about just that.
And again, you know, cause and effect. Right. Did he have more energy? Did he feel like he had more focus? Yes, to a certain degree, but it was almost too much. So again, kind of burning out, right. Almost a burning the candle at both ends sort of sensation, which was increasing things like irritability, which was making his temper a lot shorter without him realizing it.
So, based on those coaching sessions, he went back to his psychiatrist and shared what he had become aware of, and they moved off of that and are now trying something else. And the next time I meet with that client, we’ll probably have a similar sort of conversation. So it’s just, it’s really about paying attention.
And I think in medicine, especially in modern medicine in general, we get so little time, so little face time with our physicians no matter what it is that they’re treating for us. It is really important to be able to advocate for yourself because something I have learned as a coach over the years – you know, coaching hundreds of people with ADHD all on a variety of medication or no medication at all – is that the statement is really true that each medication affects an individual differently. What works really well for me might be absolutely terrible for you. And so there is some amount of trial and error there.
And so learning how to bring out that keen observer and really pay attention to your lived experiences and what’s going better, what feels better, what’s not going so well, and if it’s not going so well, what in particular is not going so well, right?
I just gave, I’ve given two very different client examples in this episode, one of which it really had very little to do with the medication and had everything to do with the behavior. On the medication versus behavior on a non-medicated day. It was the behavior on the medication that caused a crash, and bringing in some of that same intentional supportive stuff made a difference. Taking a break, taking a walk, changing environments, that made a difference for that client in terms of crash. So while it was because he took medication, it wasn’t the medication itself. It was how he was showing up differently on medication.
Versus this client who I just talked about, who the medication itself really did have an impact on mood, on irritability, on certain things that he wasn’t aware of at first because he was, you know, noticing and enamored with the good stuff, right? And it took someone else in his close world, and as his coach, that’s all I’m hearing, right? Because I’m not with this person in their day to day lives. So, in so many ways as coaches, we only know what our clients know in terms of what’s going on.
[00:26:44] Dusty: And that’s why it’s so important that we don’t give advice or don’t make assumptions because we’re only seeing a part of the picture. And by assisting with curiosity, we might be able to help that person see more of their own blind spots. But, yeah, it’s so important to recognize, like, yeah, we don’t actually know everything that’s going on. [00:27:01] Ash: That’s right. So in that client’s case, it was kind of a surprise to me based on our previous conversation when he showed up and said, I want to talk about this medication. I think it’s having these impacts on me based on what my partner has said, which was new information to me as well, but was also, again, a case where my client wasn’t seeing the whole picture, and then he was.And in that case, a medication change felt like, for him, felt like it was the most appropriate course of action, right? It wasn’t a thing of there’s a behavior we can change here to have a different outcome. It was actually just how the medication settled in his system. The results of that medication on how he was showing up.
[00:27:43] Dusty: I think for me when there’s that question of like, there’s always, there’s sort of like three different scenarios of like, I don’t know if these meds are working. One is when the person’s dosage is too low or maybe they need to titrate up, right? And of course, again, I’m not the person to say that, but if I hear from a client that they’re still struggling a lot, then I’ll often suggest that they should maybe check in with their doctor about it, right? Because sometimes, are these meds working? The answer is no because your dosage is too low, or it’s the wrong kind of med. And it’s just like not doing anything.And then there’s that other, there’s that other example that I already talked about where people think it should solve all their problems. So like they say, is this med working? I don’t know, because I still have all these problems.
But there’s also a third scenario where people say, I don’t know if these meds are working, and what they mean is like, I’m having heart palpitations. I’m having anxiety. Like, I’m, I can’t eat. I’m losing too much weight. Right? And these are some of the side effects. So when I hear of a client having significant side effects like that, again, often I will really encourage them to go talk to their doctor because it can be the case that the side effects are too bothersome.
And well, like, okay, for example, I changed from Ritalin to Vyvanse, and I had some side effects at the beginning. I had a little bit of, like, dry mouth and you know, my, I noticed, like, a little bit of difference in kind of, like, how my thoughts were swirling around in there. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. There’s sort of like a different thing, but those like went away. And like every day when I take medication, whether it was Ritalin or Vyvanse, you know, I get that sort of glasses for your brain effect. But I don’t walk around being like, oh my God, my heart is pounding. Or like, you know, I’m not like clenching my jaw or something. Right.
And, and I think if that’s, like, there’s a level at which that becomes unsustainable, right? And so, certainly there are for some people, like, if you’re having pretty significant, like, physiological side effects like that, it’s definitely really important to talk to your doctor about it.
But the good news is, like, there are just so many different formulas of ADD medication these days, stimulant and non-stimulant. There are so many more options than even when I started on medication. One thing that can be hard for people who are just coming to medication is this idea that like it’s not going to be this, like, you take it the first time, and it’s like when Dorothy steps out of her door, and it’s like black and white and then all of a sudden she’s like in the land of Oz. Like it’s not going to be like that, you know, probably.
And it may be the opposite where, like, it’s kind of frustrating and you have to try again and again. Which again, we’re historically not great with like frustration tolerance. So I think like if you are at the beginning of your medication journey, and you’re just thinking about trying it, you know, be prepared for both outcomes. And if the first one or two meds don’t, you know, they have too many side effects or they’re sort of not quote unquote working, just know that like it does sometimes take a few tries.
But there’s enough different sort of chemical formulations of this medication that, you know, there’s a good likelihood that there’s something out there for you. And if not, absolutely it is possible for lots of people do find ways to manage their ADD without medication. Which again is where like coaching and good support structures really, really help. But it can sometimes take a while to find the right thing. So just be prepared.
[00:30:49] Ash: I think the most important word you said there is journey. This podcast is all about journey thinking. And when we talk about what my role is as a coach, when I’m working with clients, when it comes to medication, it is no different than if we’re coaching about anything else. It is about being on the journey, is about being curious about what’s the impact, what’s working, what’s not working. What are you noticing? And leveraging that information to create better outcomes.So for those of you who have been thinking about trying medication, but maybe are scared for whatever reason: the stigma, the fear mongering around medication, or maybe you just don’t want to deal with the hassle. Just know that it’s more common than not to have to try more than one thing.
My first dose of Vyvanse was actually too high, and that was a pretty uncomfortable experience, but it was one that I was prepared for. And once I got my dosage right, it has made a tremendous difference. I am never afraid to disclose that I take ADHD medication to my clients or anyone else. I do not think it is a moral failing. I think it is something that helps me.
I take my medication almost every day. It is very, very rare for me to take a day off. And usually I’m like sick or otherwise going to be spending the day in bed, but otherwise I am a daily medication user, and it does make a difference for me in terms of my ability to function, in terms of my ability to do what needs to be done, but more so than that, in terms of my ability to live a life that fits.
It doesn’t make me a different person. It just enables the ability to focus a little more easily. I really like your metaphor of a thousand TVs and radios all going at once, and then somebody turns them off because that definitely is an accurate description for me. It’s like, it’s like a quieting of the mind. And now I have the ability to turn my attention in more discreet focused ways than I did before the medication kicked in.
[00:32:58] Dusty: This is reminding me that I should take my medication today, and also that I need to refill my prescription. So I’m going to do that after our call. [00:33:05] Ash: Oh, prescription refills. That’s a whole different – especially here in the U.S. – that is a whole different challenge for those of us with ADHD. [00:33:13] Dusty: I don’t envy you. I don’t envy you. [00:33:15] Ash: All right, Dusty. I think that’s probably a good place for us to wrap for today so you can go take your meds, but also because we’re at our time. So listeners until next week, I’m Ash. [00:33:24] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:33:25] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
