Estoy Nueces

It is always a bad idea to read the other diaries before I write my own. I end up linking and linking and linking and finding more and more good things to read and it's like drinking and drinking and drinking and suddenly you realize you are really really smashed and intoxicated and there is no way you can maintain anymore. Either that or I figure all the good stuffs been written, why bother?

I went back to work today and had a nice evening. I was starving by 5 o'clock but pushed on until the rush hour had passed and went to Threadgill's for dinner. It wasn't that I was really craving anything that Threadgill's has particularly but going to Threadgill's is like going to your own kitchen (except you'd have to have a really good well-stocked kitchen). I feel very at home there and don't mind reading a magazine and eating alone and asking for seconds on the scalloped potatoes.

I went to a psyciatrist today. I suppose I'm the first person in my family to have ever gone to a psychiatrist (not that some of them couldn't have USED one). Oh, an aunt or cousins have probably gone to a psychiatrist but I know my immediate family hasn't.

I hate to be mentally unbalanced (and, truly!, I'm not) but I also don't want to continue the way that I am. The doctor reconfirmed previous diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder (except that he added the H for Hyperactivity in there too so I am ADHD) and MAJOR depression. Great. I'm not just in a depression, it's a major depression.

I hate it when people don't "believe" that there is such a thing as ADHD. You might as well say there is no such thing as Alzheimer's---you can't see it or test for it! My Dallas doctor rolled his eyes at a psychologist's diagnosis that I had ADD and told me I needed to make lists, that's all. Right. I am a frantic list maker. I can't begin to do the simplest thing without thinking "OH, I don't want to forget to..." and frequently going off to "make a list." My dearest friend B! in Hawaii has tried very hard to understand ADD from me but I know she is also skeptical. She thinks that everyone is scattered from time to time. That is very true and I find it hard to describe this "itching in my brain!"

Of course, I get tired, too, of the constant news reports on kids with ADD and parents that "define" their children as a "sufferer of ADHD" like they would if they were saying their child had a broken leg or a hearing problem. I don't think the child should be defined by any of those "deficiencies." I only complain about my ADD to my family, friends and anyone else who will listen---no, really--I keep it to myself most of the time because I know it is boring.

The doctor could see that the depression "blues" have lifted from my description but that the main symptom, sleeping TOO MUCH, is still a problem. He didn't change the medicine for depression until we can see what he can do about the ADHD.

Therefore, I got SPEED. Whoo-hoo, I'm a happy camper now! He prescribed Adderoll, which is an amphetimine. Weirdest thing in the world how an amphetimine can slow someone like me down instead of making it worse. Or so they say. I'll begin seeing tomorrow. I'm sorry you will have to go on this journey with me.

The only side effect he warned me about with the Adderoll was that it can be an appetite suppresent. Damn, I don't want to take anything that might make me eat less than eight cinnamon rolls, a pint of ice cream, two helpings of scalloped potatoes and a Mars bar a day!

So I'm going to get up early (for me) tomorrow and take my speed and see what I can accomplish at home. The effect is only for 6 hours and for now I'm only going to be taking one dose a day until we figure out the right dosage. I'm going to take the dosage when it will help me get something accomplished here at home. Screw work. I know it will get done eventually. It always does.

I really hate being this self-absorbed and so caught up in the poor me attitude I have developed. I want to go back to where I was at some previous time---not quite sure when that would have been. Depression-wise, a couple of years would do it. ADD-wise, I guess I'd have to go back to the womb. Or at least back to a structured system where I was given assignments that were easy and I knew they were due so I did them, unless I lost them, or forgot them, or... never mind, let's go back to the womb. I'm going to give this approach and this doctor about a month and then I am giving up on all of the medication, grinning and bearing it and indulging in some far out herbs and hallucinagens that might at least make me enjoy the scattered-ness of it all.

Lots of other thoughts running through my mind. I'll write tomorrow and see if there is more FOCUS!!! Of course, I won't write until hours after the effect of the first (and small) dose wears off so it may make no difference in the writing yet. We'll see.

Sorry to bore you with these troubles. I want to be a funny writer! Honest I do! I will be!