Back to methylphenidate

I can’t remember the last time I was unable to fall asleep. I mean I’ve lost sleep on several days in the last month or two, but on all occasions it’s been after I’d gotten woken up in the middle of my sleep. Today is different – it’s nearly 1 am, and I’ve been in bed for two hours tossing and turning, and completely unable to fall asleep.

I think I left it until it was a bit too late today to restart my methylphenidate, after a three year gap. The dosage is half of what I was used to in 2012-13 and 2015-16. Just 5 milligrams to be taken twice a day. This convinced me that it would be okay to take it in the afternoon. Big mistake. I’ve been completely unable to switch off this evening.

The good thing is that this afternoon ever since I took the tablet I’ve had the kind of hyperfocus I hadn’t been able to achieve for I don’t know how long. I continue to get distracted, but it’s easier to get back to where I was. The big change is that I no longer feel the constant need for stimulation. The need to “feel accelerated”, as I call it, which would result in my opening dozens of tabs on my browser and checking websites one by one without any need to do so. Sometimes it would end in the rabbithole of playing online chess, and wasting hours at a time.

I’ve written about ADHD before on this blog, and elsewhere. I’ve written it as a condition where you’re unable to hold attention on what you are doing, and getting distracted easily. In the past I’d come off medication because I missed being distracted – in my methylphenidated state, I have missed the ability to think laterally which I’m so capable of in my “ground state”.

Thinking about it, though, it’s not distraction or the lack of it that’s the problem with ADHD. It’s the constant need for “stimulus”. It’s the constant need to “keep doing something” that makes me fidgety. It’s possibly the same feeling that made me run out of class when I was in kindergarten and do somersaults. The same feeling that would make me open my computer and open a dozen chat windows upon coming home from work a decade ago. Well the latter had its good parts – a lot of the time, one of those dozen chat windows would involve the person who I later married.

It’s funny how I got here today, in this methylphenidated state. As you might know, I’ve been living in London for nearly two years now. And the medical system here is government-run.

In October 2017, when I was in the middle of my last (and largely unsuccessful) full time job, I felt the need to get back on to ADHD medication. I got an appointment with, and met my general practitioner in November 2017. He asked me to share with him my diagnosis of ADHD from back home. In December 2017 I was back in India, and I got back my medical records, and shared a copy with him in January 2018.

In February 2018 I got a call to set up an appointment with the mental health practice. It was at a clinic some distance away from home, and I met the psychiatrist in March 2018. I was administered the usual ADHD questionnaire and told that I would be contacted by the “national ADHD centre” in a “couple of months”.

It was finally in January of 2019 that I heard back about this. It was my GP once again, saying my prescription for methylphenidate was ready, and I should start taking it asap. The next day I got a call asking me to meet the psychiatrist again, in the faraway mental health clinic. And today I started taking the medication. And I’ve been so unable to switch off that I’m unable to sleep!

PS: I’m publishing this a day late. I wrote this last night but couldn’t publish it since daughter started crying and I had to rush back to bed. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep well tonight