Bev and I made it onto the GEICO ad campaign featuring the cranky Caveman. You can invade the caveman's privacy by clicking on various parts of his apartment. Don't forget to look at what's playing on his iPod.
posted by Lisa  # 5:35 PM | Perma Link
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Apologies for not writing in this blog for almost a month and leaving the Happy Hooker to babysit. There is an explanation, though. I've had a life-changing experience!!

A few months ago I wrote in here about taking meds for depression, and mentioned that they've made me gain weight. Well, I saw a shrink to see about changing to a different drug, and after she did a differential diagnosis she said that she didn't think I had depression, just dysthymia (the farm team for depression), but that I was off the charts for ADD. I already knew this, actually, as did anyone in any band I've ever been in, but I've never sought treatment. So, always up for a mind altering experience, I decided to give it a go.

The drug she put me on is called Adderall (get it, ADDerall). It's an amphetamine. I took it and could feel the effects within about twenty minutes. I was at work, about to get started on a project. I told my boss that I was just going to take fifteen minutes to straighten my desk first and.....about six hours later I was still working on it. I suddenly saw what was wrong with my desk and filing system and could envision the perfect way to rearrange it. Unfortunately, I also became obssessed with having everything on the desk be exactly parallel to the edge. I ended up staying at work until 10:00PM, finishing my desk and working on my original project. After I went home I did the same thing all weekend, rearranging the contents of cabinets, labeling containers, discovering the efficacy of tools I never thought to use before, like paper clips, funnels, flashlights and footstools. I actually went a little overboard - to OCD (which is what made me wonder about the inspiration for that 1980s song by the Vapors). But my obssessive ideas were actually good ones - ones that ended up saving me time in the long run, and that I wish I had implemented long ago (and my desk and kitchen and home office are still organized a month later.) I learned later that during the first few days there's a "honeymoon phase" where you are euphoric and seemingly superhuman and that, if pushed too far by taking too much, will tip over into paranoia and psychosis. Cool!

I'm normally a person who does everything all at once - like, taking off my pants, shoes and underwear all at the same time, sending change flying everywhere. Or, I'll wake up in the middle of the night with cold feet and start rummaging around in my sock drawer without thinking to turn on the light first. How a drug could bestow upon me what most people call "common sense,' I'm not quite sure. But I have learned a few things about ADD that might explain why I tend to work this way. First, ADD is sort of a misnomer. It's not so much an inability to sustain attention as it is an impairment of the part of the brain (located in the prefrontal cortex) that controls what neuroscientists call the "executive functions" - prioritizing, determining salience, delaying action until a more opportune time, etc. This is why people like me get paralyzed - our little brains are unable to tell us whether to focus on getting our bills paid or our dishes done or calling our best friend to make sure some offhand comment we made hasn't offended her. We can't tune out a barking dog or a ticking clock or some idiot snapping gum on the Metro while we're trying to read. The drugs don't so much turn a perforated line of attention into a continuous one - rather, they show you the big, three-dimensional picture, helping you to foreground the important things and keep them there. Otherwise, everything is an immediate brushfire that needs to be put out RIGHT NOW, which causes a great deal of anxiety, frustration and discouragement. The drugs also stimulate the "rewards" part of your brain by increasing the access it has to dopamine, which is one of the chemicals that gets activated when you're in love or doing something that you know is going to bring some great benefit later. So that's another way the drug helps to keep you focused, by chemically inducing a feeling of assurance that whatever you're doing is going to 'pay off.'

The effect of the drug only lasts about four to six hours, so after it wears off you can either take more, or just go back to 'normal' if you want. When mine starts to wear off it's as if I can feel my coach gradually turning back into a pumpkin. I hope there won't be any neurological hell to pay for this down the line, but for now I am enjoying it. I feel like I have my brain back. Now that I've started taking these meds I appreciate what a disability ADD is, and how much time I have wasted for the last twenty years since this 'trait' first became a real problem (like me, a lot of adults with undiagnosed ADD get into trouble in college). This is why I could never read more than four pages in an hour, and why I forget lyrics to songs and can't remember to bring extra strings and batteries to gigs. It explains why I have to write on a piece of paper every little thing I'm doing as I try to clean my house, since ADD also affects the part of your brain that handles "working memory" - the capacity to keep a thought 'on line' in your brain concerning the past in order to help you accomplish something in the present. Apparently, I and others like me have a hard time doing something while simultaneously being able to remember the thought we had just a few minutes ago that set the activity into motion in the first place (Example-I have actually had to write a note to myself as I'm carrying a plate to the sink to remind myself why I went into the kitchen. To read about this in more detail, I recommend Russell Barkley's book ADHD and the Nature of Self Control)

So, the reason I haven't been posting on the blog lately, is that I've been playing with a new toy - my brain. I've been enjoying the fact that this medication has allowed me to focus on boring tasks like finishing my income taxes and actually doing my assignments at work without having to take 'escape breaks' all over the internet every five minutes. And blogging is one of my favorite escapes. But, gradually, I'm starting to take the 'new me' in stride and don't feel compelled to spend every medicated minute I have doing things I normally can't do.

Actually, will you look at the time? I have now been shirking for quite awhile.
Before I get back to work I will leave you with this thought, which I can now affirm along with former Vice President Dan Quayle:

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
posted by Lisa  # 1:03 PM | Perma Link
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