I am currently re-researching ADHD management (for gods know what time already) after wasting the entirety of the past two days.

Wherever I go, I only see people talking about medication. How good it is, how to approach it, what to expect from it, how it was impossible before meds, how to treat them, etc.

I cannot obtain meds. Stimulants are illegal in my country. Strattera isn’t, but I am afraid that I will not be able to pursue diagnosis for reasons I am not going to share here. Please do not tell me how good meds are - there is nothing I can do to have them.

I tried organising my thoughts, having a schedule, and so on (org mode in emacs), but I have forgotten about it, every single time I tried it. I have set up a periodic notification to remind me of it, I quickly started ignoring that.

What can I do to make it better? How can I make sure that I will not just forget to do the things that make it better? How can I make sure that I will not outright ignore the things that help me?

  • TheDoctor [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    I’ll start by saying I do take stimulants and am bad at functioning without them. But these are things I do when I’m on a tolerance break and need to not lose the momentum of my self care. Playing loud high energy music is good for getting me energized when I’m having executive dysfunction. I religiously put everything into my calendar on my phone and get multiple push notifications for every event. I drink caffeine when I can. And then I try to let the impulsivity take its course sometimes because it’s preferable to being couch locked.

    This is less immediately actionable advice, but I’ve intentionally gone out of my way to find jobs where having a bad ADHD day isn’t a deal breaker. I did this by getting fired over and over again until I finally landed at a company that’s more laid back. Can’t say I recommend this method but it’s what I did. I’ve heard it said that people with ADHD have an interest-based nervous system, so it helps that my job is doing something I’m interested in. Any other job I would get so bored that I could physically not force myself to body to work. Having a podcast or video constantly running in the background did help with that, though.

    I’ve also tried a bunch of those apps that are basically todo lists but try and gamify it. The only one that I’ve stuck to is Finch, maybe because it’s cutesy? Maybe because I started doing it with my partner? I don’t know.