Got a problem? Fix it.

I'm turning 50 in a few months. For the past several years, I have suspected that I have adult ADD. Over the past several months, I've become pretty well convinced. I talked to the doc just a bit about it a good while back, but she felt that, because I'd had a heart attack a couple of years ago, prescription meds just weren't the best idea. At the time, I was ok with that.

Since then, my ability to think has degraded considerably. It is probably directly connected to no longer punching a time clock. As frustrating as it was sometimes, that enforced structure in life provided needed deadlines to work against. It’s been two years since I had that sort of enforced structure, and my ability to focus has not only devolved, but the problem seems to be accelerating.

A few months ago, a discussion with my niece, who is thirty-ish and has been taking ADD meds for a couple of years, cemented the fact that I really, REALLY want to try them. I have become so increasingly frustrated with the inability to produce even basics like getting to church on time, that it is seriously messing up my life. When you’re 50, you start getting real serious about that bucket list. When you spent a lot of energy and can’t even get dressed by 9:30 am, the bucket list sure enough impossible.

Yesterday at the THRIVE retreat another sister recommended an herbal remedy that I am definitely ready to try. Today’s BIG GOAL is to get to the store and buy some of that stuff. While the risk/benefit ratio of prescription meds has been dramatically changing in favor of prescriptions, if a safer and more natural alternative will do the trick, I’m there.

Here’s hoping that I can eventually get past the first challenge – getting out of my jammies.

I have taken Effexor for years and know that I can NOT miss out, and yet I overlooked putting the med packet that I had so carefully put together in the luggage for the retreat. I actually saw the packet laying on the bed when I went back after something else I’d forgotten, but by the time I gathered up the thing I’d forgotten I forgot to reach over and pick up the packet.


I’m tired of having life roll by while I’m caught in a whirlpool Creative ideas, solutions that would resolve an issue, and opportunities to get out and bless others go by from one day to the next, while I continue to battle the same chaos and begin each day at re-inventing the wheel.

The snowball effect has me where I am this morning – sitting here discouraged about missing church when I’d rather be there than anywhere. I just couldn’t pull the basics together to get ready in time. I took an Effexor first thing this morning and it will kick in soon. It does help some when I take it, and the withdrawal side effects from missing a day exacerbate fuzzy thinking, so missing yesterday’s dose was a double whammy. Here’s hoping that when it kicks in I will be able to get to the health food store and lay a foundation for some victory in this situation.