Popping Pills

This entry is about my on-going work exploring my neurodivergence. Click here to read all of the posts on this topic.

Sometimes when I’m giving a talk I share an image from years back which includes working with some of my mental health medical records. One of the images is just a list of hand scrawled names of medications prescribed to me from 2004 - 2008. A litany of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, a medical student’s summary.

It isn’t even the full picture - as from 2001 until 2015 I was taking a number of powerful psychotropic medications, including mind numbing anti-psychotics for 8 years, prescribed off label. It took me 2 years to detox from that drug.

I always wondered what was happening in my brain as I popped these pills in my mouth, like a good patient. Most made me feel worse whilst some provided the relief of numbness - usually in the form of sleeping the day away like a zombie.

I’m now very wary about any psychotropic prescription drug I’m told to take daily and have been apprehensive about my ADHD medication. I take it when I want to or when I think I might need to. When I do, one of the things I notice is that it makes the underlying anxiety and discomfort in my body, which has been there for as long as I can remember, melt away (amongst all the other benefits). I feel so calm in my body. There’s a new found pleasure of being in my own skin, like I’ve been welcomed home to my own bones with a hug.

Sometimes I think about those decades of popping what feels like were the wrong pills, as if it’s lost time. But there isn’t much point in festering with resentment - it’s all just been leading up to today: happily daydreaming out of the window of a London bus on a sunny spring day, feeling more and more like myself as time passes.

This is another Polaroid self portrait that has been submerged in my ADHD stimulant medication.