A Glimpse Into My Personal Journey

At 44 years old, there’s a lot of information I can share. I’ve been seeking ways to improve my functionality and performance since I finished university in 2003.

The spring of 2003, just a few months before graduating, I made an appointment with an EMDR specialist. The goal of EMDR is to utilize a method of rapid eye movement to facilitate the neural interconnectivity that is built and strengthened during REM sleep. More on that later.

After a half dozen appointments, we were getting nowhere and my practitioner was visibly frustrated. I think she felt her time was being wasted on someone lacking the substantive trauma necessary to make the therapy useful. I felt disappointed and disillusioned and moved on with life.

Within the following year, I made an appointment with a local psychiatrist. He interviewed me one time and prescribed two separate medications: an ADD medication and a bipolar disorder medication. He chose the initial ADD medication (Wellbutrin) to also help me curb the urge to smoke.

It felt very presumptive of him to assign behavior modifying meds after a single visit. i felt like a guinea pig. That was NOT a comforting or reassuring experience. I was looking for someone who would get to know me well enough to make a scientifically educated guess.

I tried the Wellbutrin for at least a month. but at my next appointment I told him that it wasn’t helping. So he prescribed Adderol. Wow. What an experience. For the first few days my brain was on fire with activity. I felt possibilities of functionality open up to me. But then it backfired, and my brain started to feel like it was cooking from the inside.

I don't remember all the different ADHD medications I tried, but eventually I quit them all.

I maintained the Depakote for bipolar for two years. That was a very difficult time of my life. If you'd asked my wife at the time whether the medication was helping me to avoid the extreme highs and lows, she'd have said yes. But what she couldn't have told you was that all motivation, ambition, and drive was taken from me. I had nothing to live for. I had nothing to strive for. I didn't care about anything. I had no sex drive, no work drive, no life goals. I was a semi-functioning zombie.