The Horror of Receiving an ADHD Diagnosis At 35

When our first COVID case was announced here in Uruguay I’d already been living outside the US for three years. I had created and killed yet another darling startup idea that failed after an upstream provider became unreliable allowing myself a graceful event to wind up the venture. In the years of building it I’d left so many hard edges threatening the business vulnerable for my failures of self organization. Was I doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly.

Our President Luis Lacalle Pou went against prevailing wisdom by not locking Uruguay’s population down. He closed the borders to non-residents and allowed media hype to bear the responsibility less progressive police states like the UK and our neighbors pushed on the police. El Presidente succeeded in emptying the streets by giving people the power of their own choice.

Untethered, far from what was once home, I spiraled. I had been sitting on enough money-fuel to sustain myself indefinitely at that point, but I could not escape the loss of the world as I knew it. Halfway through the second year of COVID, even though people have returned to the outdoors, too much about today’s normal is “new” rather than the normal I had lived before.

The next few months passed expensively, on tilt, I lashed out at the world. It was ineffective.

Arriving At Therapy

At the recommendation of a hot friend I’d recently met, I saw a therapist. I didn’t pick the therapist, she came recommended for her English language skills. If I was to untuck my head in the least time possible, why not do it in the language I grew up in was the thought.

For the first two sessions she simply took my history, asking about my background and my goals. My goals were to break the avoidant patterns driving a self sabotage cycle I was failing to extract myself from and to simply be better. At the end of the second session she announced she was a psychoanalyst, her method of doing therapy wasn’t what I said I was looking for, but she was sure she could help me work towards my goals…

I went to therapy a flawed but externally put together adult man.

After a few short weeks digging into my past with the most innocent seeming questions, she had reduced me to a traumatized child hyperfocused on grade school wrongs done to me. Therapy took my power away. Yes, Barack Obama told us all to never give our power away, but by continuing therapy with woman my power was taken.

Week after week our meetings took the same pattern:

“How have you been?”

“Destroyed by all the shit that came out last session, my life is self destructing and I want it to stop…”

A deflection, this is a process and we have to get to the root preceded the resumption of innocent questions drawing most painful past to my attention.

After some months of reporting weekly that each week was worst than the last, she finally referred me to a psychiatrist. I would have been nice if she didn’t wait until I had to issue an ultimatum because, I couldn’t continue seeing my life fall apart because I’m going to therapy and getting worse instead of better.

I went to therapy seeking improvement from a place of boredom and graduated to seeing a psychiatrist out of desperation. It took a lot of drinking in university and through my twenties to live without the destruction having these memories this bitch of a therapist casually forced into my attention. I could have gone the rest of my life without having to confront my childhood of neglect and abuse in all its forms.

Going to therapy undid the mess of coping mechanisms that help the functional part of my life together.

Psychiatry So Much Better Here

My first session with the psychiatrist went well over an hour. Reviewing my past history with medication from when I was attending student health clinics, I left with Bupropion. There were some more sessions with the therapist, but the psychiatrist prescribed firing the therapist the second or third session. The therapist broke my head, but had no tools for fixing it.

The next few months involved ever increasing doses of Bupropion, offers of sedatives: benzos, sleeping pills, and antipsychotics. All tried in the past with nothing having had upside to outweigh the cost of being sedated when I needed to salvage what was left of my life.

The possibility of ADHD was introduced after a few sessions, but by the time I first encountered any sort of mental health service in University I was told “it would have been caught earlier” and that was it. I signed up at the counseling center that prominently advertised ADHD screenings and was denied every time the mere opportunity to be tested.

Eventually I left with my bupropion, some vitamin-Ketamine, and a hefty pile of weed on a nature trip I intended to end by disappearing. I burned the accumulated value I had left in dumb offers of largess. It didn’t seem dumb to me in the insanity of that time because I didn’t plan to need anything.

Funny thing, it turns out ketamine might be the perfect drug for lifting a suicidal depression. Out in nature, the stars started glimmering brighter and living with little didn’t seem so bad anymore. I still had an apartment whose bills I had still kept paying. I could just keep living there even if I blew everything else.

Returning to the City and Ritalin

I come back to the city. The next week the Psychiatrist finally tries me on Ritalin. The first day I was gripped by an intense calm and deep cleaned my apartment. The second day wasn’t as intense, but I was calm and productive.

At this point my distant family had become my estranged family back home as I’d lash out for past wrongs gripped by resentments freshened up by therapy. I’d been quiet for while when the Ritalin revelation happened. Open wounds from therapy could still send me spiraling, but with Ritalin I could start doing productive things finally without having to fight against my own brain!

So I lashed out at family again. Except this time I had the concrete “Why was I never screened for this?” while so many of my classmates got the pills. I don’t suspect I’ll ever get an answer that transcends their indifference to my well being. Mom didn’t care to raise me or get me help as a child, she’s not going to start caring to give me answers as an adult.

Maybe pragmatism related to her being close and me being distant drove their decision making, but the rest of the family took mom’s side. They accused me of being under the therapist’s influence, that somehow she fabricated my past by asking questions.

Rebuilding Again

After the give ways before my planned but unrealized disappearance I need to rebuild. As recently as June I had the power to say NO to opportunities that strike me as distasteful, uninteresting, or too taboo. Now I’ve already crossed the line recording myself naked as a solo male performer.

Weeks of pursuing every hustle all the time and now I have to place a portion of my rebuild behind this name. Is it a pseudonym? Was I merely a very private person before? Is there anyone to care if I, Ron Gringo, am connected to another identity that hasn’t been naked on camera?

Being on the internet is a blessing and a curse. Tiktok has become the artificially intelligent content curator that offers useful insight from creators like Connor DeWolfe and Squirreldad so that I can start making the most of the self knowledge my ADHD diagnosis offers. As helpful as the best that 2021’s internet offers, there are challenges.

The internet is not ever going to get less cluttered. Discovery on the internet is a mess. Building an audience on the internet is a challenge, and as time builds complexity, that challenge grows. Especially trying to use a pseudonym when desperation has driven a person to on camera nudity. OnlyFans had its moment last year, and following their PR stunt teasing a possible porn ban it may be time to look back to the hub other less trendy platforms that may be hungering for fresh content.

The Still Open Wounds

It took time to bring my friends up to speed. First to learn of my fall was a persistent parasite that spent a year peppering me with asks out of claimed “necessity” that disappeared as soon as I explained that I am spent. Uncharacteristically late TikTok introduced me to the concept of “Mate crime” exploitation schemes. Lesson learned, expensively. I suspect a more capable therapist, or even a life coach interested in my present could have enlightened me to that drain on my life earlier.

The family’s circled the wagons offering nothing other than denials of ADHD and suggestions that I’m just autistic instead. I never got screened or told about that either, and looking at the extractive nature with which people have successfully approached me and taken from me in the past… Their attempted redirection turned into further fuel for the resentment.

“We didn’t think labels would be useful”

That’s the only defense. No strong opposition to treatment. No principled stand. Nevermind I have always loved labels, they didn’t think a label would be useful. Here I am recently returned from a trip that I never intended to return from, and I am forced to hear that the circumstances that lead me to nearly throw away my life were born out of their whim!

In this overpopulated world I am convinced that motherhood is the greatest sin of our time. As disconnected as productivity and headcount have become, thoughtlessly giving birth and bringing new humans into this world is the greatest environmental problem of our time. Between climate, pandemic, and economic concerns eroding quality of life for everyone but the few richest persons, is it crazy to suggest the default assumption in cases of pregnancy ought to be abortion for at least a couple decades? Maybe have prospective mothers defend their choice and commitment to motherhood before society approves of their choice.

Glimmers Today

Despite the succession of collapses in every other aspect of my life over the last year and a half, my romantic life is more alive than ever. I am loved, and I know it. In light of my earlier adult life and struggles on this front, I see irony in the present romance in my life being rooted in my step-conservator’s infatuation with my sexual prowess and my hairy ass.

I have little idea where I’ll take this blog in coming posts. I have little idea which hustle might catch the lightening necessary to alleviate the material concerns of the present. I don’t particularly care if I, Ron Gringo, get outed as some mundane person who hasn’t been known to be naked on camera. It couldn’t possibly matter at all. The Internet may be for ever, but it is far too crowded now to be a scandal… unless I’ve already caught some lightening.

Distance from therapy has allowed distance to start growing between now and that distant past. If I could undo therapy, I would. I would put those memories back far from my attention if I could. Those memories sum to nearly all of my life before the age of 20, but putting them back in the box would be the smallest of compromises to not have them pour gasoline onto my self destructive bonfire.

So many times this year I’ve wished for a point where I could cut my past off completely. “From this point forward, my real life begins!” I can want it, I can wish it, but I can’t actually will myself to forget. I can’t banish the memories of my upbringing. Talking it through to “process” the feelings has lead only to disaster. Not a single harm done to myself at a child can to my knowledge be prosecuted as the statutes of limitations have long passed.

All I can do is work on developing the skills I need to use the self knowledge attained at nearly the highest cost. Had I had a caring family this journey could have started long ago, but all I have is today.