What a strange life I lead!?

So, at nine o’clock tonight my Concerta is running out for the day. I’ve gotten the little man to bed. I’m tired but not quite ready for bed myself. I want to get more work done. I know that the only way I’m going to get anything done is to take a bit more Ritalin, and wait for it to kick in. This sort of planning is second nature for me. I have been taking medication to concentrate for 24 years, since I was ten. It is my life. But for some reason it struck me as odd tonight.

If I look at it from an objective standpoint, it is pretty weird that I take pills to make me concentrate, that I can’t just muster another hour of getting-it-doneness by myself. I have to plan, take meds, wait, and hope I’m not too tired by then. I also have to look at concentration in 4, 6, and 10 hour blocks. Again, that is the way it has always been. It isn’t a problem.

But, as I look at my life from the outside, it gives me some insight in to how a kid who is new to all of this would see it with fresh eyes. It might be scary, confusing, and seem limiting. It might seem like having to take pills makes you out of control. The irony is, that if you can just open your mind to the possibilites, it actually gives you more control. Take it when you need it. Take only as much as you need. Be a team with your doctor, family, coach and whomever else. Get the medication right and it gives you power—the power to be the you that you want to be, the best you possible. Of course you have to work at it too. But what a wonderful gift of the times in which we live to have the power to take a tiny little pill and…

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