Adhd Medication Is Like Glasses For My Brain

Thursday, March 20, 2025

After starting to take ADHD medication about 6 weeks ago, I have been telling people that ADHD medication feels like “glasses for my brain." What do I mean by that analogy? I mean that ADHD medication makes me feel like I can now "see cognitively" whereas I could not before. You might think I’m exaggerating. But by the end of this blog post I hope to convince you otherwise.

DISCLAIMER: I have been formally diagnosed with ADHD. If you have not yet been diagnosed with ADHD, and you're considering taking ADHD medication, please speak to a medical professional. Even then, be careful of getting a "rubber stamp" diagnosis just to get the meds. If you "properly" have ADHD then stimulant-based ADHD medication should not only help you focus but also, paradoxically, make you feel more relaxed. If you do not get this paradoxical relaxing effect from stimulant-based ADHD medication you may not have ADHD and you should proceed using ADHD medication with great caution (as horror stories abound).

I don't mean to scare anyone off trying ADHD medication if they think they need it, but I am putting this disclaimer up top to highlight the interesting nature of ADHD medication: What I experience may not be what you experience. Trust yourself, but also proceed carefully.

At the age of 38 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I've written about this elsewhere. Regarding the analogy glasses for my brain, I’ll explain myself in a number of different ways, in a few styles, in an attempt to reach the greatest number of individuals. While I know "brevity is the soul of wit," what resonates for you may not resonate for others. And if I do a good job of explaining myself I should inspire at least a handful of readers to consider seriously, perhaps for the first time, whether they might actually have ADHD. If they do, and if I can help them on their journey sooner than they might otherwise have been helped, then I will have done my job. This is a bit verbose for that reason. So then, how exactly does ADHD medication help me?

ADHD medication gives me executive functioning that I did not possess before.

The value of improved executive functioning cannot be overstated! Yet the impact is still challenging to explain, but I will try. First, what exactly is executive functioning? Executive functions are basically your ability to do what you want to do more (or most) of the time. A definition of it via Wikipedia:

“...executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that support goal-directed behavior, by regulating thoughts and actions through cognitive control, selecting and successfully monitoring actions that facilitate the attainment of chosen objectives.”

What is the alternative without executive functions? If you’re not engaging in “goal-directed behavior” and you’re not working towards attaining "chosen objectives,” what are you doing? Well, probably the opposite of that! Seems to me then that executive functioning is critical for leading a good life. For me personally, I always wondered why my "interests were so varied" or why I didn't necessarily "feel like doing the same thing" that yesterday I thought was a brilliant idea. Turns out that I've been lacking some executive functioning for my entire life. And one of the real gut punches is: other people could see this. They could see me "struggling," and yet it was not really anyone else's place to tell me that they thought I had ADHD or to ask me whether I was looking into it. You'd need an extreme amount of trust, and the right setting, to broach that conversation. Everyone just kind of waited for me to figure it out on my own and of course I don't blame them. Recently a former co-worker said, verbatim:

"However, hopefully this comes off as constructive, it was extremely clear to me, as someone who has ADHD, that you were struggling with ADHD mightily while at . I feel that it did affect your work. To hear that you were only formally diagnosed in October 2024 makes me feel like I could have done more to help you.""

It really does feel like I am learning this 30 years too late, but again I'd much rather know than not know. Or, as the Chinese Proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is today." I am not going to cry over spilled milk, although I am still clearly working through the various stages of grief (and in a non-linear manner at that). Instead I am writing this post to share with the world how positively life-altering ADHD medication can be for those with proper ADHD.So let's get back to the point: ADHD medication helps me to control and direct my thoughts and actions in a consistent manner day over day.

To explain this analogy a bit better there is ready analogy: The Elephant and The Rider. If my executive functioning or pre-frontal cortex is "the rider" and my alligator/ADHD brain is "the elephant", then ADHD medication gives The Rider significantly better control over The Elephant. From Jonathan Heidt's The Happiness Hypothesis:

Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new or complex things in relation to things we already know. For example, it's hard to think about life in general, but once you apply the metaphor "life is a journey," the metaphor guides you to some conclusions: You should learn the terrain, pick a direction, find some good traveling companions, and enjoy the trip, because there may be nothing at the end of the road. It's also hard to think about the mind, but once you pick a metaphor it will guide your thinking. Throughout recorded history, people have lived with and tried to control animals, and these animals made their way into ancient metaphors. Buddha, for example, compared the mind to a wild elephant: "In days gone by this mind of mine used to stray wherever selfish desire or lust or pleasure would lead it. Today this mind does not stray and is under the harmony of control, even as a wild elephant is controlled by the trainer." (p. 2, The Happiness Hypothesis)

It has been my experience that ADHD medication helps me (The Rider) maintain significantly more control over The Elephant (my wandering mind and impulsive decision making). That is, in other terms, if the pre-frontal cortex is where a lot of our good decisions comes from, then ADHD medication helps the pre-frontal cortex exert more control over the "alligator brain" part of ourselves. This comparison is not scientifically approved I am sure, but the comparison just feels apt to me. Many of my bad habits previously felt as though the elephant was "too strong" for the rider. That the part of me that I consider to be "Me", for example the one that knows that using nicotine is a long-term bad idea, was previously unable to consistently control or discipline the elephant-part of my brain that wanted ("needed") the nicotine hit to survive. This is where my old brain would lie to my new brain: You need this to survive, you need this to carry on, etc. And it would lie to my new brain with a dearth of dopamine. It would feel good to change my state, at least for the moment. To have that influx of a stimulant like nicotine to break me from the boring routine or mundanity I was in, whatever it was. The nicotine hit was "new" and "exciting." It was "relaxing." But it was always a chimera.

I, The Rider, knew this. The new part of my brain knew this. I hated myself for not being able to better control myself. I'd think of all the books on willpower and habits I'd read throughout the years and all the various quotes I'd read or heard on discipline and self-control and I'd feel ashamed for not just being better. For not being "stronger." I'd feel bad for not being able to better discipline myself, or put in what strategies I could to avoid "running out" of willpower. Unfortunately, feeling bad about myself would be a "cue" or trigger in the cue/reward/routine cycle, first popularized in The Power of Habit, and I'd re-engage in the destructive behavior I knew I should not. And the viscous cycle continued. Outwardly I'd maintain appearances as best I could. But internally, when I'd lose this battle and others day, over day, over day, I eventually developed a deep sense of self-hatred. That there was something wrong with me. That I was somehow destined to fail.

Now, for the first time in 15 years, I properly believe that I can change, execute a long-term plan to do what I want to do. This is primarily because I now have real help to control my executive functioning and brain power in a direction that I choose more of the time. That is incredible!

You may be wondering, why am I writing all of this this so publicly? To be frank, I feel compelled to do so. Duty bound in way. If there is a chance that anyone else out there is suffering in the same I was, quite literally disabled by ADHD, without knowing how or why, then perhaps I can reach them and help them avoid more pain than otherwise necessary. As I've alluded to in the past, something I feel very strongly about is that I do my best to try to leave this world a better place. One of my all time favorite quotes is from George Eliot: "What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?" As part of this I hopefully want to steer a few people in the right direction, I think because that is the least I can do. It is the right thing to do.

My life has been driven by impulses for 38 years. Decisions not thought through. I am only just starting to pick up the pieces and put them back together to create a life for myself. And I am still a work in progress. I've got a host of other issues I am working through (eating my emotions when the appetite suppression wears off foremost among them), but I am working on it. "The unexamined life is not worth living," said Socrates. Indeed, I agree with this, and yet too much examination risks veering into the territory of hypochondria or navel- gazing. Having spent a great many years examining why I am the way I am, I am now ready to live. Of course, knowing sooner that I have ADHD, at a much younger age (e.g., 30 years ago), would have been so massively life-altering that I am struggling not to break down in tears at the thought of all the lost potential of my life. And yet, I feel mostly hopeful.

As I was considering the analogy of "glasses for my brain," and trying to explain how it feels to me now, and how life altering it is, I recalled an excerpt from a book I read some 15 years ago when working through Top 100 Must Read Books via The Art of Manliness (PDF). From _The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt when he realized that other children could see things that he could not, and that he needed glasses:

Then, in the summer if 1872, Teedie acquired his first gun... Although Teedie blazed away determinedly at the fauna of the Lower Hudson Valley (the Roosevelts had taken a summer house at Dobbs Ferry), he found, to his bewilderment, that he could not hit anything. Even more puzzling was the fact that his friends, using the same gun, seemed to be able to bag the invisible: they fired into the same blue blur of the sky, or the green blur of the trees, whereupon specimens mysteriously dropped out of nowhere. The truth was slow to dawn on him:

"One day they read aloud an advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I then realized that something was the matter, for not only was I unable to read the sign, but I could not even see the letters. I spoke of this to my father, and soon afterwards got my first pair of spectacles, which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world was until I go those spectacles... while much of my clumsiness and awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not see, and yet was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing. "

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this event on the boy's maturing sensibilities. Through the miraculous little windows that now gripped his nose, the world leaped open into pristine focus, disclosing an infinity of detail, of color, of nuance, and of movement just when the screen of his mind was at its most receptive. One of the best features of his adult descriptive writing - an unsurpassed joy in things seen - dates back to this moment; while another - his abnormal sensitivity to sound - is surely the legacy of the myopic years that came before.

(p. 34, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt)

Think about that! Think about how incredible it must have been for Teddy Roosevelt to go from literally only being able to make out shapes in the distance to seeing the world in all its beauty! How massively life-altering that must have been! You may scoff at my comparing myself in any capacity to one of the greatest US presidents ever. And that is reasonable. Yet I think the comparison is apt: life before was one way, there was a singular self-discovery that could be "corrected" by modern medicine, and life after was completely transformed. So it will be for me and ADHD medication, I think.

Now that I have increased executive functioning, and a newfound improved capacity to make good decisions, I want to "prove" to myself and the world the benefits derived from ADHD medication by improving my station in life. And yet I am only just getting started. Changes will not transpire "overnight." No. Rather, the benefits of good decisions are accretive and compound over time. So in thinking about how I will "prove" the benefits of ADHD medication, to myself and the world, there are a number of ways that I can go about this. The most obvious will be getting out of debt and increasing my net worth more generally. Of course, it is possible to get financially lucky but without a doubt avoiding debt will be key to demonstrating improved decision making (and reduced impulsivity). I will continue to think about, and consider this, for now I will close this section with some thoughts on suicide (and avoiding it).

A few weeks back I emailed few folks a while back regarding the links between ADHD, financial distress, and suicide. Frankly, it is no surprise to me that there is an increased chance for those presenting with ADHD to encounter financial distress and consider, and attempting, to commit suicide. Just as the benefits of good decisions compound over time, so do the negative effects of poor decision making compound over time. I've got some work to do in order to get out of the financial hole I am in (following a divorce finalized last year). Yet I am optimistic. I know that my net worth will go up if I keep making good decisions. And so that is my focus: Do the job in front of me. While on Garden Leave that will mean tightening my belt a bit and having an amazing "gap year" to spend with my son. I remind him that the reason I want for him to increase his independence, and to be able to do everything on his own, is because I love him. And now, with ADHD meds, I am confident that not only will I be around but that I'll be able to continue to provide a good/happy/stable life for this young man (and myself). The biggest difference that ADHD medication helps me with is to aid me in not feeling bad when I am just "cracking on" with regular life admin (chores/bills/etc.) or that otherwise just "need to get done." There is no dearth of dopamine anymore. Previously, when I'd be paying bills or dealing with little bits here and there I would start to feel bad. It is hard to explain. But I'd feel a call, or an urge, to do something "more exciting." As I know from reading The Willpower Instinct, it is normal for humans to want to feel better when they're feeling bad:

TODO: Quote from The willpower Instinct

Unfortunately over the years I developed a great number of coping mechanisms that would prevent me from doing the hard thing (make coffee, use nicotine pouches, masturbate, etc., etc., etc). My trigger, my cue in many instances, was that nebulous feeling bad. It would cause me to feel depressed and sad doing whatever I was doing and need or want to go and seek out more dopamine. This feeling is gone. And so the most important benefit of the ADHD medication is that I no longer feel bad just living life. What a wonderful feeling. I've used nicotine in some form or another (never cigarettes, pouches or long cut) for 15 YEARS. I have tried, multiple times, to kick the habit. But I've never been able. Now, after 30 days on stimulant-based ADHD medication, I am 4 days into zero use of nicotine. The next time I write I hope for that to be 34 days, or 64 days. Or a year. Because I don't "need" it any more. I am ready to live again, thanks to glasses for my brain.