New Beginnings

The New Year brought with it many changes in my life. In the first week of the year I thought of writing to a newspaper in India about my teacher who helped me a lot when I was a kid. I wrote about her in my first blog here. I never told her about my medical condition when I went to meet her. I was grateful to the newspaper for having published my article and when I called my teacher to ask her to see the paper, she had already seen it and so did many of her colleagues. She was very happy and so was I. This is the link to the article.

Then in the second week I was close to running out of my prescribed medication, generic Atomoxetine, which I brought from India. I went to a doctor in Munich who is a specialist in Adult ADHD for a prescription valid in Germany. He was really thorough in his approach and documented my case history for his records but told me that unfortunately Strattera is still not approved for adults in Germany. He can give a prescription but it will not be covered in my insurance. I was kind of prepared to hear that since I read about that fact on the net. I cannot afford to pay for the medication and asked for his comments on me stopping it. He was very supportive and asked me to go ahead by taking half the dose for 2 weeks and then stopping it. He decided to check me again after 3 months. I had taken (generic) Strattera for 15 months and it worked very well for me. The first 2 weeks had very troubling side effects but they went away and never came back. From then on I could feel so many changes in my behavior. I could feel fear and self doubt diminish to the point of becoming non-existent. It freed a lot of mind space so that I could work on sorting my life which was in a state of total disarray. I had no job, scattered finances and a relationship with my wife in which she was always supportive but I felt guilty for the strain that I was subjecting her to. By grace of God, the 4Ms of the book You Mean I am not Lazy, Crazy (Meditation, Medication, Mental Hygiene, Moving Forward) and support from this site of ours, I managed to get back in control of my life. As of Jan 25 I am down to 3Ms but I am doing OK so far, at work and at home. I am practicing a minute of meditation every hour at work, started taking Omega-3 capsules (Flax seed oil) and doing my best to maintain novelty in my life. I also attend a monthly support group meeting in a nearby town called Böblingen. It is a get together of adults with ADHD (ADHS in German). We have a nice exchange of personal experiences and strategies.

With best wishes to all,

Ramakant
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I wrote the above in ADHD World, a social network for those affected by ADD or ADHD. These were the comments -