(Well, perhaps a bit too melodramatic. I'll try to tone it down.)
I open the medincine vial, gaudy with the miscellaney of prescription, description, and "Do not open if this seal is broken." (It is, but I do anyway.)
There they are, inside. Rytalin. Methylphenidate. The drug I've been taking since 3rd grade. Why? The prescription, so prominently displayed on the capsule I hold, reveals the answer. "For the relief of symptoms of ADD." Attention deficit disorder - a mental disability to be controlled with medication.
A simple learning disability - a handicap which must be overcome. Or so one would think. But how handicapping is it?
I am not severely limited by it, even if I fail to take my medication. In this I am lucky - I've seen many with mental problems who are unable to function off the medication. I have no problems reading, or writing, and in no way am I retarded. Nor do I suffer hallucinations.
No, Attention Deficit is far more subtle. When I'm affected by it, I am suffused by a nervous energy - a nagging desire to tap my fingers or my feet, to "play" with whatever I may have at hand (don't dwell on that, please).
My mind looses its focus, I am easily distracted, and my actions become very impulsive. My emotions occupy greater extremes - I often loose my temper at trifles, or laugh uproarously at undeserving things.
On the medicine, I am far more "normal." I can concentrate, I canremember better, I don't procrastinate. I am more sociable, more cognative, more stable.
But that's just it! It levels my conciousness indiscriminately. The lows I don't miss, but the highs. . .
As I said, I am unfocused. But when I am my mind is so dynamic, so creative. . . Admittedly, the creativity, the intuition comes in random bursts, but the results are "the stuff that dreams are made of."
Sometimes I don't know which "me" I like best. And I hate that the medicine makes me choose. The "normal" person I am on Rytalin, or the impulsive, silly, forgetful, creative, observant person I am naturally - What a choice to be forced to make!
The waters are further muddied, so to speak, by the side effects of the medication. When it wears off a "washout effect" occurs - the negative aspects of my ADD are greatly magnified. I lose my temper at the drop of a hat. I become depressed. I feel so awful when this happens, but what is the alternative? To stay constantly "zonked to the gills" on Rytalin?
Also, it bothers me the way that my family doesn't accept that the Rytalin-free me is the natural, true me. The medicated me may be preferable, but is also aritficial. I can never let this knowlege go, while no one else seems to remember. This is my reason for the contradictory title. The drug allows me to lead a more "normal" life, yet I don't always like the person it creates of me. And, too, I hate the idea that I have to take a drug to be "normal."
This, dear reader, is the internal war I must undergo every day.