Let’s Talk About ADHD & The Ship

Okay. I said I'd make a blog post about this eventually, and I think it's time. For those of you who don't know, in November of 2022, I was diagnosed with ADHD by my doctor. This story doesn't start there, though. No, this goes back further.

WARNING: This is about to be super personal, so if you don't want to know that kind of info about me, now's the time to skip to the bottom to see pics of the pirate ship. But I promise this has a happy ending. :) 

When I was 17, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety, as well as trichotillomania and a panic disorder. I was prescribed Fluoxetine (brand name Prozac) to treat the depression. I took it for years at the recommendation of my university psychiatrist. It wasn't working. I'd go to her and tell her I felt like I was getting worse, that my mood was constantly low, that I had no energy, that I was crying all the time, and that I was always thinking about suicide. She continued to up my dose of antidepressants until, by the end, I was taking the maximum allowable amount of 80mg a day.

I didn't understand why it wasn't working. I was going to therapy and applying the tactics in everyday life. I felt like I was doing everything I was supposed to, but I wasn't getting better; I was getting worse.

Eventually, I looked into Prozac and discovered that a rare side effect can actually make depression worse and can lead to suicidal thoughts. I decided to speak with my psychiatrist about possibly trying a different antidepressant because I really did feel like I'd been getting worse every time we upped the dose, even after months at the new amount.

She told me that I couldn't go off my meds because I was already suicidal and that there was the potential I'd kill myself if I went off them. In my mind though, I was more likely to kill myself if I stayed on them.

My therapist at the time was the one I ended up speaking to about stopping my medication, and he recommended that I slowly lower the dose to wean myself off them. I didn't. I was so desperate to not feel the way I did that I went down to 60mg the next day and then, the day after, stopped taking them altogether. Just a tip: DON'T DO THAT. It sucked, but the outcome was what I wanted. I was off my meds.

After the withdrawal, I learnt something fundamental about myself. Off Prozac, my baseline mood is sad. I'm not suicidal. I'm not so depressed that I can't get out of bed; I'm just sad in a way that tints the world grey.

So, I spent a few years dealing with depression without medication. Rather, I tried different therapies, CMD oil, and other coping strategies. I also left university and got a job.

And I began to (kinda?) thrive.

Don't get me wrong, the depression was still there. The sadness was always there, lingering, casting a shadow over everything else, but it felt manageable. It felt like I could live again. I had a job that I was doing well at, which was a far cry from the "you'll never be able to hold down a job" line I'd been told during uni.

Through massive amounts of external pressure, I managed to complete 5 short stories for anthologies published by a friend(thank you, Carrie!). Suddenly a thing I'd always wanted–to share my stories with people–was happening. Yet, I didn't feel like they were the best that I was capable of. Please don't misunderstand me, I am so incredibly proud of them and what they represent, but I knew I could do better. Yet, I just couldn't bring myself to.

A coworker was actually the one who made me realize that I didn't have to just let my baseline mood be sad. So, I went to my family doctor and told him all about my experience with Prozac and how I wanted to try again with a different antidepressant. He was–politely–horrified by my previous experience and assured me we'd try an alternative medication and start at a super low dose. He monitored me, making sure to call and check in as we, over the months, fine-tuned the amount.

I ended up on a comparatively low dose and my baseline was no longer a big, gloomy cloud.

But I still had a problem.

Finding the proper antidepressant hadn't fixed all my troubles. I was still wavering between hyper-fixation and forgetfulness. Starting a project and giving up, or "good-enoughing" it and then feeling like shit after. I was still having trouble doing basic tasks that shouldn't take a thought but instead–to me–felt like unscalable mountains.

My writing had stalled. Yes, I was writing stories, but not the book I've been so determined to finish. I was writing whatever struck my fancy, which meant it had to be short, or I'd forget about it (or get bored). Even the things I did manage to write didn't feel like my best work.

I ended up going back to my family doctor and asking him if he thought there could be something else wrong. He listened to my concerns and ran me through some ADHD tests. The result was (shocker) an ADHD diagnosis.

I'm not gonna lie; I think I scared him with how hard I cried. I wasn't exactly sad. It was more relief mixed with the beginning of mourning. The relief came from a diagnosis that made sense. ADHD meant I wasn't the lazy piece of shit I always believed myself to be. It meant my brain worked differently, and that was okay. For nearly ten years, I'd been treating my mental health and employing coping strategies, all while thinking depression was the biggest factor. Knowing there was hope to improve because I'd just been treating the wrong thing the wrong way meant the world to me.

However, the grief also existed. Grief for times I could have done better if I'd been working with the correct diagnosis. Grief that, no matter how hard I tried to do what you're supposed to when it comes to mental health–talk to doctors, be honest about feelings and symptoms, work on it outside of therapy–I still was misdiagnosed.

Now there I was, crying in my doctor's office because I had an answer. It was the strangest combination of feelings, but a sense of hope overshadowed them all. My doctor let me know he could prescribe me medication, but I'd also need to find a therapist to work with.

Then we come to today. 8ish months into medication and therapy for ADHD, I completed my pirate ship.

To me, this ship is a level of success I've never before achieved. To be clear, it's not so much the ship itself but rather what it represents.

This is the first thing I've ever completed without external pressure and to the best of my ability. I know that may sound a little strange, but the problems I've had all my life–that I now know are because of ADHD–have been roadblocks to me. The only way through those roadblocks was either massive amounts of external pressure to complete something or simply not doing it to the best of my ability. And when neither of those ways worked, I quit (even if I didn't realize I was quitting at the time, sometimes it just felt like inevitability where I told myself I just wasn't cut out for X thing).

And now, here I am with a wholly frivolous pirate ship I spent literal months working on. I couldn't hyper-fixate on it until it was done because 3D printing takes time, and even once printed, it needed so much work it couldn't be completed nicely in an evening. And I wanted to do it well.

At no point did I "good enough" it, even though the pre-ADHD treatment Rachel probably would've given up and forgotten about the whole thing when it looked like this:

But I didn't. I kept working on it, sanding and gluing, using sculpting clay to fill in gaps and then sanding it all over again. I used the Dremel for hours to fix different pieces. I gave it three different layers of paint and washes, not to mention dry brushing and hours spent on tiny little details. I spent hours tying the rigging. I even made a custom flag design for the front sail using our Cricut to make stencils.

I look at the completed ship and am proud. But it's not the same pride I feel when I accomplish something I've had (needed) external pressure to finish. No, this is pride because I did it all by myself.

That's not to say there hasn't been motivation from people along the way. Still, encouragement and pressure to finish a project are very different. There was no pressure to finish this other than the excitement I had to show it to my friends for D&D and the desire to finish something that made me happy.

I wouldn't change a thing on this ship. I would definitely tweak certain things if I made another one (using the "big print" files would've been a good idea), but I look at this ship, and for the first time in my life, I can say that:

I've made something that's as good as I'm capable of.

If you've made it this far, thank you. <3 I'll have part 3 of His Siren up soon. In the meantime, here are a few more pics of the ship while I was building it. ;)