Fup Duck Brain Chemistry
One day in the tenth grade, I suddenly needed glasses.This was back in the dark ages, when chalkboards were still in use, and I was no longer able to read one while sitting in the back of a classroom. Convincing my mother of this was difficult, but after a week or so she consented to take me to an opthamologist.
After about half an hour of the sort of fiddling and fussing that eye doctors do, he gave me a prescription. I don’t know that my mother looked horrified- I couldn’t see her very well given my lack of eyewear- but her reaction was disbelief. She argued with the doctor. Finally I asked the doctor if there was any way, given all his machinery, if he could invert my prescription, and let her see the world I as saw it. He blinked, fiddled a bit, and invited my mother into the chair.
I got the glasses.
I have Attention Deficit Disorder. This is a fairly recent diagnosis, and one that I myself didn’t really believe until medication for it was prescribed for me. Actually, I didn’t really believe it then, either. But I trusted that the doctor knew more about brains than I did, and so I took the medication.
In talking with people, I find that they misunderstand what ADD is. “That must make multitasking really easy!” is a common response. That’s not quite it. Let me try to do for ADD what I did for my nearsightedness. I will attempt to show a bit of the world, through my eyes.
(Click play on both of them at about the same time.)
| YouTube Doubler |
Now: while these videos are playing, try and play a video game. The point isn’t to try and play the game– the point is to try and pay attention to all these things at once. That is what my unmedicated brain is like. Is it, then any wonder that ADD people have a reputation for absentmindedness? Or hyperactivity? Bizarrely, until very recently I had thought that this was normal. I had believed that this was the world everyone else experienced, and that I was just… a bad human because I was unable to manage it.
My “ah-ha!” moment. I was watching a youtube video. It was about 90 seconds long. During that time, I received a pair of IMs and a text message. The flashing lights and long-duration tones did not cause me to pause the video and immediately answer the various communiques. 90 seconds of attention to a video was something I noticed as new and different.
Psychology and psychiatry deal with the mind, and both take their prefix from the Greek word for soul. The idea that the mind is nothing more than electrochemical impulses is one that makes utter sense– and is utterly rebelled against. Yet knowing that redressing a chemical imbalance can fix a major deficiency in my behavior is comforting. It means that this problem is no more the fault of a defective soul than being unable to walk would be.
Sadly, the medication has not granted me super powers. I am as susceptible to boredom as I ever was- but now I can recognize it as such, rather than merely being desirous of even more stimulation. Nor has my writing or gameplay improved. Those are skills that must be practiced.
Unfortunately, ADD isn’t the major problem with this brain of mine. For reasons hinted at above, the seat of my personality- the home to my stupendous ego- is prone to fits of depression and self-destruction. Changing the mental wiring to fix prevent those things may be as easy as introducing a new chemical to my brain. It may not be. My doctor and I will have to do a bit of experimenting. That’s a whole different topic, however.
