r/ADHD • u/Kalbes ADHD with non-ADHD partner • 18h ago
Questions/Advice How to explain what it's like off medication to my wife
Hi all, first time posting and on mobile. I (27m) have for the past month, been off medication as a result of a psychiatrist not listening to me when I told them I wanted to continue my Adderall script. I am currently seeking a new one, but I am struggling with explaining what it is like to my (27f) wife.
A lot of the time, I try to explain how it feels, but it never feels like it actually works, and would like to see if someone else can explain how it feels. A lot of the time I feel as though she hears me for a moment, but never fully comprehend exactly how disorienting and and how much of a struggle it can be. Any advice for helping is also appreciated!
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u/Uruguaianense 17h ago
It's like listening to a song and a podcast while you need to read something. Your focus snaps to the different stimulus and you can't understand anything.
It's like trying to read something without glasses(or that is too far). You try, force your vision, squint your eyes, search for clues, but can't understand. Using medicine is like having glasses. You can read it clearly.
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u/BoisterousBanquet 17h ago
I told her it's like having 20 browser tabs open, and several are about really important shit that's always present. But, several more are constantly taking in and searching for new information, a few are recalling random trivia type facts, a bunch won't load, and there's always a song playing on at least one but you don't know which one it is.
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u/raininherpaderps 17h ago
It's like sitting down and writing a to do list but once you try to do anything on that list it just grows and the longer you try the longer the list gets until you are both physically and mentally exhausted. So you go back to check off the list and when you reexamine it realize you have never gotten the one main goal of the day done but have fulfilled a random side quest in triple the amount of time that task should have taken. Then you think you should have just stayed in bed.
I actually think it's a lot easier to just look up short videos that joke about adhd and watch them with them around. So they can see it's not just you but a shared experience.
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u/Dzs3xxx 17h ago
It took 10 years for me and My Husband to finally get on the same page as to why I need to be medicated. I can’t explain it. This stigma is significant and it gets filtered into relationships as well because they’re hearing the same noise as everybody else. Resources, reiterating how it makes you feel when she doesn’t understand might help.
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u/Edge_of_yesterday ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) 16h ago
It's like sitting in mud up to my neck and trying to get normal stuff done, then people who are not submerged in mud are telling me to just "try harder". Ask her "If you could draIn the mud, would you?"
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u/stovestoved 17h ago
How I've explained it to my wife; "It's like there's too many programs running on the PC, and the Ram struggles to keep up."
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u/Artistic-Recover8830 15h ago
It’s like that trick you did as a kid to fry the computer when it was finally your brothers turn to play: select all thousand shortcuts on the desktop and press enter
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u/UnusualArmy5558 17h ago
Trying to explain the difference might take a whole essay. Main points are: My brain has much more background noise when I’m off my meds. A lot of the time I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. Even if I do know, it probably won’t get done because willing myself to do something I don’t want to is nearly impossible unless there’s a tight deadline approaching. Mind wanders a lot so a 20 minute task can easily take me a few hours to complete. I feel like shit about my productivity, but that doesn’t last very long because I’ve found a distraction from that. Basically everything is more difficult for seemingly no reason and it’s very frustrating. On the plus side though, I feel more like myself and I get more creative without them. I can also enjoy the fun parts of life more fully without them.
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u/SgtMicky 16h ago
Me and my best friend tried wording this and I don't know if this helps you at all but I like the mental image. He described his mind as a lake and his self as a chill fisherman sitting in a little rowing boat. Sure there's sunny and stormy days but it's mostly predictable. Me on the other hand, he described as a jack sparrow type captain of a sail boat on the ocean. Sure there's calm days but most of the time I need to be at three places at once to make sure I don't sink. And I do sink sometimes, just floating in the midst of the planks my boat once was made of. And then I somehow always manage to put that shi back together and keep sailing the ocean like a mad lad.
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u/lauraz0919 15h ago
I always explain it like you are in the classroom and you are listening to the teacher but then you can hear someone tapping their pencil on the desk, someone else is sliding their book pages back and forth, the lawn mower running outside and can even faintly hear a class on the playground. Your stomach growls s bit because you can smell a bit of lunch already but kind of nauseated at the same time because someone has a jacket on that smells bad and every time they move it wafts over to you, you see the bird jumping from branch to branch and the cloud looks like a balloon and you keep rubbing the waist of your pants because they are new and dig into your side right now and the tag in my shirt is bothering my neck and omg does the clock have to tick so loud and what is the teacher talking about? I only looked out the window for a minute.
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u/DreadyMcNeddy1 14h ago
My kid's mom asked me this question.
I said, "You own a car that you drive to work every day, 10 miles. Would you choose to walk to work, even with owning your car?"
Obvious response, "No, of course not."
I replied, "Imagine owning a Ferrari, and you STILL have to walk, and the choice is not yours to make. I've 'walked to work' my entire life. I finally got the keys after decades, and I no longer have to walk. I watched everybody else drive by me for years and never offer a ride, leaning out the window, calling me lazy, dealing with the frustrations of that reality and everything that came with that."
After years, she finally treats me with compassion and understanding. That's almost as big as relief as the medication.
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u/lilykoi_12 16h ago
It’s the mental exhaustion for me, but it feels like I have to run on low energy. Like, my body doesn’t know what to do it with itself if I am just sitting. It’s like it doesn’t want to relax, yet when I am medicated, everything seems to be on an even keel. Without medication, my brain feels foggy and everything feels like it is moving at a snail’s pace. I also feel pretty irritable and I find myself ruminating a lot too.
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u/SocialistDebateLord ADHD-C (Combined type) 16h ago
Being off meds is like mentally being stuck in a crowd that’s leaving a football stadium that is barely moving and being mentally drunk but hyper.
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u/doctortoc ADHD-C (Combined type) 11h ago
I’ve described trying to think off the medication as being like trying to have a conversation in a crowded pub on a Saturday night. There’s a babble of voices, there’s a busted jukebox in the corner that keeps playing the same song, someone is snogging near the toilets and the folks at the table next to you keep laughing REALLY LOUDLY.
You can have a conversation with all that going on, but it takes a lot of energy and effort, and you can’t do it for long. It’s exhausting, and it’s unsustainable.
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u/Far-Translator-9181 16h ago
I feel like meds also help improve my time blindness (or difficulty perceiving and managing time). Many mornings I’ll wake up & just stare at a blank computer screen, trying to will myself to do work… & then the next thing I know, it’s 5pm & I’ve made zero progress for the day. At that point, I’ll force myself to sit at my desk another couple of hours to try to catch up & make up for the lost time, but by that point I’m so mentally drained that I may as well log off, eat dinner & get some rest. Rinse & repeat the following day.
In other words, meds can help make my perception of time slow down to a more normal(ish) pace, if that makes sense.
Meds also help improve the feeling of being chronically overwhelmed.
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u/sunny-october ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) 17h ago
A day without coffee after a restless night for a normal person I guess? Thinking of the simplest terms. Told my husband to do that for me so he can understand why I forget things or can’t get myself to do certain chores, said he got the gist lol. (Coffee doesn’t do anything measurable for me.)
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u/mememere 10h ago
Absolutely this. To me not being medicated feels like I’ve been sleep deprived for a week. I’ve never had kids but the term “mom brain” makes perfect sense to me.
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u/Odd_Judgment_2303 16h ago
Can you share some of our posts with your wife? We have so many of the same issues. Anytime anyone posts something, a lot of people will post something similar.
I had a hard time getting my husband to understand how affected I am with ADHD. I finally convinced him by being very consistent- consistently ADHD.
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u/aquatic-dreams 16h ago
You've got three stereos and a tv on in the room at the same time, all tuned to different things and at slightly different volumes.
At the same time you have a pretty full todo list, but you can't find it. You just know that it is a pretty involved list. So you bounce back and forth between various tasks that you think might be on your list, and as you do them when things pop in your head you write a new todo list. But that isn't going to be exactly what the lost list is about, you know there are similarities but you don't know what they are. So you fumble through trying to make it work. But at the same time you do a pretty shitty job because you're mad that you lost the list and you don't know if what you are doing is actually on it or not, so you're not sure if you're just wasting your time or not. Which makes you more frustrated, which makes it harder to remember what shit was on the list to begin with. But you don't know what else to do, so you do a crappy job fumbling through your random list hoping most of it was on the lost one.
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u/Key_Ring6211 16h ago
I use the chariot race scene from Ben Hur.
I am Ben Hur, all the horses, and the entire crowd.
with meds it was the scene where Jesus gives him water.
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u/Less-Capital9689 15h ago
For me it's like going from a busy street during rush hour into a museum building...
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u/Pictures-of-me 14h ago edited 14h ago
I wrote something for my husband. He loves working motorbikes so I wrote something in his language lol. It went something like this.
We are motorbikes. You're well oiled, you have good petrol, tread on your tyres, air in them, you went for a service and they replaced parts & tightened everything up so you run nice & slick
I have gravel in my petrol tank today. My tyres are old and have slow leaks. My valves leak and I'm running low on oil. I'm due a service but the last time I tried I got bumped from department to department, couldn't figure out if the bill was right and got lost in the way there so I was too scared to book it again
So we go on the track for a race but it's a disaster. The other bikes comment on our performance, the track monitors shake their head when I go past. I run off the edge cos my visor is scratched and dirty. My leathers are itchy and irritating. You win the race
He said it helped him understand.
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u/PeteZaDestroyer 14h ago
Having to focus is like being forced to watch a program but somebody else has the remote and won't stop flipping channels.
Doing anything is like being a boat with holes in the sails, kinda hard to get anywhere.
Meds slow down the channel flipping even making you watch some of the program you're supposed to. It patches some of the holes in the sails and picks up the wind so you can get moving a bit.
If it was a choice you could punish or scold me out of these behaviors and you really cant.
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u/PeteZaDestroyer 14h ago
Having to focus is like being forced to watch a program but somebody else has the remote and won't stop flipping channels.
Doing anything is like being a boat with holes in the sails, kinda hard to get anywhere.
Meds slow down the channel flipping even making you watch some of the program you're supposed to. It patches some of the holes in the sails and picks up the wind so you can get moving a bit.
If it was a choice you could punish or scold me out of these behaviors and you really cant.
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u/Global-Ad9080 14h ago
Go to one room to do a particular thing, but in up doing something else.
When I was traveling musician, I have lost 10 phones, 10 phones. If I don't leave the essentials by the door table, I will never leave the house.
Sticky notes all over the studio. What is the point in making a to do list? 'I look at and not really comprehending the list' as my moms tell me growing up.
Cabinet doors are all open, all the time. what's the point in closing them. Honest I still have a problem with this.
My mind is a tangle web of many many things I want to do or doing (I am constantly multi tasking) I am doing one thing but I am thinking of something else.
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u/Global-Ad9080 14h ago
Go to one room to do a particular thing, but in up doing something else.
When I was traveling musician, I have lost 10 phones, 10 phones. If I don't leave the essentials by the door table, I will never leave the house.
Sticky notes all over the studio. What is the point in making a to do list? 'I look at and not really comprehending the list' as my moms tell me growing up.
Cabinet doors are all open, all the time. what's the point in closing them. Honest I still have a problem with this.
My mind is a tangle web of many many things I want to do or doing (I am constantly multi tasking) I am doing one thing but I am thinking of something else.
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u/ZoeShotFirst 13h ago
You know how the one pair of old headphones/that one old charging cable only works if you hold it in at exactly the right angle?
So you either… 1) put it in the correct angle for it to work and hope it stays there (it won’t)
2) spend a ridiculous amount of energy holding it all freaking day because if you stop concentrating on the darn cable for even a minute then it will wiggle and stop working
3) use a piece of tape to hold it in the right place (the tape will fall off or get bumped at some point during the day, but it lasts longer than hope and requires less concentration than trying to hold it yourself)
The tape is the meds.
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u/420Entomology 13h ago
Turn on a TV full blast and click change channel every 30 seconds while trying to have a conversation.
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u/Sketaverse 13h ago
Imagine the thoughts in your brain is you watching the tv, focusing on a show you’re enjoying
Now imagine the signal is glitching and keeps messing up the picture and meanwhile I’m constantly changing the channels with the remote
That’s how my brain feels compared to yours
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u/Sketaverse 13h ago
Then, when I take meds, it’s like the tv stops glitching and the channel stays on the show, so you can relax and enjoy the show
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u/al_e_noms_sushi 12h ago edited 12h ago
I think of being off my meds like being in sloth mode but with my mind trying to beat Lorelei Gilmore in a speed talking contest. Bicycle, unicycle, unitard, hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants!
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u/Golintaim 9h ago
The way I explain it is I ask them when they're in a crowded room with a bunch of people talking they can block put the people they aren't talking to. The noise washes over them and is filtered out. When I'm in a situation like that I am taking in everything that comes at me with the same priority. The couple talking 50 feet away, that's barely audible? Yeah my brain is desperately trying to understand their conversation. The person next to me talking gets lost in that noise and I have nothing left to decipher their speech. I have no choice in this.
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u/cats-pyjamas 9h ago
I walked in to my sons room once and he has music on, was watching a video on his laptop and playing a noisy game on his phone. I asked him wtf and he said is head is messy and he's calming it down...by doing all that... At once.
That should help her get an idea
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u/MissSt3wiie 8h ago
Take her to a club and tell her she needs to solve complex mathematical equations while being in da club. Should explain itself.
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u/AcidNeonDreams 8h ago
It's like being in the ocean.
A normal person can take a deep breath and just float on their back in the water.
While we are have feet tied to a heavy rock that it's constantly pulling us down. You are constantly swimming up to the surface to try and catch a breath of air.
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u/Jarlstrom 52m ago
I tend to explain it this way.
There is a tv in the middle of my brain, it is sapping between 13 different channels swapping about 2/3times a second. The only problem is that I don't have the remote.
When I'm on my medication the number of stations goes down to 2-4 and I get to hold of the remote.
Hope this helps.
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u/nuclearmonte 16h ago
I always explain it that my mind is always running on a treadmill, even if I look like I’m doing nothing. It’s also why we get so damn tired! It never stops.
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