This is the first part of a story I have long known I needed to write, but was – and still am – afraid to put “out there.” When I started this blog, though, I said I would be more fearless. I also said I’d talk about my fuck-ups and my victories, and this is a whole lot of both.

I meant to write one post and get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but writing it all at once was too much. I have to think reading it all at once would also be too much.

It doesn’t help that I don’t quite know exactly how to best tell this story. A quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland keeps coming to mind. It was posted on a wall in my high school journalism classroom, and our teacher often pointed to it in response to adolescent whining about writer’s block.

“The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”

For our purposes, I suppose the beginning was dinner with the wife of a college friend. She was in DC for work, and we met at a brewpub near my office. She told me her husband had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and was doing remarkably well since starting medication. I listened, and pummeled her with questions, excited and encouraged by what I heard. Hope! There was hope for me! Her husband and I had classes together in college, and we had much in common. We were both smart and motivated to do well, but seemed to “lack discipline.” If it worked for him, surely it would work for me.

I was desperate for a silver bullet that would help me finally “realize my potential.” I went through life heavy with the weight of self-blame, never more so than at that particular point in my life. I’d been in the professional world long enough to recognize I had some natural talent but, yet again, I couldn’t harness it consistently. I was in way over my head at my job, and I didn’t have the confidence or discernment to either deal with the circumstances or find the exit. I had enough success to want more success. I was certain all my problems would be solved if only I could learn to focus and manage my time.

Probably the biggest factor in my “gifted underachievement” is that I have never been able to function well in a traditional school or work environment. I’m very easily distracted, both visually and auditorily. I don’t lack motivation, but I do lack the ability to channel it. I have such good intentions, but you know what they say about those.

There is nothing I will fail more abysmally than a long-term deadline for which I have plenty of lead time. I am a master of procrastination, derailed by the slightest distraction. As long as I can remember, I’ve felt like a square peg being shoved in a round hole. I sat through countless time management seminars. I bought shelves’ worth of books on the subject, too. Only touch a piece of paper one time…Never check email or voice mail first thing in the morning…Do the hardest task first…And so on. I wanted to do better, really I did. I so desperately wanted to be what I thought I was supposed to be. I completely dismissed the fact that I was forcing myself to be someone I was not. I kept shoving the square peg in the round hole, determined to make it fit.

After that dinner, I logged on to my insurance company’s website, looking for psychiatrists who specialized in Adult ADHD. I found one, and made an appointment. I went to his office, where I completed a raft of forms and questionnaires.

When an ADHD diagnosis was bestowed upon me, I was relieved. Buoyant, even. I called my mom and with great elation announced “I have ADHD!” like I was calling to tell her I’d won the freaking Nobel Prize. I was giddy at the prospect of a diagnosis. It provided a concrete definition of what was wrong with me. It was a hook on which to hang my failures. My mom was deeply, carefully skeptical. She tried to caution me, but I would have none of it. I had a prescription, and all my problems were about to magically go away.

Spoiler alert: That is not what happened.

I remember, shortly after I started medication, going to happy hour with some friends from work. One of them said with uncharacteristic bluntness, “I don’t like medicated you. I miss unmedicated you.” I blew her off, because she just didn’t get it. For the first time in my life, I was getting shit done. What did she know?

The particular ADHD medication I was on caused serious side effects, and instead of trying a different ADHD medication, the doctor prescribed more medications for the side effects. Those medications caused side effects, and he wrote more prescriptions for the new side effects. I am trying to be very careful about what I say here and am deliberately not offering many specifics, but it would be reasonable to conclude I was not in the hands of a responsible physician. When a medical doctor says to you, “I would really like to see more liberal use of the Xanax,” that is a big fucking red flag. Run. Run fast and run far and don’t look back. No respectable physician is going to chastise a patient for not being “more liberal” in her use of benzodiazepines.

There was so much experimentation, trying different dosages and combinations of so many medications. Every single one of those medications affected brain chemistry. Down the rabbit hole I went. My judgment became seriously impaired. By the summer of 2007, I was severely depressed and not functional. I was oversleeping and missing work. I missed my flight to a conference not once but twice, before finally making the third flight. On that trip, I barely made it to the actual conference because I literally could not make myself wake up. I was taking a staggering amount of amphetamines, yet all I could do was sleep.

This continued into the fall. In December, my husband and I took a semi-disastrous vacation to Italy. The highlight of that trip was me, in an irrational stupor, calling hotel security on my husband for being a jerk. In retrospect, perhaps he was acting like a jerk because he was dealing with a drugged-out insane person who looked exactly like his wife? Hindsight is 20/20 – especially when one is no longer drug-addled. But, hey, if you ever want a recommendation for beautiful luxury accommodations in Rome where they know how to deal with bat-shit fucking crazy Americans, let me know. I’ve got just the place for you.

Shortly after we got back from Italy, the inevitable happened. I lost my job. I was devastated. I descended further into the black hole of depression. I’d been depressed twice before – my freshman year in college and again a few years later – and this was nothing like that. I was just occupying space. Nothing else. My husband started bringing me meals in our room upstairs. He did an experiment in which he didn’t bring me any food, just to see if eventually I would go downstairs to get my own food. I didn’t. My mom recalls being on the phone with me while I vacillated over going downstairs to get a bowl of raisin bran.

The raisin bran conversation was a catalyst. My mom got on a plane to DC. My husband had to go out of the country, and he was relieved my mom was coming because he was afraid to leave me by myself. I had to get out of bed and leave the house to pick her up from the airport. She later told me I was slurring my words and obviously hadn’t washed my hair in days. I thought I was putting on a pretty good show.

That afternoon, I took her with me to meet my psychiatrist. We sat there, horrified, as he blatantly, shamelessly popped prescription pills out of the various Altoids tins strewn about his office. Until then, I thought those tins were just a quirky collection. He was practically falling asleep, and my hand to God, he looked at us and asked which one of us was the patient, like he had no awareness that he’d been experimenting on my brain for nearly two years. I swore to my mom that I’d never seen him like that, which was true. I was shattered and embarrassed. How could I have made such a huge mistake? How could I have put my faith and my life in the hands of someone so dangerous? I’d lost my job and my health, and was damned close to losing my marriage.

As I understand the story, when my husband got home from the airport, my mom said “There is a pot roast in the kitchen. After you’ve had a chance to eat, we need to decide what to do about your wife.” He just nodded and said simply, “Okay.”

I’ve never asked him about that moment – don’t ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer – but I imagine, among other things, he was relieved someone else saw I was wrecked and in desperate need of help.

In my mind, I can still see them together in his office, him seated in front of the computer and her standing over his shoulder, both looking at the screen, figuring out what my insurance would cover and discussing which hospital to take me to. After they had a plan, my mom came to me. My mom is a nurse, and has a gift for explaining things. It’s an impressive skill. She can give you information that is serious and scary in the most clear and comforting way. She told me the hospital would probably want to admit me, and went over the reasons why. After she was done, she asked if I would agree to admission. I said I would.

The three of us got in the car and set off into the night, driving through the darkness until we reached the glaring fluorescent lights of the emergency room.