#wil talks

Straight up. I will say this. If you aren’t on psychiatric medication or haven’t been on psychiatric medication, especially for something lifelong like ADHD, I am going to take your opinion with a lot of scepticism. Because medication is a generally extremely difficult concept to talk about and within the world of neurodivergence, there are a million different opinions on it, ranging from if it should be used, to when, to how much, to what kind. The fact is, it’s going to differ! Drastically! For every single person! And if you haven’t had the experience of taking meds for psychiatric reasons, you do not know what it is like. At all! I have been on medication consistently for the past four years. I take meds for for anxiety/depression and for ADHD. And let me just say, it’s both a life saving tool and an incredible frustration in my life. When I’m unmedicated, I can’t think. I can’t exist. The world feels like I’m drowning in a puddle, and nothing matters anymore. Not only is it impossible to focus or regulate my own emotions, but I slip so far into anxiety that I physically cannot take care of myself. I will go ages without taking showers, or avoid buying groceries because it means talking to other people. Existing outside of my room will envoke such a sense of panic that I won’t leave for days, or weeks at a time. Anxiety takes over my life and because I’m not on my adhd meds, I won’t be able to focus on anything else but the anxiety. I won’t be able to exist outside of the anxiety. I can’t switch my attention. My grades start to fall and I slip into an RSD fueled spiral of anxiety-hate-avoidance. 

Medication does not fix me. But it keeps the anxiety and depression at bay enough for me to work on the core issues that evoke them. It gives me the space to take a step back and breathe. To re-evaluate myself, my world, and what I’m doing. It doesn’t turn me normal, but it allows my brain to focus on things somewhat easier. 

And at the same time, medication is infuriating. Frustrating. And it makes me angry. Because I hate that I need to rely on pills to keep me running. I hate that for some reason, my brain is not ‘wired correctly’ for daily life. I hate that without them, I just completely and totally shut down. It’s not fair that other people can go their whole lives without needing any meds and I need them for life. It’s not fair that I have to limit certain things. I need to keep track of when i drink (if I choose to), when i’ve taken my pills. How effective they are. Do I need to adjust them. I need to make sure I give myself time to get refills. Make frequent doctors appointments, go to the pharmacy regularly. It is so much extra effort just to get that little bit of clarity that other people have. And that’s not even counting side effects. Nausea, sleep disruptions, lack of appetite. I had to get my heart checked three times because my ADHD meds were causing random spikes. My current ones cause intense fatigue compounded by my chronic fatigue issues if I take them in the morning. 

And there are times that I want to just stop. That I want to just quit. That I want to just. Exist without them for a while.

But I can’t. And it’s not fair. But that’s my life.

But Dream is not me.

Nor is Dream’s experience with medication my experience. for a lot of people with ADHD, medication does not help. It doesn’t do anything. It’s a tool that we get told will fix us and turn us normal and that’s not what it does. It’s not a cure-all, but often doctors and parents treat it like one. As if medication is going to turn their neurodivergent child into someone neurotypical. And it is incredibly frustrating to feel like you have to fit into this mould of who a person is, take these meds that don’t do anything at all or make you feel worse. It is incredibly frustrating and humiliating to feel like you have to take these things that aren’t doing anything for you.

And so I sort of get where Dream is coming from with that part of the music video. It’s that expression of “you do not need to be typical, you do not need to fit yourself into their box, you can be yourself”. Is it done perfectly? No. It is not. The message is messy and diluted by the fact that throwing away your meds is a terrible idea (to go off psychiatric medication, you need to consult your doctor), but it is there. That idea that you do not need to be neurotypical. That you don’t desperately need medication to be neurotypical.

You don’t need to fit something you’re not. 

I honestly don’t mind the video at all. Some people will take issue with it. But people will take issue with everything any big creator does.