Should I Take My ADHD Medicine Every Day?

By Sonia Welch, M.D.

Should I take my ADHD medicine every day? This is a question I hear often from my patients, and my response is always: Do you only wear glasses on days you want to see?

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a potentially lifelong disorder that can rob you of your ability to fulfill promises to yourself and others, your ability to relate to those around you in meaningful ways, and your ability to really see what’s going on around you. You find yourself, in most arenas, getting in your own way, and you just can’t get a handle on your thoughts and actions.

The long-term benefits of treating ADHD are truly life-changing, but you only get those benefits with daily dosing. These include increased likelihood of having a long-term romantic relationship, finishing high school or college and staying off drugs and alcohol, as well as decreased likelihood of jail time, teen pregnancy, developing anxiety or depression and developing PTSD following exposure to trauma.

I’d argue that, if you only pick one place to take your ADHD medication, you should take it in the place where your relationships are most likely to build resilience – at home. ADHD can interfere with academics and work performance, but that’s not typically the most important way that ADHD interferes with life. ADHD mostly interferes with relationships, and it’s been shown time and again that it’s our relationships that lead to a fulfilling life. Since we have relationships in all parts of our lives, patients need to take ADHD medication every day.

If there is something you don’t like about your ADHD medication, work with your doctor to find a medication that works best for you. When you take it, you should feel like your best self. It might not be the first or even the second medication you try. Your relationship with your doctor needs to be open enough that you can provide feedback on how you feel with the chosen medication. The goal is to find something with which you feel like the best version of yourself, where you are in control of your own thoughts. After all, it is only by controlling our thoughts that we have control over our emotions, and our emotions drive our behavior.

Since it all starts with our thoughts, I encourage you to take your medication daily as recommended by your doctor.

Social Media Posts and Feeling Invisible

By Sonia Welch, M.D.

If you post but no one responds, do you even exist?

Your social media post didn’t get the likes and comments you hoped for. You put yourself out there. No one said anything; no one cared. By now, many of us are aware of the studies linking hours of scrolling to severity of low self-worth. (Do we even need better confirmation that comparison is the thief of joy?) But posting online, not just scrolling, can directly worsen a sense of social isolation.

Posting online creates the sense that you must always be responding to someone in order to be seen, or you always need to post and get likes or comments in order to exist. This new and common experience easily perpetuates a sense of isolation, unworthiness, and that you are just not good enough.

Talk to your teens about their experiences online. Talk about their expectations for posting. Talk about how much it can hurt not to get any comments. When other people’s ego is magnified, your ego shrinks.

Your friend’s sister walks past without noticing you in the hall this morning as she is absorbed in thought about the crazy-hard math test she just took. That moment wasn’t recorded for you to view over and over again. You aren’t checking back to see if she looked now. Or now. Or now…. hours later. We don’t have the chance to dwell and hope that it could happen. Any. Second. Now. Refresh. Online, however, your posting failure is permanently out there. Your next post will have to be more dramatic for people to notice, or maybe you just don’t matter enough to try again.

Why doesn’t anyone care about what you’re saying? Because, in general, most people are focused on themselves. That’s right, I said it. You, in your post, mostly care about yourself and your own experience. Your readers, as they see your post, mostly care about how it relates to them. Social media seems to highlight the basic human experience of egocentricity.

While there are positives to using social media – like keeping up with the lives of faraway family and friends – there are many potential risks, including this feeling of invisibility that can grow to self-loathing and depression. If your teens are using social media (as 75% of them are), it’s important to discuss your family’s rules for social media use and to help them learn to use these sites responsibly. In this article from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, you can find lists of potential risks to be aware of and suggestions for safe and appropriate social media use.