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All my life, I’ve never shown an immense amount of empathy. Whether that is a product of nature or nurture, I’d say nature. My parents love me and we have a great relationship. I’m naturally curious and concerned about others’ feelings, but often I have a cold pragmatic response to emotional output. This has remained a constant throughout my life.. up until I started taking adderall.
Last year, for me, was the year of caffeine. Mike on caffeine was like Mike+. I could do more work, get it done faster, and feel better physically. Have you heard of Monster energy drinks? Of course you have. You can probably even picture the Monster logo in your mind right now. It’s very heavily marketed. The sugar-free drink of choice contains 150mg of caffeine. Based on the product’s webpage for my favorite lime green drink in question - Ultra Paradise, it’s flavor profile is Kiwi Lime with a hint of Cucumber. I don’t know about that. It has always tasted like a green apple jolly rancher to me. Anyway, with 2 coffees and an Ultra Paradise down the hatch, it was game on. I was hooked on the feeling of ~300mg of caffeine pumping through my body.
At this point in the story is when something happens that makes the main character have to abruptly halt, and take another method. Sorry, nothing really happened. I was self-medicating myself with caffeine for about a year when I was enthusiastically sharing my thoughts with my wife. She, of course, was supportive of me and glad that I found something that helped me feel great and perform with concentration. At the same time, she was concerned about the amount of caffeine I was consuming. As a much more evolved person than me in every way, and certainly my better-half, she suggested that perhaps I have ADHD and caffeine was doing for me what her meds did for her.
Funny enough, I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was younger (perhaps 13 or 14 years old) but was never medicated. My memory dictates that I was given the choice to take meds or not, and I had chosen to instead try to calm down using my mind over matter. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever struggled with ADHD in my life, but in the context of this story, there always seemed to be an emotional element missing. Did I need this emotion to function in life, or be successful in work? I’d argue, “No.”. Life pressed on and I learned to silently (and largely ignorantly) adapt largely without empathy.
So I talked to my doc about the possibility of having ADHD, discussed my unsafe (or at least unsustainable) amounts of caffeine consumption, and the possibility of having 10mg of adderall as a replacement. After a few months of thinking it over, I said yes and had the prescription filled. Overnight
game changer.
Although everything felt more clear and in focus from a mental standpoint, it wasn’t apparent to me that I had gained a sense of empathy until about a month in. It honestly feels like a new emotion to me. Like someone has been exhaustively trying to convey the color blurple to me through words only, and then finally revealed it with paint and canvas. It was the final piece to understanding a concept I’ve always dimly been aware of.
So now I’m on empathy pills, and I’m so glad for the change. If I can convey the feeling to you, the reader, through words it would be this: it almost feels like relating to someone else’s viewpoint or situation until I’m on the verge of crying. Perhaps that’s not actually the correct was empathy is felt for the majority of people. I’ll say this though, it is a vast self-improvement.