PMS - Methylphenidate: Day One.

With a misleading title like that I should probably start out by saying that this is not going to be a completely earnest journal of my adventures with prescription medication. It just so happens that I am beginning this blog on the first day I have started taking Ritalin. And that happens to be what I have decided to blog about today. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe something about my lamentable inability to draw complex robots.
Yesterday I actually went to the walk-in clinic. I had been talking about doing it for about 9 months, for a range of conditions from severe depression to possible schizophrenia. Because I'm currently living in a small town and am not particularly inclined to begin a patient-therapist relationship with whatever marginally talented empath that allowed failure to drive them to begin a practice in a wasteland such as this, I decided to begin with a fairly benign issue: My inability to focus and the panic that results from being faced with numerous "ordinary" tasks.
There was something else that was itching... bothering me, as well, so I asked the doctor to address that. And its not an venereal disease, hooray! Then I asked him about the itchy thing in my head. The thing that refuses to allow to work on any one thing for more than a few minutes, the thing that forces me to watch cartoons I've already seen over and over, so I don't get anxious about not knowing what's about to happen. The thing that made me stop trying. Sorta, that thing plus something else.
No sooner had I told the doctor that I actually feel panicked when I'm left alone in a room with nothing to do, there's a knock on the door. The receptionist/nurse person (nurson?) tells him that something is ready for him, and he tells me he'll be right back.
Alone. In a room. With nothing to do. The amusing irony of it was the only thing that kept me from scuffing a giant happy face into the floor with the soles of my shoes.
When the doctor came back he told me that he would have me try out Ritalin for a couple of weeks and see how it works. He asked me if I had heard anything about it, I had. Obviously, even if I hadn't taken psychology in high school, and had a teacher who wrote his thesis on ADD, I'd still have heard about it. It was that awful side project Nivek Ogre did after Skinny Puppy, right? I didn't say that, but if I had I imagine I would've got an even stranger perturbed stare from the doctor than the one I got only a few minutes later when I started babbling about his mini-PC.
Under the desk was a Sun Microsystems mini pc, connected to his monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I pointed out how genius the Sun Microsystems logo is, about how it spells "SUN" over and over, and looks vaguely like a microchip. The doctor politely feigned enthusiasm at having this brought to his attention, then went back to typing up my prescription. If anything I think I cemented in his mind that I really did need the medication.
I picked up the pills late last night after work. And I didn't take one until I was already at work this morning. The fear was that if I took it at home I might just want to stay at home and draw all day, which I definitely wish I was doing right now instead of sitting here with this headset on. Things are going fairly well so far I suppose. Perhaps I'll write another blog post later in the day with more of an overview, or summary of how things went. Then again, maybe I'll be too busy drawing.