Grayscale world + Liver Enzymes

The coping mechanisms I developed as a kid and a teenager aren’t working for me as an adult. Blame it on sobriety. Blame it on semi-maturity. They just aren’t.

This has presented itself before: alcoholism saved my ass. There were some bad, bad things that happened as a result, but if I wasn’t an alcoholic, I wouldn’t have made it to 21. The thing is, when I tried drinking again at age 26 (thinking I had “gotten over it”) I wound up in a seven-year, losing battle against booze, without any of the psychological benefits.

Blackouts and social isolation might have helped me cope from 12-20, but at 30, it didn’t do anything but slowly bleed the color out of all the awesome possibilities of my life.

Grayscale world and elevated liver-enzymes. You know?

Now that I’ve been sober for 2 and 2/3 years again, my whole hyperactive, can’t-sit-still, can’t-focus thing is really becoming a pain in the ass. Half the time I get up from my desk to walk the floor, I was in the middle of doing something and don’t even remember getting up. My memory barely works, and I can’t read things that don’t intensely interest me unless they are broken up into tiny little headline chunks. It’s like I’ve become MTV, circa 1995.

So, this is all coming up because:

1. It’s really bugging the crap out of me.
2. I’m getting tested for ADHD on Friday.

Now, I’m fully aware that as a converted-to-Catholicism, Upper-Middle-Class White Guy living in the middle of one of the wealthiest towns in the country, I’ve got little to complain about and a lot to be thankful for. And I am. I’d just like to be able to think about those things without getting distracted fifty times.

Love to all. Even you, the grey-suited, nose-wiping-with-thumb dude in the seat across from me who keeps coughing into his newspaper, thereby angling his germs right into my fucking face.