Popping some Stumulants

So after the three day Brain Injury Conference and then an intense couple of days at the Personal Trainer school, I was spent.




Not only am I blogger for the Vancouver Marathon, but I also have to work out in the gym as part of my homework.




This was all while I was dealing with a serious bought of depression and anxiety over not finding a job.




So I spent a couple of days pretty depressed. Not running, not working out. Turns out I was having some manic episodes. So I headed to my Dr. and we are trying a new prescription.




Since my injury was in my Temporal lobe; the functions of the left temporal lobe are not limited to low-level perception but extend to comprehension, naming, verbal memory and other language functions, I have great difficulty in filtering.




This just means that when I am on the bus. I hear, smell, sense, respond to all stimuli the same way. My flight and fight responses are all out of walk. So my brain fires like it is in a constant state of flight or fight.




My brain reacts to the sound of the lady's cell phone beep the same way you would respond to someone driving there car at you.




When my wife sits down to me on the couch, my neurons fire the same way our ancestors did when they were attacked by animals.




I have learned to deal with this. I have some strategies I have learned to be calm. I have learned to not trust my own brain and my own judgment.




However I have not learned how to turn this response to stimulus off.




This is a similar stimulus response to ADHD. It's not that people with ADHD cannot concentrate, it's that they can't filter out what is important stimuli and what is irrelevant. So a stimulant like Ritalin is prescribed.




To someone with ADHD or a difficulty filtering, a stimulant will actually calm them down.


There are different types of attention, including selective attention, sustained attention, strategy development, flexibility and response inhibition. What I am hoping for with the stimulant is to help me 'filter' what I need to pay attention to, and help me 'skip' what I don't need.
















So yeah. I am on Ritalin. No run today. was really sick over the weekend and just getting back to normal.