If ADHD Isn’t Real Then Why Is My Brain Basically A Piece of Old Cheese Because I Can’t Get My Meds?

HMM? RIDDLE ME THAT.

Hanna Brooks Olsen
8 min readAug 21, 2023
Not Matt Walsh.

Listen, I was going to write this a couple of weeks ago when Matt Walsh was being Matt Walsh, which is to say a complete cretin who looks like a Great Value Martin Starr if Martin Starr was also rotting from the inside, which I don’t think he is. Martin Starr seems very nice. Actually, I’m sorry I dragged him into this. Can we start over?

Imagine if your whole personality was denying the lived existence of other people. Then you’d be Matt Walsh! And I would be sad for you.

The reason I didn’t write this weeks ago is because I haven’t had my ADHD meds for months, due to a shortage that people in charge seem totally fine with for reasons we may or may not get into (will I remember? WHO KNOWS), and as a result I have been playing life on Hard Mode.

Not Super-Hard, mind you. I still have a lot of baked-in privilege and also my other meds are still available. But when, for the better part of a decade, you’ve been helping your brain function somewhat normally with medication and then that medication just…isn’t there, it’s certainly a challenge!

So like, here I am, with a brain that is not only not working as well a it could be, but a brain…

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Hanna Brooks Olsen
Hanna Brooks Olsen

Written by Hanna Brooks Olsen

I wrote that one thing you didn’t really agree with.

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