Meditation and Medication

I have done both…concurrently and separately. I have meditated and medicated with my ADHD. I have far more experience meditating, having practiced for a few decades. Nothing has given me more presence and emotional balance than meditation. 

But I still have ADHD. I first took medication for it 25 years ago, and the effect was so remarkable that I thought I was trying on someone else’s brain. I never believed, until then, that any human ever heard everything that was said in a meeting or lecture. Seriously!

So, here I am, starting medication again, and at a different stage of life. My hope is that medication will help me be more consistent with meditation. And maybe the meditation will result in more consistent effects of medication. Are you following this? The difference between the two words is just one letter. 

I once thought that substituting a “t” for the “c” would be sufficient for my ADHD brain. Dr. Daniel Siegel has cited research at UCLA suggesting that meditation may be as effective as medication. Maybe so, but my 25-year single-case study…with me as both researcher and subject…doesn’t confirm it.

I should care that serious researchers employ a large pool of subjects and scientific methodology. Still, for every rule there are exceptions. I just don’t care to be exceptionally deficient among peers with deficits. I believe those two words come from the same root. So, I’m a minority within a minority. I guess you could say I suffer from attention double-deficit disorder.