R.L. Kramer

Note: I am writing tired and with a headache. Something AI will never do. Soak it in. It is human.
Note note: My lack of professionalism is emerging from the sensation that nobody is reading this, reading my book or interacting with these efforts.

Should I stop talking about ADHD meds?

You don’t hear the story of the non-failures/Non-successes that drift into obscurity. If you are hearing that story, it did not drift off. It drifted to you.

There are two judgements to make toward the reaction of creative efforts in the age of virality-for-metric-of-value:

1: It just hasn’t taken yet – be patient
2: It’s not valuable.

Wait… Let’s adjust these points.

1. It’s not valuable yet
2. Be patient.

Still maybe.

Following publication, I came out like a matador’s bull out the cage when I published my book. I work for myself full time and released my book at a calm in a life/reality storm. I did everything I could with the resources I had. I believe that. But I also may very well have been bucking back and forth, kicking up dust. Now the bull is starting to realize, he might be in a ring, setup to do this and it’s rare that a bull gets the fighter.

And still, I chose to advocate against a leviathan force, societal agreement of the full acceptance as pharmaceuticals for mental alignment. If I had just written something fun, I would just be carrying my story along with me. But I have chosen to try to shepherd with my efforts, a conversation. A dialogue that I am not capable of completing on my own. A dialogue I think a lot of people don’t want to have. A conversation that is readily dismissed by the community that enjoys medication for ADHD and seen as not interesting to those who aren’t a part of the constant online ADHD dialogue (and good for them).

Taking meds for ADHD is the topic and my media leans toward anti-med rhetoric. I took them for over a decade’s time and had a serious affair with the meds. They were a big part of my life and quitting them was as life changing as any other divorce.

Talk to me on them – “They enrich my life. Help me creatively, give me a spark and bypass an error in the wiring of my brain”

Talk to me off them – “Those medications left me worse than they found me. I forever deal with the fallout of learning how to focus and work, later in life. From a ‘productivity’ standpoint, I vary in levels of living in the shadow of an unrealistic expectation of productivity. Those drugs are dangerous. Taking them messed with my brain and I have to rewire it”

For more of what “me off them” has to say about it, here’s the book.

How am I supposed to shepherd this discussion?

My only visible credential is the willingness to follow through with the writing of a book and some blips of digital media. Media that as of lately, with the introduction of effort have tended to come off as desperate and try-hard.

Making small clips that all seem to have some value and put them up against a seemingly imaginary machine that dictates what gets seen on the phone. The phone we all spend so much time looking at.

I make these clips and they get very little interaction on the phone and they took a significant effort to create.

I have to be honest with myself, maybe I should stop doing it. Let things steep. Make what I feel like making, when I feel like making it, and when it’s a reasonable time to do it. It’s not carrying the dialogue forward.

If I was meant for tiktok and reels, would the environment of using the app frustrate me as much as it does?

I am enjoying this – writing this.

Pointing my camera at myself to pretend like I am ignorant, and then correcting myself is a behavior that does not feel innate in me. But it feels like I am ringing the same bell over and over, in different areas to see if it makes worms come up in the dirt. That bell that sings “TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PHENOMENON OF ADHD MEDICATION”

And because that message is obviously unpopular amongst the ADHD-med-taking community, I have arrived at an audience (ADHD) with a message (Maybe ease it on the amphetamine) that is unwelcome. The media I create has a category to be filed under, but it is placed underneath most everything else because the notion it dictates is seen as misinformative, non-self-affiming, disruptive and borderline conspiratorial. It invites users of a medication to be in conflict with their use.

Media is changing faster and faster. The way it’s created and the way we consume it. Mostly, what is delivered to everyone. If I see things I want to challenge on my algorithmic media table, it is because I enjoy resisting it. The algorithm has gotten so much better at this job. Before, when I posted content about ADHD meds, I would regularly invite argument and discourse in the comments section.

Now, people don’t come back against me, the people who would are not shown the argument I am making or they completely ignore it because my videos aren’t passing the snuff test in terms of production value or base content to even reach scrutiny. People who like my stuff, if all goes well, only do for a short period because they quit the drugs and move on with their lives.

Grateful I feel about how posting lots of little shorts went for the month. It really showed me someways I do not want to create. I don’t want to create desperately, rapidly, trendy and I do not have to. This has shown me that posting rapidly doesn’t work for me, therefore, I can stop doing it. I think a good, valuable video was posted one out of every four or so videos I posted. That should probably dictate the ratio of posting for this kind of thing.

I could see a path where I could easily lose touch with my intent, my story and my subject and get lost in the creation of videos without considering what I am even saying. I can’t get lost in the medium. Back to the message. Also, it’s gotta be okay to talk about things other than one subject. This “niche paralysis.” I can’t begin to imagine creators of this kind of viral work find themselves under.

So I can be prepared for the matador to come at me if he does, but I think rushing at his flag makes me more vulnerable and tired.