When my husband and I decided we wanted to start a family, I knew I’d have to make some major changes to prepare my body. One of them was tapering off my medications, including Adderall, which I had taken for ADHD for years. Losing that “mental scaffolding” overnight was jarring, and I had to quickly relearn how to function without it.
I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t have a protocol. I had Google, a lot of trial-and-error, and the stubborn belief that I could figure it out on my own. What I didn’t know then is just how powerful small, consistent routines can be when your brain is in chaos. Even without textbook knowledge about the neuroscience of habits, I intuitively knew from my experience with ADHD that if I could automate portions of my life, I’d be less likely to forget or get distracted. Routines would be come the tracks my life ran on.
My morning “routine” is a great example of this. Even on Adderall, my morning routine was unpredictable and inconsistent. Most of the time I woke up groggy, which led to me procrastinating getting out of bed and then rushing to get ready. I was very inefficient too: I’d get up, go downstairs to eat, realize I need to get dressed, go back upstairs to do that, go downstairs to pack my bag for the day, go back upstairs to brush my teeth, and on and on. My mornings never looked the same, and everything was done in a different order, depending on what I remembered I needed to do in the moment.
I started small. I committed to taking a multivitamin and a few other supplements every morning upon waking. Not only would the movement help motivate me to start the rest of my routine to get ready in the morning, but the supplements would help support my body and brain in the absence of Adderall. It took some time, but I eventually got consistent with it. I still take all my vitamins and supplements every morning upon coming downstairs without fail.
Once I established my vitamin regimen, I continued to experiment and tweak more of my morning routine, until I had a simple, repeatable routine that worked on weekdays and weekends alike. Once I conquered my morning, I could conquer just about anything else. I used timers and alarms so I wouldn’t lose track of time and I found other little ways to cope while my body and brain adjusted.
The biggest change started to happen when I realized I was usually in a routine, whether I realized it or not. With each action, I started to “play it forward” in my mind and ask myself what the eventual outcome would be if I continued with the same actions and didn’t make a change. What would be the outcome of ignoring the dishes every day for a week? For two weeks? What routine would give me clean dishes every day and make the kitchen less overwhelming? I strived to make my routines lead to the most positive outcome. In Atomic Habits, James Clear refers to this as the power of changing your “system” rather than just completing a task once.
Complete a task and you’ve solved for the present; design a system to keep the task complete and you’ve solved for the future.
That book would have been a phenomenal resource to have in the very beginning of my journey, and reading it now feels like validation for every single one of the little things I figured out on my own along the way:
- Habits create health in a compound way; they build on each other.
- Complete a task and you’ve solved for the present; design a system to keep the task complete and you’ve solved for the future.
- Your environment shapes your behavior more than willpower.
- Reflections and honest review can keep you from lying to yourself and help you improve over time.
- And perhaps my favorite, which is applicable if you have ADHD or not: When you create systems in your life to handle recurring tasks, you ease your mental load over time, which gives you the freedom to accomplish more.
I remember first facing the idea of walking away from my medication and feeling like it would be impossible to cope without it. But now looking back, I’ve been medication-free for nearly five years, and I feel so much better now than I ever did on medication. I’m more productive, more aware, and more content with my life than ever before.
As a disclaimer, you should always talk to your provider before tapering off any medications. But if you’re wondering whether it’s possible, I’m proof that it is.
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