Natalie Preston: What medication are you on?
Jandi Clark: Wellbutrin SR, 100 mg, twice a day.
Natalie Preston: What is it usually for?
Jandi Clark: Smoking cessation, weight loss, and depression
Natalie Preston: How does your medication make you feel?
Jandi Clark: Sane. Not necessarily always calm, but I can focus and my attention doesn't wander as badly as it did pre medicine.
Natalie Preston: How difficult was it to do long assignments before your medicine?
Jandi Clark: Nearly impossible. Its actually how I got put on medicine to begin with. I couldn't read more than one or two pages at a time, and when three different teachers assign 50 pages of reading due on the same day, there isn't enough time in the day to take a 15 minute break between every two to three pages.
Natalie Preston: Are there any downsides to your medicine?
Jandi Clark: It makes me not like to sleep very much, and I have trouble remembering to take it. Sometimes I can't remember if I took it. I wish it came packaged like birth control rather than just in a bottle.
Natalie Preston: Did your ADD ever cause difficulties with teachers related to your behavior?
Jandi Clark: Yes. I got labled as disruptive and loud and too talkative as an elementary schooler. I didn't have problems completing my school work, because I could usually do it before my mind wandered to something else. But after i was done, occupying me was difficult, so I mainly just bothered everyone sitting around me. It was also a problem with my mother because a 20 minute home work assignment would sometimes take from the time I got home from school until bedtime. Then in high school teachers sorta left me to do my own thing. I had one that didn't like me to work on other work once i finished my work for her class, so she and I had issues all year that culminated with my parents visiting the principal about the teacher.
Natalie Preston: Were you on medication at that point?
Jandi Clark: No. I didn't get put on medication until April 11th, 2003, nearly a full year after I graduated from high school.
Natalie Preston: Do you wish you had been put on medication earlier?
Jandi Clark: Yes and no. Mostly no, though I do believe it would have helped in social interactions more when I was little.
Natalie Preston: Why is that?
Jandi Clark: A lot of times I thought before I spoke and didn't much care about anyone's feelings but my own. I believe this is because i felt so out of control of my own thoughts that I needed to control social situations I was in, but in controlling, I didn't take anyone else but myself into consideration I also insisted on being the center of attention, all of the time because of this, friends are hard to come by, and before a month ago, I'd never been in a sucessful relationship.
Natalie Preston: So medication has helped you in social interactions as well?
Jandi Clark:Yes, definitely.
Natalie Preston: Do you think you'll continue to take you medication for the rest of your life?
Jandi Clark: Probably, simply because it helps in social interactions and it allows me to finish things. Before medicine, I'd only finished two or three things I'd ever written. As we type, I'm putting the inishing touches on a 300,000+ word novel