The Bitter Pill

It's a biochemical imbalance.  There's no more shame in neuro chemical dysfunction than there is in Type I Diabetes.  Diabetics have their meds, we have ours.  I've said this to countless NNT people and their families.  It's completely true.  Still, requiring medication to "be the person I want to be" is a jagged pill to swallow.

I confess.  I feel like a hypocrite when I counsel people this way, knowing that I too still struggle with feeling "damaged" and "inadequate" for the same reason.  It would seem I have trouble "eating my own cooking".  To put it simply, having to use medication to prevent neurological dysfunction from controlling behaviors that others use to define "who I am" to them is something I may never fully come to terms with.

Among NTs, behavior is a result of choices.   Behavior can therefore be used as a reliable litmus for character.  People are who they choose to be.  For a NNT person, this is only partially true.  Most of our behaviors are chosen.  Those that aren't tend to have exhibitionist tendencies.  They are the "attention whores" of our existence.  Never happy to live in the shadows of our lives, they crave an audience, so we medicate.  The NT world isn't ready for their concept of "performance art".

I like to use Diabetes as my model because it too can cause "interesting behavior" when things get out of balance.  Among diabetics, this is a rare occurrence.  This is where my analogy falls apart.  NTs who medicate a myriad of ailments with the knowledge that they medicate a dysfunctional body.  Who they are as a person, a soul within a body, need not be involved.  They medicate the body to free who they are from its limitations.  For NNTs, the line between who we are and what dysfunction has made us is blurred into virtual nonexistence.  We medicate what we are for a chance to be who we hope we can be. 

The pills don't go down easy.