One of the more “amusing” things about having ADHD for me is that I lose things. Not usually irrevocably, but they disappear for long periods and then mysteriously reappear. A while back I lost my bottle of Vyvanse tablets and I could not find them anywhere. Then while I was away on vacation over Christmas I found them again. And I thought to myself “I will not forget where they are this time”. But I did and they have been lost again for the past few weeks. I just found them again, and they have now been (hopefully) placed in a sensible location.
But I am telling this story about my forgetfulness to illustrate one of the unseen ways that ADHD adds extra cognitive load for folks.
Losing and re-finding the same Vyvanse bottle over weeks is funny on the surface, but it is also a quiet example of the extra cognitive load that ADHD demands every single day.
The story behind the joke
A few months ago, my Vyvanse went missing. Not stolen, not used, just… gone. I turned the house upside down, checked all the “sensible” spots twice, and eventually gave up. While I was away over Christmas, it suddenly reappeared in a place that must have seemed perfectly logical at the time.
It vanished again. Today I found it for the second time and have now placed it in what I am once again convinced is a sensible location. The punchline is not that I am irresponsible; it is that this is normal for many people with ADHD, especially when working memory and attention are inconsistent.
What “extra cognitive load” looks like
On paper, this is a trivial problem: just remember where you put the medication. In practice, ADHD turns that into a multi-step mental overhead:
- Constantly tracking “Where did I put that?” because the brain does not reliably hold those small details in working memory.
- Regular search-and-rescue missions for objects that are “out of sight, out of mind,” a pattern sometimes described in ADHD circles as an object permanence issue.
- The emotional load that comes with it: frustration, self-criticism, and the low-level anxiety of knowing that at any moment some important thing may drop out of awareness.
All of this happens before any “real” work has even started. The brain is already partially spent on backstage logistics that others barely notice.
The invisible tax of everyday tasks
Misplacing a Vyvanse bottle is a neat metaphor for the broader ADHD taxes:
- Time tax: repeated searches, re-doing tasks, rewriting lists, backtracking through the day to reconstruct what happened.
- Planning tax: building elaborate systems, reminders, and backup plans just to approximate the reliability that neurotypical brains get by default.
- Shame tax: quietly worrying that others see this as laziness or carelessness, when it is actually about executive function, not character.
By the time a person with ADHD sits down to “start the day,” they may already have done an hour of invisible work purely to compensate for these gaps.
Why naming it matters
Framing this as extra cognitive load is important for two reasons. First, it validates the experience. Losing things, forgetting appointments, or repeatedly rediscovering the same medication bottle is not a moral failing; it is a predictable outcome of how ADHD affects attention, working memory, and executive function. Second, it makes the accommodations make sense. Externalising memory with pill organisers, visual cues, automation, and routines is not overkill; it is infrastructure that reduces the constant drain on mental bandwidth
So yes, the saga of the wandering Vyvanse bottle makes for an amusing story. But behind the joke is a quiet truth: living with ADHD often means running the same life as everyone else, just with several dozen extra tabs open in the background and consuming cognitive resources, all the time.
