I picked up a book called “ADD and Creativity” yesterday and started reading it. In it the author explains that she doesn’t feel that ADD is in fact a disorder, but merely a “differently wired brain.” This is an interesting new perspective for me, and I can’t quite decide how I feel about it. She says that rather than trying to conform to society, we should try to meet it half-way but still keep our tendancies. I slightly agree with that but still can’t help feeling that there IS something wrong with me. Like when reading a book - I find myself not being able to enjoy it half the time because my attention wanders while reading and I sometimes end up having to read the same passage several times to remember what’s going on. Another example is this very post. It’s taken me around 20 minutes to type out what little I have because I keep getting distracted. Anyway, what do you think? Is ADD actually a disorder, or is it a misnomer describing a group of people whose brains are wired differantly?
Both.
2 months ago I started Straterra after more than 20 years of symptoms and missed diagnoses. Sitting at 60 mg a day I’m noticing a marked improvement, with another eval next month.
(This ties into my bipolar thread, now also being treated, and promise to update anyone still curious in mid-Jan)
There was recently a report on a magazine show(Sixty Minutes? Dateline?) about adult ADD. The CEO of Jet Blue said he had it and he said that was why he was able to do so well.
What Abbie Carmichael said.
I’ve looked at several of Weiss’ books on ADD, and I’m distinctly underwhelmed. When I asked my ADD coach (who is apparently a pretty big name in the field) about them, she said that although she liked Weiss on a personal level, Weiss did have a habit of writing…well…as her own thoughts on the topic were evolving, so to say.
In fairness, I’d interpret the “differently wired” statement as advice not to think that you’re “broken”, and not to beat yourself up about it–instead, to accept that yeah, this is how yer brain works naturally, and it’s up to you to decide what to do about it. Which may require medication, or may not.
If you want an even more loopy view of ADD As A Good Thing, check out Hartmann’s books :rolleyes:
Sorry, what was the question again? Ooh, look - shiny!
This is an interesting question for me particularly. I’ve been medicating for a-typical depression since I was 18 on and off. I recognize this is a totally different topic, but I have to add my thoughts.
What has often kept me off my meds (lord pity those who have to deal with an unmedicated me) is the thought that our minds are unique and function as they are ultimately meant to. I myself feel most creative and passionate when I’m not treated. I wonder if ADD is the symptom, partially, of an over-stimulated creative mind?
I have reconciled myself to a life on meds, I don’t function otherwise… but I occasionally miss my frenzied mind. I wonder where we draw the line? I would gather it is where one can function and one cannot.
I’ve been reading a blog lately by a woman who deals with ADD, and I find her input facinating. I never realized it was an adult disorder until I read her writing. Some of the symptoms mimic the manic episodes of a depressive disorder. The workings of our minds never cease to facinate me. I don’t envy anyone who has to deal with this condition.
- Rebekkah
Would you send me the address? Parse is a bit (space instead of “.” so I get it.)
E-mail is in my profile. Thanks.
I couldn’t agree with this more. Initially diagnosed with a dysthymic disorder, I was rediagnosed with some form of ADD in late adolescence. I was on a variety of drugs for quite some time until I quit of my own initiative. How can being medicated for the rest of my life possibly be a better state of affairs than simply trying to accommodate a different way of thinking?
IMO, “disorder” is a misnomer. This is as much a disorder as is left-handedness.
All major psychiatric conditions are due to a “differently wired brain”. Where else would the author think they come from, an infected toe? That is not a useful description.
Whether it is a disorder or not is really a judgement call. Many great writers and artists claim that they never would have been able to produce their works without the manic phases caused by their bipolar disorder. Some shun treatment because they believe it will affect their career. Likewise, some people with ADD will not find to have a negative effect on their lives and may even be beneficial. It really just comes down to the severity of the condition. The doctor and the patient must do a cost/benefit anaysis to figure out what if any treatment is needed.
This is just my opinion as a person with ADD, and should not be taken as information or advice. “My brain is just wired differently” is something I say when the subject of ADD comes up for a number of reasons. It offers people some reassurance that ADD is not something that’s going to cause me to leap up mid conversation and attach my teeth to their necks. People hear “disorder” and it makes them nervous, or sometimes it makes them overly solicitous. It’s a nice catchall explanation for why, when I’m in a group of “normal” people, I frequently arrive at different conclusions or come up with different observations than almost everyone else. It also offers a simple explanation for why I am not particularly hyperactive, since most people immediately question that.
And finally, for me personally, it makes me feel better about being different - that’s it in a nutshell.
I’m another adult who was diagnosed late in life with ADD. I was in the middle of graduate school and really floundering when the chair of my committee noticed and we took steps to investigate. Now, with treatment, I’m doing much better and about to complete my degree. yeah me
Yes, I need the meds to help me. Without them, I cannot get thru all the reading and writing that needs to be done. I’ll agree it’s a trade off and is dependent upon what your goals are. I don’t feel that ADD makes me any better or worse than other people. It’s no different from the need I have for wearing glasses to see clearly.
A guy named Thomas Hartmann advanced this theory quite a long time ago. Basically, he said that ADD people have a ‘hunter’ brain’, while everyone else has a ‘gatherer’ brain. A hunter has to have hyper-focus, yet be distractible (a hunter can also be the hunted). Hunters have to be creative, non-linear thinkers.
Gatherers, on the other hand, have to be detail and long-task driven. A farmer has to juggle innumerable details, plan long-term, remember to do dozens of daily tasks, etc.
Over time, hunter brains have become less common, but they’re still around. ADD people can be highly successful if they manage to match their careers to their brain type. So they gravitate into jobs like pilot, police officer, artist, scientist… Anything that lets them use their creativity, gives them the external stimulus their brains need, and which doesn’t involve zillions of ‘housekeeping’ tasks.
Unfortunately, jobs like this are few and far between. The real problem crops up when ADD people try to take on ‘gatherer’ tasks - accounting, management, programming, other desk jobs. Repetitive tasks, with the requirement that many details be looked after and remembered. Task switching all the time, no room for hyper-focusing on a problem, etc. Jobs like that make ADD people climb out of their skin, and they become dysfunctional. Hence the medication.
That’s his theory, anyway. He has some evidence to back it up. For instance, one experiment was to look at societies that were still in the ‘hunter’ stage, where you would expect many more hunter brains, and see how many of them were ADD. And he found some horrifying stats, like Inuit schools where half the kids were on Ritalin. It might also explain why native populations have so much trouble assimilating into modern society.
Because the rest of society is not going to accommodate your different way of thinking, for one thing, and that can cause you a lot of problems.
It’s like being a night owl in a morning person’s world. You can either get a job at night and miss out on having a social life, seeing your family, etc., or you can fire up the coffee pot at 6am every day, chug a pot and hope for the best.
I’m familiar with that.
Wait 'till you hit about 40, and find out you can’t tolerate much coffee any more. It makes those early mornings after four hours of sleep even more special.
How close are we to having an objective medical test for ADD? Is this now possible?
I’ve been troubled in the past by the (occasionally extremely) vague kinds of diagnostic procedures that get bruited about: “If your child exhibits any 5 of the following 12 behaviors, it indicates ADD.”
Not close at all. There really aren’t any “medical” tests for any of the common psychological disorders. The only exceptions would be anatomical defects caused by injury or disease and that doesn’t apply here. Researchers do studies to map brain activity using MRI and PET scans but that is not anywhere close to being made available as a clinical diagnostic tool. For now, those behavior checklists and behavioral study by a psychologist are the best that we have.
My initial “checklist” was three pages long, and further testing was recommended when there was a clear majority of yes answers (actually, IIRC, the choices were “rarely, sometimes, often” and it was the “oftens” that raised flags.) After that, there was another battery of tests. I’m sure your example above is deliberately glib - since there are no absolute proofs of ADD, there is no legitimate questionnaire that says “it indicates ADD.” They all say “COULD indicate ADD” or “MAY indicate ADD.”
With my daughter, they asked both my husband and me to fill out the initial questionnaires, as well as her teachers and at least one other adult who spent time with her regularly. Oddly, only one of her three teachers saw any indications of ADD, whereas everyone else marked off LOTS of “oftens.” (My husband, who was pretty sure she didn’t have ADD< was shocked to see how closely our separate questionnaires matched up.) When we decided that further investigation was called for, she also did the three-page questionnaire, and then another load of tests when the first one showed that there were definitely some behavioral indications of ADD.
The idea that a person with ADHD would make a good hunter does not make much sense to me. These folks do not experience “hypervigilance.” Hunting involves all kinds of tasks that people with ADHD would simply be poor at, such as planning, waiting, signal detection and discrimination.
Diagnostically, ADHD requires the presence of some impairment along with the presence of the behavioral critieria. This means that if you meet the behavioral criteria but you are not suffering from any problems in school or at work, at home, in the community as a result of these behavioral criteria, you do not meet criteria for the disorder.
The criteria are not vague, at least in terms of being inconsistent or of fluctuating. Each one does, however, require a subjective evaluation of whether or not it occurs often. A child has to meet 6 of 9 criteria of inattention or 6 of 9 criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity to meet criteria for ADHD.
Good point. I was using “indicate” as distinct from “prove,” but that may not have been the best choice.