You might want to consider calling them back once (probably tomorrow) and following up on volunteer opportunities there. Make sure they know you’re serious about this!
Oh, did you call your friend at the radio station?
(Yes, I am bugging you, fetus. Tough. 
)
Excellent! Bad me, I need to see if there’s anything similar up here!
As far as I know, Mr. Svin (and also as usual), you are correct. We tend to study the effects of ADHD on the initiation or severity of substance use. There may be literature on the effects of marijuana use on attentional capacities in general population samples, but that is not really my area. It would be difficult to find a sample suitable to address the question.
I do recall some studies that suggest that ADHD may be associated with non-compliance or dropout from treatment for substance use or with later relapse.
As to the literature I am much more familiar with, ADHD appears to be linked to later marijuana use only to the extent that both are also frequently comorbid with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder. My own research suggests that the inattentional elements of ADHD (as opposed to the hyperactivity-impulsivity dimension) portends specific risk for tobacco use, but not for other substances.
Not necessarily. And, fetus, be glad that your county allows you to complete work at ANY non-profit! Don’t you have a church within walking distance to you? Just go ask to clean the benches (pues?) or pull weeds for a couple weekends. Bam, service completed!
My county stopped offering this luxary. Too many people were going to their church for community service. And, of course, the pastors and the like would be easy on the volunteer. They’d give them easy stuff to do, and even sign for a couple extra hours. Rounding up in big ways, adding hours if the work was done really well… that sort of thing.
All the while, the county parks and recreation department was in desperate need of volunteers and suffering.
So some genius in the courts suggested the following rules for community service:
1)Must be done with a government entity. Parks Department, Water Department, etc.
2)Must have no prior affiliation with the department. (This one’s for you, Muffin.)
The list goes on, but those are the two motherfucks!
I had already been volunteering my time at a Dolphin and Whale Hospital (a non-profit) before I was ever ordered to do community service. It’s nice because I can do it at all hours of the night, I like the animals, and it keeps me busy in a positive way. I probably put in 20 hours a month or so.
Eventually, when I was court ordered to tackle 50 hours of community service, I thought, “No Biggie”, I already do community service on my own.
Then I found out that the hours I put in there wouldn’t qualify. Not only that, instead of me doing something that took advantage of my knowledge or skills, I was forced to pick up trash and work as a laborer at a fucking park somewhere.
And what’s even worse is the hours!!! The park is only open 9-6. So I would have to take off work just to fucking do the hours. Or find time on the weekends. It was a big pain in the ass, but I got it done eventually.
That’s fascinating. I’ve read before that ADD people tend to smoke a lot more; most ADD people I know (including myself) use tobacco, and I’ve always felt it increased my concentration. Can you direct me to some more information about that? Is there anything known about why this is the case?
Mmmm… you got me there.
But the OP does raise the question… are you employed? If so, how did you go about getting a job? Because I hope you didn’t use the same method as stated in your OP.
Here are a couple of references for now - I can get you a couple more when I return to my office next week.
Barman SK, Pulkkinen L, Kaprio J, & Rose RJ (2004). Inattentiveness, parental smoking and adolescent smoking initiation. Addiction, 99, 1049-1061.
Burke JD, Loeber R, & Lahey BB (2001). Which aspects of ADHD are associated with tobacco use in early adolescence? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 42, 493-502.
We don’t know for sure why this might be, but speculate that the effects of nicotine on attention reinforce the use of tobacco for those suffering deficits associated with ADHD. It may be a form of self-medication, as they say.
Well isn’t that a kick in the head. That’s really ufortunate for the organizations that othewise would have benefitted from the volunteers, and with any luck might have established long term relationships with the volunteers. Sorry you got tangled up with such nonsense.
(Minor hijack: Every summer we put on a canoe race that after all expenses raises over $100,000 for charity. It is held in a public park. For a couple of years the maintenance staff of the parks department did not do a very good job at cleaning up the site before the event despite being instructed to do a pre-event clean-up by their management, so we did it ourselves. Their union then vigorously complained about us taking work away from them. Obviously they didn’t get very far with that one, and now they are doing a much better job at pre-site cleanup. So when I read you post about your parks department using conscripted volunteers, it made me laugh, thinking god help the conscripted volunteers if they were in my town, for our parks department would turn them off volunteering for life.)
Here, Excalibre, just to finish up on your request.
Lerman, C., Audrain, J., Tercyak, K. P., Hawk, L. W., Bush, A., Crystal-Mansour, S., Rose, C., Niaura, R., Epstein, L. H. (2001). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and smoking patterns among participants in a smoking-cessation program. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 3, 353-359.
Tapert, S. F., Baratta, M.V., Abrantes, A. M., Brown, S. A. (2002). Attention dysfunction predicts substance involvement in community youths. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 41, 680-686.
Tercyak, K. P; Lerman, C., Audrain, J. (2002). Association of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms with levels of cigarette smoking in a community sample of adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 41, 799-805.
Todd, R. D., Lobos, E. A., Sun, L-W., Neuman, R. J. (2003). Mutational analysis of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha 4 subunit gene in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Evidence for association of an intronic polymorphism with attention problems. Molecular Psychiatry, 8, 103-108.
fetus find a place off campus and I’ll paypal you $10 for the bus, just let me know where to send it.
Hey, cool, thanks. Now to see if the school carries those journals . . .
Wow! That would be awesome.
I don’t have a paypal account or a bank account, though.
Ah, too bad. Well if you have a friend with paypal who you trust, the offer is still on.
I have a few bucks on my paypal account and it’s pretty complicated to transfer them to my own Danish bank account