(Except for the part about Strattera being a traditional antidepressant; it’s actually relatively new and it’s touted as the first non-stimulant medication specifically for ADD.)
(Did you delete a paragraph where you mention that you could be overly nitpicky towards otherwise helpful posters on an anonymous message board? No? That’s just me? Damn.)
Anyhoo, I’ve been on Adderall XR for about three years, and have just begun taking Strattera on top of that. I looked into ADD when I pretty much reached the nadir of my professional life, in a dead-end job I hated, after squandering what I had always been told was my innate intelligence. I had an undergrad GPA so low I don’t think I’m eligible for any kind of graduate school, except the sleazy mail-order kind.
While the Adderall definitely helps (the Strattera is too soon to tell), if you think that drugs will change your life and point you in the direction you’ve always been seeking but could never figure out, I’d say: don’t get your hopes up. Since I started on the Adderall, I’m in a better job, but I still don’t think of myself as either happy or a high achiever; I’m kind of a wastrel who spends too much work time surfing message boards.
By and large, professionally I feel marginally better–I was unemployed for four months while my wife was expecting our first child and we had a mortgage to pay–but jeez, I still don’t understand how other people can find things to do that they enjoy and stick with. I’m still stuck with a lingering sense of disappointment in myself, and I have to accept the fact that I will have to look for happiness in roles outside of my intellect, like being a good father to my kids. That’s kind of a difficult pill to swallow for someone who grew up as “the class brain” (with the corresponding diminished social status), whose parents and brother all have multiple graduate degrees but could barely muster a B. A. in English.
In short: if you’re considering medication, by all means become informed about it. But don’t consider it a magic bullet.
Joining in the chorus of “That sounds just like me!” here. Especially the impulsive, buy everything facet, and the inability to concentrate for long, even on things I relaly love and really want to do.
If you think you might have ADD of some sort (and or depression/anxiety, but that’s a different thread), which is the best sort of professional to go to first? Do you just head to the GP and tell them how you’re feeling, and get a referral, or is it best to head to a psychologist and let them nut out what’s going on in your head?
I feel somewhat daunted by the idea of going to a doctor and saying “I think there’s something wrong”. I don’t have a GP that I go to on a regular basis and who knows me and my history. I tend to rely on walk-in clinics that have a few different docs on a rotating roster. And in the past I’ve had a doctor tell me in a roundabout fashion that most people who say “I think this is wrong” are self-diagnosing and frequently wrong.
I guess I’m just afraid of being told it’s all made up by my brain, that I’ve done it to myself for some weird kind of grab for attention.
All I know is that it took me several years to get into a doctor to have my chronic depression treated, and I broke down and sobbed when he took my symptoms seriously. I used to be terrified of talking to doctors about these things, but now I feel like I have a kind, understanding GP who will sit and talk with me about things. I’m not used to that. And if she will recommend that I visit a psychiatrist to determine what’s going on with me, I will do that. But I trust her very much. I have been told that things are all in my head by several doctors, and the fact that she takes me seriously, but doesn’t coddle me, means that I will gladly stick with her.
You know something else funny? My husband got home tonight and we talked for a very long time about my suspicions. When I told him mine, he said, without hesitation:
“I have thought that for awhile now, but I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to upset you.”
So apparently, I am the last one to take these symptoms and realize that they might mean something. And that tells me something - it tells me that my behavior has probably been driving people around me away, and it needs to stop. I need to learn to deal with it or find something to help myself.
Airblairxxx, I would prefer not to be on meds at all (I am currently getting over an addiction to painkillers…four months clean, and I will continue to remain clean, if I have anything to say about it). And I definitely understand that they are not a cure-all. I just feel like if I could focus, if I could learn to refine my thoughts instead of my head moving at 150 MPH, I could learn to handle things in my life with more efficiency, I could learn to handle the parts of my life that aren’t so exciting or thrilling. If I can do that with therapy, or if I can do that with meds, I will. I would prefer to do it with therapy, but if I have to turn to meds, I will do so. I just need things to change or I feel like I’m going to be in the exact same place next year at this time if I don’t try to do something about this.
This is a very frustrating assumption for those of us who have ADHD, and my life got a lot easier when I realized that it isn’t the case. There is tremendous variability in my ability to sustain attention, independent of what I am trying to pay attention to and totally beyond my control.
We accept this without much question for depression, which is clearly episodic. Depressed people can occasionally feel happiness, and can feel relatively normal for weeks or months at a time, and it doesn’t exclude them from a diagnosis of depression.
Part of my behavioral management of my ADHD is accepting that I might be better off putting a given task off until later, because sometimes there is a huge difference between doing it later and doing it now. Sometimes my mindset is such that I just can’t complete a task; it makes my head hurt to think about it, and it gets me all frustrated. If I wait a while, though, I’ll do a much better and more thorough job in half the time. I can’t explain why that is, but I’ve finally learned to work with it; it requires some overall discipline, but I’m OK in a global sense. I also finally learned not to see this tendency as a character flaw.
Just passing on a suggestion that I haven’t really been able to implement effectively, but have you considered engaging someone–a relative, a friend, or if the marital relations can bear it, your husband–to “coach” you, i.e. encourge, remind and inveigh (we won’t say nag) you into completing projects? Structure, as much as anything else, is critical to dealing with ADD, and having someone else help you maintain that structure can be beneficial.
I know what you mean about not completing things; I used to write prolifically, and I swear I wrote a treatment of Galaxy Quest years before the film came out, but never turned it into a proper screenplay much less submit it. (To be honest, my treatment and nascent script were more in the Monty Python/Hitchhiker’s vein, crossed with Buck Rogers and a bit of the Stainless Steel Rat.) I really had fun playing with it, but never brought it, or any other writing project, to a finished state.
My pleasure. As they say, realizing the problem is half the battle. Unfortunately, it’s the easy half. But at least you know which way to point the guns.
You know, I browsed that thread and thought about posting something to the effect, but didn’t want to be seen riding my hobbyhorse and hijacking the thread with unsolicitied and unwanted advice.
For what it is worth, I think the difference between just being a “lazy bastard” and having some kind of attentional/motivational problem is that in the former, the lazy bastard revels and wallows in his apathy and sloth, where as someone with a problem (be it depression, ADD, or whatever) agonizes about not being able to be more effective, seeks to change, and stuggles or fails to modify their behavior. If you’re not happy with your inability to effect a change then you need to figure out–and deal with–what is stopping you. If, on the other hand, you like sitting around with your hand down your pants and watching reruns of Green Acres…well then, who is to deny you your version of heaven?
Stattera (atomoxetine) is a selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor; in this it is similar to the anti-depressant Wellbutrin (bupropion), which is a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor and also used to treat ADD (although chemically, the two compounds are manifestly distinct). Strattera was actually developed as an anti-depressant but was found to be ineffective for that purpose. Strattera was “retargeted” as a treatment for ADD. You are correct it it has never been marketed as an anti-depressant, but it is distinct from the stimulant pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin that have traditionally been used to treat ADD, which is the point I was trying (albeit it in a somewhat misstated manner) to make.
Great advice. I think it’s useful to think about the drugs as an analogy to glasses. You’ve been struggling all your life to read, but you just can’t make out the text no matter how hard you strain and try to focus. You go to an opthamologist who diagnoses you as being hyperopic (farsighted) and prescribes glasses that, for the first time in your life, permit you to make out the letters on the page. Does this make you able to read? No, of course not; you still have to learn grammar and spelling, and no greater magnification (or consideration by your teachers) is going to make you an instant reader. You just have to buckle down and do the work. But at least you’re not fighting your own inability to make out the words.
The drugs are certainly not the end-all, be-all, and (as Hallowell takes great pains to point out) they don’t even work for some people. (He quotes about 35% but doesn’t cite any particular study.) For me, neither Wellbutrin nor Concerta seems to have made much of an impact on my ability to focus. What seems to work best is regular exercise plus tight deadlines and stress to keep me focused on getting work done. I’d rather find some other method than stomach-turning anxiety to let me focus, and to that end I’m willing to try other methods, but the key thing is to find something that helps you keep on focus, whatever it may be.
First of all, a GP/MD and even a general psychiatrist are unlikely to have much, if any, experience with ADD. What little knowledge they might have comes from the same popular articles and introductory information that you can read and comprehend with only a modest knowledge of psychology and without any medical training whatsoever. A child psychiatrist (who, as I stated before, do take on adult clients) is far more likely to have dealt with this issue. Regardless, I think it is worthwhile, if somewhat expensive, to have a professional diagnostician (generally, someone with a PhD in psychology and a specialization in pathology and testing) conduct neurological tests. While a qEEG (administered and interpreted by a neruologist) can be useful, it is not definitive as of yet, while a battery of neurological tests (attention span, relational abilities, various intelligence tests) can certainly narrow down the problem areas. If there is a research college near you with a program in clinical psychology and/or neurology you might check there. There are also a number of advocacy groups for ADD; see the appendix of Driven To Distraction for a comprehensive listing. The problem I have with (some) advocacy groups is that their are victim-oriented and seek special protection/benefits for people with ADD, which in my mind is exactly the wrong approach; the goal should be to “enable” someone with ADD to cope with and be competitive in the everyday world.
Nothing explicit, which is why I qualified it by saying that it was my own conjecture (and of course, I AM NOT A DOCTOR or PSYCHOLOGIST).
That being said, there is a body of evidence that ADD shares a common neurological factor with other impulse-control disorders like OCD, Tourette’s, et cetera; in particular, the specific area of the brain which governs conscious impulse control seems to be subnormally active. Here’s a cite from Psychiatric News; I can’t cite any peer reviewed articles offhand that explicitly hypothesize the connection between ADD/ADHD and other impulse control disorders, but there is a common thread with regard to attentional focus, impulse control, and addiction, all of which correlate strongly together. (Tobacco, cocaine, and heroin use are all significantly higher among people diagnosed with ADD than the general population, though the sample may be necessarialy skewed.)
We tend to view neurological and psychological disorders as a) discrete, and b) syndromes, which is at least in part result of the method; i.e. mental pathologists look for problems, and everything that deviates from the baselines is some degree of problem. This creates a somewhat arbitrary definition of health versus “disorder”, and distinct boundaries between disorders, instead of viewing the conditions as being a multidimensional spectrum radianting from a central mean, if indeed there can be said to be any natural mean or baseline psychological health. As a result, we look at multiple or discrete disorders as being co-morbid with each other; in his books, Hallowell goes into great detail regarding the co-morbidity of disorders; ADD with depression, ADD with addiction, ADD with compulsive tendancies, et cetera. The reality (IMHO) is that ADD is a blanket term that encapsulates many different aspects and ranges of inadequate impulse control as it relates to attentional focus, and therefore is best considered as more of a “metacondition” than a specific and singular disorder.
Again, I am not a trained psychologist (though I’ve read through the basic coursework in undergraduate psychology). I am definitely not an MD, a GP, or a psychiatrist. I’m not a neurologist and as my chemistry profs can attest, certainly not a psychopharmacologist. This is my own speculation, based upon a fairly broad but hardly comprehensive reading of the popular and techincal literature regarding ADD and general impulse control pathologies. Take it for what you will, but consult a doctor or psychologist for a qualified assessment.
I got back from my appointment with my therapist this morning. He is going to find me the name of a neurologist who specializes in ADD here in town, and he also wants me to talk to my PCP this afternoon. He actually has ADD himself, and when I showed him the research that I’d done and we began to piece things together, he agreed with me that my behaviors, my past history, all of it do seem to indicate it. In fact, he looked at a few of the items and told me I was off the charts with just his general opinion. I took one test where anything over a 25 is indicative of attention deficit, but it also distinguishes between ADD and ADHD. I was a 37 for ADD tendencies. I was a 9 for ADD, and a 2 for hyperactivity, which I already knew. There is absolutely no evidence of the hyperactivity that I have always associated with ADD. Maybe that’s why I never considered it before.
I feel better knowing that I am TRYING to find out how to make my life better, you know? I will talk to my doctor, I may make an appointment with the neurologist for screening, I will get the recommended books and look through them. I don’t want to use this as an excuse - I want to improve my quality of life, and I will work hard to do that. But it feels good to know that I may be on the right track, that there could be a reason for why I feel so hopeless, why I can’t seem to stay put in one place, why I feel so restless at times.
Stranger, my husband’s really good about ‘making’ me do things, when he realizes they need to be done. Unfortunately, though, and I absolutely hate to make this sound stereotypical, but it’s true - he doesn’t have much of an idea of what it takes to keep this house running. So it’s something we can work on together. But that’s an excellent idea - I’ve always needed to be constantly reminded about things. Even yesterday - my parents were here over the weekend and left yesterday morning. My mother had tossed a load of towels in the washing machine for me, and told me before she left to put them in the dryer. She called four or five times while on the eight hour trip home, and each time, she had to remind me to put the towels in the dryer again. I got them OUT of the dryer, but only because I could hear the buzzer go off in the basement, and I forced myself to get up right then and get them and fold them.
Of course, they’re still sitting down in the laundry basket in the living room, but they’re folded and out of the dryer.
In the meantime, I’m going to talk to my doctor about switching my A/D from Prozac to Wellbutrin today just to see if that helps at all - mainly because I can feel my body reacting to the Prozac as it did to Paxil four years ago, and I don’t like that. I think the Wellbutrin is a better choice for me, and I thought so a month ago, but she didn’t put me on it because of our plans to get pregnant. However, I’ve read lately that Wellbutrin is okay for pregnancy if needed - and I have a friend who is trying to get pregnant who’s on it. We (the husband and I) talked about it last night, and as much as I hate to do it, we’re going to put off trying to get pregnant for at least another month to see where this goes. Unfortunately, I have an underlying gynecological condition that may interfere with our conceiving, so I’m nervous that we’re waiting too long, but on the other hand, I would rather make sure that I’m able to handle things. It’s not fair for us to be planning for a child until we figure out what’s going on and how to get a handle on it.
I don’t want to be a victim. I can take responsibility for my own life, for the things that I need to take responsibility for, and I am going to do that. But it’s a major relief to know that I have gotten to the point where I can ask for help and not be embarrassed about it.
And Stranger? I have a full-length stage play that had investors interested in it, as long as I did some minor editing to adapt it to a black box East Village theatre with very little staging. I couldn’t do that. So I know what you mean. I now know that I haven’t missed my chance to fulfill my writing desires, but I’m going to have to work my ass off to get there. And I am completely willing to do that. I think I just need a little help to figure out how to do it.
I’m reading this thread and I’m vacillating between:
a) That SO completely describes most of my symptoms and experiences
-and-
b) I’m SO looking for justification for being compulsively lazy. It’s like a Hollywood celeberty affectation where every other one is coming out of the ADD or Dislexia closet with a born again revelation. :smack: And here I was thinking I was simply stupid and lazy! :smack: Now I’ve got a bandwagon to jump on to and nobody can argue any different. :dubious:
The only thing keeping me riveted is the single most bothersome fact that my “symptoms” are so remarkably similar to so many of those described in this thread.
For example, I often cannot focus on work related subjects being discussed in meetings. I sit and pretend to be attentive but inside my head a voice is screaming “GET TO THE FUCKING POINT! THIS IS SO STUPID!” or my mind just drifts uncontrollably until individual words are recognizable but all together don’t form concepts that hash. This may have something to do with the fact that I find groups of people to be largely superfluous. However, individuals, competent individuals, matter a great deal.
Another is that I’ve always got several books on the go. I sometimes cannot read a book fast enough. I swallow (scan?) paragraphs whole like my brain cannot soak up the information fast enough and I get so frustrated with my “slow” rate of progress that I have to put the book down and do something else. Something active and physically demanding until I tire myself.
TV is like a drug sometimes. I can watch the images while I zone out and think about other things. It’s almost therapy to me. The voices and sounds are welcome company when I’m alone.
Bills and mail in general are anathema. I’m not expecting bad news I just often can’t bring myself to physically get the mail and open the envelopes. The junk inside, the pages upon pages of useless information on a phone or cable bill is daunting. I just want to see one slip of paper containing the amount owed. Instead, I know it’ll be a search for the billing stub and return envelope. It’s so stupid… but the mail will just sit there for weeks before I can force myself to focus on taking care of it.
Compulsive shopping? Yep. Nothing I love better than buying a pair of identical slacks or shirts in every colour that I really like. If one colour is missing in my size, I’m not right until I hunt down the remaining pair.
I believe I was on this list several years ago, then changed emails and managed to unsubscribe myself. Would you mind passing it along to spatulagirl@sbcglobal.net? I think this could be a great resource, if it’s as I remember it being.
I’ve been thinking that myself since first wondering if this was the case.
Thing is, there is SUCH a stigma attached to ADD - is that really something I’d want to even mention to other people unless I truly realized it was a possibility? Have you ever heard of a celebrity coming out and crowing proudly about their ADD? Going on Oprah, or Leno, or Dr. Phil to brag about how they have ADD and how they’re SO lazy, but it’s okay because they have ADD!
Believe me, I was knocking the crap out of myself for posting this.
But as Stranger said, I think there’s a difference between being perpetually lazy doing nothing because you ARE lazy, and wanting so badly for things to change without the ability or the knowledge or the drive to change them.
I don’t know. Maybe I am just lazy as hell. But I don’t feel like this is how I should be. The most important thing in the world to me right now - getting pregnant - is the goal I am trying to focus on, but I’m having a hard time refining my actions to reach that goal. Is it laziness when I’m afraid that I won’t have the energy or ability to take care of a child? Or is it something within me that I can learn to deal with and keep under control through medication?
I don’t know. I won’t know until I talk to my doctor some more, see a neurologist, run the tests, see what might this might be.
I can’t even stand to hear the word “discipline” used in reference to my problems (as my aging, newly-conservative parents do every so often). It feels like a whack on the back of the neck with a wood ruler.
One of my struggles as a depressed person is to consciously embrace some kind of discipline in life. It isn’t easy, seeing as I don’t even like the sound of the word.
And your reading this thread and thinking “That is SO me!”?. Umm, this is me. This is it. I have three or four books scattered around the house, I pick up one after another, but I can usually read those three or four books within a day or two in that same way - I ‘swallow’ paragraphs whole.
I watch TV constantly. My husband asks how I can watch TV and be on the computer or be reading at the same time - I HAVE to do both. I can’t do one at a time. Otherwise, I can not focus my attention on one as an individual activity.
And bills? There’s a reason I’m in a credit counseling program. There’s a reason my husband pays the mortgage, the home equity line, the satellite, the phone, etc. Otherwise, we’d be behind in all of them. The few bills that I pay on my own are behind because I either misplace the bill when it comes in, or I forget that it’s there.
And I’ve gone to Rite Aid to get a prescription before, coming out with six more items that we have no need for - and I couldn’t tell you the next day what I’d bought because WE DIDN’T NEED IT.
Believe me, I get what you’re saying. But I think there’s a huge difference between trying to figure out if it’s a condition to use it as an excuse, or trying to figure out if it’s a condition to use it and better myself.
You’re not saying a word that I haven’t thought in my head in the past years, and just in the past two days after realizing what this may be. (thank god for melatonin, or I wouldn’t have slept last night with the thoughts racing through my head).
That’s so exactly how I feel. (I’ve posted about my ADD suspcians about myself before but I’ve never gotten off my ass to do anything about them) And I do all the stuff everyone is mentioning, including the avoiding bills, spacing out at work, never finishing stuff, inept house keeping, etc. In fact, after I let myself get totally overwhelmed by the madhouse my apartment had become and a couple of very good freinds helped me clean it up, one friend said I was exactly like her boyfriend who’s been diagnosed with ADD and took it upon herself to go by me Driven to Distration.
I find I rarely have the patience to actually sit through an entire movie at a theatre and wait for stuff to come out on DVD so I can read while watching. And even then I’m frustrated that the movie takes so freaking long and fast forward thru much of it. I almost prefer constant channel flipping or obsessively cruising the internet with several windows open to a good movie and that seems wrong. (I’ve sometimes wondered if the rise of the remote and the internet has aggravated the ADD problem in this country. It’s so easy to do multiple things at once now, maybe that “primes” the brain to be less tolerant of more methodical tasks.)
And I don’t really have the patience for relationships either. I find it difficult to slow down and listen to people and I also have trouble maintaining even an email correspondence. But is that an ADD thing or am I just too shallow and egocentric? Am I looking for something to blame my failings as a real person rather than taking responsibility for them?
My biggest problem with the ADD stuff is the hyperfocus aspect of it. I don’t understand why I have so much trouble concentrating on the mundane tasks of living yet, as on a recent family vacation, spend six hours a day for six days intensely absorbed in learning Japanese (a subject I’m very interested in but only seem to study on and off). That seems to indicate that I should be able to focus on more boring topics but am just too lazy to. Stranger do you have insights on this?
To get anything done, I have to make sure my day is very structured and I tend to overschedule myself with activities so I don’t have a lot of free time to waste. But I still think there’s something missing and my work suffers. (and the Dope is not helping, I get obsessed with looking up crap sometimes) But I’m immensely leary of pharmacuticals and keep thinking if I just tweak my diet, eat healthier and exercise more, I’ll find the solution.
OK, this post wasn’t very coherent and I’m not sure I added much to the conversation but there it is.
Thoroughly understand your aversion to meds. I’ve found that traditional, sit-on-the-couch therapy has helped with some of the feelings ADD has encumbered me with, like anger, but it doesn’t actually help me change.
I’ve looked into other therapies, and neurofeedback and coaching both look promising, but alas the cash just ain’t there for me so I can’t vouch for them. You can check out www.addresources.com for more info.
On a related note, I just found out that September 14 is National ADD/ADHD Awareness Day! Let’s all celebrate by coming in late to work and surfing the net.
My doc, who is an ADD specialist, has found Straterra to be quite dissapointing for improving focus. Considering the cost of it, I’d avoid it.
If you’re not insured, ask for generic ritalin; it’s the best studied, has the longest history, and has immediate effects. It’s a stimulant that goes to your brain right away, so you’ll feel the effects in a short time and they’ll last about four hours. Some drugs, like Straterra, you have to be on for a while (e.g. weeks) before you get the effects.
Another thing to note is that you’ll likely not notice a difference. It is good to make someone aware of what’s going on, spouse/co-worker, so that you can get some outside evidence of what effect it’s having. For example, I was on Ritalin for nearly a year before I even realized it was having an effect. The way I noticed was that I was reading a book in public without needing to have a walkman on. Retrospectively, I could tell that there was an effect (my class notes were notes instead of doodles, for example) but at the time I was clueless.
Another good thing about Ritalin is that it’s speed. If you’re not ADD, you’ll act like you’re taking speed. If you take it and you relax and concentrate better, then you can be comfortable w/ the diagnosis.
I found out because my mom, an RN, started working for community mental health when I was in my sixth year of college. I had never signed a major. I had turned in one reasearch paper on time. I had blown two opportunities for psychology research because I couldn’t pay attention, organize, or get started. Finally my mom said that as a kid I was exactly like half the kids with ADD that she sees. Evidently they didn’t know that non-hyperactivity was a subtype of the disorder.
I suppose my experiences may be similar. I’m no genius, but I always had impressive scores on my standardized tests in school. Yet I never did well in school either. I mean, I did okay, but only because of my ability to retain things. I didn’t do a lick of homework. In high school the guidance counselor would call me in twice a year, gripe at me for “not living up to my potential,” and send me off without helping in any way whatsoever.
I did okay in college. I rarely did homework. I generally skimmed the texts, if I opened them at all. I verily never studied. Yet I racked up enough credits in pscyh and econ to have a double major without even realizing it. I was an office of my frat, yet I never actually did any work that my offices required.
I learned very early that if I cannot do something immediately, then I cannot do it. That is something that doesn’t seem to go away and I still have trouble with it. I never learned how to study, work, or organize, and so the only time I’m really effective is when I’m putting out fires and am panicked enough to focus.
Right now I’m taking Concerta rather than Ritalin. It seems to work pretty well. But…I still have the same old behavioral problems. If I can get to work, then I can focus on it much more easily; however, there are a host of “executive function” problems that come w/ ADD and those aren’t so easily solved. For example, translating the steps of a simple task into actually doing. We have an electronic filing system. I have the instruction sheet. Yet I cannot connect the instructions to what I’ll actually be doing. I can look at the formulas for calculating the permutations of X items chosen Y at a time; however, translating that into the process of actually doing the calculation is nigh impossible sometimes.
Another executive control problem is initiating tasks. Also switching between tasks is a bitch. A normal person can take a two-minute phone call and experience a two minute interruption; for me a two-minute phone call may throw me off by a half-hour because getting back on task is so difficult. Sometimes a 10:00 am phone call will blow my whole day’s work. You can read some more here.
Ok my official welcome to the boards came in the form of the hampsters eating this really long wonderfull post I had. This thread is what has pulled me from lurkerdom.
I have Adult ADD. I found out 3 years ago when I was 20. All through school they wanted to test me. I always said no. I really wish I would have. I was a smart kid, very smart. Couldn’t make friends, never knew why. I had 1 or 2 close friends that was it. Everyone kind of thought I was strange, didn’t really want to be around me. I lived in a diffrent world from everyone else. My mom would tell me to do the dishes, after much hounding and nagging I finally would. I t would take me 3 hours, when I was done, my dad would come to look at them and even though I had done my best he would point out the spots still on the plates. When I was old enough for the work force I never really fit in, my co-workers thought I was funny, they like my teachers knew I COULD do what was asked. It’s just that I didn’t. I didn’t do anything like I was supposed to. I just kept pushing on, changed jobs because I was bored or I knew it was leave or get canned. Then one day I got a THE JOB (So I thought at the time) I was working in a vet clinic. Everyone in my family thought it would be the PERFECT thing for me. When I was fired for a list of things that read like a naughty kindergardners report card, i decided to go and get tested.
$1,200 unplanned dollars later, it was official, I had ADD. As much as I wanted to try out meds, I couldn’t afford to go to the appointment the doctors said I needed to go to to get the meds. So I went back to doing what I always did, kept pushing, got a new job, one where I worked by myself. No one around me to tell me that I wasn’t doing things right and a boss that only cared about the numbers not how I got to them. But it was winter and I was depressed. I was living paycheck to paycheck, bouncing checks, in debt. I was bored with my job, no challenges, no insurance. I had a boyfriend who was trying to leave me, my impulsive and obsessive behavior was to much for him to handle. I was depressed. I saw an ad on TV for a deppression study and called. THe woman I talked with was great, she listened to me as I talked about all my problems, and I told her about the ADD. We talked more and decided that instead of the depression study I should try the Strattera study they had. I WAS STOKED! I figured I had a magic pill to solve all my problems. I went got in and was sent on my way with my pills. The first day I took them I waited for the life changing calm to take over, it never happened. I stayed on for 8 months because it was free and I kept hoping that one day I would wake up and be someone else. The side effects were horrible for me. I quit sleeping, felt like hell all the time and finally gave up.
Unmedicated, I went ahead with my life. I got a new job, the boyfriend and I split, money was still a major stressor.
I liked my job, I am good sales person, I was making my numbers. But it didn’t take long for all the same things to start again, meetings with my boss, co-workers who were sick of my crap. I explained to them again about ADD, In my interview when they asked what my greatest weakness was, I told them ADD. I was on a mission to educate my boss and coworkers about my disability, yes I did do things differently then they did, but for a reason. Then one day I was working away at my desk and in walked the boss and his boss. I had hit the last step before getting fired again, Final. Written. Warning.
At this point I made 2 calls. The first to a doctor so I could try agian to get “fixed” The second call was to the State Dept. of Equal Rights. I had a documented disability, that was being refused resonable accomodation. Soon the HR-VP was in my office and I felt like I was finally getting somewhere. I went to my GP doc and he gave me a script for Ritalin. Again I waited and nothing. But this time instead of giving up I tried again and went to a Pshycologist. I explained that I felt like since I had tried 2 diffrent drugs and niether had helped I must be broken. I must be destined to suffer with this disorder for the rest of my life. He perscribed Adderall, I took it and waited. It worked.
I am now back in control. I still have problems with my job, my boss resents that I went to the State. I am sure they are trying to push me out, and I will leave, but in my own sweet time, when I find a job that I want to leave for. I still have money problems, but now intead of beating myself up over why I spent $100 on shoes instead of paying a bill, I usually pay the bill first. My love life is even looking up! I realize now that no “magic pill” exists. I will always not do things I should be doing, but thats not ADD. That is me. Adderall helps me see what others see. I now can control my impulses, and the phone ringing at work doesn’t make me forget what I was doing everytime.
But at least you know which way to point the guns.
pay the bill first. My love life is even looking up! I realize now that no “magic pill” exists. I will always not do things I should be doing, but thats not ADD. That is me. Adderall helps me see what others see. I now can control my impulses, and the phone ringing at work doesn’t make me forget what I was doing everytime.