Tell me about your experiences with ADD

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am NOT looking for medical advice, as medical and psychological treatment is now underway. I am interested personal experiences.

Well, it seems that Hallboy is well on his way to being diagnosed with ADD.

This is after many months seeing a therapist, quite a bit of testing (largely to rule out depression and other diagnosis) and our next stop is a lengthy visit with his pediatrician. Along the way, it was realized that Hallgirl (now 24 and having graduated college, and having returned to college for a new degree) is experiencing some of the very same symptoms as Hallboy, so she did tons of research and had a lengthy chat with her PCP and recently began a low dose prescription of [EMAIL=http://www.concerta.net/concerta/pages/index.jsp]Concerta. The impact for her has been nearly instanteous and amazing. (For example, she’s finally able to focus enough to read a book…matter of fact, she read three her first week on Concerta.)

Hallboy, soon to be 14, and I had a discussion yesterday with his therapist, who did a really nice job of explaining about the brain, and what it’s doing (or not doing) and why he’s having some of the problems he’s having and how it relates to ADD, as well as how medication may help him. Honestly, I was VERY reluctant to begin him on medication, but I’ve gradually realized what an impact this has had on him–largely him feeling like he’s lazy or stupid, when in all actuality, he’s very intelligent, but just can’t seem to “focus” on school related work. He’s a wonderful writer, but has extreme difficulty focusing enough to actually write, etc. This has had an impact on his self esteem, something which I originally (and wronglyfully) didn’t realize.

What I want to know now is others experiences with ADD or ADHD, particularly treating teens or preteens. (Hallboy doesn’t have the hyperactivity aspect of it.) If you’re an adult with ADD/ADHD and are beginning treatment, I’d like to hear about that as well, since Hallgirl feels conflicted about being diagnosed and treated at 24. (She’s went through somewhat of a ‘mourning’ period when she began to think of all that she could have accomplished, and how easily, if she’d gotten treatment earlier in life.)

I guess I really want to know if medication helped, or if you feel it did more harm than good. (I realize that ALL medications have side effects.) How did being diagnosed and being treated impact your life (or did it)? What do I need to do as a parent to support Hallboy through this, or more importantly, what do I not need to do?

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The most important thing to remember about ADD is

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A good friend of mine suspected her son had ADD so she started researching, and realized that she herself has it too. The son largely outgrew it but she still suffers badly. She takes drugs sometimes (Dexedrine) but not all the time. My experience is that she is two totally different people, on drugs and off, and she can basically decide which she wants to be - if she wants to get stuff done and not sleep for days, she takes it; if she wants to relax and catch her breath and feel like “herself,” she doesn’t. This is not a management strategy I would suggest, because when she is on the dex she is single-minded of purpose (which makes her hard to communicate/work with) and when she is not she’s scatter-brained (likewise, but in a different way). No doubt some of this is due to her diet (terrible) and her personality (already somewhat scatter-brained), so YMMV.

Another adult friend has it and he manages it extremely well without any drugs. His major trick is that he doesn’t eat any sugar at all (very occasionally fruit), and he has worked hard to develop all kinds of behavioural techniques to manage all the aspects of his life that he needs managed.

All this to say: drugs work well for some people, but it’s equally important to look at diet and behavioural strategies to manage it.

4

Let’s see, I lived through middle school, high school, under grad, and grad school medicated for ADD. I was taking the stimulant Dexidrine, and it worked very well. Problem was it is a class A narcotic, and you can’t just stop taking it whenever you feel like. You need to titrate off it and do that under the supervision of your physician.

I would try medication and see how it works with the help of his counselor and the doctor. He should be monitored closely for signs of dependence if you choose to go the stimulant method. There are medications that are non-stimulant and the only thing I can say about those like Strattera are that you need to watch children taking it as it increases the risk of Suicidal ideation in kids under 18. That is a scary side effect but one that is much easier dealt with as an adult than as a teen.

ADD in teens can be easily managed with medication or naturally through diet. Feel free to PM me with any pointed Q’s.

5

I was diagnosed at 24, just before returning to complete the last 2 years of my undergraduate course work. I had a pocketful of Adderall & high hopes. My cumulative GPA was a 1.98, but I maintained a 4.0 from that point forward.

Well, I thought that the Adderall was a miracle drug after that. When I first started taking it, I had no problems whatsoever. After a while (a year or two), though, I started to experience some pretty serious insomnia, some shakiness, and a very strong urge to start smoking again (which I did). After a while, I really wanted a beer, or something to take the edge off, after a day of studying on Adderall. Then it turned into a whole bunch of beers. Then, I finished my MBA, put the Adderall in the cupboard, and have had no issues since.

I know everyone’s experience is different, but I know several people who were treated for ADD/ADHD with amphetamines, and they all eventually reached a stage where they were exhibiting signs of serious dependence. Eventually, none were reaping much benefit from the drug at all. Sure, they could still focus while studying, but even that benefit was starting to fade away.

In short, I would have a sit down with your son’s doctor & ask him about some of the newer, more gentile, medications available to people with ADD. Not to say that the medication I took won’t be a fantastic solution for your son, b/c it very well could be. I’m just wary of it these days.

6

I’m a “primary inattention” ADHD’d adult. I took medication from about ages 7-13.

My mom was very cautious about meds and I took the lowest possible dose of Ritalin (this was before wonderful things like time-release ADHD meds.) Meds helped immensely at that time, w/o them there’s no way I could have survived (my teachers might have actually killed me!)

My mom found that a cup or so of coffee had about the same effect on me as my meds as I went into high school, so I just became an early coffee drinker.

I learned a lot of coping skills as a teen that I still use when I have difficulty starting a project or otherwise concentrating. I have learned that doing something that’s motivating, yet difficult (like doing a crossword puzzle) “warms up” my brain to deal with boring or more difficult tasks. I take frequent 5 or 10 minute breaks when I work on a difficult task, every 30 minutes or so. It keeps me from staring at a blank screen and keeps my brain refreshed. Hallboy will need to find what works for him, you can reassure him that he WILL find strategies that work!

I also still abuse caffeine! It works for me, in part because I have my worst difficulties w/concentration early in the morning…

I’m still a procrastinator, but I’ve been very successful in academics and in my career.

I have a good friend who has just started taking ADHD meds as an adult - she’s about 5 years older than Hallgirl, and realized that she had difficulty concentrating as she started medical school.

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I’m sorry. What were you saying?

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My ex is a coffee fiend. Before she got prescription meds, she would drink coffee before she went to bed. It helped her to concentrate on sleep.

phall, I highly recommend this book.

I also highly recommend that if hallboy goes on meds, do not get the generic brand. I have it on good authority that while the ingredients are the same, the binders are different, and that makes all the difference in efficacy.

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I used to work in a disability services office at a large university so this post pertains to young adults. The majority of our students had ADD or ADHD or learning disability. The students mostly thought medications helped.

There was some commonality to their problems. Writing was a big issue for our students, they had to pass an essay test to advance and repeated failure was often why they were referred to us. They were given a quite private place to test because distractibility was also an issue.

We didn’t really have many of the better students use our services. They would register with us but find they made good grades without the office. Your son is lucky to have been diagnosed before going to college; it is a big blow at an emotionally difficult time.

Should he enroll in a college and want these sorts of services, he may need to be diagnosed again. This was our schools policy because symptoms change with adulthood, and we wanted specifics on the student’s deficits in order to provide appropriate services.

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I hope not to hijack this too much- but maybe the audience here can point me in the right direction. What does ADD actually feel like/mean to the people who have it? I am trying to get a first-person perspective.

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Reading three pages of a book then suddenly realizing you were only looking at the words and have NO IDEA what happened in the past three pages.

Sitting through an entire 50 minute lecture, and when it’s over you have a nice new piece of art in your notebook but didn’t hear a single word the professor said and don’t even remember when or how you zoned out.

Being three months late on all your bills, not because you don’t have the money, but because every time you remember you have to pay them, the thought floats out of your head seconds later.

You can’t have anyone over because they will think you’re a lazy slob based on the state of your house. Disorganization doesn’t begin to describe it. I can’t explain why but it seems to be a common thing – (a lot of) people with ADD/ADHD cannot keep a home clean to save their lives.

I was 20 when I was diagnosed. I was screwing around on the internet and somehow stumbled upon this, started reading it, and said out loud, “OH MY GOD…”
Metadate is my best friend.

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This sounds exactly like Hallgirl and nearly almost like Hallboy.

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My favorite, most accurate-for-me example, which I’m sure I’ve posted here before but will be happy to repost: You know how, whe you go into a restaurant for lunch with a friend, and they are playing background music through speakers? “Normal” people can block the music out and concentrate on the meal or the conversation. Sometimes, I can too, but far more frequently, I find myself annoyingly aware of the music, to the point where, after lunch, I might not be able to tell you what I had to eat, but I can tell you what songs were repeated. It’s MADDENING.

And (again, I’m sure I’ve posted this before and beg the indulgence of those who’ve read it before) a lot of people hear ATTENTION DEFICIT disorder and assume it means that we ADD people are not able to pay attention. I would like to point out that for most of us, it would be more accurate to say ATTENTION deficit DISORDER. Frequently, we can pay A LOT of attention to things that interest us… to the point of ignoring any other input as insistent as a full bladder :eek:

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This made me laugh out loud, because I know precisely want you mean. About two months ago I even had a brief conversation with my fellow ADD sufferer best friend about how incredibly inconvenient it is to have to pee sometimes. Our lives are so terrible!

I used to get the “hyper-focused” (ie, not clean the room for months, then one day do decided to do so, and I can’t focus on anything else until it’s spotless even though it takes 6 hours, and I blew off going out with friends and doing my homework to get it done) thing when I was younger, but it’s pretty much completely disappeared from my behavior now.

I never fully addressed the OP.

Medication has vastly improved my life. I will never give it up. My apartment is… well, it’s not clean, but it’s no longer a complete disaster area. I can pay attention in class. I’m extremely productive when it comes to little projects and drawings (I’m an artist). I CAN FINISH THINGS! IN ONE SITTING! I haven’t locked my keys in my car in over two years (I did this so much that I was on a first name basis with the local police, who I always ended up calling to come by with a slim jim. I once locked myself out of my car 8. times. in. one. week.).

My self esteem has improved. Before I was diagnosed, I genuinely thought I was just a lazy, stupid, undisciplined flake. Knowing that my brain just doesn’t function the same way a “normal” person’s does and that my inability to function wasn’t always my fault was a huge weight off my shoulders.

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Son #1 was diagnosed with ADD in 3rd grade. He started on the Rit and was on it for many years. I became uncomfortable with the constant medication and went to seminar to learn non med coping skills. He was a figitty kid, which was distracting in both the classroom and at home. We worked on coping exercises over the summer when he didn’t exactly need the meds. He did take Adderall for a while, but after many sleepless weeks on the low doseage, his doctors said let him have caffiene. I had the only 7th grader in love with (iced) coffee.

When he started having difficulties in high school, we tried Concerta, but again he couldn’t sleep, so we went back to the caffiene and another class on coping exercises. This has paid off for him. Though when he was on the Concerta, wow! He was on fire. School assignments done, and turned in! It definately boosted his self esteem to understand that it wasn’t because he was, as he put it, a secret idiot, but that his brain just needed a jump start throughout the day.

He really didn’t want to come off the Concerta but his doctor and I knew he had to. He was only getting 4-5 hours a sleep a night and had to take metamucil 2x a day b/c he’d get constipated. His ‘medication’ now is caffienated and/or energy drinks. He’s the only person I know who can drink a mountain dew and fall asleep 10 mins later.

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More thoughts. I bolded a key point. A very, very large portion of my inability to Get Things Done was due to my ADD (I don’t have the H), but obviously some of it was just pure laziness, etc.

Understand that it’s a very, very challenging condition to have, but don’t let him use it as an excuse for everything, especially as an excuse to give up. If you get him on medication and it still seems like he’s never doing homework, not studying, having problems paying attention in class, either he’s milking the diagnosis, the effectiveness of the meds need to be evaluated by his doctor, or something else is going on (ie, depression). Don’t let him get away with everything, but a lot of breaks need to be cut.

Most of all, BE SUPPORTIVE! That means be extremely careful saying things like, “you have so much potential, if only you’d try a little harder…” I’d be rich if I had a dollar every time someone said something like that to me. It hurt, it made me feel like a failure, and like I said, eventually I started to think that everyone was right and I was just the laziest person alive, or that I was actually really stupid but nobody had realized it yet (like someone else said). Please don’t do that.

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Screw more gentile medication! When you need a pill, you want Jew meds! Make mine Weinstein!

Seriously though,

I missed my Concerta the past two days and am having problems focusing all the way through longer posts.

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Ok, can you tell I haven’t taken my medication today?

I’m thinking of more things that I would have appreciated from my parents (who, somehow, never realized I had a problem) when I was a teenager.

Like I said, be supportive! Constantly being yelled at because my room was a disaster, or I was getting bad grades, caused me a great deal of stress. My behavior embarassed me. I was ashamed. It gnawed at me in the worst way. I wanted SO BADLY to be a ‘good kid’ and go good in school and keep my room clean and make everyone happy and “live up to my potential” but sometimes I just couldn’t do it. Obvious I don’t mean they should have never told me to clean my room or that I need to do better in school, but… something a bit gentler, a bit more understanding, and less of the harsh, angry nagging would have made me feel a lot less guilty about it.

Praise him when he does good. It’s a struggle. To keep up with the cleaning theme, after I went on one of the aformentioned 6 hour cleaning binges, I’d be so incredibly proud of myself for just accomplishing something, I’d make my mom come look and she’d just say, “good!” in a “what do you want, a cookie?” kind of way. It really deflated me. It sounds silly to praise someone for doing something they should be doing anyway, but more of that would have gone a long way towards making me feel good about myself.

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Had to answer this one.

I was diagnosed with ADD about two years ago, at the age of 34. I cannot begin to tell you what a difference it has made.

On taking the medication, the first thing I discovered was that I had time. I could sit down to accomplish a task and have it finished half an hour later, not three or four hours, or never at all.

“Magically,” my ability to handle money - pay bills on time, resist impulse purchases, keep my checkbook balanced - improved so much, I was no longer broke four days after getting paid. “Magically,” I became a calmer, quieter person. “Magically,” my life began to straighten itself out.

Like others, I came to realize that I wasn’t lazy, junior Alzheimers, or immature. I am still coming across things that remind me what a handicap my ADD can be, and how much I might have accomplished in my teens and twenties, if I’d just been able to concentrate for a little while.

I will say, though, that being diagnosed, changing habits, and taking medication may not fix everything. Along with ADD, I have to deal with bouts of depression, and one thing I’ve discovered, is that when I have a bad bout of depression, my ADD is much, much worse. It’s so much worse that when I take my meds (Adderall XR, 15 mg), I improve to a non-depressed, non-medicated ADD stage. My depression magnifies my ADD symptoms to where they are almost unmanageable.

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As someone who went undiagnosed until I was in my 30s, let me point out that some of the problems we have are not because of the ADD itself, but because of the poor coping strategies we taught ourselves in our own attempts to deal with it.

As a young adult, I became a very skilled and spontaneous liar. I could, on no notice whatsoever, give you a Very Detailed And Convincing Story to prove to you that the fact that the dishes weren’t done was not my fault. I was excellent at placing blame elsewhere (all the while berating myself internally). Because if everything that goes wrong is actually my fault, then I am pretty freakin’ worthless as a human being, aren’t I?

Once I was diagnosed, the meds smoothed out a lot of the actual ADD, but the therapy was, for me, vital to repairing my life. I had to learn new coping strategies, and unlearn my knee-jerk reactions to criticism (and to recognize what issues were mine and which ones were not.)