I’m 41 (and how come we never say 41-going-on-42, like when we were kids, hmmmm?) and just figured out that I have ADD.
All my life I have felt like I was broken somehow, and could never figure out what it was. Yesterday I had to get out of the office, and so I slipped out to Barnes & Noble on my lunch break. I’m new to the social work field, and so I was looking for something that might benefit me in my work with CPS. Somehow I ended up deciding to get a book on Women with ADD. After reading a few pages, a light bulb went on.
Eureka! :smack:
Things make sense now! Since yesterday afternoon, I’ve been doing a lot more reading and studying, and things just keep falling into place. I have a doctor’s appointment on 5/16 to follow up on the depression (I’ve been on Celexa for a month), and am going to talk with him about ADD.
It’s not that I’m happy to have it–it’s just happy to finally, after all these years, figure out what’s going on and now I can figure out strategies to cope.
Definitely get this confirmed by Someone Who Knows - but in the meantime, I’ll extend a probationary welcome to the club.
The good thing about having a diagnosis is that it opens avenues of treatment that would otherwise be overlooked. Good luck to you - it’s not easy, but it can be managed!
I second the above references and the suggestion to have your tenative self-diagnosis confirmed by a diagnostician (not just an MD’s cursory say-so). Understand, though, that ADD is largely a pathologization of what might well be “normal” behavior in the prehistoric world. It’s not so much that there’s something broken about you as that you just don’t quite fit into the expectations of the modern world. The solution might involve chemical stimulants, of course, but it may equally call for changes in how you deal with life, i.e. learning coping strategies and ways of turning your characteristics into advantages; for instance, many ADD people are creative in non-linear, lateral-thinking type ways, which can serve to be an advantage in some jobs, but are a problem in a vocation where you are expected to do the same mindless, plodding work all the time.
My point here is that you shouldn’t think of it as a disease or pathology to be cured, but rather an inborn characteristic, like being short or having extra sensitive hearing: “I’m have difficulty controlling attentional focus so I need to find ways to cope” not “I’m easily distracted so everyone should walk on tippy-toes around me.”
Oh, and welcome to the “club”, FWIW. Just don’t make it your identity above all else.
Oh, I have no intention of making it my primary identity. And I am going to the doctor and talk to him about it. The thing that gave me the most relief was the fact that if I can realize that I have different ways of looking at and dealing with situations/stimuli/whatever, I can find ways to work with myself instead of constantly berating myself. Does that even make any sense? It does in my head, anyway.
Like he said, Driven to Distraction, a book written (apparently) by people who were looking in my windows. The diagnosis itself is a major part of the treatment.
Be wary of meds if you have any sort of addictive personality. They’re basically speed. I had a scrip for ritalin, wound up abusing it, and had to quit.
Seriously, though, I should probably check out those books too. I was a hyperactive kid and I’ve always thought that I had a case of Adult ADD now. I’m very creative and good at problem solving. But, doing the same thing over and over is very difficult for me. Focusing on something can be hard also. I have to try and tune all the other stuff out, and that requires consious effort on my part.
Is there any merit to any of the online tests for Adult ADD? I’ve seen ads on TV for them, but I’m skeptical about how accurate they could actually be.
Yes it does. AD/HD is a difference, not a disorder (IMHO). You are wired differently, made to do different things, you are not broken. The problems occure when you try to structure your life in a way that non-ADD people do, you are not designed for that and it can’t work (easially).
Keep reading up on it, Driven to Distraction is a book that usually gives people the Eureka! response, but you have had that already (might be good for reinforcement however). I would recommend some/any of Thom Hartman’s books on AD/HD to find out how to restructure your life around AD/HD.
One thing I often say when it comes to my ADD is that it’s not so much an attention deficit as it is an attention disorder. For me, the distinction was important, because of the hyperfocusing - I can focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else for hours at a time, which really makes uninformed people go :dubious: They’ll say, “Obviously you don’t REALLY have ADD because I’ve seen you pay attention lots of times.”
I don’t honestly care if Joe Random believes I have ADD or not, but when dealing with this in the beginning, it was helpful to make the distinction among those close to me who insisted that I was just lazy, unmotivated, airheaded, daydreaming, disorganized, selfish, lying…
The thing about ADD is it is (if I can extend the analogy to height) as if you’ve been walking around all these years unable to reach stuff on the top shelf. You berate yourself, and typically, other people inveigh against you because your reach is too short. “Just stretch higher,” they say, and 'cause you don’t own a yardstick long enough to meausure your height you just assume that it’s your fault you can’t reach. So then you start carrying around big weights all the time to try to stretch your arms, which just makes you tired and your arms hurt.
Realizing that you fall under the catagory of ADD suddenly makes you understand why you haven’t been able to get the corn flakes all these years.
'Course, you still have to cook in the same kitchen as everybody else, and you can’t always be demanding that people get stuff off the shelf for you. The trick is understanding that you need to use a stepladder or place stuff on more accessible shelves rather than to try to modifiy your body to fit or demand others give you consideration for your height.
Anyway, enough of silly, reductionist analogies; get it checked out and confirmed by a professional, and consider the options provided. Be advised that chemical therapy is kind of a black art; responses, side effects, and effective dosages all vary from person to person, and it make take a while to find an effective combination (or not at all). Not to contradict Larry Borgia personal experiences, but for the most part the dosages are low enough and/or the interaction is such that the drugs are not physiologically habit forming; however, they can have other side effects that may or may not prevent them from being effective for you. Hallowell goes into more detail on this, though not as much as I’d care for; talk to a psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist for more information.
My situation is similar. Ten years or so ago, my doctor voiced his suspicions that I have ADD; however, since I was already on Wellbutrin for depression (and still am), he refused to prescribe anything for ADD. He did, however, recommend that I read up on the subject.
I was skeptical, as I had previouslty thought of ADD as a daytime talk show psychobabble catch phrase for people who won’t get their sh*t together and/or want to be thought of as “special”. But on my doctor’s advice I read numerous books, among them the aforementioned Driven to Distraction. And everything clicked into place for the first time in my life. Every symptom, every story, every case study, every detail of those books, could have been written about ME. It was uncanny.
I’m still not on medication for the ADD, but I did learn many useful coping strategies from the books, and they make a big difference in my daily living. Knowing is two thirds of the battle.
Makes perfect sense to me - sounds like you had a real “aha!!!” moment, you know, where the lightbulb goes on in your head and you realize “This is what’s been going on all these years!!!”. I had that happen when Dweezil was diagnosed with autism and I started reading about it, and realizing it explained so damn much about my life to date.
Anyway, second/third/fourth discussing with knowledgeable professionals. You may want to pursue testing with specialists who know about adult ADD, as I imagine most docs don’t know a whole lot about the adult variety.
By the way, when I was first diagnosed, I went to a support-group meeting. Once. Compared to those people I have no problems at all in my life. I encourage you to seek out a group like this.
Bear in mind, just because you go on meds now doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily on them for the rest of your life. I was diagnosed and did Adderall for a year. Give me a lot of insight as to how I was “supposed” to do things, and provided for me a basework of coping strategies and a boost in my self-confidence.
I moved away from my prescribing therapist and discovered that I was OK without them. Some days are harder than others, but I feel like once I had broken through, so to speak, it was easier to stay on track.
For me, ADD really is a loss of concentration. If I miss a dosage, I never fail to be spectacularly unproductive. When I was younger (we’re talking elementary school here) it was more about keeping my short fuse under control. These days it’s more that the medication enables me to control myself and stay focused on what I have to get done. Stranger’s stepladder analogy is suprisingly descriptive of my situation. Taking the medicine is like someone handing me the stepladder, it’s still up to me to use it.
According to (once again) Driven to Distraction, that’s pretty rare, due to the low doses used for ADD patients. I don’t think addiction and ADD are an uncommon combination - if I remember right, they definitely correllate (which makes sense if both are conceived as problems with impulse control.) Nevertheless everything I’ve read makes a strong point that addiction to ADD drugs is rare.
Which makes your experience particularly interesting to me. I’d love to know more about what happened to you (especially since I’m on Ritalin, and while I’m not addicted to anything except nicotine and maybe coffee, I worry about my own propensity to use substances.) How did you become addicted? What was it like? Any warning signs? Etc. I’d just love to hear more.
I agree completely that the diagnosis itself is a big part of overcoming it. At least it was so in my case. I saw an Adult ADD therapist also for about 7 months and she really helped me to come up with routines and stategies to help overcome it.
My entire life I thought I was lazy and unmotivated. I was the classic case, Straight A’s on tests, never did my homework. Struggled to pass my classes even though everyone said I was smart. Every single parent-teacher conference my parents were told “If he would just do his homework he would be the best student in class”, “he knows so much, if he would just put forth the effort”, etc. etc.
How the hell I was never diagnosed as a child boggles my mind, because other than hyperactivity, I was showing every symptom. And it actually really bothers me because I can’t help but think what I could have done.
But anyway, I have never gone on any meds, but I am considering it now because I will soon be starting a very detail-oriented job that requires me to be a self-starter, and those are things I have some problems with. As I’m sure you are all aware!
Here’s another late-life diagnosis. I was 44 when got tested. My advisor for my committee in grad school helped me find out. I took a series of tests and got the diagnosis. I’ve just ordered Delivered From Distraction… hopefully it’ll help me to cope.