I haven’t gotten any work done all week!
I know it’s because I haven’t been taking my Ritalin. I don’t want to take it anymore! But it seems like I have no choice if I don’t want to get fired.
Why is life so hard?
A lot of the time I’ll be cooking something on medium heat, and I’ll forget that it’s cooking. It is a pretty common occurrence for me, happening at least twice a week. This week it happened several times.
How could anyone forget something on the stove, if they can hear it or smell it? you might be thinking. Well, I don’t think it’s normal either, because this only happens to me. I’m sure that those of you out there with ADD or ADHD might be able to relate, though.
This is one of the many secrets of having ADD. People don’t realize how hard it is to live like this. That reminds me, I should go and check the noodles cooking on the stove.
“ADD moments” are how I refer to those times when I get up to do something and then completely forget about it.
I just had a particularly funny ADD moment. I was buying something online, and I had to get up to find my credit card. My credit card was in my purse just six feet away from where I was sitting.
Instead of going directly to my purse, I got up and walked out of the room and into the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry or anything, so I just walked aimlessly. Then I wandered into the bathroom, where I had nothing to do either. Finally, I walked into my bedroom. I looked in the mirror and thought, “That’s good, I’m not getting too fat,” and then I walked out of the bedroom and back to the living room/computer area again.
In the living room, I noticed that my plants were dying. One of the things about ADD is that you always forget to water your plants. So I went back to the kitchen to get a glass of water for the plants, and a funnel since pouring can be kind of messy.
Forgetting that I was going to water the plants with it, I took a sip from the glass of water. “Ewww, it’s warm,” I thought and immediately realized that the glass of water wasn’t intended for myself to drink. I then noticed the funnel in my hand and knew I had to water the plants. So I went over to water them and succeeded.
I brought the glass back to the kitchen, forgetting the funnel on the windowsill. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be getting my credit card from my purse!
I hurried over to my purse and found my wallet, and I returned to my computer. There, I took out my credit card and finally completed my online purchase. I was so relieved that it didn’t time out. It’s such a pain to have to start over when you’re buying something online, forget halfway through because of ADD, and then return to find the purchase timed out.
As soon as I finished the purchase, I went to blog about my ADD moment, knowing that it was genuinely good writing material. And as I was writing, I looked over and saw the funnel on the windowsill. “Should I go and put it back in the kitchen?” I thought. “No, I had better finish my blog entry first,” I said to myself, trying to avoid another one of those funny but aggravating ADD moments.
I am not completely sure on this one. I want to say yes, but then I think of all the times that ADD has gotten me in trouble, made me lose jobs, and turned my life into a difficult mess.
I recognize, though, that ADD has helped me in many ways. It has given me many very creative ideas, some of which have gotten me public recognition.
(I won’t give specifics here because I’m trying to maintain at least some anonymity. I wouldn’t want to get rejected at a job interview, for instance, because they Googled me and found out that I had ADD.)
However, none of that public recognition has turned into anything more for me. I still struggle with money, and although I do have a job, it’s not a very good one and doesn’t pay much at all.
The day that my ADD helps me become secure financially and emotionally will be the day that I consider my ADD to be a gift. Until then, it’s mostly an annoyance.
There has got to be some connection between having ADD and being a creative person.
I always notice that I’m much better at brainstorming than other people. I come up with all the random, odd ideas that end up getting used.
I hope I’m not sounding too egotistical here. I am just being honest. It’s the truth.
I think that people with ADD tend to be more creative because they allow so many distractions into their thoughts. Most people would just tune out all distractions and focus in on the main topic, which limits creativity. People with ADD can’t tune out distractions, but it’s not always a bad thing.
I have an unfortunate history of getting bad performance reviews when I have worked for companies in the past.
It makes me especially resentful because I try harder than anyone else. I stay long hours to get the work done, and I feel like I care more about my work than other people. I think I also have a gift of enhanced creativity, which my coworkers often notice, but never my boss.
Companies measure performance in terms of results, and I guess that I just don’t produce results that are as good as the results of other people. I can’t figure out why.
Is it because of my ADD? Partly, but I don’t want to blame it all on ADD. Some of it must come from myself.
I know that my mind tends to wander during meetings. I can’t always pay attention, even though I try, and sometimes I get put on the spot. When I’m put on the spot during one of my daydreaming moments, I get caught not paying attention.
I know that I get distracted by little details. I try to see the big picture, but it’s hard when all the little details are so interesting. Maybe I see things that others don’t see. Maybe I just have more hope in certain little things that my manager can’t understand.
I know that I’m disorganized. My email inbox is a mess. Sometimes I lose emails and forget to reply. Sometimes I miss appointments, which is much worse.
I know that I’m hopelessly late to meetings. I plan to be there 10 minutes early, but I always end up walking in late and disrupting.
Finally, I know that I have trouble socially. Often I have trouble keeping up a conversation because I get distracted and my mind wanders. I lose interest in what people are saying, not because I am selfish, but because my attention span is so short.
I was diagnosed as ADD, not ADHD. I don’t know if it was because my doctor always generalizes adult ADHD as “ADD”, or if he really does think that I don’t have symptoms of hyperactivity.
Personally I think that I am not hyperactive anyhow, but I’m not completely sure. I just know that when I was young, I was a daydreamer, but not a child with endless hyperactive energy.
Not being hyperactive makes it more of a hidden illness. It’s more obvious to everyone when a person is clearly hyperactive, but being a daydreamer, people just think that I’m a hard worker. It doesn’t matter that I spend much of the time that appears to be “hard work” daydreaming (without meaning to daydream, of course).
Having a hidden illness can be better than having an obvious illness in some ways, and worse in others. It depends how compassionate and knowledgeable about medicine the people around you happen to be.
I am starting to see ads all over the web about buying Ritalin online. Sometimes I even see those ads here!
It really confuses me. I didn’t think you could buy Ritalin without a prescription. Is it not highly controlled and regulated?
I do wish that Ritalin was a normal, over-the-counter medication. I wish it was potent enough to help people with ADD and ADHD, but not so potent that kids could consume it in large quantities to get high. Having it available over the counter without a prescription would probably reduce the stigma of using it.
After all, cough syrup can be bought without a prescription, and it is abusable, but buying it at the pharmacy does not raise any eyebrows.
If you would like to share a testimonial about your experience with ADD or ADHD, let me know. I would love to post your testimonials here, because it is so important that people have a chance to see the real sides of ADD and ADHD. There is so much controversy and stigma right now, and not enough understanding, kindness, and support for people with ADD/ADHD.
Email me at cassandra@addadult.org if you would like me to feature your testimonial here. I can do it anonymously if you want.
Spreading the word via personal accounts, stories, and testimonials is the strongest way of reversing the stigma against us, in my opinion. People are disillusioned by the messages from drug companies and would benefit from hearing another voice.
I welcome testimonials from children, teenagers, and parents as well as testimonials from adult ADD/ADHD sufferers. Basically, everyone who wants to contribute is welcome.
When I’m at the computer sometimes, I hyperfocus in on what I’m doing so strongly that I forget about time. Hyperfocus (or hyper-focus) is an extremely intense period of concentration.
It is what I wish I could do in situations where productivity is needed the most. I would like, for example, to be able to hyperfocus on my work so that I could get things done in half the time. Unfortunately, hyperfocus tends to occur for me during the least stressful times, when I’m caught up in something that’s interesting but has nothing to do with work.
You could say that right now I am hyperfocusing. I have no trouble writing this entry without being distracted. It helps that I have a deep interest in talking about ADD and spreading my experiences so that other adults with ADD or ADHD can benefit from them. It just feels so natural and completely captures my attention, somehow.
I have really been struggling with my vitamin + fish oil plan, because I keep forgetting to take my pills.
With stimulants it was much easier to remember to take them. Honestly it was because of the instant gratification. I knew that if I took my Ritalin, I would experience a noticeable improvement in my concetration within the next hour.
With vitamins and fish oil, it seems like you have to take them for a longer-term period in order to experience the improvement in concentration. Don’t take my word completely, because I’ve never been able to take the supplements long enough to experience the long-term benefits.
It’s the vicious ADD cycle. If I forget to take my meds, I can’t concentrate. If I’m distracted by lots of things, I will inevitably forget to take my meds. And without the instant feedback that stimulants have, taking vitamins and fish oil isn’t easy.
Kelly mentioned in a previous comment that movies have been hard to concentrate on. I can completely relate to that because I have had a hard time following movies ever since I was young.
A few factors make movies hard to follow for the person with ADD or ADHD:
Movies involve lots of plot twists, to make things interesting (though it backfires if you have ADD and can’t follow what’s going on). I would always space out at one moment or another, only to discover that I had missed a crucial part of the plot.
It’s also hard to follow who’s who throughout the movie, especially when there are many characters. I would always mix up characters who looked similar, because I never really paid enough attention to identify distinctive details about each character.
Finally, movies are just too long for someone with ADD. I used to always get restless after the first half hour or so. Now I’m a little better at watching movies and can last longer, but not too much longer. It’s funny that watching movies is like work for me when it’s simple pleasure for the average person.
Thanks so much for commenting and special thanks to Kelly, whose comments were so thoughtful and fun to receive and respond to.
Concerta was the name of the medication that the doctor prescribed for me. I had never heard of it, but then again I was never the type of person who talked about medications with friends or who trusted the media and the Internet for health-related info.
The first time I went to pick up my medicine at the pharmacy, it was nerve-wracking. I was terrified that I might run into someone that I knew. Living in a closed little suburb, you tend to run into people you know wherever you go.
I didn’t want anyone to know that I was picking up a prescription for ADD medication. I was afraid that people would think I was a stimulant-abuser, a druggie. I was afraid that even the pharmacist would think that.
I knew it would help me, though, so the same day I found the courage to pick up my Concerta. I was relieved to find that there was no one else my age there at the pharmacy. The other people in line were elderly ladies, and I told myself that they probably didn’t know what Concerta was anyway, or even what ADD was.
Adderall was banned earlier this year in Canada.
It is a shame that stimulants can be abused, because they help so many people so greatly. Every time I hear a story about college students abusing Ritalin or Adderall, it makes me very angry. It makes it more difficult for the people who really need the medications to have them.
The real people who suffer are those who need it for driving, and for work. A wonder drug like Adderall can help a person pull himself or herself together enough to go out and find a job, and then to hold the job steadily. That tends to be the fate of wonder drugs; they are so helpful that people who don’t need them start abusing them, and then the wonder drugs get banned for everyone.
If I depended on Adderall but lived in Canada, the ban would be enough to make me move to the United States.
Many of the supplements that are supposed to help you concentrate consist of fatty acids, including fish oil.
For example, this one:
“Learning Factors School-Aid” lists tuna oil as the second ingredient. It lists a bunch of other ingredients too, which is why I won’t take an ADD/ADHD supplement like this one at the moment. Although I trust my Centrum multivitamins, I don’t want to take something specifically for improving focus that has so many ingredients. Because then how will I figure out which ingredients are working, and which are just filler?
Feel free to post a comment if you’ve had any success with these types of supplements. I want to know!
Okay, something drastic is happening. For the next several weeks I am going to try taking the following supplements:
I am also going to try taking time off from my Ritalin. The reason is that I’ve noticed a decline in my memory. I used to have an amazing, almost photographic memory, but over the past few years I haven’t been able to remember details as well. If my memory improves with this experiment, I might not go back to using Ritalin or other stimulant medications again.
Just as a disclaimer: don’t try this at home, and this is not meant to be medical advice for anyone!
For the longest time, I didn’t have the courage to see a doctor about my concentration problems.
Then I became desperate. I started failing my classes. The funny thing is, I was trying harder than ever to pass them. While my friends went out and enjoyed a normal social life, I stayed in to catch up with work.
Nobody understood. They all thought I was a straight-A student who spent all her time worrying about grades needlessly. They never understood that I just wanted to pass my classes so that I wouldn’t get kicked out of school.
I was struggling so much that finally I gave in and walked into the doctor’s office. He agreed that all my symptoms pointed to ADD and suggested some books about it. He gave me a prescription, which I was embarrassed to use but which helped me significantly. And then my life began to improve.
The hardest part of going to job interviews was trying to answer the thinking questions. Thinking questions are basically the questions that HR people like to ask in order to see how your thought process works.
I froze up during many of those thinking questions and just couldn’t answer them. If the same exact questions had been written on paper, and if I had been alone, I’m sure I would have been able to answer them easily. If the same exact questions had been asked informally and casually by a friend, I’m sure it would have been no problem to answer them.
The problem was that so many thoughts were going through my head that I couldn’t focus on what they were asking me. It looked like I was either dumb or just didn’t know how to think.
Suffice it to say that I didn’t get accepted to almost all of the jobs that I interviewed for.
I saw an advertisement on TV just now for Focus Factor. Apparently it’s a supplement you can buy at any drugstore or online without a prescription, and it’s supposed to help you focus.
Sounds like a stimulant. Well, let me know if you have used it, and whether it has helped you. I am curious to hear about your experiences!
I am probably the most understanding person in the world when it comes to ADD and ADHD, so don’t worry. You can email me privately at cassandra@addadult.org if that’s easier for you.
Most of my friends got their driver’s licenses the day they turned sixteen, or soon after. Definitely by seventeen, at least.
I, on the other hand, waited until I was 23. I had wanted to get my license sooner, but I was afraid because my concentration was so bad. It seemed like I would never be able to drive because I just didn’t have the focus and attention span for it.
I finally had to get my driver’s license when I was 23, because I was out of college and looking for a job. I needed to be able to drive myself to job interviews. It was terrifying to drive, but at least my medication helped.
High school is probably one of the roughest periods of life for a person with ADD or ADHD. It is when the amount of homework assigned each day rises sharply, to the point that it becomes difficult for most people and unmanageable for the ADD/ADHD sufferer.
I was so overwhelmed by homework that I became significantly sleep-deprived. Not out of stress, but out of desperation to finish each assignment. If I didn’t cut into my sleep, I would never finish my assignments and therefore never pass my classes. I was no perfectionist; I merely tried to earn passing grades in each class, because it was the best that I could do.
The sleep deprivation only made the ADD worse. The less I slept, the harder it became to concentrate. Sleep deprivation was really the last thing I needed for my ADD, and it made studying feel like torture.
When I was in elementary school, I was not allowed to drink coffee. Fortunately, my mother had a weakness for coffee ice cream, and she reasoned that if she allowed herself to eat coffee ice cream, then she should allow me to eat it with her. So I developed a taste for coffee before I was allowed to drink it.
Throughout middle school and high school, I was allowed to drink coffee. I began with iced coffee in middle school and graduated to warm espressos in high school.
I loved coffee for the taste, and for the effect it had on me. I rarely felt jittery from drinking coffee. Instead, it relaxed me and made me feel at ease while doing my work. With a cup or two of coffee, my concentration was much improved.
I loved reading when I was young. I would go to the library and check out tall stacks of children’s books. I won prizes in all the children’s reading challenges, because I loved reading so much.
Then what happened?
As the books became longer, I lost interest. My favorite books were the ones that could be finished in a single sitting or two. Anything beyond that and I wouldn’t be able to finish the book.
Around sixth grade, I completely lost interest in reading for pleasure. That was the time when people started reading thick young adult books. I could not finish books more than a centimeter thick. I sometimes had to read long books for school, but it was grueling and I always grew tired of the plots before finishing those books.
One of the most well-known examples of hyperfocusing in an ADD/ADHD child is with video games. Mothers and fathers often tell the doctors of their children, “He can’t concentrate on his homework for more than a couple of minutes, but put him in front of a television with a video game pad in his hands, and watch him concentrate for hours.”
It wasn’t true for me. I couldn’t concentrate on video games. I didn’t have a video game console of my own, but I often had a chance to play Nintendo at my next-door neighbor’s house.
I would play for a few minutes, but then I would lose interest. At that point, it wouldn’t make a difference whether I was winning or losing in the game. I would stop caring about the game entirely. I would be thinking about other things, and everything would seem more interesting than the dull video game.
I suspect that clumsiness is an ADD/ADHD trait, even though it is not officially recognized as one. I have seen so much overlap between the people I know who have ADD or ADHD and the people I know who are clumsy.
I was one of the clumsiest children when I was young. I would spill every glass of juice, milk, water, or other drink, guaranteed. I was bad at sports because my coordination was poor. It would take much more practice for me to become good at something, than for anyone else to attain the same level of skill.
My parents were extremely clumsy too. They still are, but that’s another story.
I think my clumsiness was a mixture of forgetting what I was supposed to be doing and thinking about other things. I had too much going on inside of my head at once.
My elementary school had Study Hall right after school. In Study Hall, everyone was supposed to work on their homework for an hour.
I usually squandered away the time, instead of taking advantage of it. I would really try to do my homework, taking it out every time and getting ready to do it, but keeping my mind focused enough to actually complete any of it was a problem. My mind wanted to think about everything else, from thoughts about earlier in the day to observations about the children in the room.
By the end of the Study Hall period, pretty much everyone else was done or almost done with their homework. I, on the other hand, was still at the beginning, even though I had struggled and it had not been fun.
I was a child before the ADHD diagnosis had exploded in popularity.
I wonder if I would have been diagnosed as an ADHD child if I had been born during a later decade. Would my parents have suspected my problem? Would my teachers have suggested to my parents that I see a child psychologist?
I might be lucky that I missed the childhood ADHD popularity boom. I grew up without Ritalin, without Adderall, without stimulants, period. My brain was able to develop naturally. The connections within my brain might have formed differently, had I been stimulated by medications from an early age.
I would regularly forget to bring things that I needed to school. My mother would then tell me that I was forgetful “just like [my] father”.
I wonder if she would tell my father that he was forgetful just like his daughter. Maybe that’s what she tells him now.
ADD and ADHD tend to run in families, according to my psychologist. Looking back, my parents have shown ADD/ADHD traits all through my life. I don’t doubt this theory one bit.
In elementary school, we were often assigned to write short stories. I would start by thinking about the assigned topic, just like all of the other students.
However, my thoughts about the topic would lead me to other thoughts, and those other thoughts would lead me to thoughts that were even more unrelated.
The time would pass, and other children would begin to hand in their assignments. I would notice and become worried, but soon afterward I would drift off into new daydreams.
I knew my mind behaved differently from everyone else’s minds, because no one else had this problem. But that was all I knew. I had never heard of ADD, ADHD, or probably even the words “attention”, “deficit”, or “disorder”.
