Stories of an ADD Adult

If you’re wondering, the move was successful.

Every time I move to a new place, it is like a wake-up call for me. I realize how disorganized my living area actually is because I have to sort everything into suitcases and boxes. I become more aware of how having ADD affects my personal life.

In the end, I would say that it is always therapeutic in some way (though always painful) and gives me the encouragement to improve my ways of coping with ADD. I always realize that there are things I can do to improve my life.

The past couple of days have been awful because I have been packing and preparing to move out of my apartment.

Moving is one of those extremely annoying and difficult things in life, regardless of whether or not you have ADD! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hate moving.

My main problems are:

• I have too much stuff. Although I am better now at not accumulating decorative objects and useless clutter, I accumulate lots of materials for all my projects. It’s all useful, but there’s so much of it.
• My stuff is highly disorganized. I envy the people who have a specific place in their houses for everything. It’s incredibly difficult to sort everything into categorized boxes and suitcases now. I know from past experiences that I can’t just throw everything into boxes and sort it after I move, because I will never get around to it.
• I have papers for work scattered all around my house, mixed in with mail, receipts, paycheck stubs, and other paperwork for my personal records. I’m terrified of losing something important.
• Keeping track of so many things at once is driving me mad. Normally my ADD is actually helpful when I have to do lots of things at once. But in this case I have to keep track of an abnormally tight schedule in addition to sorting my entire living area and packing it into my car. I feel like I am going crazy!

I shouldn’t even be writing right now because I have so many things to do in so little time. Well, I needed a break. I have been feeling so overwhelmed and depressed, and today I felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown.

This break really helped me put my worries into perspective and calm down. I am sure I will be fine once I get back to packing. I also made a list of things to do, which is making it easier.

I’ve been posting some long entries lately. Sorry, I just get carried away sometimes.

When I look back at some of them, I have trouble reading them. A good trick I use is to cover the bottom half with my hand and read the top half, then move my hand to the top and read the bottom half.

If you want me to break up future long posts into shorter ones, let me know and I’ll try. No guarantees but I’ll try to make an effort. I know it can be hard to read long articles and stories on the web when you have ADD like me or just a short attention span!

Is brand-name medication the same as the generic “equivalent”? Based on my experiences, there is a huge difference. Many doctors, pharmacists, employers, and insurance plans are skeptical without good reason, in the same way that some people don’t believe that PMS really exists.

I am currently taking brand-name Ritalin. My doctor switched me to it several months ago, after being on generic methylphenidate HCl (methylin) for a long time.

In my experience, the generic version was much stronger and harsher than the brand-name one. I am 100% sure that I would be able to tell the difference if I were blindfolded.

Generic methylphenidate HCL was great at helping me concentrate. But it made me jittery, as if I had taken a few shots of espresso. As soon as I would take the medicine, the effect was immediate and strong.

The comedown was also very noticeable. I could tell very clearly when the methylin was wearing down. I would suddenly feel extremely spacey. My mind would be extremely foggy, beyond how it normally is if I’m not on any medication.

I switched to brand-name Ritalin because I was starting to get scared that the methylphedidate HCl was making my concentration worse. My psychiatrist didn’t know much about the differences between the brand name and the generic versions, but, lucky for me, my psychologist had read a lot about it. He told me that my concentration probably wasn’t becoming worse, but that if I was worried about the starting and ending effects being too strong, that brand name Ritalin might be better for me.

He told my psychiatrist about it, and I made the change immediately. I noticed right away that my psychologist was absolutely right. The brand-name Ritalin had a much milder, sloping starting effect, and a gentler comedown. I also felt less jittery and edgy.

I’m just an ADD sufferer/mental patient, so please don’t take this as official medical advice. Remember that I’m not a doctor, and that if you want to switch you should talk to your own doctor.

You might want to do some research online or at the library before asking your doctor, just in case he or she is skeptical. I’ll try to find some articles about this and post links here, when I get a chance.

Sometimes it feels like time is warped. My mind starts to wander away from my work, and the next thing I know, half an hour or more has already passed.

The effect is exaggerated when I have the internet at my disposal, ready to distract me at any moment. If I stop to look something up online, before I know it, I’ve spent half a day surfing the web.

I feel like my mind travels to outer space and back.

The web surfing example I mentioned is probably pretty common for people with and without ADD. I’m sure people without ADD would also say that their minds wander sometimes. But I feel like without medication, my mind is foggy and spaced out during 90% of the day.

The more I put off finishing my work, the worse I feel.

I hope it gets better.

Starting right now, I’m giving myself exactly 20 minutes to get as much done as possible. I’ve had enough of my bad ADD habits and really need to challenge myself to complete some work.

I am on my last roll of toilet paper.

I have gone out three times during the past week, intending to buy toilet paper at the grocery store. Yet I forgot to buy it all three times.

Two out of the three times, I didn’t even end up going to the grocery store in the first place.

Half the time when I read articles about adult ADD, I end up disgusted with what the writers have to say.

An article in Wired Magazine by Evan I. Schwartz describes adult ADD:

Adult ADD is marked not only by a short attention span but also by a multitasking mind. Anxious to avoid boredom, those afflicted are constantly scanning their environment, searching for all things captivating.

I am completely disgusted with this characterization.

I am never anxious to avoid boredom. In fact, I am rarely ever bored. Most things are fascinating and interesting to me. I don’t remember the last time I was bored because it was probably sometime during middle school, many years ago.

If I don’t have things in front of me to think about, I have millions of ideas in my head to play with. I have so many ideas for projects that I don’t have time to even start all of them.

I constantly think of business ideas and companies to start. If I could only settle on one or two ideas and make them work, I would probably be a millionaire.

My problem is that I jump from idea to idea. My problem is NOT that I suffer from extreme boredom and need interactive media coming at me from every direction to satisfy my bored mind.

A lot of articles and websites seem to claim that Bill Gates has ADHD or adult ADD. I’ve never heard him admitting the accusations. I’ve never heard him rejecting them, either. Probably because there is some truth to the rumors.

I have gone to hear Bill Gates speak a couple of times. He always amazed me with his creativity and insight. I am no Microsoft devotee by any means; in fact, I get annoyed by people who follow Microsoft in a cultlike fashion.

Bill Gates has a very energetic, uninhibited way of thinking. Although sometimes you can see through his words and understand that he’s just trying to push his company forward, other times you can really sense his inspiration and creativity.

I have seen this type of thinking in myself and others with adult ADD. This is not to be taken as a purely egotistical statement, although I can imagine how it might sound that way.

I am just saying that I think there is truth to the claims that many famous people and great achievers have adult ADD, and that many adults with ADD are capable of achieving a lot with their creativity.

I am tired of reading news stories about college kids staying up all night on ADHD drugs. I am sick of hearing about it on TV as well.

There is so much attention given to the abuse of stimulant medication. The media just loves these types of stories. They love scandals, and they love being the heroes who expose the wrongs of our society.

Unfortunately, most people listen to these types of news stories without really understanding the full issue. People think of medications such as Ritalin and Adderall as overprescribed drugs that are abused by college students, rather than as real medications that actually do help so many college students pay attention in lectures and maintain good enough grades to graduate.

When I feel well-rested, I concentrate much better than when I’m tired.

Don’t underestimate the effects that sleep has on concentration. A severe deficit in sleep can make anyone appear to have ADD.

It’s hard for people with ADD to get enough sleep. Often, I have so much to do, and I still get distracted. It can leave me with no choice but to stay up late to finish things.

When staying up late to finish things becomes a habit, though, it can eat into concentration severely. So I try to avoid it.

After doing some internet research of my own on the long-term effects of Ritalin and other stimulants, I’m a bit nervous about taking Ritalin and even about drinking coffee as often as I tend to do.

The main long-term side effect that I’ve been finding information about is depression. It seems that if you have been taking a stimulant for a long period of time, you are likely to experience depression and/or depressive symptoms.

How long is a “long period of time”? No one seems to have any hard numbers. I can say, though, that I took stimulants daily for a few years, and after deciding to take them only when absolutely necessary, I experienced depression that seemed to be clearly related to the lack of Ritalin.

I don’t know if I was just experiencing temporary withdrawal symptoms, or if the feelings were permanent. They seem more temporary in my case. I am lucky that I didn’t take stimulants as a child, because I could imagine myself having severe depression due to the long-term side effects.

It seems like such strong psychiatric medications inevitably have long-term side effects on the brain. More research on the long-term effects is desperately needed, as the diagnosis of ADHD becomes older and there are people who have been on stimulants for longer and longer periods.

My concentration was improved for about two and a half hours since taking the generic Sudafed. It’s now back to the way it usually is, where I can’t focus on anything.

My sinuses are feeling much better, at least. I can even breathe through my nose a little.

I guess that’s why pseudoephedrine isn’t suggested by doctors as a treatment for ADD or ADHD. It works a little, but it doesn’t last very long. It might also be bad for you to take it constantly, possibly. That’s just a theory; I don’t know for sure.

About 45 minutes ago, I took some cold medicine to help with my stuffy nose and sinuses. It was just over-the-counter medicine: Target brand “Non-Drying Sinus”, which is the generic equivalent of Sudafed Non-Drying Sinus.

I noticed that it actually did help with my concentration a little. I was able to write a couple of posts without too much distraction (though I did get distracted here and there).

Looking on the back of the package, the active ingredients in each liquid cap are:

• Guaifenesin 200 mg
• Pseudoephedrine HCl 30 mg

Aha, so the pseudoephedrine is what’s helping me concentrate. It’s a mild stimulant, I believe, and it’s in cold medicine because it dries out the sinuses. The guaifenesin is supposed to be what makes the congestion more fluid and liquid, like the effect when you eat spicy foods or chicken soup.

I took 2 capsules as recommended on the back of the box, so I’m on a normal dose. I am somewhat surprised that it improved my concentration, seeing as from my entry a little while ago, I didn’t think anything could help me concentrate because I am feeling so sick.

The sinus medicine also contains FD&C blue #1 granular, which annoys me because I have tried so hard to stay away from all artificial colors in my diet. I guess that the stimulant effect overpowers the artificial coloring effect.

I will keep track of when the effect goes away and post it here, if I can remember to post.

If you work with someone like me who has adult ADD, there can be some challenges but for the most part it’s a workable situation. In some cases it can even be a better-than-normal situation, surprisingly.

I think that if the coworker is taking medication for his or her ADD, you won’t have any real problems with their distractability. The meds make such a huge difference, transforming the most distracted person into someone who is generally focused on their work.

You might have problems with the coworker’s impulsiveness, irritability, anger, and frustration. Those are common parts of the disorder. As someone who has struggled with these traits, I can say that they will come up from time to time. The meds also help with these though, in particular the irritability.

If your work has a creative or decision-making aspect to it, working with someone who has ADD can make things interesting for the better. People with ADD tend to come up with unusual, often random-sounding ideas. Your strange ideas are also more likely to be supported and believed in. That is because people with ADD tend to be less inhibited in their thinking.

If your work is administrative or requires a lot of planning and organization, it can be difficult to have a co-worker with ADD. The best way to make things go smoothly if you’re sharing planning & organizational duties with an ADD person is to try and handle more of the detail-oriented parts while letting him or her handle more of the person-to-person interaction or the thinking & deciding parts.

I’m not saying that this is exactly what you have to do, but it’s more of my list of suggestions if you’re already having a hard time working with your adult ADD co-worker and want things to go a little more smoothly. But if things are working out and you’re doing exactly the opposite of what I suggest, there’s no reason to change them.

I have been feeling sick with the flu for the past few days. Last night, I slept for eleven and a half hours straight, which is out of the ordinary for me. I’ve been so tired.

Having the flu makes it extremely difficult to get work done, for anyone. It makes your head so foggy, so you just cannot concentrate no matter whether you’ve had coffee (or taken your ADD meds). It is like having double ADD if you already have ADD.

My stomach has been turning too, making it even more difficult for me to want to take my supplements or eat anything. But it’s good to do both so I should probably fight my feelings and fears.

Growing up, my father was chronically late when it came to picking me up from school. You wouldn’t believe how late he would arrive. He would show up at least one hour later than he had promised. Often, he was two hours late.

I would always get so mad at him when he was late. He would make every excuse imaginable, but very few of his excuses seemed genuinely excusable. Most of the time he was late due to work or running errands.

The sad thing is that now I am chronically late to every appointment. I promised myself when I was young that I would never be a “late person” like my father, but I’ve broken that promise repeatedly.

Being late is one of those annoying parts of having ADD that you work endlessly to improve. At least there are all sorts of helpful tools and tricks to keep you a little more on schedule. I would never be on time to anything if I didn’t have a million clocks all over my house, nagging me to hurry up and leave the house.

I believe that childhood ADHD may very well be overdiagnosed. However, adult ADD is another matter altogether.

In my mind there are two main groups of people who get diagnosed with adult ADD. The first group consists of adults who had the ADHD diagnosis when they were children and are now grown up. They are the ones who didn’t outgrow their diagnosis. That is, they are the ones who genuinely suffered from ADHD as children and were more likely not to be part of the overdiagnosis trend.

The second group consists of adults who have been hearing about ADHD and adult ADD in the news, in magazines, and in commercials. They see it on TV or read the articles and say to themselves, “Hey, that’s me! That describes exactly how I’ve suffered all these years.” They then go online to find whatever other information they can find about adult ADD, including this website if they are lucky. They really do their research well, and if they are sure that they fit the symptoms, only then do they see a doctor about their problems.

Like the second group of adults, the first group is also extremely knowledgeable about ADHD and ADD, due to all the years of being labeled with the disorder. They know all the details by heart, both because they have gone through therapy and because they have been reading about ADHD and ADD for years and years.

Anyhow, both groups of adults have one thing in common: they themselves identify with the adult ADD diagnosis, including most or all of the symptoms, and they feel comfortable that it’s not a misdiagnosis. They have done their research. They differ from the children who get diagnosed with AD(H)D in that not all of those children can comfortably say that they identify with all of the expected symptoms. Many of those children have the diagnosis imposed upon them by a teacher, school administrator, doctor, or parent. Few children received the AD(H)D diagnosis only after doing their own independent research (though it may be true in some cases).

Self-diagnosis is probably quite accurate in the case of ADD. The symptoms are pretty simple to understand, and you either relate to most or all of them, or you don’t. Since the majority of adults with ADD either self-diagnosed themselves or are sure that their symptoms from childhood are real and have carried over into adulthood, the diagnosis is probably accurate for most ADD adults.

Furthermore, doctors tend to be especially careful in prescribing ADD medications to adults. Adults are also the ones who abuse these controlled medications, so doctors know to take the extra effort and care to be sure that the adult ADD diagnosis is correct.

Based on all these facts, adult ADD must not be overdiagnosed. It is a completely different scenario from childhood ADHD, which has great potential for overdiagnosis.

I had left a needle on top of a piece of fabric, in the middle of my living room. I was thinking that I would pick it up later.

And now it’s gone. It is lost somewhere in the fibers of my carpet. I know I will find it sometime soon by accident, walking around the house barefoot. It will hurt.

That was a dumb decision for me to make. I have realized that having ADD makes you do dumb things sometimes. I was going to pick up the needle, but I got distracted and decided I would do it later.

Distractions. They make it so easy to do regrettable things. I would never have done something like this had I taken my medication. I also might not have slept so well, on the other hand.

In another ADD moment, yesterday I bought groceries and forgot to put them in the fridge until this morning.

They were out for 12 hours straight, so some of the food probably isn’t good anymore. I was hoping to have yogurt for breakfast, but maybe I’ll have something else.

It happened because I got home and put my grocery bags on the messy table just inside the entrance to my house. There, they blended in with everything else. I then went to get something to eat and sat on the sofa, eating.

I did get to put some of the food away last night, but not much. I feel like an idiot but know it’s just one of the drawbacks of having ADD.

I don’t have any children right now.

But when the time comes for me to have children, one of my biggest fears is that they will suffer from ADHD.

I am definitely not ready to have children because I don’t know what I would do when they received the diagnosis. Would I take them to a psychiatrist early in life and have them go through therapy? Would I subject their developing little brains to harsh stimulant medication?

I do know that I would try to spend as much time with them as possible. I would want to give them every possible advantage of having a loving parent to help them with their classwork and homework.

I would buy many educational toys to help them with their concentration and memory. I would give them all the art supplies they wanted in order to encourage their creative thinking.

I guess I probably wouldn’t medicate them until they reached late high school or college. It would break my heart to see them struggle through school the way I did, though, so I don’t know if I could sit back and watch them suffer with their illness, knowing that medication existed and was available.

I knew I wasn’t normal when I was young, although I didn’t know what ADHD was until I was in middle or high school. Therapy might help my children understand the differences in their brains, but having the ADHD label might hurt their self-esteem.

Until I have a better idea of what I would do for my kids, I will not have children. I am not ready to bring up children and watch them suffer in the same way that I have always suffered.

There are a few paradoxes you encounter if you have adult ADD. One of them is the paradox of taking medication regularly each day despite being undeniably forgetful.

Another is finding an ADD coach, and paying for the ADD coach once you’ve got one.

It’s hard enough to find an ADD coach because the idea of it is so new. They are still pretty rare. Searching online brings up some promising webpages, but then you realize that all the coaches listed are pretty far from your area.

It is so difficult to find one that there are even ADD coaches who offer their services by phone. I’d never pay for that, and I can’t believe that there are people who do pay for it. It really says something about the scarcity of ADD coaches, considering that there is a market for ADD coaching by phone.

It takes a lot of patience and hard work to find an ADD coach. I have tried finding one in the past but did not have the patience to keep up my search.

And if you are lucky enough to find an ADD coach (or ADHD coach, or whatever), paying for it is another issue. Having ADD makes me get to work late all the time and leave early, and that’s why I don’t have very much money. Not to mention that I can’t keep a decently-paying job. I might be able to keep a job that paid me reasonably well if I had an ADD coach, but how would I find the money to even pay the coach in the first place?

It’s all so paradoxical and confusing. And with my ADD, I am surprised I had the patience and energy to finish writing about this paradox. I think I was in hyperfocused mode.

I can’t believe I’ve been able to keep up this blog for so long. I start so many projects but have a hard time keeping up my interest in each one for more than part of a day.

My house is a mess because there are materials from unfinished projects all over the place. I rarely wrap up my work and clean up when I’m done working on a project.

Instead, what determines whether or not I am done with a project is distraction. It may be in the form of another project that I’m in the middle of, starting a new project or task, or even just wandering off. When I get distracted, that’s the end of whatever work I had been doing previously.

I don’t like being distracted from projects, and I try not to get distracted. I try to see how much I’ve accomplished every five minutes in order to keep me on task.

Inevitably I end up getting distracted and beginning something else. It happens every 10-15 minutes when I let myself work on projects without paying attention to the clock, and every half an hour when I’m conscious of time.

I was watching one of the Strattera videos where they mentioned this exact problem with focusing on projects. That’s what inspired this post, really.

Strattera is one medication that I have never taken. It really does sound promising, because I’ve always worried about the fact that Ritalin is a stimulant.

I guess it just would feel better not to be taking a medication that has so much stigma. I am trying to think of other reasons, but I can’t really come up with any right now.

I always feel like I have to hide my Ritalin when I take it. I take it in the bathroom, where no one’s looking, or at home in private, but I do everything to hide the prescription bottle in my purse when I’m in public. I don’t want anyone to know. I’m also scared because people use Ritalin as a drug, and if others knew I had it, they might try to steal tablets or something.

Maybe that’s just paranoia. I don’t know.

I think I would probably do the same with Strattera, but I wouldn’t feel so worried about carrying it around with me. As far as I know, people don’t use it as a drug. My guess about this is that since it often takes 4-6 weeks to feel the resulting effects, people who want to use it actually get a prescription the honest way and actually do need it for real reasons.

People looking to get high probably wouldn’t get anything out of Strattera, I would imagine.

I was talking to a friend of my mother’s who happens to be a pediatrician. She regularly prescribes ADHD medications to her young patients. She was saying that it’s sad how so many parents insist that their kids be given a prescription immediately, rather than trying to examine and change other factors first.

I agreed that too many parents try and take the easy way out of solving their children’s problems with medicine. But I also told her that I was a patient myself, and that I was taking Ritalin. I told her that it had helped me tremendously.

She said that if it’s what helps, that it’s good to take the medication. She clarified her words right away, saying that there were children who justifiably needed meds to treat their ADHD, but that there were too many other kids who needed more personal attention from teachers and parents first before resorting to prescriptions.

Children with ADD/ADHD and adults with ADD are pretty similar. This is probably surprising to most people, including doctors, but it isn’t surprising to those of us who are adults and who have suffered from ADD/ADHD throughout our own lives.

It seems hard to believe that the adult ADD diagnosis is so new. I can’t imagine how doctors and researchers could have believed for years and years that all children with ADHD would grow out of the illness by the time they reached adulthood. To me, that’s completely absurd.

You can’t just suddenly wake up one day and discover that your concentration and attention span are suddenly normal. It takes practice, coaching, and/or medication to get to the point of being normal.

I always hoped that one day I would grow out of my restlessness and lack of focus. Once I knew about childhood ADD, I was sure that my symptoms would be gone by the time I was an adult. I was sad to discover that the myth wasn’t true.

Yesterday I had to drive to an appointment. My mind was feeling cloudy, and I knew I would have trouble watching the road, so I took one of my Ritalin tablets. I’ve been trying to avoid taking Ritalin, but in this case I knew the risk of having an accident was too strong.

I swallowed the little tablet before leaving home. Then I drove off. I noticed that while my concentration was improved in a much smoother way than it had been the previous day, when I had drank a cup of coffee containing a high dose of caffeine.

Since I haven’t been taking much of my Ritalin lately, I figured that only one tablet would be enough. And I was right today. It boosted my concentration just enough to help without overpowering my own abilities. It was sort of like having training wheels.

I felt pretty confident while driving and did not come anywhere near having an accident. Which is the opposite of what happens when I don’t take Ritalin or anything else before driving! Usually I have a few “close calls” and almost end up hitting someone, only to be saved by my very quick reflexes.

Today I drank a small cup of strong cappucino at an Italian coffee shop. It must have had much more caffeine than an ordinary cup.

I had to drive home after going to the coffee shop, which was far away. I was worried about driving because I hadn’t taken my Ritalin, but it turned out not to be a big problem.

I concentrated pretty well while driving home. I felt a little weird because the coffee was so strong, but I could definitely concentrate. It was sort of like being on Ritalin, but it felt stronger and rougher.

It’s odd how caffeine can be stronger than Ritalin sometimes, yet Ritalin requires a prescription and coffee can be bought anywhere, even in places other than pharmacies.