Stories of an ADD Adult

I haven’t had much luck with the ginseng supplements. The liquid tasted awful and was too hard to drink.

The ginseng did have a mild effect but it wasn’t enough to really improve my concentration. If there was any stimulant effect, it was cancelled out by its alcohol content. The alcohol in the ginseng extract made me feel lethargic.

I haven’t been on any medicines or supplements for awhile now. I think my work really shows it. I have gotten into a slump with all my projects. I feel so frustrated. Sometimes I feel depressed and can’t sleep at night, which makes my concentration even worse the following day. Being sleep deprived doubles the ADD symptoms. I feel so helpless right now. I need to fix my situation.

I sometimes wonder how different I am from “normal” people without ADD. It’s really quite hard to imagine what other people are like.

Sometimes it seems like everyone has concentration or attention problems of their own. At work I notice people struggling with their projects. I suspect that at least one or two of my coworkers have ADD, but I don’t want to be intrusive by asking them about it. That could be a very bad question to ask at work.

It feels like almost everyone has one ADD trait or another. So what’s normal, and what’s not? I don’t know.

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.

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 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?

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.