Stories of an ADD Adult

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.