Stories of an ADD Adult

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.

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.

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.