Bloggy post about adult ADHD

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fade

fade

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Hmm, this reads like the story of my life:
http://www.drthomasebrown.com/brown_model/index.html.
Or "Matt" here:
http://chesapeakeadd.com/portfolio/gifted-adults-with-adhd/

I was diagnosed with adult ADHD a while ago. I took some meds, but they didn't seem to do anything except make me ... I don't know, feel like I was pulling away from myself. Hard to describe. It's been a huge impediment to my career. Like "Matt", I get by on brains, but I do procrastinate like crazy (see Fade subforum here). I do have problems like in the first link, too. I hate meetings, because I space out, and when it's brainstorming time, I can't think of anything. 5 minutes after the meeting, I've got a million ideas, but it ends up making me look less capable than I am. Plus, the matter is often closed by then in a business setting, so getting your new idea in is difficult. I wish I knew what to do to get over procrastination. I've tried everything short of thumbscrews to force myself to focus, but if I do that my own body rebels, and I just get sleepy.

Like Matt, I practically begged for mentorship when I was at the University, and like Matt, I was told that tenure track was about proving you could do it on your own. I really didn't like that answer. You know what the greatest feeling in the world is? That moment of clarity when for some reason the ADHD subsides, and I just focus for hours, and I don't even realize it. Wish I could make that happen. I tried GTD, and that's great for planning, but it doesn't work for me. GTD is about identifying the next action. I already know that. Planning isn't the problem. It's executing the plan. I get a little better at it every year, but I'm getting too old for that.

Eh, anyway, any advice/suggestions would be helpful. Thanks for the space to rant.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

I have the same issues. Very difficult for me to focus on any one thing.

This is one of the reasons I want to learn art, however, because art is one of the few things I can focus on. My only issue with that is the older I get, the less time I have, and the less time I have, the less I feel I can allocate towards artwork, which means I never even start it. That is one of the bad things about the "All or nothing" issues I have with how I focus.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I often describe it to people as an inability to focus/finish any one thing, but I think a better characterization would be that it is extremely rare for any single project to appeal to me so much that I absolutely must finish it before I start on anything else. As a result, my finish/start ratio is nonzero, but significantly < 1.

--Patrick
 
Dei

Dei

I've basically had the same issues my whole life, my husband knows about it, but I've never really talked about it to anyone else. Every year I tell myself I'm going to talk to my doctor about it, but I don't, even though I desperately want to go back to college and finish a degree, and I know there is no way in hell I will be able to do it alone. I just don't want to drug myself up, and I'm afraid that's what it will end up coming to once I talk to a doctor about it.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Dei said:
I just don't want to drug myself up, and I'm afraid that's what it will end up coming to once I talk to a doctor about it.
Click to expand...
I hear ya. I'm sure that a prescription for (legal) stimulants would solve my productivity problems, but I don't want the "real" me to have to depend on the contents of a bottle...any bottle.

--Patrick
 
Shakey

Shakey

I know this is a horrible answer, but I used to smoke my pipe. My mind would race until I lit that first bowl of tobacco. For some reason it calmed me and helped me focus.
 
Hylian

Hylian

While I have never bothered to get testing for adult ADHD I do suspect that I have it. Most everything you guys have stated pretty much sums up my life. I did take a few simple tests online and they listed me as most likely having it and telling me that I should get further testing but I am hesitant because I don't really want to get put on medicine becuase I have seen how the medicine has affected my brother when they put him on it after he was diagnosed with adult ADHD. So to summarize I don't really have much to add to this thread but I can at least say I know how you all feel.
 
strawman

strawman

I got a 19 at http://psychcentral.com/cgi-bin/addquiz.cgi which says "You have answered this self-report questionnaire in such a way as to suggest that you do not likely currently suffer from an attention deficit disorder." and offers a little webgraphic I can use that says "I'm ADHD free!" in a jaunty font.

So any advice I might offer is unlikely to be useful, but I find that with my unrelated issues, I have had to find and practice coping mechanisms. Not things to hide or fix the issues I face, but workarounds and techniques that make it easier for me to behave the way I desire to. Rather than fighting with my tendencies I try to arrange things so that my tendencies lead me in the directions I want to go, as well as arrange paths of effort so that it's easy for me to redirect myself once I find out I'm going off track again.

I don't know what techniques there might be for ADHD, but I'd be surprised if there weren't books, websites, or professional help with lists of ideas to try that don't require medication.

Also, be aware that food may be more significant than you realize. I have a niece and some nephews that found that preservatives, food colorings, and some foods affected them significantly, and they did show heavy signs of ADHD prior to figuring this out. You might be surprised at how much your diet affects your state of mind. Removing the chemicals and bad foods from your diet would probably be a good step prior to adding new drugs to it. It takes time and effort, though, to track your consumption and moods to nail down what triggers you have, but it's very much worth the effort.

Anyway, good luck, and if you do find anything please share, it's obvious there are many that struggle with this. There's no need to be isolated.
 
papachronos

papachronos

LittleSin said:
I have to wonder if this test is designed t give false positives or if people on the internet are more prone to it?
Click to expand...
My guess is that the random nature of some internet forums (especially ones like Halforums, where there's not really one particular subject or interest around which the forum revolves) is very appealing to the brains of those affected by AD(H)D. Such as myself, for instance (scored an 82 on that quiz). I'm here all the time, CONSTANTLY using this place as a distraction from the work I know needs to be done but takes too long or too much focus. Even though getting projects done is much more satisfying, it's much quicker and requires less focus and effort to check the forums.

It's even started to creep into my home life, since I've discovered Tapatalk. As if my kids weren't distracting enough.

But I'm no psychologist, psychiatrist, psychic, or psych-anything, so that opinion is worth what you paid for it.
 
Gared

Gared

Heh. I got a 7. I guess I just multitask effectively. While it's true that I usually have multiple things running at a time (for instance, right now I'm at work and I'm reading/posting on the forums, emailing customers, packaging account preservations, archiving and unarchiving files, and burning DVDs), I don't "frequently fail to finish" things. I tend to read the forums or reddit or local news only while waiting for my computer and/or online services to finish processing things that I've already set in motion.
 
fade

fade

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89 on that test. I would prefer not to take pills as stated in the original post. It's a serious thing that interferes with one's daily life, family, and career. I would prefer not to take pills as originally stated, but if medication helps, I'm certainly not going to blow it off.
 
Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

As I understand it, the majority of prescribed treatments for ADHD are stimulants, correct? (Ritalin etc)

Could a similar effect not be achieved by utilizing OTC stims (caffeine, guarana, Yellowjackets/Stackers etc)?

I say this from the standpoint of someone who tends to consume MASSIVE amounts of caffeine - I've noticed that I tend to work better and finish up work when I'm rocking a caffeine high. I was always at my most efficient in the warehouse in the Corps after 8 Monsters or so - like I was HYPER-focused.

Of course, the same effect might be achieved with a placebo, so YMMV.

(Got a 59 on that, for what it's worth.)
 
Mathias

Mathias

Fade. I'm in the same boat, buddy. I generally get by on my brains. Getting onto work is the hardest part of my day; I procrastinate like a bastard. Once I get going though, I tend to over-focus with tunnel vision - ignoring everything. I space out at meetings, classes, seminars. I usually can't take direction from someone. I need them to give me the ground work of what they want, and I piece together everything on my own. For example, I have this one co-worker who talks and gives directions slowly. From her experience, she does this because she gets annoyed repeating herself. I can't focus on a long string of tasks, and tell her to just give me the gist of what she's saying, and I'll ask along the way if I have questions.

In grad school, my mentor annoyed the shit out of me when he suggested I had a learning disability - mainly because I procrastinated on reading papers etc... He didn't understand that it wasn't that I didn't understand the material in papers; it just took me forever to just focus on the damn things. I had to pretty much relearn how to read again by learning to look at figures first, and figuring out what's going on before reading much of the text. I know it sounds backwards (like reinventing the wheel when i don't have to), but by doing that - figuring things out until they "click" - I kinda trick my mind into thinking it's solving a puzzle. By the time I get it on my own, the place where the obvious answer to stuff (the text) can be quickly breezed over to confirm things.

The trick, I think, is to figure out ways to make your mind not get bored. Baby steps sometimes helps me with procrastination. I start with some small task that I know I can handle quickly -set the work mood, if you will. I'll read my email and do my daily responses. Then I shift over to doing light paperwork, which helps me get a sense of accomplishment before I switch to the big stuff. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. I can't really help much more than that. Extreme busywork (like filling out Excel tables or making data look pretty for clients) is my Achilles heel. I can't stand doing it, and it takes me forever to get into the right mindset to do it.


Oh I got an 89 on the self-assessment test.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Got a 52.

Officer_Charon said:
As I understand it, the majority of prescribed treatments for ADHD are stimulants, correct? (Ritalin etc) Could a similar effect not be achieved by utilizing OTC stims (caffeine, guarana, Yellowjackets/Stackers etc)?
Click to expand...
Theoretically, yes. There are a large number of CNS stimulants out there, but pretty much all of them have been designated in the USA as Class II controlled substances...except for caffeine (since it is self-limiting by being water soluble and also a diuretic) and pseudo-ephedrine (Sudafed), which was practically outlawed anyway by the Patriot Act when the gv't proved that methamphetamine production was funding Terrorism. Oh wait, not really.

What that means is that you can now only get these with a doctor's prescription (making Big Pharma richer) or illegally (making the drug lords richer) but gone are the days when you could just go to Sears and pick up a bottle of speed.

There are some other ways you can boost your decision making and prioritization skills, but as always they require practice.

--Patrick
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Making the decision and prioritizing isn't the problem. I can plan like a mofo. In fact, I tend to plan as a means of procrastination. I know what needs to be done next. I can atomize and identify the next action, and all of that. It helps, but all the planning in the world can't make you stay on task or get started.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

I got a 25 on the test.

Though, I'm not a particularly big fan of the accuracy of the test. If I were to turn this questionairre into one of my psych professors for testing subjects, they'd rip me a new one.
 
Frank

Frank

51, but if that test is any indication, my problems stem from my temper and inability to not be annoyed by stupid shit.
 
Gared

Gared

My wife has long had a fully diagnosed case of adult ADHD, complete with an Aderall prescription. She recently (well, ok, not terribly recently, but within the last year) switched doctors and whereas her previous primary care physician handled her prescriptions, her new pcp refused to prescribe it for her, as she doesn't have a psych background - makes sense really, and neither of us had a complaint with it; until her psychiatrist started dicking her around on whether or not she'd continue to authorize refills (actually new prescriptions each month) while she tried to therapy the ADHD out of her. Her most recent chess move? Wife had an appointment scheduled with her for today, she shows up for the appointment, and finds out her care has been transferred (without any sort of notification) to a different specialist, and this one's a therapist and cannot prescribe meds. My wife has now had to make a new appointment with the original doctor for March 5th, and call the person she was supposed to have an appointment with today and demand that she authorize the prescription now, because she's been out of her meds for days now and if she has to wait until March to get a new prescription she'll likely lose her job due to inability to focus. Fucking bitch psychiatric specialist. Suddenly refusing to authorize an aderall prescription and trying to therapy away ADHD in a patient with an 8 year diagnostic history is like trying to pray away homosexuality.

Edit: So, after getting a little more information from my wife, it appears that while no less frustrating, the specialist probably didn't do this on purpose. Apparently she's really, really, really old and keeps confusing my wife with her other patients. Last visit, she sat down and asked my wife about her "episodes" starting with why she was hospitalized. My wife looked at her very confusedly and said "I had kidney stones?" To which the specialist replied, "No, the time you were hospitalized for your psychotic break." My wife has never been hospitalized for a psychotic break. She has been hospitalized due to kidney stones, though. The psychiatrist had no idea why my wife was seeing her... and it wasn't their first visit.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Gared said:
My wife has long had a fully diagnosed case of adult ADHD, complete with an Aderall prescription. She recently (well, ok, not terribly recently, but within the last year) switched doctors and whereas her previous primary care physician handled her prescriptions, her new pcp refused to prescribe it for her, as she doesn't have a psych background - makes sense really, and neither of us had a complaint with it; until her psychiatrist started dicking her around on whether or not she'd continue to authorize refills (actually new prescriptions each month) while she tried to therapy the ADHD out of her. Her most recent chess move? Wife had an appointment scheduled with her for today, she shows up for the appointment, and finds out her care has been transferred (without any sort of notification) to a different specialist, and this one's a therapist and cannot prescribe meds. My wife has now had to make a new appointment with the original doctor for March 5th, and call the person she was supposed to have an appointment with today and demand that she authorize the prescription now, because she's been out of her meds for days now and if she has to wait until March to get a new prescription she'll likely lose her job due to inability to focus. Fucking bitch psychiatric specialist. Suddenly refusing to authorize an aderall prescription and trying to therapy away ADHD in a patient with an 8 year diagnostic history is like trying to pray away homosexuality.

Edit: So, after getting a little more information from my wife, it appears that while no less frustrating, the specialist probably didn't do this on purpose. Apparently she's really, really, really old and keeps confusing my wife with her other patients. Last visit, she sat down and asked my wife about her "episodes" starting with why she was hospitalized. My wife looked at her very confusedly and said "I had kidney stones?" To which the specialist replied, "No, the time you were hospitalized for your psychotic break." My wife has never been hospitalized for a psychotic break. She has been hospitalized due to kidney stones, though. The psychiatrist had no idea why my wife was seeing her... and it wasn't their first visit.
Click to expand...
I actually had a similar experience. I went to a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, at first. She diagnosed me and recommended a medication. She could not prescribe anything though. She told me to give her diagnosis to my PCP. I did, and he said no. He said flat out he didn't think I could've made it to a Ph.D. program if I really had ADHD, and he questioned openly her diagnosis techniques. He refused to write the prescription. My psychologist was an older, experienced person, and my PCP was a young, fresh-out-of-school person which very little psych experience (I asked). I called the psychologist, and after some choice words about my PCP, she scheduled an office visit with the psychiatrist in her office. We sat down, he did a mini-diagnosis, but praised his colleague, and wrote the scrip.
Added at: 12:22
All of these people were in the same office, by the way, including my PCP. We were in this HMO that had a huge facility where it housed all its own doctors.
 
Gared

Gared

That sounds like something Group Death would do, but yeah - her PCP isn't in the same office as her psychiatrist (who's actually an LPN with psych background) or this new therapist, but since sending my wife to a psychiatrist to get her ADHD meds, her PCP refuses to refill not only her Aderall, but also her sleeping meds and her anti-depressants. Which means that if the LPN flakes (which she does frequently), my wife can't get any of her meds and can't even get her doctor to respond. Hence the fact that she's looking for a new doctor. But, since she actually really liked the therapist, she's going to call a doctor that she liked the look of and ask if she can be seen by the doctor and the therapist and if the doctor will authorize the Aderall prescription on the recommendation of the therapist.
 
Gared

Gared

Jesus fuck, the cycle continues. My wife called the psychiatrist LPN that she had scheduled an appointment with for yesterday and told her that while she appreciated the chance to speak to a therapist yesterday, she made the appointment with LPN specifically because that was what LPN told her needed to happen in order to get her meds refilled, and that she needs a refill NOW because she's out of Adderal and cannot function without it at work. LPN called her back today and left her a voicemail saying "I don't understand what's going on. Therapist is a therapist and cannot do meds. You need to see me for meds. If you schedule an appointment with me for next week (she doesn't have any appointments available next week, doesn't have any available until March 5th, but apparently doesn't know her schedule), I'll give you a few days of Ambien and Celexa (her anti-depressant) to get you through. But we need to have a serious discussion about our working relationship because you keep asking me for meds without following through."
 
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