First Post: ADD and what it has left me

[Anonymous]

It began as a child. I would hear my name being called a lot. I was always distracted. I was hyper active, but I would calm down and feel restless quite a bit. I took Ritalin in elementary school but got off it a few years later. I spent all of middle and high school with knots of anxiety in my lower stomach, feeling overwhelmed, having little obsessive things I’d have to do to hide everything about myself. I left helpless and I was consumed with a lack of confidence and self esteem. I graduated, met girls, and things did change.

I’ve only had two relationships. The first was nearly 3 years and she was very mature and is really making the best of her life now. She still stands in my mind as one of the most influential people I’ve ever met. She did become tired after a while of my impulsive decisions, my distractions and my taking her for granted, when I honestly didn’t mean to. The second relationship ended because of the same reasons and now I just feel lost. I’m 22, living at home (got kicked out of my apartment due to my room mate stealing two months of my rent when he said he paid it), and I’m working over nights at a grocery store.

I’ve experimented with a lot of marijuana and LSD twice. That was more than a year ago, but that certainly gave me different perspectives of life and such. Coupled with the inability to keep a job for more than 6 or 7 months and feeling terrified to go back to school I find myself constantly feeling down on myself. I feel completely burned out and useless. No matter what optimism or new trends I introduce I feel as though I always end up feeling the same and I’m starting to wonder what my mental trend is, what my cognition is and how I can change that. I’ve gotten out of bleak periods before, what’s up with this one.

I have experimented with my moods just a few weeks ago. I found for two days I was completely motivated, and being nice to people, helping out, everything felt as though it paid off and relaxing felt amazing. Everything was positive in my environment therefore I felt like I was gaining from it and I looked forward to other aspects. Then just like that I got put back into a hole. It sounds like big time bi-polar, but coupled with ADD it has been present though a bit weaker for just about my entire life. I often wonder if it’s a product of ADD or if it’s something by itself.

My biggest agitation is that I spend my hours off work 3 odd days a week feeling overwhelmed and on edge. I cannot make myself focus on any task and feel care free, or at least stop long enough to finish a movie, or play a video game for more than ten minutes. I have a bit of an addictive personality as well so video games have always been interesting to me. I used to write a lot, I can’t do that anymore. I basically sit and google stuff, read these forums, attempt to do things and clean and knock chores out. I end up sleeping then I’m at work again.

I feel like I can relax at work and I feel the positives of socializing. But sometimes I feel so unmotivated at work all of a sudden, or I’ll focus on the time and realize I have 5 hours left or something, and then focus on negative thoughts further like how I’ll end up doing the same stuff at home.

I should mention that I don’t always feel uninterested and unmotivated like I do now. In my own realm of interests I can sometimes hyperfocus and get things done extremely fast, or do things to the point where time will pass hours.

I was at work last night caught in so much mental work and day dreams that my shift passed from 12-4 in absolutely no time.

Oh my!

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[Anonymous]

I should also mention that I have been on Effexor, then switched to Zoloft. The first was horrible, the second worked a little at first, it made me have more mood swings, but some were a lot better than I had experienced for a while. After a while I just felt like a zombie.

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[Anonymous]

glosolli, are you on anything for your ADD now? Perhaps going back to Ritalin or concerta might help. Zoloft as an antidepressant is good, but youmay have to increase the dosage. Make sure you’re seeing your Dr. regularly for that! Have you had a physical lately? A complete work-up might be a good idea–there are a lot of things that can be making you worse and can make the ADD symptoms worse as well. Good Luck. Hope you feel better soon!

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[Anonymous]

I know how you feel. I am 55 and it seems now is the worst time of my life. I don’t know if I am depressed or it is just the add disorder. I take ritalin twice a day…that is the only way I can do anything at work. All I want to do is sleep…very rarely want to do anything else. Rarely want to bother with anyone or do anything.

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[Anonymous]

I’ve been on Vyvanse for about a year and a half and to be honest, it was an absolute miracle for me. I was reluctant at first because I am also in treatment for bipolar disorder and was told that a ‘rare’ but ‘worth mentioning’ side effect would be that it would lead to manic episodes, which is a nightmare for me. I really believe that if you are not seeing a doctor now, you should get a consultation. I see a psychiatrist to handle my meds and it has helped me TREMENDOUSLY. Everything that you have mentioned in your post rings a bell in my own life and I can tell you that my only regret is that I didn’t seek out help sooner. Good luck to you!

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[Anonymous]

not trying to brag, but your 2 relationships put you waaaaay ahead of the zero relationships i’d racked up at 23, and no way would i have got into an apartment either.

part of the whole ADD and depression cycle, i think, is that we get down on ourselves, and combined with our awesomely creative powers of rapid, bouncing off the walls thinking and running of on tangents and making tenuous leaps all over the place, we manage to get ourselves wickedly depressed, and then go around in big tangly circles of negativity in our heads.

looking at it another way, you have a diagnosis. great start. you do manage to hold down jobs for several months- great! you’ve got somewhere to live (woohoo!) and you’re clearly a smart person- which means you have oodles of potential just waiting to be utilised, you just need the right support strategies and help behind you.

have you got a doctor? if so, if i was you i’d get referred to a psychiatrist and get working out some meds for your ADD so you can think half-straight. at the same time see about getting referred to a psychologist, who can help you through your feelings and to change some negative patterns, avoid pitfalls and traps, etc. when you’ve started getting those two bits working together, see if you can get a socialworker on board or get a decent careers assessment done- that’d help you work out what you CAN do, not what you can’t. there may be a whole bundle of short college courses that’d be great for you, and give you the confidence and practice to move onto something bigger down the line- if and when it was right. there may be an ADHD support group in your area that you don’t know about, some funding and subsidies you could get hold of, etc.

there are a lot of good people out there who can and will help you through this stuff- you just have to ask them, and keep chipping away at it. i do know how hard that is, i promise, but once you do, it’ll get better.

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[Anonymous]

You sure know how to sound positively thinking personality…

It seems that there is moments and times with length and longitude to make one self feel hopeless with bottomless worries…

Coming times when one sees when there is more to see than just one does.

22 year old and has had two serious relationships? well that’s pretty awfully magnificent. You have been worthy to have those and surely when you know better it may come to you to know… there will others or just one more and none other but one never knows before time.

I sound like i’d be like old as hell (in my head though). But o’ve only had one truely serious relatiponship, one with half intent to be on my part other one resulted to without my knowing to go for another relationship not telling me about it and i had to get it known…… spying stuff…. uuh great..

But surely this last relationship truely were the point of getting myself to gather in short time some youth, some young adult’s attitude and when i thought i had gathered enough to be thought as more mature relationship had come to it’s end…

To get help, to gather network of supportive personalities (more than close relatives) and so on… These and many more are qualities which are ?taught?….

I feel like i have not come to get myself to that train or that cart to make myself to be one. I don’t like to make myself get in the picture and same time i’d like to be in some part… it is feeling in me guts that if i just maybe fuck things up it will be like… oh well you know the drift…

Well one is filled with words to express oneself and what would like to be…….

Like jeneticallyenhanced hmmm.. oh well modified (as one truely sees and writes the other) says it well when one has thoughts which doesn’t end in the middle but continues on (there come something else to cut it out and one can’t say what one was trying to say), and then goes for the some other thing to say which in the third sentence may tell.. “And about that again…..”

oh werll.. better to stop this rambling….. but all the best for ya…

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[Anonymous]

can we not message people privately here? Glosolli, am I right thinking you’re in NFLD? Do you see any kind of specialist here? I live on the Bonavista peninsula and want referring to someone in town.

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[Anonymous]

I think you might be able to message privately by going to the person’s profile, it might depend on their profile settings. Fellow Canuck here, but I’m closer to Toronto.

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[Anonymous]

thanks, no_dopamine – I tried but I can’t see how I can do that so maybe he has high privacy settings?

Lucky you, being in Toronto. I used to live in St Cats, moved east for a quieter life – ha ha! Never realised the turmoil in my life was inside ME!

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[Anonymous]

I was born in St Catharines, left when I went to university years ago. Couldn’t wait to leave, but like you said, it took me years and years to realize that I was the problem, not the city.

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[Anonymous]

I thought my problems at work would be solved if I just got one more academic degree or certification… Now it’s worse than ever. It’s too early to let go of denial…

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