Just found out. I'm 41. Mixed blessing.

[Anonymous]

Hi.

I am new here. I am 41 years old. I have always felt like I go through life with a backpack full of rocks on my back towing a sled full of bricks uphill through 3 ft. of snow, just to do things that others seem to do effortlessly. Pay bills. Take out the garbage. Change cat litter. Finish projects. Clean my car. Clean my house. Show up for appointments on time, when I remember them at all. Get the kids off to school on time. Even get out of bed. I frequently fail at these things, but not because I want to.

About a month ago, I went to a therapist for the 1st time in my life because I thought I was suffering from depression and she suspected I have ADD and lead me down this road. I have taken several online questionaires and researched this at length. I have seen my GP and told him my suspicion and showed him my reports cards from school. He agreed that I very likely have ADD and has reffered me to a specialist in adult ADD for this region, as well as a cognetive behavioral therapist.

I won’t go into all the nitty gritty details of my symptoms, but there are many. All along ADD has dominated my life and I didn’t know I had it. I always thought I was just lazy. I knew I wasn’t stupid, and I tried very hard not to be lazy or innatentive or forgetfull, but these traits have been prevelant in my life since I was a toddler…I have been struggling to overcome them for over 36 years, ever since my first teachers told me to stop fidgeting and that I was more than capable of doing the work, but I just didn’t apply myself. I passed each grade in school because I understood the material, but I nearly failed each grade because I never completed homework or projects. This seemed to cause no end of vexation for my parents and teachers.

I eventually dropped out of high school at the age of 17, and moved out of my mother and step-fathers house and onto the street. Living with them was a version of hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. My step father thought I was the laziest person on the planet. So much so that he didn’t let me sleep. If he found me sleeping, he would angrily wake me up and make me do housework.

After moving out, I eeked out a meager existence for the next 8 years, going from job to job trying to survive. I worked at over 30 different jobs. Throughout all of this I took self-reliant courses through a local high school and managed to squeak out my grade 12.

I ended up finding work as a baker in a cafe and then worked my way up to manager. This job lasted the longest to this point in my life, 2 years. I eventually lost that job due to my inatentiveness and forgetfullness.

From the time I was about 6 years old I was fascinated by firefighters, there was a show on TV called “Emergency” about fire fighters in L.A. I watched this show every week with my father, and when I played I would always play “firefighter”. I thought these men lived the most exciting lives in the world and would loved to have been able to become one, except for one problem. My self esteem took a terrible beating on a regular basis from my teachers, my parents and my peers at school. I dont remember one single day that I wasnt being chased, beat up, name called, made fun of, berated by teachers, screamed at by my mother and beaten by my father. And when my parents divorced, my mother re-married a man that took the mental and emotional abuse to a whole new level. The insults, peppered with profanity that this man would scream at a 12 year old boy would make your hair stand up. So the dream of being a firefighter died with my self esteem.

Around 1992, while sitting in a bar with a friend of mine lamenting the current status of our lives, no job, no prospects, no money, soon to be no place to live, I changed the subject to that of my childhood dream of becoming a firefighter, and how if only my life had gone differently I would love to have had a career in the fire department. Just then an older gentleman sitting a few stools down from us, said, “Do you boys want some free advice?” I said “Sure”.

He said, “Get in with the volunteer firefighters”.

This lead to a 3 hour conversation with this 30 year veteran firefighter, who was at the rank of Platoon Chief in the full time fire department in the city in which I lived. He told me all about the job, and then seemed to take a liking to me. He told me to go to (I am going to use fictitious names and locations to protect my identity) Station 43 and speak to the Volunteer Fire Chief there and tell him that Platoon Chief “John Doe” says he wants me to be a volunteer firefighter.

I went and had an interview, he seemed to like me. I got a phone call a few weeks later and began my training as a volunteer firefighter. I remained with the volunteer firefighters for 2 years until there was a full time recruitment. I went through this very difficult and scrutinous process with 1500 other apllicants for 5 jobs. I interviewed well and based on my performance and passion for the job that I displayed as a volunteer firefighter I was hired into a rather large full time fire department of over 200 firefighters.

I am pleased to say that I have been a full time firefighter for the last 16 years, I was promoted to Captain 2 years ago, largely in part to what my superiors call my “Fireground Instincts”.

These “Fireground Instincts” are my ability to focus on many different things at the same time under a lot of pressure and quickly see a course of action that will lead to a successfull outcome and then act on them. I thrive in my job. I get a great deal of satsifaction from it, no other occupation in the world would be better suited to me, and I am convinced that it is my ADD that has lead me into this field.

So it has helped me be very successful in my career but has been an enormous burden in my personal life. I am married, (15 years now) to the same woman, whom I still love. There has been no infidelity despite the fact that people with ADD are supposedly more likely to cheat. I am what you could describe as “hyper-sexual”.

Over the years my wife has had to pick up the pieces after me, projects unfinished, bills left unpaid, late fees for everything, constant reminders to go to appointments and get kids to their activities, she is exhausted by it, and I don’t blame her. She now knows about the ADD and agrees wholeheartedly that I definately have ADD and she is relieved that I am going to be getting some help for it…when I get help for it, it will be less burden for her too.

I am a little worried about one aspect of my treatment, I believe that cognetive behavioual therapy coupled with medication is probably the answer for me…but I believe I have spent most of my life using strategies to minimize my negative traits and capitalize on my strong traits, I am WEARY of it. I think that I will really struggle to find new cognetive behaviors that will work for me since I have spent so much time and energy in my life actively fighting my negative tendencies (Laziness, unmotivated, forgetfull, inatentive, spacing out, not following through) and fostering my unique abilities (hyper focusing, intuitivness, emotional intelligence, empathy, multi-tasking under pressure, risk taking behavior, staying calm in high stress situations). I am WEARY of the constant effort I spend on minimizing the impact of my negative traits, I don’t want to have to keep trying this hard all the time, I dont want some CBTherapist giving me suggestions that I already employ and have been employing for years…I want some relief…I am hopeful that medication will help me with this. So my question to the forum is this: Am I at risk of failure, or drug addiction in terms of medicating to get these desired results, with my doubt about any new cognetive behavioral therapists suggestions being at all helpful?

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