Not sure if it's me or the ADHD but I hate morning

[Anonymous]

Over the last few years since my diagnosis at age 25, I’ve realized that not everything wrong in my life can be blamed on the ADHD. However, there’s one thing in particular that I’m very curious to know if other ADHDers suffer from and that’s a general hatred of morning.

First of all, it’s nearly impossible for me to get up on time regardless of the number or type of alarm clocks I use. I’ve found that the really loud ones and ones that force you to run around the room only make me angry, then I just get back in bed. I’m currently using a full spectrum light alarm clock with nature sounds which has prevented the angry part but I hit the snooze bar for roughly an hour before finally crawling (as if coming out of a drug induced coma) out of bed. I’ve recently started using the 3 vibration alarm clocks on my smartphone but I turn those off, half asleep, without even realizing it. Also, you’d think after 7-9 hours of sleep that I’d be well rested and feeling great but that isn’t the case. Whether I get 4 hours or 8 hours of sleep I still feel tired and sluggish.

Fortunately I work from home and make my own schedule so running late to an appointment or meeting is rarely an issue because I schedule almost everything after 11am.

So…is difficulty getting up and never feeling well rested an ADHD issue or just something wrong with me?

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

Me, I am an early riser, @ 48 I rarely set an alarm, often up by 6 am,or before, I find any alarm to be very rude, if i feel the need to set one, i’ll wake before it goes off, I can’t remember getting more then 3hrs sleep at any one time, two or three hrs two or three times a night is enough for me, if you where going on a trip or doing something new and exciting would you wake up on your own?

G

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I’m also a morning hater but as a nursing student I’ve realized that this is all about individual bio-rhythms. Now I don’t know enough to say at the very core there couldn’t be a correlation between the 2 but for now I’m not aware of one. If anyone else has info on this I would be very interested to hear as well!?!?!? I have noticed that if there is something I’m very excited for like race day (I’m a runner) then I have no problem. But for all the boring training runs especially in the dead of winter it’s nearly impossible for me to get up early for them. My teacher once described like a machine with different systems that just don’t come online all at once like you want them to. That is exactly how I feel 90% of the time!?!?!?

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I love the mornings. I like getting up earlier than others.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I used to be a morning person. Early to bed, early to rise. Now it’s just early to bed and hit the snooze button a dozen times. Once I get moving I am alright. My mood is usually really low in the morning too; that in itself makes it hard for me to get out of bed. Especially for work. It usually passes after a while though. My brain doesn’t “wake up” until mid morning. If I haven’t slept well than my brain is in a fog the entire day, even with meds. Put PMS into the mix, and I have trouble functioning.

So I am trying to figure out if this “morning thing” is related to ADD too. Over the past two years or so is when I noticed my struggle with mornings. I think for me, it’s just the amount of stress I’m dealing with at a particular time. When I’m away from it, I am the morning person I used to be. But for the moment, I do not like mornings, especially weekday mornings.

REPORT ABUSE

[laddybug3]

I hate nights, at ten I am in bed. Then wake up at 12, go back to bed. Wake up at 2 and go back to 4 then give up at 5 or 6. My friends would invite me clubbing at 11 I was done with it. I tried to stay out, lucky for me they had a post clubbing back at the town house, and I was up for that.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

@Graham – unfortunately I rarely get to do anything fun, new or exciting so I can’t answer that question. I’m the owner of a struggling small business so money is beyond tight. I haven’t taken a vacation in 3 years and the last few months I’ve had to borrow money from my parents to pay rent…talk about making an ADDer feel like more of a failure.

Considering the current crappiness of my life my hatred of morning and lack of feeling rested might be due to depression. I don’t have health insurance so this is speculation.

From what everyone has said it seems like this isn’t an ADHD issue, there’s just something else wrong with me.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I have always been a morning person and having just taking the test on this site, am full blown adhd. Never need to set an alarm and always wake up before it if I did

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I was able to see a therapist for free at the student mental health clinic associated with my local hospital. The Dr. said that I definitely suffer from depression which makes ADHD symptoms much worse. I’m starting behavioral activation therapy and will be put on a anti-depressent once I’m approved for the free voucher program.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

I definitely do not suffer from depression but I could have written that 1st post in the thread, verbatum. I can get up at 4 and still be late. … I’ve got a 504 that allows me to be a little late, which I didn’t ever want to get because I’ve always been good at compensating and figuring out how to manage things like repeatedly locking my keys in the truck. I get frustrated daily because I’d rather get up, exercise, get to work on time, all these things that would eliminate unnecessary stress…..

REPORT ABUSE

[Monika]

@Shuz4me If you need some time management/organizational tips, I can recommend http://www.flylady.net she isn’t just for housekeeping. It sounds like you already are discovering “work arounds” for you night owl tendencies such as setting appointments after 11am when you are more productive. That’s very good.

I’ve just listened to Kate Kelly’s, “You mean I’m not lazy, stupid or crazy?” book about ADD, some good tips in there.

Best wishes on your journey,

M:)

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

shuz4me you’re quite possibly my morning clone.

it CAN be an ADHD thing, or a depression one- some of us get so tired and frazzled mentally and physically rushing about trying to keep up and concentrate and get even just one thing done in the day, and struggle so much to get our brains off all the things that seem to come up last thing at night (when we’re tired enough to think half straight) and into bed and switch off at night, and then we think all night while we’re sleeping- no wonder its hard to get up again!

depression by itself can also make mornings a killer, i don’t deny it. until i got my depression meds sorted out, and got some adhd meds thrown onto the pile, getting me up in the morning was a feat that the most heroic dragonslayer with the best armour and longest proding stick ever would be daunted to undertake.

when i was at school and college i had 3 or 4 alarms set to get me up in the morning, 10 minutes apart, on full volume: the little travel one by the bed, that beeped wicked loudly, with a really tiny fiddly off switch on the back (i used to rip the batteries out of the back and chuck them across the room while wailing loudly in my sleep instead of fumbling for the tiny button), the loud rock music cd that’d play on the minisystem 10 feet across the room (i could get across there and turn that off, and get back to bed in my sleep) the tv alarm set on a horribly annoying channel that yelled at me in welsh some time after that (with remote hidden in a sock drawer) and sometimes the classic metal alarmclock shut inside a steel box buried in the closet as well. i was still late a lot.

i would hold impressively coherant conversations while in my sleep- with people who knocked on my bedroom door asking me to remember to do something important for them later in the day, or whether i knew where something was that they couldn’t find, and not remember them at all. i took written phone messages in the hall and got back in bed without knowing it, even. my mother (who took a long time to come around to the idea that i wasn’t lying about the sleep discussions) would yell me into awakedness with sheer blooodyminded willpower, and by putting cold wet flannels on the soles of my feet, all sorts. brave brave woman.

the bf (who is now lucky enough to take over her roll of awakener) yells “time to get up babes!” and rolls me over and shakes me around a bit and threatens me with the flannels (which i stupidly told him about) every 30 minutes or so for several hours each morning, and ignores the stream of expletives and angsty “just ten more minutes… just one more hour!… nooooooo!….. i’m not finished sleeping yet damnit!” type verbal drama that results, along with the “its bloody THREE PM?! why didn’t you wake me up earlier!?!? argh!!!!” that also inevitably follows, then strokes my hair while i lie snuggled against him under a blanket on the couch grumbling with a chocolate icelolly, slowly trying to come to terms with the trauma of awakedness, for the next hour or so.

……or at least he did until very recently- they’ve jacked up my dose of straterra recently, and now i’m on a very novel and quite unselttling 8 hour sleep schedual, and wake up pretty damned chipper and fresh like a daisy before lunchtime- as aposed to fuming and seething and dragging my sluggish form around the house wailing after a solid 14 hours kip.

things do seem to be going a bit sucktastically for you recently, so i know getting the perfect stash of meds to fix your wiring challenges might not be on the cards in the near future (if you can, and its deemed appropriate, maybe see if they can prescribe you something with a bit of stimulant to it- effexor, wellbutrin, etc), but do try and grab hold of all the help you can for your depression and ADHD- from chairities, support groups, etc- it’ll help you haul yourself out of that hole and wade through your days one at a time. things can and will be better- i never thought they would be for me, but they are- you just gotta hang in there until change starts to happen, then keep it moving forwards. you can do it!

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

Hi @shuz4me,

Another vote for an incredibly similar morning routine to yours. I’m a freelance writer at the moment, a career choice that I’ve tried to manufacture in order to accommodate my inability to wake up early. (As a tangent: getting distracted while writing is another topic which I’d love to know more about. i.e. is writing even a career I should be pursuing as someone with ADHD)

I’ve struggled with mornings my whole life and at just past 30 years of age, I doubt I’m going to change anytime soon. I’m chronically late for appointments, especially if they’re in the morning. I beat up the alarm clock for about an hour each day before I am able to crawl out of bed.

There seem to be two stages. My body physically wakes up, but my brain sort of burns and aches with this horrible mood if I try to get out of bed before I’ve squeaked out another few rounds of snoozing.

Something I’ve tried:

I often take vitamin B pills during the day and it helps with the energy levels, mood and general sustained alertness.

So I decided to try taking a Vitamin B pill late at night or before bed. It doesn’t hinder my ability to fall asleep, but I’ve noticed that mornings can be much easier when I do take a pill the night before.

Having a regular exercise routine also helps, when I’m able to…

I’d be interested to hear what other people have done to help out the mornings.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

Shuz4me, I feel for you. I myself could have written that post. I know I don’t sleep well and find mornings very difficult. Like a lot of others here I don’t schedule anything in the morning. I hate being woken up in the morning and it doesn’t matter how many hours I’ve been sleeping, I just always have a sense of not being rested. When I was working, getting up at 8am was a huge struggle, I lived my entire week in anticipation for the weekend when I could finally sleep in. Having to get up early even once in the week throws the whole week off for me. I literally end up in a mental fog and takes me days to get back to normal. This week alone I had today and then again tomorrow of waking early. Ugh!! It’ll probably be friday by the time I feel like myself again. And being tired just makes the adhd worse. I have my schedule cause it works for me and if someone messes with it you better look. Like if someone wakes me unexpectedly in morning (I hate surprise awakenings) I will be very irritated and edgy and you will know it. lol. My husband knows not to do this with me any more. lol. Anyways just wanted to let you know you are not alone in feeling this way at all. Take care.

REPORT ABUSE

[Anonymous]

Until I started on Adderall this past November, I thought my morning “snooze punching” habit was due to mental fatigue from having Asperger Syndrome. When I went from Effexor to Adderall for my ADD, I noticed I had a lot more energy throughout the day, and I could rise and shine with only one or two punches of the snooze alarm. In retrospect, my fatigue was from the ADD.

REPORT ABUSE

[Author]

Posts