[AllAboutControl]

@ras46

I also found out that I had ADD during my post-secondary years. My diagnosis followed the events that made me decide to switch majors; at first I had no idea what I wanted to switch to. I went to the university’s counselling centre to see a career counsellor, who helped me get an idea of what fields meshed well with my interests. The career counsellor was also the first person to see the signs of my ADD, which led to my diagnosis; your diagnosis might be something that you could bring up if you meet with this kind of counsellor. It is important to note that none of what they tell you is an absolute – one of the fields that meshed the best with my interests was healthcare, which was the field I had just decided to get out of…

One thing that I struggle with is doing so much planning and research that I never get started. I’ll use a metaphor: I spend so much time figuring out where to put my pieces in order to get a good start and researching how to play the game that I never actually start playing. Research is a great tool, but I know that it is possible to do too much.

Like yourself, I am also a frequent victim of the “BOOM”. If I don’t force myself to re-adopt the systems that I had in place within a day, I often fall completely off track. I’m actually in that off-track state right now.

As for the actual schoolwork, I would try to build a support network. I’m pretty sure that I had to work with several different people in order to get the grades that I did – I worked with a tutor/TA at the math learning centre, went to some extra tutorials, and kept in touch with one or two classmates. When I got the weekly assignments, I could use all three of these resources in order to get them done properly with time to spare.

I can’t offer any advice on impulse spending or consistent cleaning routines, because I am still prone to the former and have not established the latter.

Apologies for the flood of words, and best of luck!

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[AllAboutControl]

I won’t pretend that I know what you’re going through, because not only do we have completely different lives but because ADD affects everybody differently. However, I would like to offer some advice of my own:

Things didn’t change much after my diagnosis and only changed a little when I started taking a medication that worked for me. It wasn’t a simple solution – I took advantage of the benefits that meds gave me in order to focus on one part of my life, school, and ignored everything else. Adderall makes it easier for me to think things through to either resist my impulses or force myself to do something; it doesn’t make my impulses go away or give me the drive that I lack. The reason that nothing else changed was because I didn’t do anything to change them; I didn’t build good habits or deal with the side effects of my meds, instead I made sure that I did well in school.

I would recommend three things, which I’m still working towards myself: building a support network, such as the Totally ADD forums, professionals, and/or loved ones; looking into and using the resources and information that are available to you, such as websites or library books; and finding out what works for you.

There is one more thing that I was considering. I’ve noticed it myself, and it may not be the case; please take this with a grain of salt: a diagnosis is an answer, but it can also become a label or an excuse. It can be easy to just attribute the difficulties to ADD and just give up trying, accept them as inevitable. It’s something that I need to work on – I need to distinguish between the fact “I have ADD” and the excuse “I have ADD”.

I don’t know how helpful any of this will be.

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[AllAboutControl]

I started Adderall at the end of the summer, so I didn’t notice this side-effect right away.

We’ve had a winter that was slightly longer than normal, so I ended up with cold hands and feet more often than not. It would happen indoors, while I was sitting in class or in my apartment, as well as outdoors – I also deal with the sweating side-effect, which meant that the sweat in my gloves would cool and my hands would get cold. I actually wore two layers of gloves, which kept the cold air from triggering it, only to have it happen anyway.

Nowadays, it’s warm enough for me to go around in shorts and sweaters. I still notice that my fingers and toes get cold – I’m currently at my desk, which is near my currently open window, and they’re cold. Mind you, it might be that I’m not moving around. Who knows?

My psychiatrist said that the exact cause of this effect isn’t known. My theory is that it has to do with reduced peripheral circulation, like in the fight-or-flight response. I can’t confirm this theory, but it would explain the reduced blood flow to my extremities and the fact that parts of my body act like it’s always cold.

The worst part is that my core is always warm; I can be sweating from the slightest exertion and want to take off a sweater/coat, but my hands and feet will be cold. It feels weird to be hot and cold at the same time.

I hope that we all warm up soon.

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[AllAboutControl]

Hi PigMonkey,

I’m fairly new to the pill game myself; it’s been less than a year since I’ve been taking 30mg/day of Adderall XR. After my diagnosis, I first tried Strattera and Biphentin with no success.

My relationship with my meds is interesting to say the least:

I have noticed a significant difference between the days that I take my pill and the days that I sleep in too late to take it or forget. The latter are essentially write-offs – I have no drive to do anything productive that requires any thought or effort. When I do take Adderall, I notice that I can make myself do things, but it still isn’t easy.

That’s where my biggest problem concerning meds comes in: I’ve been using them as a crutch. My focus has been directed towards school with very positive results while everything else has remained on the back-burner. School has always been something that I could focus on, which I think is due to the fact that I’m accountable to somebody else. This means that I have drive and motivation for things like work, school, meetings and appointments, and other such events; I have none for anything else. I can focus on things once I get started on them, but I can’t muster up the will to do anything.

I need to learn how to take advantage of this medically-induced ability to do things. My priority was school, so I never took the time to learn coping strategies or build and maintain good habits. That’s why I’m here.

The side effects are one such thing – I don’t get hungry anymore and forget to eat, I need to take another pill just to fall asleep at night, I sweat a lot, and my extremities get cold very easily. I’m living with these side effects, but I’m not really doing anything about them: I could get into the habit of going to bed earlier, I could schedule meals, and I could actually use the clinical-strength antiperspirant that I bought several months ago. I could, but I don’t.

I’m a prime example of the “meds are about 15% of the solution” adage…

I’m sorry for the rant. I guess I just wanted to offer my experience with medication.

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[AllAboutControl]

@blackdog

Thanks for the response. I’m sorry to have put you through that.

To be honest, I was getting really disappointed with myself. I considered just never posting again because I was just that embarrassed. Nobody had said anything about the length and frequency of my posts, but I still felt like I’d messed up.

Your reassurance that long posts are normal definitely helped me decide to give this thing another shot. I would have thanked you earlier, but I am amazingly talented at putting things off – I actually put off being a member of this forum for quite a long time, and put off posting until several days after I had joined.

I will probably finish what I started, but it’ll mostly be in the form of posts in other threads.

Thanks again.

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[AllAboutControl]

Okay… This is too much… Cutting myself off for the night.

Apparently a tendency towards wordiness and hyperfocus lead to me writing so much that I’m actually having trouble posting or editing what I write – I keep getting error messages.

That’s it. I’m done. I’m sorry. This won’t happen again.

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[AllAboutControl]

No Direction, New Direction

I knew then that things were broken beyond repair; I probably could have salvaged things and kept going, but I wouldn’t. I wasn’t cut out for that field, nor was it cut out for me. I wished that I could have realized this sooner and that I could have avoided this situation entirely, but I had no choice but to cut my losses and learn from it. It wasn’t a complete waste: I learned a lot and gained a lot of skills that will help me in the future.

I didn’t know what that future was going to be, because the life plan that I had was completely off the rails. I had spent so much time struggling that I wasn’t sure that I knew who I was when the struggle finally ended. I didn’t have the slightest idea who I was anymore, let alone what I wanted to do with my life. Any sense of routine and good habits was now gone, and in its place was an inability to initiate anything that took effort other than school and poor impulse control.

So I started seeing another psychologist, as well as one of the university’s career counsellors. The different tests that she administered suggest the areas of Healthcare, Medical science, Counselling and Helping, Social sciences, and Science; this was highly ironic, because my degree fell within one of those fields. Eventually, I decided that I would start a psychology degree – I had spent enough time around psychologists to know that the idea of psychology interested me and that their approach felt much better suited for me than my former degree’s “assembly-line” approach to care. I always want to explain things, to know why something happen; I think this translates easily into a fascination for the things that make people tick.

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[AllAboutControl]

University – Undergraduate Degree #1

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I ended up following a career path that my parents suggested. I won’t deny that the field and the subject matter were interesting and that I liked the idea of working in the field, but I was never passionate about it. Several preceptors had asked me within the first few years whether or not this was what I wanted to do with my life – hindsight is 20/20.

I continued to do well academically, although I learned quickly to lower my standard. The only class in which my grades were not above average were the classes that were discipline-specific. The major reason for that was the clinical component – where others excelled in clinical practice and had to put the effort in academically, I was the opposite. In the end, I was putting in extra time and effort into the clinical/practical aspect of my program only to not get as much out of it as my classmates. My struggles were primarily with organization and with “performance anxiety” whenever I was being evaluated.

Outside of school, I was struggling as well. As an introvert, living in a residence where people were prone to partying was not an ideal situation. I went from having a circle of friends to not knowing anybody at all; I had nothing in common with my classmates or the people I lived with, so I found myself incapable of forming any meaningful connections with any of them. It took its toll, and I was forced to see a counsellor by October.

Things did improve: I joined a sports club, which I am still involved with; eventually moved into an apartment with my older sister, a fellow introvert; accepted that I had nothing in common with most people my age; and eventually became part of my city’s geek scene. It wasn’t and still isn’t perfect – I still can’t form any meaningful connections with people and I continue to see a psychologist without really making any noticeable progress.

University – Breakdown

Unfortunately, my struggles with the practical aspect of my program became increasingly obvious as I advanced. I ended up failing a summer placement that was a prerequisite for half of the courses that made up my final year, which meant that Year 4 became Years 4 and 5. That was only the beginning…

The first semester of Year 5 was a full-time specialty practice placement; I spent my days in the field and did homework when I got home. I had started living on my own during the summer, but this was the first full-time/full course load semester that I was on my own. My supervisor noticed that something had changed after the Thanksgiving weekend, during which I was out of town for a tournament; I’ll never know for sure what it was that would start what would become a downward spiral.

It was a progression: I became increasingly distracted and disorganized, my confidence levels dropped as my levels of anxiety rose, and I was an emotional wreck. I felt the pressure, and the slightest mistake would set me into a spiral of self-doubt that meant I failed more than one evaluation, which in turn upset me and either led to reduced confidence during the next attempts or, on occasion, outright tears. I spent more time on-site than any of the others, but it wasn’t enough. I put all of my energy into passing, but I was running out; eventually my focus became just keeping myself afloat.

I put my all into it, and consequently put everything else on the back-burner. I stopped exercising, socializing, making food that wasn’t quick and convenient or junk food, cleaning my apartment, or taking care of myself in anything other than the basic ways. I had no energy to devote to anything other than “Clinical” or “Homework”. It took its toll emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

Near the end of the semester, my supervisor and teacher actually staged an intervention and told me that I had to see a professional, which I did; my appointments with that psychologist ended up being focused on keeping me afloat. In the end, I found out that I had failed; apparently, I had actually failed a month before but nobody had figured it out. Had I had enough left in me to be relieved that my struggle was over, I would have; I was empty, I had nothing left to give.

That ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was done…

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