[Tim]

Bobbie40N, use whatever name you like. Here’s more than you want to know about the name of the city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelfs

pete-puma, Thanks.

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[Tim]

Interesting thread.

Although I have had many of the difficulties described above, I have always had a wallet and except for having to spend an hour a day looking for it, it seems to work pretty well. Mostly I use cash and don’t save receipts. Perhaps that’s the secret.

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[Tim]

I have never been able to understand song lyrics unless they are well enunciated, something very rare in the pop music world. I have accumulated the craziest lyrics to songs I have heard over the years but most songs just go by as if they were noise.

If I don’t work very hard at hearing what I am being told by a supervisor I usually miss everything after “Here’s what I want you to do.”. This isn’t good. In a crowded room like a pub or a party, I also have to expend a huge amount of energy to carry on a conversation. After a while I just go home or somewhere else. It’s just too much work.

And yes, the best place to hide something from me is to put it right in front of me.

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[Tim]

New Scientist also has a story on this.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19528-have-gene-findings-taken-the-stigma-from-adhd.html

I think the truth is that this evidence is pretty weak. From the story posted by Lisa SB:

“In children without ADHD, about 7 per cent of them had deleted or doubled chromosomes in the analyzed gene sequence. But among children with the disorder, researchers discovered about 14 per cent had such genetic alterations. “

Only 14% with the abnormality? That leaves 86% of the ADDers with apparently normal genes.

This issue isn’t going away any time soon….

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[Tim]

Normal. Definitely overrated.

At 56 and diagnosed only two months and two days ago, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs over this and I’m still trying to figure out what this really means in the context of my life. What gives me optimism about the future is that the stimulant is working well and I finally have an understanding of all of the difficulties I have had that makes sense. I can work with this understanding and shape my life around who I really am, not who I kept thinking I should be.

Sadie1235, I spent a lot of time and money over the years on mental health professionals that missed mine completely. However, we both know the truth now and can get on with living. I’m still mourning the loss of the future that never happened but as with all losses, I’ll get over it. If this seems a bit abstract, think about never getting diagnosed and trying to muddle on for the rest of your life.

Take the time you need to sort through and accept your feelings. Then figure out how to use this gift you have just been handed.

You really are quite lucky.

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[Tim]

Larynxa, I agree with your Big 3 comment. It’s crazy that we allow driving at 16.

My experience with driving is a bit different. I took to it quickly and easily. In the early years I kept the tickets under control and caused only one crash (which is enough!). I won a trophy for car racing and participated in motorcycle competitions in my late teens and early twenties.

However (!!!), I had a lot of close calls that I managed to avoid because I was technically very good even if I was a terror on the road. I still remember one day when I was going far too fast in the city and, while coming out of a bend in the road with poor sight lines, I was almost upon a woman crossing the street. It was all I could do to avoid her although I came so close I must have scared the bejeezes out of her.

I certainly scared myself and realised that I wasn’t making very good decisions about driving. Since then I have become very careful. I follow the speed limit, leave lots of following distance, stop at stop signs, slow for pedestrians and animals etc. All of these have become habits which have served me well because they give lots of opportunity to recover from a daydreaming session or momentary loss of focus. I still have a few close calls but they would have been crashes before. I also save a lot of fuel.

The only down side of driving like this is that most drivers are horribly impatient. They will tailgate aggressively and pass in stupid places but I have accepted that I’m not responsible for their bad habits. If someone persists in tailgating I just slow down or pull over to let her pass.

I unfortunately have to drive a lot but since cleaning up my act, I haven’t had a ticket in about 25 years, my car has no dents and no one has died because of my driving. I’m very happy about the last one.

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[Tim]

It’s not easy to take comments like that after a while so I have become a lot more careful about who I talk to about it. I don’t think others can really understand what ADD has done to us, especially when “lazy, stupid or crazy” seems to explain everything to them.

I have on occasion ranted about how I have intelligence and abilities that they could only dream of (if they were smart enough even to do that) but almost ended up homeless on the street. About how I have to work twice as hard to get anything done. About the frustration that comes with failing again and again. To be honest, this seems not to be a good tactic as all it does is shut them up.

It was suggested that I merely say that I have had a professional diagnosis that explains an awful lot about the difficulties I have and provides a path to dealing with it. I’ll let you know when I try this one.

Sometimes I just want to slap the person upside the head but that’s probably not good either….

I’d love read some successful responses too.

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[Tim]

C’est parfait! Et, c’est moi aussi.

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[Tim]

I did a lot of work a while back, trying to get a local pesticide bylaw. Being a chemist by training was very helpful in this and something that I concluded was that although some pesticides such as the organophosphate insecticides were clearly a problem because of their nature — they are poisons — other pesticides such as some of the common herbicides weren’t so obviously a direct problem for human health. The difference is that insects and other members of the animal kingdom share a lot of biochemistry with us while plants share less.

However, I also became aware of how many chemicals we are all exposed to that are man made and quite recent — post war mostly. While absolutely pure 2,4-D may not be harmful to any thing but your weeds, the commercial product contains impurities that are not tested along with other chemicals, each with their own impurities, that make it possible to spray the stuff and make it more effective. If you looked hard enough you could find hundreds of chemicals in the mixture and few have received any scrutiny. And, even if we screen out the obvious poisons, what about the long term effects of the others that we can only guess at? Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie document the issue in their book. Here is the web site: http://slowdeathbyrubberduck.com. I think this is a huge problem and one very hard to study because no one is unexposed so a true control group for a study is impossible to find.

So, what about ADHD? There is a clear link with cigarette smoking during pregnancy, which is a chemical exposure for the foetus. As for the chemical soup we live in? We may never know for certain.

Let me throw out something for thought. ADHD is clearly a disability in our culture but there is some evidence that it may have some evolutionary advantage in our previous hunter gatherer life. I don’t know if I would want to hang my hat on the idea but this web site http://borntoexplore.org/hunter.htm is an interesting read.

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[Tim]

Rick,

You wrote above:

“Not only is it true that… “You don’t really know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” but when you realize it’s gone, you can spend so much time in regret, sorrow, mourning, beating yourself up, angry at the lost opportunity, etc. etc. etc. that you now miss another day that’s passed you by. Or a week. Or a decade.”

Your comment is wise although I fell less like “You don’t really know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” than “You now realise what you might have had but it’s gone.”

I’ve been on this kind of trip before and I’m determined not to let feelings like those that you have listed get in the way of turning things around. I think what you are describing is grief at the loss of a part of your life. It’s a huge loss and it is very natural and reasonable to feel grief. For many of us there are dreams that have to go from the “To Do” list into the garbage can simply because the stage of life where they made sense has passed. For others, the aftermath of impulsive decisions needs to be dealt with. Most have taken a real financial hit over the years and who knows how many have ended up with criminal records. It is all part of the “Emotional Journey” that you have used as a label part of this site. I think it’s a necessary journey but one that shouldn’t last too long.

I mentioned to a friend a week ago that I am now looking forward to the future as I never have before. I want to live a life that’s less scattered, get on with dreams that make sense, make some new ones and be that person inside who wants so badly to get out. I don’t really know what all of this looks like yet but it’s got to be better than where I’ve been.

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[Tim]

This web site is truly helpful in my process of figuring out where I’ve been and how I’m going to take back my life. I often though that I remembered only about 10 minutes of my childhood so it’s interesting how comments made by others here have triggered memories that were long dormant.

DogFather, I had forgotten completely how many times I had been told to “apply myself”. My marks were all over the place too. I would have As and Fs on the same report card. Some things were interesting and came easily but I remember the deep deadly boredom of the subjects that didn’t interest me. “If only Tim would apply himself …” was something I heard far too many times. The interesting thing is that were comments in the early grades (2,3,4) about how much knowledge I brought to the class from my outside reading. I wasn’t “applying myself”, I was just doing what I enjoyed.

Your last sentence brings back memories too. The phone in my parents’ house was the classic Northern Electric model 500 that everyone had. Too many times the distinctive ring would be the start of another episode of being yelled at, called lazy and told to, well, you know. For years my guts would tighten at the sound of a telephone bell and for most of my 20s I refused to have a phone in the house. I inherited that phone along with my report cards a couple of years ago and decided that I would plug it in to see what would happen. Fortunately time has softened the response and it is still plugged in. I even enjoy using the dial as long as there aren’t too many 8s, 9s, or 0s in the number.

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[Tim]

That web site has an interesting take on things but I think it is really saying something that we all know: other things can look like ADHD so the assessment needs to be carefully done. Good advice I think.

I think though, that treating something like ADHD has a lot to do with helping someone reach his or her potential and a lot of that has to do with navigating society. As Larynxa has pointed out, IQ and EQ both matter. While I would never suggest transforming a square peg into a round one (probably impossible anyway) shaving down the corners a bit can make life a lot better.

I really was a square peg from the beginning. Born in 1953, I was identified as gifted in Grade 3. I did Grades 3&4 in one year and then spent Grades 5-8 in an advancement class. I was a poor student then and in high school. I was an outsider who was bullied and beaten up a lot. I later went on to get a PhD but never found work that required it. I recently found my old report cards and other correspondence and it was thought by the school that my hyperactivity, inattention and other classic ADHD symptoms would disappear were I to be challenged. That never happened.

Life for me has been a trail of drifting, unemployment, emotional incompetence, sadness and potential unfulfilled. I was referred to as lazy in my report cards and I’m sure that some of my friends, knowing some of my potential, think so too. Hell, I thought so too for a long time because so many things were left uncompleted or even unstarted. I’ve long thought that others negotiated life a lot more easily than I do. It’s as if they were walking on a level sidewalk while I always seemed to be walking uphill in mud up to my ankles. I never knew why.

I should add that it hasn’t all been bad. I have some great friends who accept my quirks. If I need to, I can learn something quickly and I can do many things very well. In spite of it all, I’m sure some of you would happily trade your problems for mine.

It was on the evening of September 18 last year (John Diefenbaker’s birthday — oh yeah, mine too) that I switched on the TV after too many beers at the pub and saw my life being described in amazing detail by Rick and Patrick. The next time I saw my GP I started the assessment process and it seems now that I’m a rather classic case of adult ADHD. Thanks guys for a great birthday present!!!

So, my point, finally, is that if your child is having difficulties that look like ADHD, something needs to be done. I present a précis of my life as an example of untreated ADHD. There may be some point in our evolutionary history at which what we now call ADHD was an advantage, given how common it is, but in the context of our society, it is not. If a medication makes life easier then I really think that it should be considered. If educational enrichment helps that’s great. The good thing is that it can all be reassessed at any time.

Mmarcel, I wish all the best for you and your son. Good luck in your quest.

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[Tim]

What a read this topic is! And how familiar it is, getting off antidepressants. My final one was Serzone which caused all sorts of side effects I would have paid good money for as a teenager . It came as tablets but I did the same thing as you Larynxa — I cut the tablets so that I could taper off smoothly. It worked well.

Good luck with the tooth.

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[Tim]

I too have had a lot of downs and downs in the half century that I have been on this planet.

About 1988, after wrapping up my post doctoral work, I sought help and was diagnosed with depression. After a couple of years of useless talk therapy I asked my GP to refer me to a psychiatrist and started taking antidepressants. Unfortunately the psychiatrist died about six months later and my GP took over my drug (mis)management. For the next seven years I was in an antidepressant as he ramped up the dose of one drug the max only to admit defeat and try the same thing with another. All along I was suffering physical side effects and, especially on the last one, Serzone, visual and auditory hallucinations. At one point my GP took me off the maximum dose of Effexor one day and onto another drug the next. The crash was so bad I almost killed myself. After that he sent me to another psychiatrist to keep writing the scripts. All through this episode I never felt any relief from the depression. In fact I had never suffered so much in my life.

Fortunately my intellectual side is strong and has been my friend all along. I looked carefully at my life and saw that my career was in shambles, I was broke, I was lonely and very very unhappy. I also saw that there was no good future in the direction I was headed.

At this point I told the MDs that I was going to stop taking the drugs and they predicted disaster. My feeling was that things could hardly be worse than they were. I tapered my dose to zero over two weeks and noticed that each day as I took less I felt better. I sought help with a CBT therapist and I have never looked back. It’s pretty clear that ADHD was the issue all along and I’m starting on a new journey here.

I do have an important point to make that I think “Sam and I” and others should hear. It is your life and no one else’s. You need to keep yourself informed and ask yourself if what you are doing is helping you. I went so far as to make an appointment with another GP and got referred to a psychiatrist who is also a researcher at a major teaching hospital. I needed to talk to someone with a fresh mind, recent knowledge and no interest in justifying my original diagnosis and ongoing drug therapy. The problem for me is that antidepressants fog the mind — I became very complacent and compliant for far too long. Also, in some people, me for example, they cause depression and none of the MDs ever picked up on this.

Sam, you sound desperate and confused which is where I was many times. My friends and my cat were a big help in these times and so was the local pub. As a student of science, I bumped into Albert Einstein quite often, metaphorically of course. He is said to have defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Perhaps the key to your recovery is there.

I hope this gives you something to think about and I wish you all the best.

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