[Violexie0071]

Wow. All the support you guys, I’m feeling the <3. Let try me respond systematically.

Fabulous: lol The tone of your post lifted my spirits! So it was nice to hear from you too. I can definitely identify with the relapses. For me, it’s this defeated apathy I feel after I experience a weight-loss failure. And then eventually I gain so much weight that I get fed up with myself and try to diet again. I use Caloriecount.com. I think it’s pretty simple because their food database is pretty extensive and the website tells you (on a very general basis) if the food is good for you.

Pookie: First off, I love your screen name. Secondly, yes I just started Vyvanse 60 mg on Sunday. As far as the effects, I have noted a curbed appetite and a MUCH greater will power to resist impulses. This is only the end of the third day of being on the medication. I have gotten 8 hours of sleep since I started it and I pretty much feel like a crack head. But my body is still getting used to it. That and I am trying to establish a good bedtime routine that will calm me down enough so that when I take my xanax I fall asleep and stay asleep. I started logging my foods on Caloriecount again on Sunday and it is truly my hope that the medication + behavioral control strategies will result in me actually losing the weight and making a positive change. As far as everything else you mentioned in your post, I second all of it. Except for the fact that I am 23 years old. It’s like almost creepy to see how much I have in common with everyone else on this website and many of you are much older than me and on the surface live completely different lives from me!

Shutter: Awww I’m touched that I moved you. I don’t usually open myself up raw like that on the internet but it seems like a good supporting community on here. Whenever I was on a diet I used to get so angry at my mom for buying donuts and cookies and leaving them on the counter. And then she would get all defensive like: Well if you can’t resist it then you’ll never lose weight anyway! She never got that for me, it’s a little bit easier to resist enticing foods away from home because you usually have to pay for them, but at home I was defenseless against that box of Entemenn’s crumb topped donuts! >.> Anywho, thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you for the hugs! *Hugs back!*

Allan: I think you kind of missed some what I was saying. The atmosphere at my college is very competitive. It’s very hard to do well there. I quite sure that my University is on the list of the top 10 schools that have the most depressed and suicidal students. And we’re high up too, somewhere near Stanford.

Me personally, I am not really concerned with competition with a specific individual – it’s more like a competition between yourself and everyone else. When the tests are graded and the averages are determined, where do you lie? In most of the classes your grade depends on how well or poorly everyone else did. So like, no – I am not trying to one up my friends or classmates. That’s petty high school drama that I left behind in 2007 when I graduated!

As far as compensation … like IDK. I’m smart? I’m talented? I’m genuinely and intrinsically passionate about learning. I’m driven, and I have ridiculously high standards that NOBODY can tell me that I shouldn’t live up to. Before the past 6 months, I HAD NO IDEA I had any kind of disability or disorder or anything. I thought that I was “normal” yet defective in my own right. Like, idk I can’t really tell you how I compensated for something that I didn’t know existed. I was able to get by only using a fraction of my potential until these past few years in University. You ask anybody who goes to my school – could you be successful working two jobs and being a full time student pursuing two majors and a masters on top of that – BUT you can only use about 30% of your full potential. People would laugh. It’s impossible. There was a breaking point. After I couldn’t handle the recurring pattern of mediocracy, mid semester crisis, and the occasional failure I had to seek help. It’s like a switch went off in my head: Ok, something is wrong with me. There is something else here I know I’m capable of more why am I doing so poorly?

WARNING: Tangent Alert

Last year one of my students moved on to a new teacher (always with my blessing) but I had been teaching her for the previous 5 years before that. She has ADHD. It’s really her who I owe credit to figuring out what was holding me back my whole life. I always see myself in my pupils, but I slowly began to notice specific patterns of behavior, personality, self esteem, downfall, and success in her that were identical to me. That and over the course of 5 years I had plenty of experience with medicated Kimmy, and unmedicated Kimmy. Though she was clearly hyperactive and I’m inattentive, Kimmy’s behavior, habits, and personality was the most similar to mine when she was unmedicated. Days when she forgot to take her meds or perhaps the prescription had run out. Interestingly enough I usually preferred her with out meds. I never said anything because it wasn’t my place. Sure she was harder to redirect, made more silly mistakes, and would sometimes overwhelm me with chatter and noodling – but she was her happy, bubbly, bouncy, fun, adorable, creative, and most importantly passionate self. A child grows the most as an artist when they have this passion. This fire to to learn and do and conquer – like many ADDers have! When she was on her meds, she would often be sad, seem depressed, had low self esteem, tired, non responsive and oddly detached. Yes we were more productive and got more things done and she made less mistakes when she was on her meds, but idk looking back I definitely think she either needed a dose adjustment or to try a different drug. I also want to add that she was one of my most (if not the most) talented students – truly a rising star. (That’s kind of an overlooked trait of ADD I think.) That’s why she eventually left me fore her junior and senior years of high school for someone with more experience. I actually tried to convince her parents to take her to a prep academy like the ones I went to years before but they refused to leave because they and she loved me and she was doing well under my instruction.

The whole point of that tangent was that teaching Kimmy, and seeing at least one form of ADHD up close and personal (and having the rare opportunity to study it treated and with out medication) planted the seed in my head. I was far from really taking the possibility seriously at the time but I could never shake the fact that Kimmy and I had so much in common when she hadn’t taken that pill in the morning. Fast forward a few years and here I am today.

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[Violexie0071]

Allan, I think you have a lot in common with some of the other posters here. At least you do with me. And that’s saying a lot because demographically speaking (I’m making some assumptions here) we are quite different. The way you describe your self esteem and this potential that you feel like you never live up to. I feel exactly the same way. I teach adolescents violin and viola and it’s weird because I have been teaching since I was 16 – but I’m 23 now!!!! When I first started my rapport was more like that of an older sister than a grown up teacher person. But now, most of my students are younger and have started coming to me recently – but I still have the same rapport with them now even though I’m a young woman and not a teenager. Yea, immaturity and relate-ability to youths – I think that’s “a thing.”

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[Violexie0071]

Thanks for your post Allan. I appreciate what you have to say and I’m thankful for your camaraderie.

In my life time, I’ve only ever been labeled an under achiever by my parents. But college was… rough. It still is, I’m really still at the start of things. I’m a biology major in a competitive school known for its sciences and features class sizes of 300 and up. The atmosphere is very cut-throat – every man for himself – fight kick and scratch for every point. Almost every other person you meet at my University is pre med. Don’t get me wrong, I still have this strange love for my school, but it is a situation where you must give 100% or you will sink – and I have been operating at a fraction of my full capacity especially with the added stress of college. Then my junior year, I couldn’t take the torture of getting C after C in a field of study that beat me over the head more than it could ever stimulate me. My parents would disown me if I ever dropped the biology major – so I added Music as a second major. In my senior year, I applied for the science education program (this was two years ago in the spring) and got accepted – so now I am also perusing a masters in education.

So here I am in my 6th year of college just now figuring out how to function and actually compensate for ADHD. Sure adding fields of study that I am more readily stimulated by and passionate about helps, but at this stage everything is an upper division course on a highly scholarly and academic level. 25% doesn’t cut it. And it disgusts me. I want nothing more than to give 100% and reap the rewards that I know I am capable of getting. What can I say? I have to take things one day at a time. Today it’s 25%. Maybe tomorrow will be 35% and perhaps next week 40%.

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[Violexie0071]

past 3-4 months*****

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[Violexie0071]

Ummm nobody checked my thyroid? I suppose I should ask about that. He simply asked me if I had any thyroid problems and I said no because I didn’t know that the thyroid had anything to do with why I was there and I didn’t know of any thyroid problems.

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[Violexie0071]

My fingers are always cold. As a child and still now I could never sit ‘Indian’ styled for moor than like 5 minutes because my legs and feet would go numb.

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[Violexie0071]

Thanks guys. My dad is more passive than my mom but he also didn’t believe migraines were real until morning after morning of me waking up crying and vomiting in high school.

My mom is more the authority in the household. She is weary but at least she is behind me somewhat. I still doubt she really believes in ADD either.

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[Violexie0071]

Anything Hydrogenated is bad. Learned this in several college biology, chem and organic chem classes. You hydrogenate a fat then you are asking for a clogged artery.

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[Violexie0071]

Thanks Scatty and KC. I went to an ADHD group over the summer and have recently started a continuation for the semester. I have been doing a lot of research actually, and have taken quite a few courses in biology and organic chemistry during my college years. I just, idk freak myself out regardless.

As far as information sources, I have been combing the internet and websites like this since last spring, as well as consulting books like Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell and I recently bought the sequel. I have been attempting the “Notebook Method” since the summer and it has helped but it’s definitely not cutting it. I don’t write in it every day and I often don’t finish my To Do lists. Then I get depressed or ashamed and my personal failure and then don’t touch the book for at least another week. I also experience difficulty prioritizing the items on my list in order of importance. At the group they told me to use an A B C type of distinction system but everything always feels like A importance to me! I use the calendar on my phone as planner but I am still bad at remembering to put every single appointment in my phone and then when I do remember, my phone is in another room and I tell myself: I’ll do it later. (We all know how that goes.)

I am just really good at freaking myself out and it doesn’t help that my mom is a ball of nerves and my father doesn’t believe that ADHD exists. He told me I don’t need drugs – that I’m just not disciplined enough. I can’t help but feel anything I achieve from here on out he won’t really give me credit for now – which bothers me because I have always been a Daddy’s Girl. It’s just a nerve wrecking process to look up all of the side effects and health risks and just hope that I don’t wind up with most of that.

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[Violexie0071]

Ermagawd guys I’m so super scared. I am 23 years old. I just found out that I had ADHD last spring. Some quack doc who didn’t even believe me put me on Strattera and it was the worst month of my life. Terrible side effects and massive break downs during finals week.

After a lot of hesitation and persistent encouragement from my therapist, I made an appointment for a neurologist at the end of the summer and finally saw him today. I just can’t help feeling intimidated by the amount of hardcore drugs he gave me prescriptions for. I am to start with 60 mg of Vyvanse, an anti-depressant for my anxiety, and a generic for xanax for sleep at night. Dude I don’t wanna have a nervous breakdown and fail out of school but I am already so behind and drowning is past due assignments and papers. Did I mention that I am terrified? What will it be like? Did I mention that I’m terrified? Will the Vyvanse make me feel like walking sleepy poop? I don’t wanna become an addict! That and my mom is convinced that I am gonna be a crack ho. I gave her the pill bottles to like… keep or what ever to make her feel like she has some control but I know she is just gonna google the stuff and have a heart attack. Any advice guys?

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