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What did i say?
1) I understand that many respond well to medication and coaching. Great! Go ahead and say “I do.”
and
2) “… And I’m certainly not advocating any official public policy. All I suggested was an exercise of personal discretion.”
REPORT ABUSEHa! A forum member who uses the moniker “Agnocet” summed it up well, I think—”For someone who’s been there, no explanation is necessary. For someone who’s not, no explanation is possible.” Such is ADD/ADHD.
Just start reading other posts. You’ll see your feelings are not unique.
REPORT ABUSEToday is Thursday, 12 May.
Just this morning, news broke about Facebook paying a large New York PR firm to trash Google in the press. Similarly, companies routinely use (and pay) plants to hype their products, and disparage others, on forums such as the one you’re looking at. I’m not suggesting that any of that is going on here, BUT…I think it is always prudent to take comments about a particular product or service—both pro and con— with a grain of salt. Because online posts are anonymous, it’s hard to know when somebody with an agenda is at work. It’s unfortunate. Such forums as this one can be enormously helpful to people looking for frank, informed answers to their questions. But it’s one of the realities of modern online marketing.
REPORT ABUSE@ James—We’re ALWAYS nice to “guests.” And to community managers!
REPORT ABUSE@James Well, allrighty–he’s got a few questions waiting for him….
REPORT ABUSELance, buddy, you have NO idea what you’ve signed on for….
Having said that, do you by chance have any particular expertise in the relationship between diet and ADD? Or are you primarily a weight-loss guru?
REPORT ABUSE“For someone who’s been there, no explanation is necessary. For someone who’s not, no explanation is possible.”
Well said.
REPORT ABUSENow, now. No ad hominem attacks. I plainly stated that no jurisdiction in the US or Canada would ever outlaw ADD marriage “for all sorts of reasons.” And I’m certainly not advocating any official public policy. All I suggested was an exercise of personal discretion.
What I see on this site (and others) are large numbers of spouses who’ve had it with ADD/ADHD partners. They can’t take it anymore. They type HELP!!!! in their headlines.
So how do we respond to these people’s utter frustration? They deserve our compassion, ¿no? We can’t say, “Hey, we are what we are and you need to deal with it, even if it drives you out of your mind and into bankruptcy,” can we? I guess I’m not the kind of guy who thinks we have a right to happiness at the cost of somebody else’s sanity. I understand that many respond well to medication and coaching. Great! Go ahead and say “I do.” But others are not so fortunate, for whatever reason.
My thesis is simply this: If your ADD/ADHD is severe enough that it presents such symptoms as, say, frequent bouts of violent temper, financial squandering, compulsive gambling, lying, promiscuity, and/or an inability to hold down a job (among other things), you should see if you can muster some charity and refrain from imposing your dysfunction on another person, even if you love her/him—unless that person knowingly signs on for a life on a relentless roller coaster.
REPORT ABUSEMay 6, 2011 at 8:18 pm in reply to: If ADHD describes the symptoms, are we all suffering from the same thing? #102517Hey there:
It’s certainly true that saying somebody has ADHD is like saying somebody is wearing a shirt. A shirt is a shirt, but it can be cotton or polyester, red, blue, pink, white, long sleeve, short sleeve, you name it.
At the risk of reposting something (which I know is “Verboten”), here again is (I think) a useful definition offered by Thomas Trilling:
“Attention deficit disorder is a congeries [jumble] of symptoms, to all appearances unrelated and sometimes contradictory. If there is a linking theme, it is the inability to maintain a productive level of concentration (“focus”) through the normal range of daily activities. Lack of focus can show itself as a failure to do the right things or to keep from doing the wrong things. The symptoms are almost as diverse as the demands of life itself: hyperactivity, but also lethargy and daydreaming; procrastination, but also rushing into situations without thinking about rules and consequences; unwanted shifts of attention, as when a conversation overheard across the room suddenly drowns out everything else; unprovoked or disproportionate outbursts of temper; inability to plan ahead, stick to a task, or keep track of time; insensitivity to other people’s unspoken needs; high-risk and thrill-seeking behavior; and obsessive cravings that are no sooner satisfied than they give way to others just as intense. The list goes on…”
…and on, and on.
To make matters worse, medications that work for one person don’t work for another. Coping strategies that work for some don’t work so well for others. Everything about this disorder is slippery, and that can lead to enormous frustration for people looking for definitive answers. I’m afraid we may be a long way off from being able to provide real relief to all those who suffer from it—assuming all want relief, which, of course, is not the case.
REPORT ABUSEMay 6, 2011 at 4:07 pm in reply to: Spouse of (potentially, but most likely) ADHD son and husband #101631Why not tell your husband to take your son to be tested? Make that his little errand.
There are countless instances of parents listening in during the testing and then thinking, “Hey, that sounds just like like me!” In fact, if memory serves, some ADD oracle once said that many adult ADDers see the light and eventually get diagnosed because they attended sessions with their ADD/ADHD kids.
REPORT ABUSEWell, it’s prescribed sometimes for ADD/ADHD. I suppose it must work for some people.
I tried it once. Nothing happened for a week. Not a thing. Then, on about the seventh day, I woke up sure I was dying. In fact, I was SO sure, I had somebody take me to see my lawyer—to amend my will—before I went to the doctor. He took me off the med immediately, and a few days later I was fine. So… maybe you should wait for the next person to post. Perhaps they will have had a better experience.
Good luck.
REPORT ABUSEADDers have trouble focusing. Doctors have problems writing. I THINK I understand what he’s trying to say. If I do, it’s good news.
REPORT ABUSEI love the sock thing. Brilliant.
REPORT ABUSEGG, the thesis of the Time piece is that people are lying to doctors in order to get ADD/ADHD meds that will help them perform better in class or the office. While it doesn’t seem reasonable or cost-efficient to administer polygraph tests to every patient who walks through the door, researchers are suggesting there may be techniques clinicians can employ to help weed out the fakers.
We know that many doctors are disposed to prescribe what patients want (thus all those pharma ads on TV, at least in the U.S.). So all clinicians may not have clean hands. But the main purpose of the research cited in the piece was to reveal the scope of a fraud being perpetrated by PATIENTS.
Unfortunately, the article is sure to give additional ammunition to all those out there who believe the disorder we call ADD/ADHD does not really exist.
REPORT ABUSEGood luck.
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