Hi everybody please excuse my spelling for I never realy got past the 9th grade.I'm 45 years old and finally realised that my mother should have never taken me off ritilan 40 years ago.My life has been a big mess for the most part,however after being diagnosed with ADHD 10 days ago and put on adderall 15mg's 2x day I've improved in some area's but have become way more aware of people around me , like stangers,family and freinds, and I am feeling uncomfortable in social gatherings and daily chores were people are around,I've allways felt like a loaner and like to get in and out of those situation but now its like I'm having aniety and nervousness clearly in these situations,were before I just avoided it and never thought much about it .Could this nerousness be a side affect of the adderall? or could this be a aniety disorder. My Dr. is out of town for a couple of week so I can't call him.Any comments would be welcome , and I'm sure glad to be here with my own type.

Best...........chris m.

I believe the anxiety and nervousness in social settings is ADD .The medicine is allowing your brain to question why this is where before you just knew you did'nt like it and blew it off .The medicine is the beginning of allowing you to think clearer and to commit to action towards healing yourself .
I am in the same position ,maybe a few months ahead of you .You will find many of us in these threads that feel the exact same feelings as you .you are not alone .I don't know why we are loners but I may speculate it is because when our thoughts are racing from here to there ,we feel more comfortable to be alone than have to carry on a conversation and forget what the topic is after a few sentences go by .
Welome to the forums and the road to feeling good about yourself

Scrambled, william tell's answer makes a lot of sense I think.

I hope you dont' blame your mom too much for taking you off ritalin, it has come up in my research that for a long time, the medical community felt that ADD was a child's disorder and would be grown out of.

Welcome to the forums, Chris. This is an excellent place to learn about AD/HD. Please don't feel discouraged and don't hold anything against your parents. They didn't know. So much has been learned about AD/HD in the past 5 years, let alone 40 years. Being diagnosed is 3/4 of the hurdle. I hope it feels like a huge weight has been lifted. Continue to work closely with your doctor. If you do not trust or you feel uncomfortable with your doctor find a new one.

The best advise I can give you on understanding AD/HD is get both "Delivered from Distraction (2005)" and "Driven to Distraction (1994)", by Hallowell. They answers so many things.

Good luck with everthing and learn and understand as much as you can.

Thanks gang for the advice and understanding,I can tell you that I harbor (NO) ill feelings about what my mother did by stopping the ritilan 40 years ago,she only did what she thought was right at the time.
Tim I will pick up the book s that you recomend,I'm hopping that I can find a group meeting here in the Sacramento area that meets with people with ADHD/ADD,in the meantime I'll be hanging out daily at this website.

Best...........chris m.

I usualy don't get nervice around anyone. BUT >>>>>>> the other day I dropped by a friends house from church. Him and his wife were in the back yard doing yard stuff, we are very good friends, and his wife comes walking up wareing shorts and a very low cut tank te shirt. And she is built. I knew that but I lost it. Not visibably but I know she knows I did and I know her husband Dave will get a great laugh out of it when she tells him. It will go something like this. Hawksford ! got nervice HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Man did I, Must be getting old. LOL

I feel anxiety when meeting new women that I favor or strangers in a group setting outside of buisness

Welcome Chris. You are not alone. That very realization made me feel
so much better after years of wondering what the hell was wrong.
You will learn a lot from the books that were recommended. I
am almost through the latest book mentioned.

Good luck in your journey.

I'm often nervous around people, but I've noticed that I'm not always nervous around everybody. Some days it's worse than others. Some people I feel immediately comfortable with while others I feel nervous around even after knowing them for awhile. I've never quite been able to pinpoint exactly why I react to different people in different ways like that.

Little tip ; when you 1st walk in a room or amoung a new group, find something to make your sit back a make mental notes about the people in the room. Usualy your 1st impressions are good. And think that they all have baggage just like you, no one is exsempted here.
Alot of times I wait for someone to approch me or if not I will just say Hi, I'm Dave, Let the converstion build. Little chit at 1st and then add info. Remember you not the only one who is feeling this way. Hooking up with another loner works great.

2 weeks ago at a retirement party I new know one. It was for 2 teachers and 1 principle at my wifes school. I was sitting with her add and her husband. We were both loners their. I saw the host walking around with a plater. I went upto him and there were a few ladys standing around includding my wife. I looked at the guy and said "Hay how you been? This was fun; He said great , haven't seen you for a long time. I laughed and my wife said you 2 know each other we both said ya ! He said we went to school together and I said ya he was the lady crusher and he said I would kick his butt, It was all in fun though and he said ya it was.
At this point 5 ladys were saying that's neet, I've never seen the guy before but everytime the new tray came out he came over to our area 1st and sence we looked as if we were having a great time so did allot of the new teachers at the school.

My wife adds husband and myself had a great evening in a room of 250 and we were able to meet some neet folks. Everyong was in the same boat except the teachers who worked together.

Isn't nervousness around people called Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) ? What does it have to do with ADHD? Or probably all of these conditions are related? Anyway, I used to take Paxil for anxiety before - really helps with SAD and GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). I've been off it for quite some time now and still feel much more confident around people - so the benefits don't go away once you stop the medication.

Something that has hardly been pointed out, but scrambled suggests in his first post
I personally think it is very possible that the anxiety is a side effect of the medication.

"anxiety is a side effect of the medication." That's all to posible but I think it comes from having to many things going on in my head to be able to concentrait on the task at hand.
>I find that when a problem arrises and I am not formiluar with that problem and I have to react quickly to it and realy I don't but my head is saying "You have to get this done right now" ! I will know I need to "Take a pill" LOL BUt that can be very difficalt when your white water canoeing LOL

Thank you all for your kind and caring responces, I've been away for a few weeks only because after 2 weeks on the adderall I can't beleive the (RACING & HYPERNESS) has subsided by 80% - 90%,I can't ever remembered feeling this settled down in my entire life. So now I'm having to learn how to THINK again, were in the past, like most of us are minds were so scrambled we realy didn't care or we just blew-up.I now no that their was alot of damage that I've left behind and its pritty clear that I was the cause for it, though I'm in the process now of forgiving myself and trying to look forward.
I'd also like to say to the bombing victims and there familys in England, you have my upmost sympathy and emppathy, I to lost 1 freind during the 911 attack on the World Trade Center.We will stop this insanity!

Best..........chris m

Also I need to mention that I take 20mg's aderall 2X's a day, now I take it at 8 am then it just relaxes me that I can go to sleep if I want ,the same thing with the afternoon dose,is this normal? and I also have an increase in appetite too.I see my Dr. in 14 days for refill and to let him about these symptoms.He did comment thuogh that My working dose might be higher than the norm he thought, because I was on the severe side of adhd for my age.Any comments about these side affects are welcome please.

Best ........ chris m.

Some people do find that stimulants - like Adderall - help them sleep, especially if they are kept awake by thoughts racing through their head - which stimulants can help with. Anxiety can get worse at first, but I think that most find their anxiety diminishes, as the improvements from the medication makes them more self confident. Social anxiety disorder (S.A.D.) is certainly associated with ADHD in some people, as are other disorders - when this occurs it's refered to as being "comorbid" - a fancy term meaning "together".

Adderall did that to me for a good month or so. I would take it, get hungry, then sleep for a couple hours. For me it was kind of annoying b/c, I felt tired A LOT! It did go away eventually, and went on to suppress rather than stimulate my appetite. As the tiredness slowly went away, I came to realize that feeling was a collected focus. Almost like my brain was worn out from running in circles all those years and finally had a chance to relax. It was strange because it didn't fit my common perception of relaxation, like when you take a valium or smoke a joint or get done having really good sex. Nor did it fit my normal idea of stimulation, such as driving 140 mph, or snorting a line of coke, or HAVING really great sex ;).

As if the feeling of being focused was a foreign concept to my mind, and until it could be properly assimilated I had to make an analogy, albeit inaccurate, to other experiences more familiar to me.

Bunch of philosophical b.s., I know. It's probably a unique physiological reaction that certain individuals are prone to. But, I also have ADHD on the severe side.

Hey what's up Scrambled....

I just wanted to say I have anxiety problems too. It's mainly a problem when I'm off the medication. Though I'm anxious when I'm on it too, I just dont show it as much.

I think the anxiety is caused by the fact that I dont know how to act around people. The reason why I dont know how to act around people is for a variety of reasons which I wont go into. But the one reason that I will mention is that the adderall has fundamentally changed my personality.

It's almost like having bipolar disorder. Just the gentle fluxuations in the adderall as well as my state of mind at the moment have a profound impact on my behavior. I think my anxiety is my bodies natural response to deal with the fact that I need to be careful how I act and what I say.

It sucks and it's been this way for a long time. But who's to say that I would have been any better without taking the medication in the first place. I've been on adderall for 10 years so its not like I'm going back to a life without it.

I actually tried doing that. It's almost like my brain reverts back to the way it was when I was kid before I started taking it. I think adderall hinders normal development in some ways.

Hey
I'm a female ADDer and I'm ALWAYS nervous around others...don't feel alone, you'll get there

I'm the same. I get very nervous and don't talk anytime I'm with people I don't know very well. A party with 10 or more people is like torture unless they are all really close friends, and I can't work at all with anyone watching me. I think it's just tied in with ADD.