I got the idea in my head that I might have ADD about two years ago, reading about it online somewhere I think. I read a couple books on the subject, and whenever they got to the "inattentive" part -- yup, that's me, that's my life story. (stop me if you've heard this one before...) That "Inattentive ADHD symptoms" thread describes me to a T.

I'm not the kind of guy to take an aspirin when he has a headache though, so I've been trying to tough it out -- it can't be that bad, after all. I've done the exercise thing, the fish oil thing, the L-Tyrosine thing, the no-tv-no-video-games thing, the get-more-than-five-hours-of-sleep-a-night thing, the meditation thing. Can't get anything to pan out in the long term, but then again I never really stuck with any of them.

It was kind of my summer project to either get help or stop being so lazy once and for all. I came thiiiis close to seeing a doctor (or something) when I realized that when push came to shove, I really don't have it in me to walk into a doctor's/psychologist's/whoever's office and tell them I'm so lazy that I actually need to alter my brain chemistry with drugs to properly function as a person (er, no offense to the medicated folks out there).

So the idea has been to reeeeally try my best, for real this time, and if I still really can't make it work, then I get help. I'm having a hard time trying my best though. The best I've been able to do is to put in an hour or two of pacing for every thirty minutes of internet or video games -- when I really buckle down and get down to business, you know -- and that just doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment.

I'm taking a self-paced British Literature class online. I figure that's the real litmus test, and if I sit in my room with everything electronic turned off, eyes glued to the book, and I still can't do it, then I should definitely get some help. I crack pretty easy though, and pretty soon I'm up pacing, and then after an hour or so of that I figure that as long as I'm not getting anything done anyway I might as well have a short video game break, and then I play a game for an hour straight.

Sometimes I get on a roll though, and really get to reading without a whole lot of trouble. Or I could just read something that I'm actually interested in and have no trouble at all with it. Then this whole "ADD" thing seems really silly and I feel ridiculous for even thinking about getting diagnosed with this quite suspicious "illness" that doesn't show up on any brain scan.

(no offense again, but even at my most demoralized I have to say that ADD at least sounds seriously fake, and it's not too encouraging that every book that I've read on it puts a lot of effort into reassuring the reader that every reputable medical organization accepts it as real but zero effort into actually arguing for its physical reality. The exception is Dr. Amen... the guy whose evidence no one can replicate. Well whooptee doo.)

I want to tell you about last night and today. I stayed up almost all last night to do homework and study for my test today, all British Lit stuff. I say "to do" but I got almost none of it done. It was one of those nights when I resolve to stay up until I finish what I set out to do, then go to bed at 4:00 AM loaded up on caffeine and scarcely a damn thing accomplished. Maybe you've been there.

But today I feel so very wonderful. It's strange, because I only got about four hours of sleep, but I've really been able to sit down and do stuff today. I read a whole twenty pages of boring crap in my Lit book without interruption, in record time, and I actually understood it. Never even stood up to pace or stared at my hands for ten minutes or anything, and to tell the truth, I felt really foolish that I was making such a big deal of it before... nothing hard about reading, you just have to sit down and do it. Right? Cleaned up my room too; didn't even hurt. I'm so physically exhausted my eyeballs hurt and I'm not too steady on my feet but I don't feel like going to sleep -- it's 2:30 AM now. Well, my current plan is to ride this out and not go to sleep until I physically can't stay awake anymore. It's so funny; last night I was so sure that I'd absolutely have to try to go on some kind of med and I was cursing myself for not getting help earlier, but now that all seems really far away and kind of silly, much ado about nothing. Maybe it was just anxiety that kept me from getting all this stuff done yesterday?

I do worry it's going to be back to business when I wake up tomorrow, though. More reason not to go to sleep.

Well, that was long. Sorry, I hate reading long stuff too.

Anxiety.....you mean that thing that doesn't show up on a brain scan?:p
Sorry, couldn't resist:D .

You sure are putting an awful lot of energy into proving that you don't have AD/HD...why? You have tried a number of things... that haven't worked. You seem intelligent, seem motivated, so what, you're just lazy...."because"?

You can read things that you are interested in, a very common AD/HD trait by the way, so you again assume you have no disorders. You are just trying a million things to function normally, and can't...."because"?

The thing about lazy people is that they don't care they are lazy. They don't want to "not" be lazy, because they just WANT to be lazy. They enjoy it. This does not sound like it's the case with you. You sound like someone that very much wants to be able to read anything you pick up. Do all the things that you initially set your mind to do, but continually fall short. Yet, you can't find an answer to why you fall short, and continually try to find ways around it, but you never really "get there".

So...you would rather just keep going on and on the way you are...to what, prove that you aren't lazy? Don't you think that if you were really capable of all these things you WANT to do, that you WOULD do them? Do you realize that that is exactly what AD/HD is all about? That we can't do the things we WANT to do, like the rest of the world can. That is why it IS a disability, because it disrupts our lives, stops us from getting where we want to be.....disables us.

Lazy people can still do anything that they want to do, their problem is not wanting to. They can read any book they pick up and read. They can clean if they decide to clean. They can do anything they decide they want to do, they just don't want to.
AD/HD people "want" to do many things, but "can't", and that is the difference.

You can talk yourself out of getting help for the rest of your life, but if you have AD/HD, what you have lived with your whole life, is what you will continue to struggle with for the rest of it.
You can believe in the disorder, or choose not to, but it won't change the fact that you have it, if you do.
The bottom line is, you can believe it, not believe in it, call it lazy, call it fake, call it anything you want, try a million things, struggle your whole life, talk yourself out of it all day long, but none of it will change your functioning level if you have AD/HD. It's all up to you on whether or not you get help :).

Wow is all I have to say after reading your post...wow

it took me 38 years to get help. i was on Ritalin as a kid. Smoked dope as a teenager, Drank as an adult, masked it every way possible, I have had a million jobs, and my wife was the one who had had enough of my ADD and it took me awhile after that, then I got help. I have been taking ProVigil for a week, and I still think I am crazy.

ADD is unfair to me and to others around me. Try following my lead, yeah, right...

I would like to be able to get things done in an orderly and routine fashion, but it seems like a dream.

:soapbox:

Okay, I found myself in exactly the same position as you a week ago. But I feel I made a quantum leap forward - I actually got a referral. You know what was the stimulus to screw my courage to the sticking place?
My whole life had a big chance to get a whole lot easier.
I rehersed the conversation and by the biggest flukey luck I had a compassionate doctor. I have a huge problem communicating and I've talked to the doctor on many occasions about various symptoms I never realised were related. They shoved a prescription in my hand and shouted 'next!' over my shoulder.
Endless, controlling anxiety, inability to remember more than one verbal instruction, appalling memory (no idea what I had to eat last night, but I know all my bank account numbers), difficulty paying attention, crying every day, endless and multi-layered thinking. It became apparent to me from reading book that thinking like this was not the norm. You never see 'who's there?' coupled with beethovens 9th and the vague anxiety about the noise the heater is making. Nobody writes it. This sort of thing happens all the time in my head...does yours work like this too?
An interesting upside to this is, being introduced to music at a very young age (3 - and I think this was my saving grace, music helped me think spatially) Any piece of music that I have heard enough, I can reproduce the entire score in my head. What do people think about this? If you can think like this, you are more likely to sing in tune, and that's a fact. My mother is a music teacher and she uses harmonics to help kids learn to sing in tune, which she can do to anyone. Crazy, huh?
As you can see, I write like you too...compare the styles. Paragraphs, syntax, but of course I come across as a lot more formal...I have problems thinking of the common word so I end up being stupidly verbose. Especially when writing about things like this...You'll find that lots of people on here write like us.
I think your major argment against seeking help (feeling ridiculus was the overall impression of your post which I tried my best to read properly ;) has a massive flaw in it. Has everyone always been endlessly paitent with you or have they instilled into you that you were lazy, scatterbrained and absent-minded? 'See what you can do when you try?' always used to burn me because I really really tried.
So many things are just plain difficult, don't you think? Things that other people look as if they find easy...Imagine, there's a chance you could find it easy too and then you wouldn't waste so much energy trying to cope when you could excell instead. I don't want to fill you with hope just to get them dashed, but the chance is there.
What also helped me to convince myself was medical evidence. Look up the physiological features of ADD if you like, it's quite interesting and it has pretty pictures :D
Tell me if you've ever experienced this...
Have you ever been close to sleep, in a darkened room, when a loud noise suddnely disturbs you. Do you see a very fleeting flash of light? I have been noticing this for years and have come to the tentative conclusion that perhaps the auditory and visual bits are badly wired, interferring with each other.
Whaddayoo think?
Blah blah blah I'll shut up now.
Good luck, eh?

'See what you can do when you try?' always used to burn me because I really really tried.Dude I always hated that one too! "Try again, and try harder this time!" :rolleyes:. Did they ever once ask me how exhausting that was? Nope! Had they asked I would have told them I was completely worn out, if I had been able to speak in that state of exhaustion, that is if I were not actually drooling after expending all the brain-juice I had left...and I still would not have been able to tell them why, because I didn't know!

I know now :D.

I got the idea in my head that I might have ADD about two years ago, reading about it online somewhere I think. I read a couple books on the subject, and whenever they got to the "inattentive" part -- yup, that's me, that's my life story. (stop me if you've heard this one before...) That "Inattentive ADHD symptoms" thread describes me to a T.Yep, yep, me too, all the way, "classic textbook case", all that rubbish :D and for a very good reason, too! I am simply loaded with ADHD type Inattentive, and there's the reason. Makes loads of sense doesn't it?

I'm not the kind of guy to take an aspirin when he has a headache though, so I've been trying to tough it out -- it can't be that bad, after all. I've done the exercise thing, the fish oil thing, the L-Tyrosine thing, the no-tv-no-video-games thing, the get-more-than-five-hours-of-sleep-a-night thing, the meditation thing. Can't get anything to pan out in the long term, but then again I never really stuck with any of them.Well now that makes some sense to a certain degree. I do not overmedicate my children or myself for something like a virus, which is gonna pass eventually, nor for a slight fever, which is the body's natural response to an invader and by golly, it works! So true, an aspirin may not be necessary at every turn. Of course if my child is suffering I would help them in any way possible.


Check it out though, ADHD no matter what type is no virus. It is NOT gonna pass or burn itself out, nor will the body develop an immune response to it.


It was kind of my summer project to either get help or stop being so lazy once and for all. I came thiiiis close to seeing a doctor (or something) when I realized that when push came to shove, I really don't have it in me to walk into a doctor's/psychologist's/whoever's office and tell them I'm so lazy that I actually need to alter my brain chemistry with drugs to properly function as a person (er, no offense to the medicated folks out there).Well why would you tell a doctor that to begin with? Didn't you say you had symptoms consistent with Inattentive ADHD? Where did lazy even come into the picture? Last I checked there was a whole lot going on with Inattentives (including me) and none of it was about laziness or lack of willpower or inability to try.
So what lead you to the perception that you may have ADHD may I ask? Surely it was more than a vague idea that you are lazy?

Sometimes I get on a roll though, and really get to reading without a whole lot of trouble. Or I could just read something that I'm actually interested in and have no trouble at all with it. Then this whole "ADD" thing seems really silly and I feel ridiculous for even thinking about getting diagnosed with this quite suspicious "illness" that doesn't show up on any brain scan. Have you by any chance heard of the term "hyperfocus"? Right along with Dr. Hallowell and Dr. Ratey et. al. you might wanna shift your perception of ADHD away from the actual wording...it is not specifically limited to attention deficits, its more like attention inconsistency.

(no offense again, but even at my most demoralized I have to say that ADD at least sounds seriously fake, and it's not too encouraging that every book that I've read on it puts a lot of effort into reassuring the reader that every reputable medical organization accepts it as real but zero effort into actually arguing for its physical reality. The exception is Dr. Amen... the guy whose evidence no one can replicate. Well whooptee doo.)

Yea I heard that, even believed it, for most of my life, because when I was growing up there was no such thing as ADHD. You just needed a good swift kick on the behind (got lots of those), to try harder (believe me I tried!) or just didn't care (Oh, but I did and nobody believed me). Let it sound fake or believe its real...I can tell ya one thing: I got it, tons of it, right here and I don't really care about physical proof of existence. We got lots of very good researchers here so keep digging and you might find the physical proof you want, or be directed as to where you can find it but for me? Proof is in the pudding. I do not need to know the chemical reactions involved to make some pudding. In the end, pudding is still pudding whether I know any of that or not.

Take it one step further (or as I am prone to say "take my hand, let's RUN!") and ask yourself this:

Do you have to understand gravity for it to be real? Proof or no proof, if you stop believing in gravity will you float off the face of the Earth? Did our ancestors understand gravity? Or did they stay right here, bound by it even though they did not understand?


You can talk yourself out of getting help for the rest of your life, but if you have AD/HD, what you have lived with your whole life, is what you will continue to struggle with for the rest of it.
You can believe in the disorder, or choose not to, but it won't change the fact that you have it, if you do.
The bottom line is, you can believe it, not believe in it, call it lazy, call it fake, call it anything you want, try a million things, struggle your whole life, talk yourself out of it all day long, but none of it will change your functioning level if you have AD/HD. It's all up to you on whether or not you get help :).
Could not have said it any better than that, cheers ladym that was brilliant! Your whole post was :D.

And Dissident, she is dead right. If you want to you can also try to teach a bull to sing, but I am willing to bet that the bull will never sing and in the process you are going to seriously annoy the bull ;).

So if I were you I would try talking to a doctor and if that one does not listen, try another. You may not need medication (I am one that clearly does, by the way) but there is a lot you can do with something that you understand to be ADHD, lots of things that would increase level of functioning. Otherwise you might want to take up shadow-boxing.

::shrugs::

I don't mean to sound harsh. I mean to make a point, and hope that I have. I spent way too many years wondering what was up in my own life, and hate to see anyone spinning their wheels when the answer is so plainly out there.

Pain is pain, needless suffering has no need, and ADHD is ADHD.

Good luck to you and keep us posted as to what works for you. Many of us would love to know! :)

So...you would rather just keep going on and on the way you are...to what, prove that you aren't lazy? Don't you think that if you were really capable of all these things you WANT to do, that you WOULD do them?

Maybe. Or maybe I wouldn't. Lotta out-of-shape people out there (like me)... maybe a couple have some kind of weird brain disorder, but I think most of them just like cookies more than they like exercise bikes (like me). And I'm sure a lot of them still beat themselves up over it (I've been known to).

Maybe you're all finding this terribly stubborn, but spending 8 hours on the internet then thinking I might need to go on medication to 'cure' it makes me feel like a lazy hypochondriac. If I'm such a swell guy, what the heck am I doing here, instead of staring at that book I'm supposed to be reading?

(I'm did a bit of staring earlier and I'm kind of worn out on it. Still, I get a lot more done staring at the book than I do sitting here. But I've spent most of the day avoiding the book altogether.)


Tell me if you've ever experienced this...
Have you ever been close to sleep, in a darkened room, when a loud noise suddnely disturbs you. Do you see a very fleeting flash of light?

Can't say that this has ever happened to me. A couple of times, though, I've been awakened by a loud sound, or by someone's voice calling me, only to find out that it was a dream. I don't realize it was a dream in the usual sense because it seems completely real, I figure it out because I must have dreamed it.

Anyway, I'm kind of leaning toward the "I really do need some meds after all" theory, after the last couple of days of doing nothing but not reading that book (Not reading that book is really cutting into my time. Like, I want to watch a movie, except I know I can't because I plan on sitting down and doing a bit of reading in about five minutes. Which I then don't do, of course.)

I sent an email to the counselor at my university a couple days ago and still haven't heard back. I'm not even sure if he's "open" over the summer. Anyway, if he thinks I need to just buckle down and really set my mind to it and eat less sugar, the buck pretty much stops there for the time being, because I have pretty much no money at all.

Well, thanks for the prodding everyone, maybe it'll pay off.

So what lead you to the perception that you may have ADHD may I ask? Surely it was more than a vague idea that you are lazy?


I'll make this another long story:

I've pretty much always had the idea that something might be wrong with me, at least once high school came around and it became apparent that I just couldn't deal with what life was throwing at me at all -- I started failing out of classes and all that. So I read around and thought... maybe insomnia, maybe major depression, some personality disorder or another. I've dealt with some counselors and some counselor-wannabees and none of them were a lot of help or took any of my concerns too seriously, particularly the ones about me not being able to handle college at all. I guess they all figured I'd pull myself up by my bootstraps whenever I felt like it.

I do remember one time, I was going to clean my room once and for all, and I was going to stay up all night 'till I got it done. So I stayed up all night and didn't do it. That was pretty demoralizing; people were asking me "what's wrong?" all day the next day. I remember thinking to myself, "I'd think I have ADD, but I'm not hyperactive and not a kid". Heh.

So a while after that I stumbled onto an anti-ADD thread on some internet forum, and it linked to some site whose theory was basically that "ADD" people are just gifted people bored by ordinary stuff and society should stop pushing them around and making them take drugs and if you think you have ADD you probably shouldn't worry about it because you're just special and you'll be fine. That does sound nice. (that site's still around, don't have a link handy though)

That sparked me to look around, and I took an online test somewhere, I think it was Dr. Amen's. And then I got his book, and when I got to the "Inattentive" section, hey, there I was.

I was once like you, determined to handle my suspected ADHD on my own. It took years of constant frustrations because I was constantly losing things, missing deadlines, failed relationships, financial woes due in part to impulsiveness, and my family harping on my to fix things before I began to see the light. The final straw was when my stubbornness to treat the possible ADHD affected my performance at work so much that I was actually disciplined by my boss. I have even gone so far to forget to turn in my time sheets, which resulted in me not getting paid for a full month! In any case, the day that I went on meds was the best thing I have ever done for myself. Now, I am not trying to preach meds as treatment because people react differently to different things. However, I think that for some people (me included) have to pretty much hit rock bottom in order to make the decision for treatment. I wish you all the best in whatever decision you make!

.....

So...you would rather just keep going on and on the way you are...to what, prove that you aren't lazy? Don't you think that if you were really capable of all these things you WANT to do, that you WOULD do them? Do you realize that that is exactly what AD/HD is all about? That we can't do the things we WANT to do, like the rest of the world can. That is why it IS a disability, because it disrupts our lives, stops us from getting where we want to be.....disables us.

Lazy people can still do anything that they want to do, their problem is not wanting to. They can read any book they pick up and read. They can clean if they decide to clean. They can do anything they decide they want to do, they just don't want to.
AD/HD people "want" to do many things, but "can't", and that is the difference.

I do not believe I have ever read any thing better that describes the difference between being ADD and being lazy! Well written.




You can talk yourself out of getting help for the rest of your life, but if you have AD/HD, what you have lived with your whole life, is what you will continue to struggle with for the rest of it.
You can believe in the disorder, or choose not to, but it won't change the fact that you have it, if you do.
The bottom line is, you can believe it, not believe in it, call it lazy, call it fake, call it anything you want, try a million things, struggle your whole life, talk yourself out of it all day long, but none of it will change your functioning level if you have AD/HD. It's all up to you on whether or not you get help

True. Some how getting help means there is some thing wrong?

Let me help ya out there:

Not getting help doesn’t make it go away it either=burying head in sand doesn’t mean every thing is alright! (no offense)

You will be just as ADD with or without help, You won’t make any more progress and frustration will continue unchanged. Some how doing the same things that have failed over and over makes more sense or makes one stronger? Btw- Who said we were supposed to be flawless?

Nothing will change unless you do some thing to change it.


So a while after that I stumbled onto an anti-ADD thread on some internet forum, and it linked to some site whose theory was basically that "ADD" people are just gifted people bored by ordinary stuff and society should stop pushing them around and making them take drugs and if you think you have ADD you probably shouldn't worry about it because you're just special and you'll be fine. That does sound nice. (that site's still around, don't have a link handy though)

Even after reading this bored gifted crapola, you didn’t simply stop worrying about it because? (you know better-perhaps)

You talk your self out of getting help and figured you would post about it thinking we would? (give you a good reason to)

So I shall . . . . . .

Look in the mirror! If that isn’t good enough reason to give your self all the chances life has to offer (even if that means being on medications) then it is doubtful we will offer you any thing better. It is your life and the changes must be your decision, it is that simple . . . period.

"Lazy" vs. "ADD" was something I struggled with. Wanting to do better, try harder, to change and then feeling horrible I seemed to expend more effort and still couldn't do what comes easily for others. My thoughts weren't specifically "lazy" but frustration and "what is wrong with me that I can't just do this?" and more "irresponsible" or "undisciplined" than one of a lazy sloth lying around.

I got the idea in my head that I might have ADD about two years ago
Me too. I overheard 2 other grad students describing what their lives were like with it and it sounded eerily familiar. So I started reading on the internet, got a couple books. Still wasn't *sure* because I didn't fit profiles exactly, but a lot of overlap. Decided I would observe my behavior. Fall semester came and back to the same patterns, went to someone for help, but had a bad first appointment. Didn't go back and talked myself into trying to change things on my own since I knew some strategies from my reading.

Spring semester came and again, same patterns and I was struggling. Like the person who sought help after work problems, I knew I had a major evaluation coming up that had the potential to seriously complicate things. I decided I needed help (anything so my final year would not be as stressful as the 2nd year) and let my advisor and academic dean know what was going on. I got the name of a different psychologist from one of the people I'd overheard talking about ADD. It was a good fit and I began my work. Have been seeing this doctor for over a year now.

I'm not the kind of guy to take an aspirin when he has a headache though
I wrestled with this a lot myself. I had issues with feeling like it was a crutch or it might mean I was like an addict, etc. etc. although I knew it was probably closer to someone taking high blood pressure medicine or insuline or anti-seizure medicine. As my last Fall semester began I decided to try an ADD med to see if it helped. It *does* seem to help. But it doesn't mean that it's a magic cure for me and suddenly everything goes perfectly.

Whether you decide to try meds or not, I think getting help from a psychologist/psychiatrist who's experienced with ADD can make a big difference. They can offer suggestions, help you be accountable to the changes you are trying to make, help you work through baggage from years of being ADD and not knowing. They can help you determine if it is ADD and then you can stop wondering.

Or I could just read something that I'm actually interested in and have no trouble at all with it. Then this whole "ADD" thing seems really silly
Someone else mentioned that people with ADD are able to focus on things they find interesting or stimulating. I've been known to sit and read a fiction book I'm into all day (hyperfocus anyone?), reading fairly quickly. And this was one of the things that I would point out to myself too. But give me an involved article to read for class, especially if I'm not very interested in it and it takes forever to get through it.

It was one of those nights when I resolve to stay up until I finish what I set out to do, then go to bed at 4:00 AM loaded up on caffeine and scarcely a damn thing accomplished. Maybe you've been there.
Yup, I've been there with many papers (from my BA to a Master's I didn't finish to the one I've just completed). Sometimes I would finish by 2am or 4am, other times I would just stay up all night or sleep for 2 hours and get up early and finish, or keep working and skip my first class in order to finish. And then would feel like something the cat dragged in for a day and a half.

but I've really been able to sit down and do stuff today. ... nothing hard about reading, you just have to sit down and do it. Right? Cleaned up my room too; didn't even hurt.
Maybe it was just anxiety that kept me from getting all this stuff done yesterday?
For me, there were/are those days where things go real easily. See, not so hard, why can't I do this all the time? What you have to look at is what is typical, what is the norm for you. Is this something that happens a lot and has happened for a long time? Also, I do think that stress and anxiety can worsen symptoms.

Sorry this is kind of a long answer to your long post, but I hope it helps. Best wishes as you continue to sort this out.

~~bythesea

So I talked to an LPC today. So I guess this means you guys win?

He didn't even seriously consider the possibility that I might just be lazy or faking it to get drugs, so he's probably some kind of quack.

Anyhow, he gave me a bunch of tests to take, so I'm on that.

Me too. I overheard 2 other grad students describing what their lives were like with it and it sounded eerily familiar. So I started reading on the internet, got a couple books. Still wasn't *sure* because I didn't fit profiles exactly, but a lot of overlap. Decided I would observe my behavior. Fall semester came and back to the same patterns, went to someone for help, but had a bad first appointment. Didn't go back and talked myself into trying to change things on my own since I knew some strategies from my reading.
Hi, I am going through the same academic stuff as you, so I have been following this thread like a hawk. Can I ask what happened/didn't go well in the first appointment that dissuaded you from pursuing a diagnosis?

Just yesterday I had an good appointment with a very compassionate Psych Doc. Were you able to voice your concerns with yours? I totally didn't want to go on meds, thinking that I might conquer whatever inattentiveness or discipline issue by being over-disciplined, but it hasn't been working.
My background is in Neuroscience so I was really concerned with messing up my neurobiology...ie., I was worried about the re-uptake of all of the 'messengers,' the shutting down of the receptors, and long term effects should I wean myself off of meds.

I wanted to private message you in case you didn't want to "publish."
What's the latest?

So I talked to an LPC today. So I guess this means you guys win?

He didn't even seriously consider the possibility that I might just be lazy or faking it to get drugs, so he's probably some kind of quack.

Anyhow, he gave me a bunch of tests to take, so I'm on that.Good to hear you saw someone Dissident, I was pulling for ya!

If believing that ADHD of any type is real and deserves to be addressed then I won long before this thread ;).

LOL @ the idea that the guy is a quack...wondering what you'd think of MY psychiatrist? Not only was he able to spot me as ADHD in one half-hour session with my daughter and skip the testing part entirely? He also happens to be ADHD himself. I personally love the guy, and I bet he would get a good chuckle from the idea of your LPC being a quack. Knowing him, he actually might get up and duck-walk just to hear my kid and I laugh, because he knows how hard it can be to live with ADHD. We all need a good laugh some days.

Good luck with the tests and keep us posted.

Crazy

I totally didn't want to go on meds, thinking that I might conquer whatever inattentiveness or discipline issue by being over-disciplined, but it hasn't been working.

Just a little uneducated observation here:

If you could have over come inattentiveness without help don’t ya think you would have done so already? :eyebrow:

There was a thread think it is in scientific academic discussion area where some guy wanted to know if ADD was that serious and why we just didn’t try harder.


Hyperion came back with some thing along the lines of

“You say try harder as if we hadn’t thought of that already”

He is right we have all tried the “try harder” most of us did so long before getting out of grade school, ADD is our biology. :eek: ADD is the biology of our brain workings, which is different than non-ADD, and laziness! :soapbox:

The medication thing is a personal choice we each have to make for ourselves. :D

Whenever I read on here that someone's in grad school, I'm always impressed. I was planning on going to grad school -- that was my latest scheme to fix my life in one swoop -- but it's become pretty obvious there's no way I could handle it right now.

I saw the LPC again today, and my tests were graded. On the self-screening ADD screener thingy, my score for inattention was 25, but the graph on the page only goes to 21. On the observer-screener ADD thingamajig, my observer put me completely in the normal range, except for energy level, where I was low. The observer was my aunt. I live with her, so either she has some serious rose-colored glasses or, like I was saying, I'm faking it.

I failed the personality test. The LPC warned me that these things were extremely accurate and that I should brace myself for what he called "direct" language. I was bracing myself to hear all of my most horrible flaws laid out in the most brutal way possible, so I ended up being pretty disappointed. The only thing that seemed eerily on-the-spot was when it said I was cynical and sarcastic. It picked up that I'm very introverted, but that's a gimmee. Even a 10-question test could have gotten that.

The rest of it was all this crap about how I'm depressed all the time and hyper-sensitive to criticism and totally self-conscious and emotionally fragile and anxious, and I just wasn't buying any of that. I guess I can kind of see it to an extent, but it's not the way I think of myself at all. Or maybe I'm in denial. I basically tried explaining that I'm not really depressed, I just hate my life and fail at everything I try, but I'm not sure if he was totally buying it. I do have a history of depression, which we talked about in the first session, and he thought at the time that I might be bipolar, but he seems to have dropped that theory.

So the LPC says I either have depression or ADHD or both. I offered the possibility I might have neither, but he disagreed. The rather sad fact of the matter is that I'm probably happier now than I've ever been.

So the next step is to see my doctor. Wait, isn't that the first step? Looks like seeing the LPC was step zero, and so thus far, I've pretty much accomplished nothing. A year and a half from now I may be ready to get my Adderall prescription filled -- and I'm ready for that, I guess, as just based on past experience, there's realistically no chance that my behaviour's going to change without drastic measures. Well, in the mean time, I have to come up with a list of symptoms and make an appointment. And I get to go back and see the LPC again on Thursday.

So the next step is to see my doctor. Wait, isn't that the first step? Looks like seeing the LPC was step zero, and so thus far, I've pretty much accomplished nothing.

I wouldn't call it nothing although I can understand why it feels that way. Getting help for ADD can be a real ~not~ ADD friendly thing to have to go through. I remember feeling like if I have the attention span to get through this doesn't that mean I could not possibly have ADD?

*NOT*

But I do understand the fustration! ;)

Hooray, I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for... August 14th?

Jeez, does it ordinarily take this long?

Hooray, I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for... August 14th?

Jeez, does it ordinarily take this long?In my experience, yes it does take that long. If I had not already had a child seeing the same doctor? I would still be waiting for my first appt. to come round :faint: yes over 2 months!

Crazy (hang in there!)

I feel that depression and guilt are sometimes a direct result of add/adhd. I know that I have no qualifications to diagnose anyone but having lived with this my whole life, I realize that I felt depressed about all of my failures and guilty for frustrating my parents and wasting alot of their money on 2 semesters of college. I also felt guilty for not being a better provider for my wife and kids. The underlying reason for many (not all) of my failures was add. Therefore shouldn't I be able to conclude that had I been diagnosed and treated at an earlier age, my failures would have been fewer? And if my failures were fewer, wouldn't I have less to feel depressed or guilty about?

I still have the feeling that most of my problems are still my fault, and I don't know what I really expect medication to do.

Over the next three weeks I'll see what I can do with regular sleep and less internet time. And then maybe I'll actually having something to complain to my doctor about.

Try not to be too hard on yourself. It's not about "finding fault" it's about finding treatment. Go to the doc and be honest and open and see what happens. Don't let problems from the past ruin your future.

First of all Hooray for you, glad to hear it.

Second of all yes it can take awhile even here in the US (Europe and other countries it can take six months=in which case I will have forgotten about appointment and ADD)

I still have the feeling that most of my problems are still my fault, and I don't know what I really expect medication to do.

Let me appeal to your curious side . . .ya aint going to know until you try.

Medications open up a portion of my ability I didn't even realize existed. The most startling revelation was I am actually an organized person. I am god at making simple easy to use system that work not only for me but others people as well . . . if you had grown up with me you would call that amazing!

D-day (DOCTOR day) is Monday, and you know, I'm starting to chicken out again.

I've had a very good past couple of days. Coincidence? If I could keep this up it would be silly to go complaining to a doctor.

Ah well, I suppose I'll go anyway, but at this rate I hardly know what to say.

Hi sbgrace:
I'm glad you had a good appointment with the psych. I think you may be confusing Dissident who is struggling with diagnosis, with my comments about facing some similar issues, but eventually I *did* find someone I went back to on a regular basis and it helped a lot. I'm fine posting about what happened.

In my first appt with the guy I didn't go back to, I'd voiced my concerns, and he did a history, but somehow in the history and the rest of our discussion he seemed more interested in talking about my dating life (or lack thereof) than in my academic problems and concerns about ADD - which was what I wanted help with.

He is ADD himself and actually took his afternoon med as we sat down to begin. He had overbooked his afternoon with several new people which was draining, so by the time he got to me he was tired. He was literally half-falling asleep the first few minutes as I spoke to him - definitely not a good attribute in a psychologist. To his credit he realized what was happening and said sometimes it helps if he walks up the hall (physical movement) and gets a soda. So he did that. Either his med kicked in or the walk up the hall worked because he was awake and attentive after that.

However, since we didn't really focus on what I came there for, he gave me no suggestions about how to proceed with figuring out if I was ADD, didn't really seem to validate my concerns and that I had some real issues I needed help with. To me it just felt like going back would be a waste of my time and money.

Later when I was feeling again like I needed help and needed to do *something* about this, one of the first people I'd overheard discussing ADD happened to be in town and gave me the name and number of the psychologist she had gone to. I made an appointment and went. This person is also ADD so not only knows what it's like, but also knows what it's like to do graduate school with it - which is helpful. But he was not half-falling asleep, has never taken his med in front of me (although I think he's on one that lasts all day), and even though he asked personal and background questions while taking a history, they seemed appropriate and not off on a tangent. We seemed to have a good rapport and I got the sense that I was being heard and he had some good suggestions for how to proceed. So it seemed like this would not be a waste of my time and could be very helpful, so I went back and kept going back.

Hope this helps answer your question.
~~bythesea

Hi, I am going through the same academic stuff as you, so I have been following this thread like a hawk. Can I ask what happened/didn't go well in the first appointment that dissuaded you from pursuing a diagnosis?

Just yesterday I had an good appointment with a very compassionate Psych Doc. Were you able to voice your concerns with yours? I totally didn't want to go on meds, thinking that I might conquer whatever inattentiveness or discipline issue by being over-disciplined, but it hasn't been working.
My background is in Neuroscience so I was really concerned with messing up my neurobiology...ie., I was worried about the re-uptake of all of the 'messengers,' the shutting down of the receptors, and long term effects should I wean myself off of meds.

I wanted to private message you in case you didn't want to "publish."
What's the latest?

D-day (DOCTOR day) is Monday, and you know, I'm starting to chicken out again.

I've had a very good past couple of days. Coincidence? If I could keep this up it would be silly to go complaining to a doctor.

Ah well, I suppose I'll go anyway, but at this rate I hardly know what to say.
Woo Hoo! Doctor day is approaching. Definitely go, it shouldn't hurt and it may really help.

It took time to get this appointment, if things start to not go as well again it will take you that much longer to get another appointment. Listen to and evaluate what your gut and what your LPC have been saying about this being a real issue. Don't look at the few days each month that go smoothly and everything seems to fall into place without effort. You have to look at the big picture, look over the last month, months, years... is it a chronic problem? Do you have these problems more often than not? Do you see a pattern?

Also about depression - depression is listed as a comorbid with ADD/ADHD and often that's the presenting issue. Only when digging deeper is it sometimes discovered that a contributing factor to the depression is undiagnosed ADD.

Have you read any of the ADD books out there by Hallowell or Dr. Brown or Kelly & Ramundo? If not I definitely recommend it. It's amazing to see in print someone else who struggled with similar issues. It's validating and you realize you're not just making it up.

One word of caution about your doctor appt. and going on meds. If you decide to go on meds, don't just go on meds. Keep seeking counseling to help you through this and the baggage that it's caused and also to work on structuring your life in a way that doesn't work against your ADD.

Also know that finding the right medicine and right dosage can also take time, you don't necessarily get it on the first shot. It took me a few months to find the right med and a dosage that seemed to work well. Fortunately I only tried two different meds. Started on Adderall and tried a couple different doses but was not myself on it (for others it works great and is often the first that doctors try, unless they try a non-stimulant first).

You should be able to have your same basic personality, and I was more serious and intent, not as cheerful and light-hearted (although this was not as evident to me as to my psychologist and a friend's observation - I only really noticed the difference on a day when I hadn't taken the med and was feeling lighter and more like myself that day). Next I tried Concerta and I felt like myself. Tried a couple doses and found one that seemed to work.

It's possible that some other med could work as well or even better, or maybe not, but for now I'm happy with this one. My psychologist thinks that if I decide to go off meds I may do okay because I won't be in the same chaos that juggling aspects of working on a Master's required. I may try it. Definitely going back to school highlighted and worsened my symptoms, but even when I wasn't in school they were there. My profession and my work week is going to be erratic and require some juggling and structure, so I definitely won't be going off meds at the same time as I start my first position, that's for sure.

All this rambling to suggest 3 things:
1) Keep your appointment
2) Keep going to counseling
3) Be aware that it could take time to find the right med/dose and it's not a cure-all. Like glasses can help me see better, they can't tell me what to look at. Same with meds - might help us to stay on task, or break out of hyperfocusing, but they can't tell us what to focus on... that's my choice. I can choose to focus on homework, or on reading my email.

Best wishes for a fruitful appointment. Hang in there!
~~bythesea

I have Delivered from Distraction and I'm Not Crazy on my bookshelf, I think I've read something older by Dr. Brown too, if he's the guy I'm thinking of.

Doctor's appointment was pleasantly straightforward. He was a nice guy and took what I said at face value instead of telling me what must really be wrong with me, or that I was imagining it.

So now I have a date with a psychiatrist on September 20. I'm due to go on meds sometime in spring 2037.

I have Delivered from Distraction and I'm Not Crazy on my bookshelf, I think I've read something older by Dr. Brown too, if he's the guy I'm thinking of.

Doctor's appointment was pleasantly straightforward. He was a nice guy and took what I said at face value instead of telling me what must really be wrong with me, or that I was imagining it.

So now I have a date with a psychiatrist on September 20. I'm due to go on meds sometime in spring 2037.
I seriously hope this is a mis-print....and it's supposed to be 2007?
In which case....why so long? maybe I missed too much of this thread. But if you have been trying taht long to get your crap together...and finally made it over the hump to get into to the doctors....which deserves a pat on the back...you need meds...simply put.

It's my opionion..and you can take what you want and leave the rest. But man I am telling you, I am inattentive...ergo the sloth at the bottom...and short of dynamite..and some peer coaching, time managment etc...nothing but meds will probably slow that mind down enough to get the body going.....just my thoughts..and again...meds are a choice.......but how about trying it then making a informed decision...you know what it's like without..it's not like if you take them for a couple of months you can't stop? If you dont' like, don't take, but don't knock em if you don't try em....You might have a whole world of gettin off that duff and getting er done...
Let us know how it goes okay?

So now I have a date with a psychiatrist on September 20. I'm due to go on meds sometime in spring 2037.

Allow me to label the above:

“sarcasm” ;)


seriously hope this is a mis-print....and it's supposed to be 2007?

No no misprint. Hurry up and wait thing we all love so much! :eyebrow:

Considering you are in Texas this is a long time to wait though! :confused: This can be due to the use of public facilities? Really busy doctors are like good restraunts! If you are in West Texas, say around the Midland area I know of a great ADD doctor! I can be PMed should you be near that area!

I'm in central Texas (Killeen). If I won the lottery I'd go see a bribe a specialist to open up a spot tomorrow, but in the meantime, I go where I'm referred, when I'm referred.

I'm not even that annoyed about having to wait anymore. My expectations of what I'm realistically going to be getting out of this are really low, especially in the short term. Reputedly, stims frequently don't work well for people that are 100% inattentive, and I've been on a number of antidepressants to no avail, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up. I wouldn't be shocked if a year from now I'm still fiddling with med doses in the hope of finding something that justifies the cost.

I'm just looking to be able to say, "Well, at least I tried." What are you on, justhope?

In the meantime I've done nothing but sleep and sit at the computer for... I don't want to think about how long. Looks like I'm going to fail this class I am, unless I get a sudden burst of non-procrastination and do the past couple weeks of work in a day or two.

Seems like stimulents would work very well for inattentives, so far there isn't a reason to think they wouldn't. Stimulents in low doses helps non-ADDers focus better some people would easily teater into the hyper focus element ; in higher doses it make NTers hyper active like I am naturally. According to medical science the ADD is caused by the same neurotransmitter difference weather one is hyper or inattentive thus the largest portion of our population being combined type with elements of both inattentive and impulsive ADD symptoms.