I am new to ADHD treatment, and am desperately seeking some solutions. I've suspected for some time that I had an ADD personality, but it has never been a huge issue until I started emerging from a pornography addiciton. Now I am starting to believe that somehow that addiction was a means of coping with my ADD.

I have been working on overcoming my pornography addiction for three years, but have only been seeing success in the past 3-6 months. In that time I have had major success avoiding my porn addiction, but my work performance has suffered tremendously. I can't focus, I can't keep my tasks straight, and I can't seem to pick up the pieces when I get back to a task I've left for even a few hours.

I used to spend an hour or more each evening browsing porn and masturbating, which I knew then and know now is a destructive habit, but was unable to quit. It interfered with my relationships, but never seemed to interfere with work. Now I'm wondering if that activity in some way medicated whatever is going on in my brain so that I could actually function? If so it is obvious that I need to replace it with a healthy coping mechanism.

My physician recently put me on Strattera, and that initially has really screwed me up. I can tell I am thinking differently, but again I can't seem to focus or pull things together. I am already reconsidering this step, as I think it is just a shot in the dark from a MD that doesn't have a broad understanding of ADD and wants to address symptoms.

I am at a loss right now. From my initial foray into these forums and other related sites I am getting the idea that I might need medication, but more likely I need some counseling and mentoring to learn to cope properly. I am starting to see my ADD not as an overall liability, rather something that gives me certain strengths, but also many weaknesses that need to be addressed.

I am not sure how to go about finding the resources that I need to succeed here. Help!!!

Re- -- I don't know anything about sexual addictions, but I do know my story with alcohol, recovery, and ADD. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was using the alcohol to medicate the ADD. It's pretty easy to imagine a connection which involves dopamine. I now know that it was a way to mitigate the attention issues which are my ADD. (Maybe it was also a way to escape, but that was only part, and not the most important part, of the story.) I got to the point where I had to quit drinking, and that left me defenseless against the ADD. In a sense worse off than I was before - because my coping mechanism was gone.

So perhaps the part of your past that you label "addiction" served in a similar way - be it neurological or psychological. It was a way to distract you from the distraction - if you get my drift. Maybe flooding your brain with those orgasm-related chemicals was similar to what I was doing with booze.

But that's really neither here nor there. The "can't focus, can't keep things straight, can't pick up the pieces" sure sounds like ADD as I know it. And if that is true (find a doc that knows about ADD and get a real diagnosis) then meds are the most important part of moving forward. If you could get counseled out of ADD more of us would have done that. Strattera helps some people (down in the one or two-in-ten range), but not as many as other meds, my doc has given up on even trying it. Just by raw numbers, the probability that it is the med for you is low. And your experience seems to support that. You need to find a doc that will stick with you until you find the med that works for YOU. Some will, some won't, hopefully one will be a standout. Unfortunately the only way to find the right one is trial-and-error at this point.

Have you tried exercise?

(Strattera was initially attractive because it isn't a controlled substance like the other main-line ADD meds are. Easier to prescribe, and not a worry for people known to have addictive tendencies. The fact that I have a history of subsance abuse made docs, quite understandably, nervous about prescribing the Adderall which turns out to be best for me. We've gotten past that.)

Good luck -- u

Thank you for sharing your experience! That is exactly what I am feeling, that leaving my addiction has left me unable to defend against my ADD issues. My physician has taken me off Straterra, thank goodness, and referred me to a behavioral psych who I am meeting with next Tuesday.

Not looking forward to the trial and error phase as I have so much catching up to do at work, but thankfully my boss is supportive. I have tried getting consistent with excercizing for some time (not necessarily as a coping mechanism) but like a lot of things have been unable to stick with it. I'm going to try to get back to it. I have several co-workers that play racquetball.

If it really is ADD or ADHD then meds are your best bet, by far. That's just the statistical odds. If your doc thinks that ADD is NOT your issue, then you might think about getting a second opinion, just for your own piece of mind (find someone who knows ADD. In my town that doesn't neccessarily mean a psychiatrist. Some of our best are GPs or pediatricians.). If your doc thinks it IS ADD, but is unwilling to try any med besides Strattera, then you need a new doc. Or there is something else in your background - like a speed/meth/cocaine problem. The mainstream meds (Ritalin etc. and Adderall etc.) have a success rate of many tens of percent (maybe 80-90% - someone correct me). Strattera success rate is quite low. So is therapy by itself.

I'm not trying to burst your bubble or be a wet blanket. But a firm diagnosis by a competant doc is an important first step.

(Well, second step? For me the realization that it was ADD, that there was a reason behind it all, that I wasn't just a lazy, stupid screwup, was tremendously liberating. To the point that it really was a major first step.)

Thanks again. I'm not expecting to get off without needing meds, but I do believe counseling is a big part of it. I plan on searching until I find the right professional that I can work with.