I just started my second year at college. The summer after my senior year of high school, I finally decided to see a physician about my inability to focus. My SAT scores were outstanding and for the first half or so of high school I was able to get by with very little work, but especially during senior year, whatever system I had developed to do this started to fall apart as I was taking more difficult AP courses. I had tried everything I could to simply force myself to study effectively, but even if I spent good amounts of time in a distraction-free environment with my books, I simply could not stop my mind from wandering. This was especially frustrating because I did sometimes have periods of hyperfocusing during which I could take a difficult problem (such as for my computer science course), completely "wrap my mind about it" and work on it intently until it was solved. I got many Cs in my senior year of high school and knew that I needed to do something before heading off to college.

I discussed the problem with my primary care doctor, who while a normal internist has an interest in ADD/ADHD, especially in adults, as a result of having the disorder himself. After talking about the symptoms I had inside and outside of school for about 45 minutes, he said that in his opinion, ADD/ADHD is a clinical diagnosis and he thought it would be worth trying medication. He started me on Adderall XR, and I am currently taking 30 mg/day. It works extremely well - no real side effects and for the first time I can remember, I feel like I can sit down and force myself to focus on something when I want to. I finally feel like I am accomplishing things to my potential. I understand the logic behind the need to see a specialist for a more formal diagnosis for these conditions and I wouldn't mind doing so eventually, but to be honest, I'm not going to mess with what is working.

One thing I have noticed while on Adderall is that when I am handwriting text quickly, I sometimes transpose letters in words. This does not happen enough to really be an issue -- if I am in an hour-long class and frantically scribbling notes down the whole time, it might happen 3-5 times maximum. I haven't noticed anything different from normal while typing, only when writing by hand. I've never had any trouble with language skills before and I've never had dyslexia or anything else, and I seemingly never make mistakes like this while not on the medication. It's absolutely minor and nothing I would want to go through changing medication or something to get rid of... I'm just curious about what's going on.

Could the Adderall be involved with this? Does anyone have any similar experiences or anything about the reasoning behind why it could happen?

You're getting the 'jitters' I think. Adderall is a stimulant - it 'stimulates' you - makes you more active, more aware, more alert, etc. It may make you more talkative and ...not 'hyper'...but 'jittery'. Maybe you should drop your dose to 20mg a day and see how that goes?

You're in college and I think your college probably has a students with disabilties office. Go there and get some accomodations set up - they can get you a note-taker or set it up so you can take tests in less distractive environements or get more time for test taking, etc.

For the first month or two on Adderall, I was makin' loads of Word Salad. Not to worry. :)