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Need advice from someone who has ADHD
Tidus53
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm a high school kid with ADHD and I always have the same problem. every time I try to do something I always distract myself and end up screwing myself over whether it's in grand or small ways. I'm wondering if there is anyone else on this site that has ADHD that has found away to get over this hurdle?
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Go to a doctor. Talk to them. Possibly get drugs, possibly not.
/thread.
Seriously, there is no better advice for this situation than this post.
Ask your doctor about it, he'll give you a questionnaire to fill out which can be used to diagnose whether you've got ADD, ADHD, or chronic depression. Answer it honestly. If they put you on medication that isn't working out for you there's at least half a dozen alternatives and then dozens of generic copies of each of the alternatives.
Regardless of what those goosey commercials claiming that you can just 'get over it', if you truly have the condition, the only real solution is to find the right medication.
There's a school of thought going 'round that ADD / ADHD aren't 'real' medical conditions, and that the diseases were invented by Big Pharma to guilt parents into buying drugs. This same school of thought blames all of the symptoms of ADHD on poor discipline, laziness, etc.
This after years (might be decades, now?) of neuroscience giving us actual brain scans that not only concretely identify it as a disease (much more concretely than even schizophrenia, I might add, which no serious person doubts the existence of), but show us exactly how it works.
Gnome Tank is definitely right: go to a doctor to get a proper diagnosis, and see if you can get medication. You can't 'get over' ADHD anymore than you can 'get over' type 2 diabetes. You have to treat it.
Do something about it now. Go see a doctor.
this, I am 40 and had a pretty rough go of it in my 20s as well. Ignoring it or self-medicating are not long term winning strategies.
GIS is evil
Feel free not to answer if this is too personal, but how did you decide it might be time to seek out a doctor? I feel like the line between I'm lazy/a procrastinator, and I have adhd can be pretty blurry. Posting this in the middle of my work day, on a forum I've spent more than 20 minutes looking at, is probably not a great sign.
Go see a doctor. Honestly.
For me it was when I realized my life isn't what I wanted it to be and it was because I couldn't focus on my life or job or anything.
ADHD sucks. It sucks a lot. It especially sucks because there are a lot of people who still think it's all made up and that you just need to work harder. It's like telling someone with one leg that they should be able to walk just as well as everyone else if only they tried harder. The ADHD brain does not work that way.
Even if you find a medication that works for you, it usually isn't a cure-all. It's a long-term process of figuring out how to manage your strengths and weaknesses.
When I lost my second job for goofing off at work despite knowing I shouldn't be doing it...but somehow not being able to force myself to focus enough to do it. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I paced at home worried I was going to get fired, no matter how much I said "This has got to stop, I'm going to be fucked"...I couldn't focus enough to do my work. I knew I had a serious issue then. I'm normally an incredibly strong willed person, I can will myself to do a lot of things...but I couldn't will myself to stay focused on my job.
My opinion? It probably did. I think a lot of my issues with playing too many video games, and not being attentive at times, was due to focus issues. Video games have always been a mental bastion for me because they are complex enough and dynamic enough to keep me interested and feeling like I'm learning, which is one of the things that helps me focus.
Over the last year, I've been able to broaden my life out a lot. I still play video games, but I get out more, I do things now. Even if some of those things are decidedly geeky (like going out and playing Warmachine a couple times of week), the point is that I'm out and doing things and not just in front of my computer 24/7. I have the focus to go play a few rounds of Warmachine now, I had trouble with that before.
EDIT: There is some work on utilizing cognitive behavioral therapy to blunt some of the more frequent, low-level elements of self-sabotage common to ADHD, but as far as I'm aware, groups offering that service are only in major cities like New York (Mt. Sinai comes to mind) and cost to the tune of a few grand. Adderall is significantly cheaper. You'll still need to relearn a few behaviors after you start medicating (if you start) in order to reach optimal efficiency, particularly in the organization, planning, and commitment departments.
If drugs are where you want to head, there's no shame in that if you have the condition. I had various personal reasons for trying some more natural things first.
e: To not get too deep in to the personal reasons, but to also not sound quacky or whatever, stimulants can be dangerous to me for various reasons, and so my doctor and I wanted to approach them carefully. This is not modus operandi for ADHD.
There's a lot to be gleaned from this post, OP. I find intense exercise very helpful (I lift heavy 3x/week). Getting your micro and macro nutrition up to snuff will help as well. Getting enough protein in your diet (the RDA is nonsense), getting a good blend of vitamins and minerals, and getting a good balance of Omega-3s vs. the far more plentiful Omega-6 fatty acids will do a lot. I've also found experimenting with the structure of my daily routine to be useful. Personally, I don't work well when given massive blocks of unstructured free time, so I've tended toward a field of study and a professional life characterized by structure and rapid deadlines. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to recommend hobbyist levels of playing video games, but a lot of us on these forums do it anyway.
Being in my early 30s I have very distinct periods of how my ADHD has influenced my life. In high school I was the kid that got straight A's until junior year because up until that point I never had to study to understand things. Once I hit AP chem, calculus, etc., that was no longer an option, but as I couldn't study worth a darn, my grades suffered and, because it was the late 90s, no one really cared at the time and just assumed I was lazy/stupid (I'm not kidding, my math professor called me stupid).
I immediately went to college and the being unable to study was debilitating. Plus, as I gotI older my energy level went through the roof and keeping still was almost impossible. I also regularly fell asleep in class despite ample sleeping because I would get bored and my brain decides that when it gets bored it's going to shut down. I received my ADHD diagnosis when I was 19, prescribed dexedrine, which helped for one term and then went side effect city on me, and so I left college.
I enter the working world at 20, get prescribed Ritalin, which while maintaining my focus, also removed any and all filters between my brain and my mouth and made me a total asshole. So I stopped taking that. For the next five years I work without medication, and I am helped by getting a job at Costco, which was physically demanding and always engaging.
Seven years ago I'm prescribed Strattera, pretty much the only non-stimulant ADHD drug out there, and it helped so much that I was able to go back to school. While it hasn't been perfect, it does help keep a lid on the hyperactivity enough to help me focus on the tasks before me. Additionally, I self-medicate with lots of coffee which helps my attention, eat well, exercise frequently and generally do my best to stay on the level.
That doesn't mean life's easy. Heck no. It's still hard as hell, but you learn a lot about yourself and what works and doesn't work for you along the way.
I chose to get help about 7 or 8 years ago, and I only wish that when I was in school, there was help to be had. I was labeled a "bad kid" or "problem child" and shipped off to a vocational school to learn a trade so that i could "make something of myself". I also enlisted in the Army, which at the time sucked major goose grease, but in the long run was the single smartest thing I'd ever done.
First, make sure that your parents are aware that you're having difficulties, (assuming you're of high school age). Do NOT self medicate. Many people who have one illness or another find things that help them short term (legitimate and otherwise) but without proper attention can only do you more harm.
2nd Start with a Dr, (of which I am not) and not just your family Dr, but a specialist, a psychiatrist. You may Also need a therapist, but that's going to be for you and your other doctor and perhaps your parents to decide.
3rd If you are prescribed medication: Take it, Always, forever, exactly as prescribed. Many of us (people with a mental illness) will take our meds when we're feeling bad, we'll get to feeling better and decide to take ourselves off of them, as they're no longer needed. This is NOT true.
4th Find help from friends and peers, even if they're on the internet. I'm a semi-active member in both the OCD and Bipolar discussion groups on Google+ and just having someone to talk to, who knows what you're going through can Really help.
ADD/ADHD are Real problems, and people who feel that they are not, are not the people you need to be listening to.
/gets off of soapbox.
I talked to my dad about this, he also suffers from ADD and he definitely attributed his failed marriage with my mom in some part to it.
Looking back, it's so obvious, and now that I'm being treated properly everything has improved significantly. My mom still asks "can't you just....tell yourself to focus?" Some people just can't wrap their heads around it, I guess.
When I first got my diagnosis it all made sense. Suddenly my life wasn't 100% crap 99% of the time, and I started finding hope and began to actually like my self a little.
Often times symptoms are made worse by a lack of proper nutrition and can be helped simply by taking a good multivitamin (Note: I am not saying this is a cure.). I have had positive results with keeping more focused throughout the day since I started taking 100mg of Rhodiola every morning. Pycnogenol is another herb which has been found to improve hyperactivity and sharpen attention, concentration, and visual-motor coordination. (I do not have any personal experience with this one and it is very expensive.) Both of these herbs have a lot of research to back them up.
Something else that I started several months ago and am kicking myself for not doing sooner is write down everything. I keep a small notebook and a pen on me at all times. I start every day by skipping a line and writing the date. If someone says something that sounds interesting and I want to remember it, I write it down. If I think of something I have to tell someone and can't do it literally that second, I write it down. If I have a text I haven't responded to that needs an answer, I write it down. If I need to remember to take chicken out of the freezer for dinner, I write it down. If I ask someone at work to make sure the recycling gets taken out, I write it down. Everything gets written down and I cross it off when it is done. When I look at my list I can see everything from the past 4 months that I didn't cross off and ask myself, "why didn't this get done?"
It has helped me so much with work because (for example) I can go back and look and see that 2 weeks ago I talked to an employee about not using their cell phone on the floor and, oh look, there they are doing it again. Or "how come that recycling didn't get taken out yesterday?" Before I was writing stuff down I would have seen the recycling didn't get taken out, but I would have forgotten to talk to the person for three weeks because I kept getting distracted and by then no one remembers!
At home it helps me not get in trouble with my husband ("Hey, I thought you were going to take some chicken out to thaw?") and remember that I have a load of laundry in the washer that needs to get changed over at 12:45.
The only medication I had an issue with was Stratera, which is a non stimulant piece of shit.
The only side effects i've suffered from on my medication (Concerta) is slight insomnia. But I smoke pot or take melatonin when that happens.
So see a doctor or mental health professional. There is really no "but" to be involved here.
I tried Dexedrine for quite a while and didn't enjoy the side effects at all (too much of a physical stimulant) - I was on Concerta for about a year and generally speaking that's about the nicest stuff you can buy right now. So I've heard anyway. From a drug efficacy stand point. It was certainly effective, but I didn't really like what it did to my sleep cycle, and in the end I decided that I was better off without it.
I'll put it this way. I've found that ADHD medication can be a blessing and a curse simultaneously. What it did to me was dampen my ability to notice and subsequently respond to distractions when I was trying to concentrate on a particular task. Indirectly, this led to a having a more impaired perception of passing time. The reason this can be both a good or a bad thing is that it works whether you're doing something you "should" be doing, or doing something you "shouldn't" be doing. For example, I'm absolutely awful with picking or scratching dead skin. Been that way since I can remember. On medication, I think I have a better time resisting the urge to pick, specifically when I'm trying to concentrate on something else. But if I DO end up giving in, I go at it without really stopping for quite a while because I'm not really paying attention to what I'm doing.
That's my overly simplistic answer, but I hope that kinda jives with the experiences you guys had.
Also, has anyone found it helps with paying attention to people talking? I get lost when I listen to people even in normal conversation. I ask people for help they spend like 5 minutes explaining something, and it all goes over my head. The only way I learn is to visually see it or walk through something step by step. It's like aviation wasn't a problem for me because it was more physical, hands on type learning, there's a lot of stuff like that for me. Any ponderous intellectual activity just frustrates me.
I'm curious. Why were lectures ineffective, but assistance from TAs and tutors was effective, for you? It seems that if you "get lost when I listen to people" that would apply to TAs / tutors as well.
If you have been diagnosed, like Sentry specifically stated, go visit a psychiatrist specifically. There is some talking intermixed with the drug prescribing, so you'll be able to tell them if something is helping or not.
This is something that definitely bears repeating. Pretty much anything you put into your body to get some effect is going to have possible interactions. It's rare, but some can be pretty nasty. And even if it's not nasty, a lot can interfere with the actions of other drugs.
I'll also echo everyone else who says if you think you might have ADHD, get it checked out. I realized it after college, and I'd probably be having a lot less trouble right now if I'd managed to study for longer than ten minutes at a time. I definitely feel like I was completely sabotaged in my success by something easily treatable, and it's just generally super shitty to feel like the only records you can show people to prove how good you are are you performing extremely suboptimally.
Anyway, I'm going to try it, sounds like people have a lot of regrets making the realization after it could have helped a lot.