Is ADHD a real disorder?

what sort of drugs are prescribed if you have high anxiety/ocd/depression as well as ADD/ADHD?

i've found that wellbutrin knocked out my depression (p much) and that helped with my anxiety. it also helps alleviate adhd symptoms, not as completely as adderall did, but it makes them more manageable and is indicated for treating some cases of add

ok that's interesting; i was curious since adderall et al seem like they could really exacerbate anxiety.

yeah... adderall is amazing for what it does, but i think it ultimately is playing with fire when it comes to anxiety/depression. doctors seem suspicious when i tell them that; they seem to think it's a good thing. i did have to go back to it for a while to finish my masters degree. there's nothing else really like it when it comes to reducing adhd symptoms ime

but like, i never want to go near it again, if at all possible

(other people do really well on it though. everyone's brains are different)

I've generally experienced a lot of ADD/anxiety/depression comorbidity, and when the ADD symptoms are alleviated, the other two tend to fade (which makes sense to me, as most of the anxiety or depression I've experienced is as a result of being overwhelmed by focus-related stumbling blocks). Although I acknowledge, as Treeship says, that that obviously isn't going to be the case for everyone

everyone's brain is different but mine is the same as Treeship's apparently. (with the masters degree too.) also sleep is more important than anything else.

i've managed to beat so much of my ADHD. i don't think it's anything lifestyle-related like sugar intake. i just became a more organized thinker. i still chase stimulation/dopamine like crazy, but i concentrate better. i think i had to force myself into doing it. it was one of those things where i became resentful of my neurotypical peers for retaining information really well while multitasking or otherwise paying the absolute minimum amount of attention, while i struggled with concentration and retention even as i was listening intently and taking good notes. me not taking that stuff for granted helped me become kind of a rock star of paying attention.

adderall has been the one thing to help me with my chronic depression and social anxiety.

i think adderall can be super helpful for depression and social anxiety at the right dose and assuming all else is equal (ie youre not an insomniac etc).

hey i'm feeling like... maybe this is me? i have always had trouble dealing with periods of depression and generalized anxiety, but i've only recently come around to the possibility that i might have attention issues as well. my executive function is, let's say, inconsistent at best. i've resisted any sort of medication or diagnosis for any condition for a long time for misguided personal reasons. being a caretaker for a chronically mentally ill sibling will do that, i guess, not because i distrust psychiatric medicine but more because i internalized the role of "the healthy one" during that time. but anyway... i think i need help here.

whatever you decide to do or not do, hopefully you'll find it freeing (as i did) to realize your focus problems aren't a moral failing

xp

i've been on adderall xr once-daily for 12 years and it's been nothing but helpful - before, i always felt my mind could never rest and it like, caused tangible pain via stress and exhaustion and absolutely horrible sleep habits.

it's certainly worth looking into, especially if you think the concentration/mental restlessness issues are exacerbating things like the depression you mentioned.

I quit Strattera because it caused (temporary) impotence, like really bad. Unfortunate, because otherwise I kind of loved it.

The moral failing aspect of taking meds is something I want to throttle people over. It's like, meds have their place, you fuckin' hippie.

I'm sensitive about talking about it out loud.

But that feeling of dread, ennui, pulling yourself up to accomplish This One Task... coming home at the end of the day and feeling like you did nothing... all of that after awhile looks an awful lot like depression.

That's the way it was for me. I tried a few anti-depressants, and it didn't work right. Felt worse.

Once I was diagnosed with the ADD and started getting medication for that, things dramatically improved. Best part is that I'm not a little mouse in a wheel like I was worried about becoming. I'm not scared or as anxious about projects at work anymore. I can sit down and look at the household bills with a clear head. All of those things have kept me off the stairs with my head in my hands lately.

I'm sensitive about it because I still feel like I'm cheating somehow. I will say thought that damn, I might've graduated college instead of dropping out after two-and-a-half semesters had this been around.

But that feeling of dread, ennui, pulling yourself up to accomplish This One Task... coming home at the end of the day and feeling like you did nothing... all of that after awhile looks an awful lot like depression.

this rings so true for me it's sickening

ADD meds and antidepressants helped me survive 6 years of undergrad engineering classes, that's fer sure.

everything you just said pplains rings exactly true for me as well. Except I'm no longer feeling like it's a cheat. It took me a long time to come around to that, but I now don't think it's any more cheating than taking a round of antibiotics for tonsilitis is cheating; you are not well, and there's a clear way to get better, and other people aren't taking antibiotics because they don't have tonsilitis.

It's also valuable to realize that if you need to take add meds, then by taking them you're almost certainly making the lives of the people around you better. After I took them, I was able to repair the nearly-broken-beyond-repair relationship with my father which was largely spurred by the fact that he thought I was a good-for-nothing lazy so-and-so.

In my experience and opinion, depression and anxiety have generally followed ADD symptoms (e.g. I get depressed because I'm not following through on shit that should be easy to follow through on). At any rate, if you think you have a problem, see someone. It's the first step towards digging out of the quagmire.

(Says the dude who inadvisably went cold turkey off his ADD meds and his professional help at the worst time imaginable and still hasn't gotten it together enough to rebuild that bridge five years after the fact. Gah.)

amphetamines were advertised & prescribed as antidepressants back in the '60s

http://www.decodog.com/inven/MD/md28730.jpg

read the fascinating book On Speed for more info

Adderall changes lives. But if it stops changing yours after a while, if you don't lose the low points, go back again and don't be afraid to talk about bipolar disorder.
Mental health is an amazing thing and everybody should have it. Taking pills to have it is fucking awesome. It's not cheating, that's for sure.

I'm finding that being a middle school teacher requires a good amount of organizational and time management skills and I feel fucked

i really appreciate the encouragement, folks. to be clear, i don't feel there's any moral failing for getting treatment for mental health issues. being a caretaker was a huge challenge, in the sense that my brother's mood disorder / schizophrenia tended to make my own mental health concerns seem trivial in comparison, and also that his illness made it necessary for me to be well. i've come around from that view, and it figures that since there's a fair amount of MH issues in my family, it's probably unwise to think of myself as an exception.

my depression symptoms, while recurrent, have never been terribly severe, and definitely have a lot to do with feeling ineffectual and having trouble following through on tasks. comorbid adhd makes some sense, and the experience that pplains described really hit home.

many intriguing posts itt, i am recognizing myself in a lot here, i've never taken meds though or received a diagnosis (i've never really sought one tbh). i have been in therapy for 5 years and it has helped enormously with so many aspects of my life - self-esteem, self-care, sexuality, ability to articulate and connect with complex emotions, etc., but i my procrastination is off the fucking hook and pretty much has been forever. it's been particularly bad lately, like tasks that i am STRUGGLING to even initiate after weeks and weeks and pretending to colleagues that i am super busy with other stuff when i am really just struggling to get anything done at all. it's getting kind of fucked up, like colleagues are starting to notice (or at least i'm aware that they are noticing - i'm sure other colleagues have noticed in the past)

like i've always relied on the stress of the DEADLINE but in my work deadlines are pretty malleable for the most part and i just postpone and postpone and postpone. the number of times i've said in emails "sorry for the long delay, but i've been completely buried with other stuff recently" is little alarming. tbf to myself i do have a lot of personal shit going on, including parenting two young children (one w/ autism), balancing work/family/marriage/self-care, dealing w/ an in-law's heroin addiction but when i'm at work i am pretty much cruising ILX and other places on the internet

part of my career choice was definitely based on the realization that I need a lot of deadlines and structure to work well

I think I actually feel more guilt or shame about stuff like that than I do about medication -- it's like "I should just be able to create my own freelance career/run my own business/etc. Why can't I just do that shit? Why do I need to be a cog in a machine to function?"

I guess in that way I'm very susceptible to all that boomer/millennial mythology about finding your passion, designing your bespoke life, etc.

Cheating:

Maybe it's not a "gaming the system" or "playing unfair" kind of cheating I feel. Maybe I'm just not used to medicine that not only makes me feel better, but dramatically improves portions of my day-to-day life.

You take aspirin when you have a hangover and eventually return back to 0. You take chemo and feel like shit for six months to get back to a point where the good news may be, guess what, you're not going to die of a fatal disease this year. You take acid and see the universe, but your day-to-day definitely gets interrupted and then there are those darn back spasms.

With what I'm taking now, there is no downside. I sleep well at night. I'm capable of taking care of my shit during the day. If anything, I may have gotten a raise in the past year for taking on more projects.

There's still a depressive, fatalistic part of me down inside my guts somewhere, but most days, I don't even notice it's there and neither does anyone else. Except my wife.

I was in college in 1992. If someone had told me, "you can't get out of bed, walk to class, pay attention, study your chapter and prepare for a test? How about I give you a pill that will take care of that?" I wouldn't have belived it. And in some ways, I still can't wrap my head around it.

But shit works, p.

how do i go about getting diagnosis & treatment, if this is what's going on? i'm currently shopping for a new physician because i don't particularly care for / trust my current PCP, so i'm reluctant to go through him for a referral. there are mental health clinics around that accept my insurance but tbh i don't know what to look for in a MH care provider who's not a LCSW / therapist.

I went to a therapist at first. She referred me to the psychiatrist who now handles my prescription.

I picked the therapist basically from a generic online profile, like what you'd see on here. I think it kinda helped that everyone works for the same clinic. Even my pharmacy is in the same building. Instead of the psychiatrist having to leave a message on the Walgreens voicemail, they just walk it down the hall.

I don't even see the therapist anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

btw when I said moral failing I meant guilt around not being able to "just get shit done".

I _still_ have huge issues with self-perception as a nogood lazy etc despite getting a lot of attaboys at work since i started treatment. but it's a lot better than it was.

patron sailor if you are already seeing a lcsw they can refer you to a psychiatrist

i am no longer in treatment with my lcsw therapist but i realized i have friends who work in behavioral health so i'll be looking to them for assistance here

I _still_ have huge issues with self-perception as a nogood lazy etc despite getting a lot of attaboys at work since i started treatment. but it's a lot better than it was.

Co-fuckin'-sign.

While taking Adderall I was fired from 2 jobs over 3 years. I've stopped for good now and the greatest parts are 1. I'm no longer late wherever I go and 2. A lot of lost memories are coming back which is down right glorious tbh

I'm finding that being a middle school teacher requires a good amount of organizational and time management skills and I feel fucked

― Treeship, Thursday, November 12, 2015 4:51 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg hit me up via the emails so we can talk about this; I can help

Can't you two get samples from your students?

am i alone in thinking this thread is completely wtf omg, as far as the original posts go before the jump?
i assume people differently, now. . . ? (adhd isn't in my life, still, though).

people feel differently*

i vaguely want to defend it -- there was a cultural moment in the UK where ADHD was suddenly 'a thing' and there was a massive jump in infant diagnoses, without a large-scale response or plan being put in action as to how to train people to deal with it in education. so there was a lot of cynicism about it from the POVs of teaching and child-rearing. that said, the kind of outright denial of its existence seen upthread is kinda gross.

my first awareness of ADHD was private school classmates who used the diagnosis in the academic setting to have extended time for test-taking. diagnoses weren't as fully widespread as they later became, and all of these classmates came from wealthy families so there was a general sense, at least on my part, that any underachieving rich kid could essentially pay for the diagnosis & get a leg up on their peers. that's an uncharitable view of the condition, but it took a few years and having a college roommate with severe attention issues for me to accept that it could be a real thing.

i did well in school and always tested well, but i had really bad time management and procrastination habits and struggled to complete homework on time, which was generally ascribed by my parents and teachers to 'laziness' and lack of discipline.

How's it going, patron sailor? Did you seek help?

I think I have ADHD. Or maybe I'm just a lazy scatterbrain with an all-devouring internet addiction. I dunno.

Sometimes I fool myself: lazy + disorganised + forgetful + internet addiction + thought-derailing noise sensitivity + the thought "if I do badly everyone will think less of me" makes me freeze up on tasks = huh, that's a lot to add up, maybe ADHD wins by Occam's Razor! But obviously "lazy" and "internet addiction" are simpler than having a neurological disorder.

And I admit, I did well at school despite always forgetting to bring the right books with me, do the work on time, etc. If I remembered, I would usually get on with the work (although possibly largely due to my parents checking up on me, and always last-minute - if nothing was due the next day I'd take the evening off, no matter what else was looming). I don't remember being totally unable to concentrate despite wanting to until age 17+. But things went really off the rails at university, and I've never got it back together.

I miss deadlines at work. I'm always late for work. My home is permanently a cluttered mess. I have ideas and intentions and never seem to finish them - mostly I don't even start on them. If not for direct debit/standing orders I could never stay on top of bills. All this stuff runs in my dad's side of the family; I think I overheard that my uncle was recently diagnosed as ADHD, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were others.

But tbh I don't think the NHS would diagnose me anyway. They seem not keen on diagnosing it in adults, they emphasise hyperactivity and early childhood symptoms, and it's supposedly underdiagnosed in women. Plus I have a history of chronic depression (though this stuff is a problem no matter how my mood is) and I've worked at the same (underachiever-friendly) place for years rather than having the characteristic unstable work history, so those are two other things which might rule me out.

I'm mainly typing into the void, but if anyone has any thoughts or experience with adult diagnosis, esp in their 30s+ or as a woman or non-hyperactive or in the UK or despite any of the other impediments above, I'd be interested. Thanks. Sorry for tl;dr.

Feeling yr self-diagnosis so much tbh

I am currently sat at a table full of cluster with loads of empty booze bottles beneath it, next to the dog bowl. I grew up in a neighbour from hell type council-house abode and it all feels quite normal to me. My grandma had 20 odd cats and was an obsessive hoarder, my mother has less extreme but similar problems. I am sorry I can't offer any more to this thread other than just simple recognition. but can say with some confidence that you are definitely not alone APS and all the best to you.

Even yr username screams 'ADD' ('spacecadet' was my childhood nickname, too). Even if you never get anything from the NHS, I hope you remember to be kind to yrself