Is ADHD a real disorder?

I was diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD inattentive-type ) when I was a teen. Put me on Ritalin, which didn't make much of a difference because I wasn't actually trying to DO ANYTHING back then. I didn't care about doing good in school, so even if I was on the right kind of medicine, I wasn't applying myself toward anything. Stopped taking Ritalin after a year or two and just went about my life to mixed results.

I recently came across all this old paperwork where the psychiatrist was discussing my diagnosis and it hit me with stunning clarity - this is a huge part of why my life is still so ramshackle as I'm approaching 40. Now that I can see the connections between this diagnosis and my behavior and the things that are going on inside my brain, I really want to get back into treatment for it. I'm currently using all my medical money to pay for braces for my kid though. Some day.

Regarding ritalin though, I'm scared to try it. I also have a huge insomnia problem and I'm worried a stimulant could make that go badly.

most ritalin variants don't last super long in your lboodstream, the type they usually start you on is like... 4 hours? when i started on it i took one to wake up and another around lunch to get me thru the day. no sleeping problems, if anyting the "down" made sleeping easier. search my name on this thread for more of my thoughts on it, all of it stands except for holy fuck i am so much fatter and older than i was then (that was 2007?!)

seems to be basically impossible to get a diagnosis in the uk unless your an upper-middle class naughty child

I sent more specifics in my email marcos, but one thing I will say I have found really useful is that, since ADD is often triggered by anxiety, try to identify the source of the anxiety. Sometimes it is a specific thing you need to get done that you are apprehensive about doing, and when you do that thing, it unblocks you and makes it easier to concentrate on other things.

check yr email marcos

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Wednesday, April 4, 2018 2:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank you!

ymp <3

ADD and anxiety and depression are most definitely comorbid ime, and it can be difficult at times to determine which is triggering which. I know from my own experience that the frustration of trying to overcome the ADD symptoms (or dwelling on the extent to which I'm failing to do so) can often trigger the other two.

I take 10mg of Ritalin twice a day and it doesn't affect my sleep at all. They're my 'getting stuff done at work' and 'getting stuff done after work' doses, and the latter has plenty of time to fade away before bedtime.

Cool. Good info.

I started seeing a psychiatrist for clinical depression years ago and tried several different anti-depressants to no avail, stopped drinking and drugs altogether and suffered until one day in desperation, I took one of my son's Vyvanse and suddenly everything changed. My wife noticed a change within hours. I was finally paying attention to her. I think my ADHD manifested itself as depression because whenever I wasn't engaged in something that held my interest, my thoughts would turn to how terrible everything was. I've been on vyvanse and Lexapro for around 5 years since. my psychiatrist wasn't aware of a connection between depression & ADHD at the time, but was of the mindset that whatever works to combat depression is worthwhile. And since both my father and son were diagnosed as ADHD, it made sense that I would have it too.

ymp that does sound like progress. part of the impetus for questioning whether i have adhd has been the work we're doing w/ my two sons - the older one w/ autism and the younger one, if not autism, then prob ADHD or at least some autism traits. thinking about some of their challenges, the genetic overlap, and considering okay yea that might make sense when i think about my life too

I had a lot of trouble sleeping on Ritalin, which was ultimately why I stopped taking it. Just to add another perspective. It was still worth taking for a brief period of time, just for the confidence boost. It permanently changes your sense of what is possible when you are able to easily do things that you formerly had struggled with, and (for me at least) you stop thinking of failure in moral terms, and more as a practical matter of inputs and outputs.

It was a very bad idea for me to take it regularly, although of course everyone is different.

i was just diagnosed this morning. i had a few appointments with an attention disorder specialist, we did a bunch of tests over the past few weeks. it feels like a relief to now be starting treatment

hardest part was taking the TOVA test under instructions to avoid my regular coffee intake this morning, it was really not fun let me tell you

inattentiveness is generally much more of a problem for me than hyperactivity or impulsivity, all the self-reports and questionnaires indicated that but the TOVA test indicated much bigger problems w/ impulsivity

It permanently changes your sense of what is possible when you are able to easily do things that you formerly had struggled with, and (for me at least) you stop thinking of failure in moral terms, and more as a practical matter of inputs and outputs.

reading things like this have made me so hopeful about medication, we'll see how it works out but i am just tired of not being able to do things that i want to. like read a book. i haven't read a book cover-to-cover in about 8 years. i read a lot but that prospect of reading something from beginning to end has always seemed like a truly impossible task for me

Feels weird to congratulate someone on an ADD diagnosis, but I guess at least congratulations on taking those first steps.

I just finished the 3000-pg., 3-volume MLK biography. A minor accomplishment for some but it's totally not a thing I would've had the focus or wherewithal to stick with pre-meds. Reading stuff for college took me FOREVER and involved ensconcing myself in the most quiet and remote library carrels I could find. Now I read on a crowded commuter train without an issue. You can get there, dude.

I'm on pretty much the same ADD tip as you, sounds like. I honestly kinda wish I'd gotten a little bit of the hyperactivity so that, y'know, adults might've noticed something was up and gotten me treatment as a kid rather than just assuming I was being a PITA slacker whose output was irregularly correlative with his ability.

I honestly kinda wish I'd gotten a little bit of the hyperactivity so that, y'know, adults might've noticed something was up and gotten me treatment as a kid rather than just assuming I was being a PITA slacker whose output was irregularly correlative with his ability.

haha otm

thanks old lunch

see that is amazing about that 3000 pg book. 100 pages has been overwhelming for me. even long form articles take me a few days to read right now.

Good luck marcos! Congratulations on taking these steps.

I had always written my loss of interest in reading as a result of forcing myself through too much literature in college. But of course the pre-existing ADD is probably a huge component.

OL, I wasn't stealing your congratulations btw. It just took me a while to formulate that post.

It's an incredible bummer when you feel like you have to force yourself to stick with a thing you enjoy doing, and incredibly disheartening when you reflect on how many enjoyable things you've ultimately discarded as a result.

No worries, buddy.

first day on adderall, this feels super weird! it is a stimulant obv but everything feels slowed down so much. like i can do one thing at a time deliberately and mindfully. living and making decisions deliberately, god that has felt so elusive to me. i just sat through two hours of meetings and didn't have to open my laptop at all or fidget in my seat or hop around to a million places online just to survive the meetings. i was able to listen and be an active participant.

I'm jealous. Haven't been able to talk to a doctor about going back on medication yet, but I'm definitely keeping it in mind.

Oh yeah, meetings! That's one of those things I take for granted these days. Just got out of one. Painful, boring, the works. Sat alert and attentive (if ultimately uninterested as hell) the whole time.

I guess this is only semi-relevant, but I was watching the movie Heat for the first time and I really liked this quote from Pacino's character: "I gotta hold on to my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be."

I was thinking that that's a big part of overcoming ADHD for me is figuring out what motivates me and then holding onto that. Sometimes it's a false sense of danger, sometimes it's a need to please others, but whenever I have the motivation I work much better and focus harder.

Do you feel like if you didn't need to work or fulfill any social obligations, ADHD would still be something to overcome?

I do wonder that sometimes. I think so, because it makes it harder for me to accomplish even projects that I want to accomplish. But maybe my entire sense of what I should be doing with my time is so overrun with capitalist influence that even "personal" projects take on the qualities of work.

man alive, one of my past therapists referred to that as 'productive anxiety'. As opposed, one assumes, to the variety of anxiety that's more-or-less paralyzing. And, yeah, it's super helpful to figure out what triggers both.

xps

i wonder about that too. i was listening to a podcast with henry rollins the other day, who is clearly hyperactive and talked about being prescribed ritalin as a child and a teenager (he eventually stopped taking it in high school), and he has basically filled his whole life only with things that are interesting to him, and he's incredibly prolific and lives a fulfilled, active, and busy life. it made me wonder whether i could build a life like that, but man, it is hard. life is full of administrative tasks that you just have to do, or maybe you can be successful enough that you have other people take care of those things in your life. but on a day to day level there are just things i have to do that i don't necessarily want to do. there also things i want to do that i have not felt capable of doing (reading books, initiating and sustaining some hobbies). there are parts of my job that i hate and that i'm not interested in, sure, and i wish i had fewer of those obligations, but i've been struggling so much even (or perhaps especially) with the things at work that i really am interested in and want to do but don't know how to initiate and see them through. so many of the major projects at my job i've had on my list for a year and they are things i want to do but have just not been able to focus the attention or summon the motivation to do.

Sometimes I think of my goal as being to just keep slogging through the stuff that's hard for me until I get to a level where I can delegate all of it. I have certainly worked for people who I have a feeling are similar and did the same.

ugh i slept horribly last night. didn't fall asleep till probably 1am and woke up every couple of hours until 6:30 or so. just felt wired all night despite taking the adderall first thing in the morning. does that go away once my body gets used to this stuff a little?

IIRC, there was a period of general adjustment, but I think different people just react differently. I've had pretty much no issues with sleep at all (but a very pronounced stretch of bad insomnia during the year or so that I was off meds altogether). Dosage may be a factor, so you may want to bring it up with your doctor if it's persistent.

good to know, thanks! i see my doctor in a few weeks so if this persists i'll definitely bring it up. dosage felt right all day, just was a little hard winding down before going to sleep. we'll see how it goes

it is kind of incredible that with this medication my work becomes way more stimulating and engaging than fucking around on the internet. it's like reward system in my mind is altered. i went on twitter for a few minutes and was just like "this blows, let me get back to work"

on concerta 54mg and missed a dose today for the first time in quite a while (first time missing a does on a work day in probably YEARS) and holy fuck am i useless.

it is kind of incredible that with this medication my work becomes way more stimulating and engaging than fucking around on the internet. it's like reward system in my mind is altered. i went on twitter for a few minutes and was just like "this blows, let me get back to work"

― marcos, Friday, May 18, 2018 8:47 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this describes how I feel when I get like three good nights' sleep in a row, which is really rare. I'm like, wtf, why would I look at my smartphone? There are beautiful trees around me.

I dumbly stuck my meds in my pocket last weekend on the walk back from the pharmacy and subsequently lost them (shout out to the solid dude in my neighborhood who opted to have some fun instead of making any effort to return them, hope their street value served you well you massive douche) so I was doling out a bottle of ancient pills I found with a different dosage until I could get a refill this weekend. Boy, was I ever discombobulated last week and boy, do I ever feel more on the level today.

Like, this is my insanely busy time of the year at work and I was barely keeping it together. I went home every day feeling like I'd run a marathon with no prior training. Doin' a-okay today, though, despite being no less swamped.

Best of luck to those struggling and glad for those making progress.

Tangentially we tried my son on Adderall for a week a year ago. It was... not pretty. Shrieked for hours, trashed his room, emptied all the bookshelves onto the floor.

Now I have a mostly-full bottle of expired amphetamine salt. On the one hand I could throw them out, on the other hand - they may have street value and could be used as barter in the coming zombie apocalypse.

I am pretty skeptical of giving stimulants to children, although I'm not really qualified to say it should never be done

The conventional wisdom is that it's a paradoxical reaction (it chills kids out and revs adults up) but in the real world the reactions are very person-specific.

I think I'm glad that I wasn't popping bennies as a young'un. I'm not convinced that it's such a good idea as a catch-all for ADD-afflicted kids.

Something that is giving me somewhat of a fresh perspective on my own situation is that I've been tutoring/'mentoring' (god help him) a kid who, although not formally diagnosed afaik, is definitely dealing with his own attention issues (which is, I think, the implicit reason why he was assigned to me specifically). As difficult as it can be as an adult to articulate my own difficulties and needs, I'm realizing it's like quadruply hard for a ten-year-old to talk about what he's struggling with. His frame of reference is so limited that this is all he knows. So much of my goal when I work with him is to monitor his reactions when I ask him about his schoolwork and, whenever he's clearly bored or disengaged with the topic of conversation or the gaze kinda drifts away and the foot starts shaking manically, I brainstorm and try to find any method I can to make the topic engaging for him. Which more often than not involves visual aids or something hands-on (one of the few things he's explicitly articulated to me is that he vastly prefers doing a thing to being lectured about a thing). The difference when I find an 'in' is like night and day. I've historically not given nearly enough thought to the different ways I can approach a thing that brings out my best 'Paul Rudd with a lunchtray' impression, but watching these techniques at work (techniques which, natch, obviously exist inside of me and are being underutilized in my own life) is giving me lots of food for thought.

I mean really I was taking prescription decongestants for a huge part of my childhood and those contain amphetamine-like stimulants too. But I don't think it was good for me.

Well-adjusted stimulants are sanity-keepers for many kids and their parents (and teachers). That said, they’re effective when managed with other therapies and skill-building around self-regulation, not as a substitute for discipline/routine.

The anti-medication contingent strike me add yay close to anti-vaxxers, with similar rationale, and I don’t know how to explain to them the foolhardiness of shutting down a potentially viable approach to ADHD management for (essentially) superstitious reasons.

Yeah each family's situation is different and they should figure out what works best for them etc. etc.

However I think it's important that any CNS / psychoactive / mental health medication should (IMO) have the right to be seen as medicine to the same extent insulin is.

Nobody is all up in a diabetic kid's grill like "why can't you just manage without that stuff?" Nobody goes up to someone with a broken arm and says "you know, I'm not sure that cast is good for you."

Just FTR, in case I was unclear, I am not against ADD meds for kids.

there's a lot in this thread lately that really reasonates with me especially marcos's experience but i feel like i can't afford to exist right now let alone get health insurance, see a doctor, take a test, pay for a prescription, etc. my ability to function at a basic level just feels so impaired compared to everyone else around me, i constantly space the most basic shit and i get really depressed because of it. i tried zoloft for depression but it made my spaciness worse and just made me feel flattened out tbh. i took an adderall once recreationally and it was incredible, i suddenly felt like i could focus on everything in front of me like one thing at a time and seen them all through, start in the most logical place to start and work through each thing i needed to do in order. n.b. i've done other uppers before like coke or meth but they weren't that great.

I started using Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse) for my add about 2 weeks ago and it's been a life changer so far.

Started studying again recently and having massive anxiety/panic problems. Kinda glad to know I'm not alone, and that meds might help; not so great to know some of my favourite posters are going through the same shit I am.

so because of the somewhat shitty setup i have with my doctor and pharmacy i had a couple days off my meds through no choice of my own and it really drove home how fucked i am if everything collapses and i can't get my stuff. back on concerta today is a bit of relief but yesterday was so bad that i called in to work and said i'd be late, then just didn't show up or email ot say i wasn't showing up, finally got my prescription delivered to the pharmacy (thx to my gf calling the doc/pharma multiple times to ensure it happened! no CHANCE i would've done this myself given my state) but didn't even make it to the pharmacy until it almost closed because i was so useless.

that post was so winding and pointless that i'm wondering if like the drugs haven't fully kicked in or if missing a couple days has a lagging effect lol