Ask me about childhood and adult ADD.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about childhood and adult ADD.

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

Hey everybody! I am on my very first dose of Ritalin LA and had a question about a seemingly contradictory reaction. I am more calm than I have ever been in my life. No need to fidget, no need to look around the room and I actually paid attention to the lecture I was just in. While this is awesome, I am at the same time, a little jittery. Is this normal? Will this improve the longer I am on it? I am also experiencing some nausea and wondered if taking my pill with food will help.

To add to the convo on delayed diagnosis, I am currently 23 and just receiving treatment for my ADHD. I was always a really nervous and depressed kid, so I have been in and out of treatment for that since 13, but ADHD never came-up. Looking back, it seems obvious what was really wrong, especially since last time I was on anti-depressants I dropped out of school, got into debt and generally acted irresponsibly.

Its weird being diagnosed and realizing the things that you thought were just you being lazy are actually part of the disorder. Like someone said a page back about not putting their sheets on their bed for three days. I have done this exact same thing and always just thought I was a crappy unmotivated person for it. My mom is always getting pissed at me for not calling back after she leaves me a message. Sometime it will take me weeks to call her, because it just seems like such a big thing. In reality, it takes about 5 minutes... When I was telling her about my diagnosis, she actually asked me if ADHD makes me hate my mother and I had to explain to her how my constantly being frustrated at her over little things was just my disordered reaction to every little stress in my life. It was devastating.

Also, I don't know if ADHA genetic, but my grandma took my mother to the doctor for behavioral problems when she was a kid. My mom was the youngest of 9, so my grandma knew a thing or two about raising kids by then, but still couldn't figure out what to do with her. The doctor told my mom she was just too smart for her own good and she should listen to her mother :bang:

.

Wow, kind of wrote a novel there...

SquirrelFace fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Apr 6, 2010

# ¿ Apr 6, 2010 18:47

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 20:37

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

To all the people not diagnosed until adulthood, did you ever feel a sense of loss over all the things you could have done, but didn't because of ADHD? Looking back at all the lessons and clubs and activities I dropped out of as a kid makes me feel like I missed my chance to be a good pianist or dancer or whatever. If I had stuck with Spanish instead of taking up three other languages, maybe I would be fluent. If I had stayed in gymnastics, maybe I would be an athlete. I know its crazy to let that stuff get me down now and I am hopeful, but I'm just angry about it.

The worst is that when I was on anti-depressants a few years ago, I dropped out of school without dropping my classes and failed everything. My anxiety and depression were really good at keeping my behavior in check and with those gone I went a little wild. I have since pulled my poo poo together since going off those meds, but with a whole semester of F's, my GPA is so low I could never get into grad school. Now I just tell everyone I don't want to go...

# ¿ Apr 7, 2010 22:50

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

extraneousXTs posted:

Find a good counselor or support group (whatever works for you) to help herd your brain away from thinking about this poo poo too much.

The anger is a tough thing to have hanging around. Don't think it will ever go away in some aspects, especially not the resentment towards my parents and how hosed up attitudes about symptom description/diagnosis are for girls and women (boys are hyper while girls are neurotic/hysterical/histrionic).

In the future, after you get leveled out and in a routine: See what your doctors and the school registrar can do about dropping or remedying those class grades from that semester. Write a letter to the school's president if you need to and explain that there were extenuating medical circumstances, what they were and what you've accomplished since then and your fears about grad school. At least make the effort so you can say you've tried if you really honestly do want to go to grad school.

Thanks for the advice. I am also seeing a therapist in conjunction with a psychiatrist and I plan on talking this out with her next week. I had thought about asking if I could get those grades changed to incompletes or something, but wasn't too confident about it. Now I think I'll give it a go.

And yeah, I feel you on that gendered diagnosis criteria bullshit. My over-sensitivity and easy frustration wasn't a symptom when I was younger because "girls are just more sensitive" and I just had low self-esteem. gently caress that!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2010 01:53

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

RobotEmpire posted:

We have many of the same symptoms, though I have opposite problems with writing. I don't believe in proofreading. Though I don't think this has anything to do with ADHD for me but sheer ness.

What medication are you on? I'm on Wellbutrin (just started recently) and am hoping to specifically avoid those two side effects. It's actually why I'm on Wellbutrin. I asked my doctor to give me something that didn't have obsessiveness/depression ("I don't want to be laying in my bed crying myself to sleep for no reason in six weeks.").

Also for anyone who's taken Wellbutrin, how long does it take to get full effect? Yesterday I both felt and was told I seemed much more focused at work. But I'm like 95% sure it's just placebo effect. I've only been on two days of full dosage.

I also didn't proofread :ssh:

, since my brain and nerves were usually too fried by the time I had finished writing to even think about re-reading it. Just finished my first paper I wrote while medicated. I finished it, proofread it, and made a coherent argument throughout. Most importantly, I still remembered my thesis by the end of the paper.

I don't have any experience with taking Wellbutrtin, but it was offered to me as the slow-path medication, so I'm assuming it takes at least a few weeks like most anti-depressants do.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2010 19:37

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

Hobo Tickler posted:

The reverse. I wonder what life would be like if I hadn't spent the greater part of my teenage years on stimulants. Yes, they helped me get things done. I listened to everything the teachers said, I got in the top 2% and came first in all math subjects. I studied programming and taught myself C, Assembly, and Pascal at 14 (among other things). But godamn I was weird. I was chatting to a kid today (I'm 29) who'd just started on Ritalin and he seems exactly the same. He wouldn't shut up about his various boring interests. It was like the kid's mind was on fire, and his enthusiasm and dedication to his work (he works near my workplace on the weekends) were 'unnatural' in my opinion. Volunteer work? Sign him up.

I mean godamnit people it's natural to find certain things boring. Ritalin will without a doubt make concentrating on uninteresting tasks easier, it will help you peruse and understand legal documents / poo poo they throw at you at work much much easier. Just keep in mind to a large extent our interests define us, and if your interests are 'loving everything' you may develop personal problems (yes, like I did), tics, nervousness, depression and other side effects the medications may bring you over time. You'll win accolades from everybody who wants you to read everything technical / legal / very bland though.

I just got a job at a firm. I still fall asleep / think about monkeys if what I'm studying is like a 500 DVD player manual with all the pictures taken out, but I get by. Occassionally my lateral thinking takes me on tangents relevant to the issue being considered, I come up with new ideas, and this is valuable too. I'd like to add on this point that if I read only 100 pages of something without a stimulant, I recall and retain that 100 pages better than if I'd read it on drugs (much better it seems).

It seems to me many of the people posting have life issues they'd like to find an excuse for and are perhaps too eager to get on drugs (it's a loving drug) and believe it will solve all their life problems. As someone with behavioural problems, perhaps the same ones you share (impulsiveness, depression, monkeys) I think if I hadn't had bad experience with amphetamines I'd be tempted to go on them as well.

There is a sort of idealism that comes with first being medicated, but that wears off. You can say that stimulants made you weird, but that just means you shouldn't have been on stimulants, not that no one else should be. And since when is enthusiasm a bad thing?

But sure, if it makes you feel better about your own dysfunction, believe that everyone here is just out to get drugs because we have other "life problems." We're all just so lazy that we can't even do things when we want to. And :ssh:

I'm on Ritalin and still find this book I have to read for class boring, but on the drugs, I can actually remember what I'm reading.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2010 02:59

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

Well you obviously came in here just to stir poo poo up, so I don't actually care. If medication makes you weird and you can manage without it, then hurray for you. Medication makes me feel normal, so I'll keep taking it.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2010 04:32

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 20:37

SquirrelFace: Dec 17, 2009

Sekhmet posted:

I know this was a month ago and we've moved on to like 10 other topics by now, () but I just want to comment and perhaps provide a little bit of encouragement. I agree with XTs here.

I am a late-diagnosed (at age 27) ADHDer (have posted in this thread previously). I graduated from high school in 1999, had no real idea what I wanted to do afterwards and spent a long time screwing around in college, transferred universities and got a degree that I didn't really care about with a very mediocre GPA (around 3.0 cumulative). Then I decided I wanted to go to vet school (high standards for admission) and afterwards my grades got better but still not good. Finally after my diagnosis, I got my poo poo together but let me tell you, after 2 bachelors degrees and like 200 credits, that cumulative GPA just isn't going to budge.

I've been medicated for about a year and a half, and have done quite well in a thesis based MS (that I sort of lucked into...your stats don't need to be AWESOME for an MS/MA, and there are ways to fund yourself if you're very determined). Anyway, I applied to vet school for the second time this past year, and I wrote a good statement explaining (but not making excuses for) my past performance and talking about how I've changed the way I approach things and understand how to study effectively and stuff, with concrete examples and a 3.91 graduate GPA to back it up. I was accepted to my first choice with a GPA far below the class average (though other aspects of my application were well above).

I guess the point of that ramble is that if you really really do want to go to grad school and are willing to put a lot of work in, you can still do it.

Thanks for the encouragement! I am trying to get the grades from the semester I dropped out excused for medical reasons since I was on anti-depressants that fixed my anxiety, but not my ADHD. It was a disastrous part of my life, not just in school and I'm hoping they will take that into account. I know that significantly raising my GPA will not be possible in the short time I have left in undergrad, but I am hoping that the good grades I've gotten in the past 2 years while not medicated plus the Awesome work I am doing now that I am correctly medicated will be enough evidence that I can compete on a graduate level. I also met with my favorite professor and he basically said he would help me with anything I needed, even when I'm not in his class. I think I'm going to take a year and spend it working in the Caribbean (my area of study), learning Spanish, French and whatever Creole languages I can before going to grad school. So, yeah, I am banking on: working crazy hard + explanation of past behavior = grad school, but we'll see what happens...

# ¿ May 9, 2010 21:13

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