After years of ADHD symptoms and struggles — dating back to elementary school — Jeff Siegel was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 46. That diagnosis was “bittersweet,” says Siegel. “On the one hand it’s a relief, you know exactly what the answer is,” he says. But on the other hand, there’s fear too — that it’s something you can’t get rid of. [ Click here to read the whole post ]

Oh. Before I forget. I should mention that the ADHDer referred to in that Everyday Health post is me.

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Random Thought Number 1023

Random Thought Number 847: I’ve figured out how to deal with my seasonal affective disorder. No more depression for me. This year I’ll remain in panic mode in anticipation of the depression. That’s progress, no?

Random Thought Number 621: So when extraordinarily creative and successful people like Steve Jobs leave their mortal coil, must we assume that they had ADHD? Just wondering out loud because it seems that some people make that assumption. (Attila the Hun was extraordinarily creative and successful. Was he an ADHDer too?) The real question I have is this: when ADHDers make this assertion about someone’s ADHDness — whether or not it is true — are they really saying something about the person who they assume has ADHD or are they really trying to say something about themselves? I don’t mean this in a mean or pejorative way but anyone who has ADHD or lives with an ADHDer knows that ADHD is debilitating. It is not manna from heaven and it is not a gift from the gods. It simply “is” and it “is” something that you have to confront – whether you embrace it, curse it, or try to ignore it like a mosquito – every single moment of your life. When you are awake, when you sleep, when you have sex, when you weed the garden, when you drive your car, you have to deal with your ADHD. The only known escape from ADHD is death. Short of death, you have to live with it and deal with it. So, again, I ask the question, what are we ADHDers really saying about ourselves when we assume that someone famous has ADHD?

A Message From Our Sponsor: The person providing the best answer to the question, “What are we ADHDers really saying about ourselves when we assume that someone famous has ADHD?” will receive a free Slap Chopper. Contest ends 11:59PM on October 1st, 2011. Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

Random Thought Number 768: I’m confronted with the same problem that I had in 2007. I believe that Adderall is helping me to feel normal but I have no clue what “normal” is supposed to feel like. How will I know “normal” when I see it and live it? I’ve never seen the world (or myself) the way others see the world (or myself). Is the medication making me “normal” when I decide to stop writing and cooking and growing vegetables and, instead, throw myself onto the sofa, flip on a football game and yell at my wife for not bringing the beers fast enough? Is that what “normal” is?

No? That’s not it?

Oh.

I get it.

“Normal” is supposed to be about accomplishing your goals in life. Interesting.

So what happens if those goals are unrealistic and, therefore, are never achieved? Are you still “normal”?

Random Thought Number 933: Remember that “mess” that I described in Random Thought Number 1023? Well, here’s a random thought based on that random thought. (Still with me?) That mess is the externalization of the internal mess in my head, a result of going off of Wellbutrin and Vyvanse. Though getting off of those medications has put me in touch with my inner porn star, it has also resurrected the internal AND external Chaos of the ADHD weltanschauung. Those medications, it seems, only masked and suppressed Chaos and once they were out of my system the Chaos was back.

Perhaps it was naive to think that I could circumvent physics (the Conservation of Chaos assures that chaos cannot be created or destroyed). But it is disappointing to see that the years of Wellbutrin/Vyvanse induced “normalcy” did not have a lasting effect.

Random Thought Number 621 (cont’d): We’re really trying to make ourselves feel good in the same way we identify with a sports figure or team in order to make ourselves feel good. Through some sort of magical transference “their” good fortune – hitting home run number 500 or winning a world series – rubs off on us. We all want to feel like we’re a winner, so we identify with winners.

By the way, there’s a theory that says that some people vote for president, not based on who is the best candidate, but based on who they think will win.

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Thoughts on a Wellbutrin-less Theme,
or
My Search For the Gift of Adhd

if only I could sit
if only I could sit I’m sure that I can
write a novel or three
a history book or two.

if only I could sit I could write a  new computer game, or create a painting or two.

if only I could sit I could take the
contents of my brain and pour it out
onto paper and lay it before me
and sort it
and shape it
and refine it.

if only I could sit.

if only I could sleep I could lick this
ADHD.
I could control my day,
I could do what I must do.
if only I could sleep.

Post Script

I am waiting patiently for the gift to arrive and, so far, I have not seen any evidence of magical powers. I have found that my patience has gone down to zero and I can only concentrate in five minute increments. To perform a task for longer than five minutes requires that I, metaphorically, stick my head in a vise and squeeze my brain into submission, usually while listening to some good toe-tapping music on my headphones as I dance about in my desk chair. Overall this Wellbutrin-less existence has been an absolute disaster and I need to get back on the medication.

But I must confess to a definite difference between living a medicated and non-medicated state…besides the obvious increase in physical and mental chaos. I noticed a marked difference in the rate that ideas are generated. Others have pointed this out and I think there’s some truth to it. Ideas flow at a much faster rate when compared to my medicated state. However, it is nearly impossible to retain any of the ideas long enough to actually act on them. They flit by at lightning speed and they have the consistency of wisps of smoke. They seem to be within grasp and as soon as you reach out to hold onto them they disappear. This heightened intellectual fecundity is, I believe, self-delusion. It only seems like you’re experiencing some sort of intellectual renaissance when, in actuality, you are likely experiencing more ‘noise in the system’ and mistaking this noise for ideas. The internally high noise level, which is the ‘natural state’ for ADHDers, seems more intellectually stimulating (at least for the small percentage of ADHDers who are intelligent) and, therefore, misleads the ADHDer into thinking that the number of ideas has grown exponentially. What has really happened is that the system noise has increased exponentially and the ability to filter out the noise and focus on the ‘good’ ideas (yes, every idea is not necessarily good) has nearly disappeared.

I’ve also noticed a marked increase in physical activity. My body screams at me to get up and move and not just walk but lift things with my arms and shoulders. It’s dying to get all the muscles moving. I’ve started to think about rejoining a gym or, at the least, getting some home gym that would allow me to pump a little iron and then run back to my desk to work. All this new found activity has been focused on my home and is evidenced in the photos of my Facebook page (a few photos are below). I’ve built two fences, rewired most of the outdoor lights, rewired parts of the garage, rearranged everything in the garage to give myself more working space, and so on.¹ As a result of all this I’ve been losing weight which is not surprising now that I’ve become a perpetual motion machine.

When I’m back on medication I’d like to figure out how to keep up the level of physical activity.

Corner Fence

Side Fence

1. If I were to change careers one more time, I’d go into the construction trades.

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Image source: http://bit.ly/kNPksL

The weeds are winning. Those tenacious bastards seem to grow within hours. Pull out a bunch of weeds in the morning and, damn it, you swear they are back by the afternoon. Spray weed killer on Saturday, watch them wilt on Sunday, and by Monday they are back. These parasites have infiltrated my lawn and have made my life miserable. Admittedly, I have a hate-hate relationship with my lawn. In fact, I think the obsession with having a green lawn is a form of middle class mass psychosis especially since lawns do not grow naturally like weeds do. Keeping a lawn green requires dumping the equivalent of a petrochemical plant on it to keep away those f**king weeds. And god forbid you forget to water the lawn a few times. It flips you the finger, in the form of a brown lawn, and it stays brown for the next few months. But I have a solution for this lawn/weed problem – zoysia plugs. Zoysia is a type of grass that is drought resistant and which doesn’t wilt and turn brown in brutal heat. It can even survive harsh winters. Most importantly, it hates weeds. Its Not In My Lawn (NIML) mentality combined with its drought resistance is perfect for the busy homeowner – ADHD or not – who hates weeds and may forget to water their lawn every once in a while.

The downside of zoysia plugs is that it takes a few years to see the results and… WARNING! Planting them is not exactly fun. The zoysia farm sends you a few pieces of sod that you cut up into little pieces that you put into little holes that you make in the lawn. (The morbidly curious may want to see this page.) How many plugs you need to put in per square foot depends on how quickly you want to see your new lawn. Of course, how many plugs you need to put in determines how many frackin’ little holes you need to make. I probably spent about twenty hours doing my measly front lawn, cutting up the sod, making the little holes, and putting in a plug every six inches.

Now that the boring-as-hell task is done, I check the lawn every week for signs of zoysia dominance. Surprise, surprise. The bastard weeds are winning. But here and there I see signs of the zoysia plugs taking root and adding a few of its own blades of grass to the lawn from hell. I’ve been diligent in watering and fertilizing and, while my neighbor keeps asking me, “How’s it doing?” I keep replying, “I won’t really know till next year.” In fact, it may take a few years before I see a real difference.

.  .  .  .  .

My weed-infested lawn is a lot like your weed-infested ADHD life. You pull out the weeds of ADHDness and the bastards come right back. Then you hit on the idea of using self-coaching plugs to help the process. You put in the plugs and check them every week. You add your Concerta or Vyvanse fertilizer. You add lawn aerating physical exercise (running; bicycling, etc.) While there are a few hopeful signs here and there that things are improving, for the most part, it seems that nothing is working. But you keep at it and several years go by and you make an amazing discovery: the plugs worked!! It took time. It took patience and determination but, damn it, it paid off and you now see the results. Sure, you still get a few weeds here or there and that’s to be expected, but your ADHD life has turned green. And if, perchance, you get a few brown patches, you know what to do. Get a few more plugs, make a few more holes and wait patiently for the change. And never stop watering, fertilizing and aerating. You’ll see. It does work. It just takes time. A lot of time.

.  .  .  .  .

As for my front lawn, if the zoysia plugs don’t work, then I’m selling the lawn mower, the lawn trimmer, the rake, the seed spreader, the fertilizer spray doohickey that hooks up to the garden hose and every other piece of crap that’s lawn related. Then I’m putting in AstroTurf.

For Jay and Katy

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Still, despite the improvements in ADHD safety equipment (and the drugs), it’s a bit depressing  to see that other ADHDers can’t avoid crashing into the same walls that I have crashed into again and again and again. Perhaps that is the way it should be. Perhaps there is no shortcut to learning to deal with ADHD. Perhaps Papa Mousekewitz was right all along. “Fievel, if growing up were so easy, would it take so long?” But I’m…er…way past 30 years old. When will I finally grow up? Enquiring minds want to know.

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Image source: http://skeptisys.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/verizon-attacks-civil-liberties-and-makes-illegal-spying-part-of-their-policy/

I use Verizon for all of my communication needs. I have four cell phones (one for each family member), one land line and one FIOS internet connection. I receive two monthly bills. One bill is for my cell phones, the other bill combines the charges for my land line and FIOS internet…well…it used to.

On November 29th, 2010, my FIOS internet stopped working. Since I have “the gift” of ADHD, I called their billing department. Maybe I missed a payment. Nope. Payments were up to date. I then spoke to their technical support department. It took a bit of digging to realize what the problem was. No payments were made for the FIOS internet. “How is that possible? Your computer said that my payments are up to date.” It turns out that in August 2010 (possibly earlier) Verizon had instituted a major change in their billing system. As a result, my FIOS internet billing was split off from my land line bill. I had never received a separate bill for the FIOS internet. However, the charges kept accumulating for FIOS and the internet service was turned off because of lack of payment. I promptly made a payment and service was restored. I was told that this billing error will be addressed. From then on the bill would consolidate land line and FIOS internet charges into a single bill…just like it was for years prior to August 2010.

You know where this story is going…right?

On January 27th, 2011 my FIOS internet stopped working. I called technical support who explained it was a billing issue, the same billing issue that caused the service to be turned off in November. A trouble ticket was being issued and it should all be cleared up in two days.

On February 23, 2011 my FIOS internet stopped working. This time I was angry…really angry. I called their office at 7:30am. The billing department was closed. I called back at 9:00am. I was on the phone for fifty-one minutes. The representative tried to straighten out the problem. She transferred me to their finance department. I was disconnected.

Now my inner lunatic started to emerge. I snapped at everyone…even my poor dogs. The obscenities poured forth, interspersed with sarcastic remarks about the virtues of the free market: “Look, honey! You can choose from Company A which provides crappy service or Company B which provides their own brand of crappy service. Isn’t competition wonderful?”

I called again.

I spent ten minutes explaining the situation to the representative. “Can I have your FIOS internet account number so I can pull up your records?” I had to swallow hard to keep my inner lunatic in check. “That’s the problem,” I said as I carefully monitored my volume for traces of anger. “I never got a bill so I can’t give you my FIOS account number even if I wanted to.” We reached an impasse. “I can only see your telephone bill and there’s nothing there about your internet. Without the FIOS account number I can’t help you.” My anger increased. I apologized for getting testy but, as I pointed out to the rep, this problem has been going on for months. “Call this number. They should be able to help you.”

I made my third phone call of the day.

“I apologize for this but I need to speak to a supervisor.”  I was put on hold. Thirteen minutes. Nineteen minutes. Thirty minutes passed. Same crappy on-hold music.

Thirty-five minutes passed.

I hung up.

I threw the phone across the room.

I’ve had a long relationship with anger. Like a good friend (and my State Farm agent), it has always been there. But it has a devilish streak. It often shows up at the wrong time, weeks or months after an egregious wrong has occurred. When it finally appears, it’s usually the result of some trivial event, like someone touching my pile of books.¹ This triggers a Vesuvius-like eruption, curses pouring forth with a blazing heat that burns the ears and sensibilities of all who are near. The eruption does not end until every real or perceived wrong, starting from the time of the REAL precipitating event to the triggering event to events that have not yet occurred, have been buried under the molten curses.

I’ve never really known what to do with this anger. I tried to get with the “happiness program” but it felt wrong. It irritated me. It made my skin crawl. It felt a bit phony.

So for years decades, really I kept my anger inside.

And periodically Vesuvius would explode.

.

.

When I was prescribed Wellbutrin for my ADHD, I noticed a momentary pause between precipitating event and outburst. The Wellbutrin allowed me to step between the event and the (potential) outburst and stop it from occurring. That helped…a lot.

.

.

Later I learned that “ADHD was the source my anger” but I wasn’t really sure what that implied. Did it imply that my anger was not justified? Did it imply that if I got my ADHD under control then the anger would be under control?

Maybe that’s what it implied.

Paradoxically, if ADHD was the fuel igniting my anger, ADHD also made it possible for me to contain it. It became a place for me to put my anger. Where’s your anger? I put it in the ADHD box. But when I entered my post-ADHD phase, the anger container was broken and the anger was released. I was back where I started so many years ago. I was back to being a person with an anger problem.

But that is all wrong.

I do NOT have an anger problem.

I have an outburst problem.

The way I expressed my anger may have been inappropriate but the anger itself was not inappropriate. In fact, I realized that ANGER IS GOOD! When towns shrivel up because jobs are shipped overseas, the appropriate response is anger. When a woman is a victim of domestic violence, the appropriate response is anger. When a parking spot in front of your house is taken by someone else after you spent hours shoveling snow so YOU could park there, the appropriate response is anger. The question is, NOT how to suppress that anger but, quite the opposite, how to EXPRESS IT. And I am learning how to express it in appropriate ways. Many times I feel better after releasing the anger. Sometimes I don’t feel better and that’s okay. So the next time a person parks in front of my house, I’m not going to cover his car in snow. That’s childish and inappropriate. Instead, I will knock on his door, explain why I am angry, and then shoot him. I’m sure THAT will make me feel much better.

1. “Book pile touching” is a cataclysmic event within the ADHD universe, equivalent to the explosion of the Crab Nebula (1054 A.D. if you must know). “Book piles,” for ADHDers (and this applies to many of the other piles they create) are meticulously crafted arrangements of objects that have an order discernible only by the ADHDer. When a non-ADHDer touches the pile, the order is irrevocably destroyed and, in accord with the laws of ADHD quantum mechanics, can never be put back into the exact same order it was prior to the touching.

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Adult ADHD has a serious downside. It effects every aspect of your life. Even worse, you cannot get rid of it. However, just because you are stuck with it forever that doesn’t mean you can’t reduce its impact on your life and this is where Sidney Parker Holt’s ADD Simplified: Strategies for Minimizing the Effects of Adult ADD and ADHD can help. Holt provides field-tested techniques for handling aspects of daily living that can, quite frankly, drive you nuts. He offers suggestions on such tasks as organizing documents, to-do lists, electronics accessories, handling money, avoiding morning stress, and more. He discusses the need to establish a bedtime ritual, the (negative) effects of social networks and, my favorite, why you should take a nap each day.

Holt’s book is written in a deceptively simple ADHD style: the suggestions are easy to understand (no need for lengthy rumination) and to the point. At times you think he’s sitting next to you, offering suggestions. In the chapter on how to avoid morning stress he writes:

I’m not trying to sound like a strict stepmother, but TV in the morning does not help. Watching TV while you’re having breakfast is not only unhealthy, it also takes more time and does not promote family bonding. Just leave the TV off; you’ll catch the news later.

For the paperwork-challenged (the very definition of ADHD!), he suggests using colored folders based on a color scheme that assigns a meaning to each color. For example,

…blue folders for documents related to the house, white folders for documents related to official paperwork (taxes), a green folder for all medical documents….

Open shelving with colored boxes

But Holt warns that using more than five different colors increases the likelihood that you’ll forget the meaning of each color (“Hmmm…the canary yellow folder is for….?”) The color coding doesn’t have to end with the use of file folders. Holt has an open-shelved filing cabinet (available at your friendly Ikea store) for which he purchased colored fabric boxes (also from Ikea) for the open shelves. Particular items are “assigned” to particular colors/boxes. Color coding also works in the virtual world. Software applications, such as Microsoft Outlook and Google Mail (Gmail), allow you to color code your emails so that, for example, priority emails may have their subject line in red.

One color that some of us have difficulty with is U.S. dollar green (those from other countries will need to make the proper color substitution). The problem manifests itself in the purchase of unnecessary items. Holt suggests a three-step process, kind of like stop, drop and roll, to control that urge. For example, before buying that 42 inch wide screen television (after all, it IS larger than your current 40 inch wide screen), stop yourself right there. Are you being impulsive? Perhaps. So wait a week and then examine your “need” for that purchase. You still think you need it? If yes, then wait AGAIN and see if that need still exists. It is likely that the need may fade away. If it doesn’t fade away, then you’ll like this sage advice:

Read at least two positive and two negative reviews before you decide whether to purchase the item.

Like all books that offer suggestions for the ADHDer, some suggestions may not be applicable to your lifestyle (“Do I really need a Leatherman tool?”) and some you may not agree with at all (“I won’t replace my physical books with e-book versions…I like taking a pen and scribbling in the margins of a book”). Still, there are so many good ideas on reducing clutter, creating organization, using various types of to-do lists and more, that you’re bound to find a dozen or more suggestions that will fit your lifestyle and that you’ll want to incorporate into your daily life to minimize the effects of your own ADHD.

NOTE: Discussion about this review is taking place on Facebook.

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Sometimes I try to imagine how different my life would be if I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age. (From the perspective of age 52, a “younger age” would be 36.) The changes that have occurred in my life during the past few years — improvements in memory; ability to meet deadlines (well…sometimes); ability to visualize the future (this is improving in leaps and bounds) — would already be woven into the personal fabric of my life. They would be another set of processes that are akin to my daily rituals. (I don’t have to think about my morning shave…I just have to get the process started). Further, I would not have spent many years misdiagnosed, assuming that I suffered from Jewish nomadism (the modern equivalent of roaming the desert)¹ or perhaps a mild form of multiple personality disorder (yet another “diagnosis” by a “professional”).

Despite all the help from the “professionals,” the true explanation came at the age of 46 when I diagnosed myself as ADHD. It was a bittersweet moment or, to put it more bluntly, it was an “oh shit“ moment. There was the “oh shit“ explanation of my life, the reason why so many things had gone wrong. But this was quickly followed by the other “oh shit” moment when I realized that knowing the cause of my problems did not mean I could eliminate that cause.

There is a part of me that wonders what my life would be like right now if I was never diagnosed as ADHD. Would I be happier? (Remember…ignorance is bliss.) Would I be even more depressed than I was at that time? I know I would be divorced. Would I have quickly remarried? Would I have stayed single? Would I have moved to another part of the country?

Image source: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/alice/complete.html

My life would be radically different if only the “professionals” had read the “label” that was affixed to the patient, the label that had all the signs of ADHD written all over it and which was staring them in the face. My life would be radically different if they tried to understand reality as-it-is instead of through the lens of some neo-Freudian existentialist gestalt preconception. Perhaps, if I were properly diagnosed and treated, I would have stayed in graduate school. Perhaps I would not have left a good paying job that was, literally, ten minutes from my home. Perhaps I would not have been on the brink of divorce. If only the “professionals” had tried to really understand instead of just playing the part of a “professional” who “understands.”

The “professionals” have failed 2.5 million adults² in the United States by failing to read the label and take the words seriously. That’s the only conclusion I can come to. For the most part, anyone who is now 45 years old or older and has “the gift” was probably never diagnosed with ADHD during the first forty-four (or more) years of their life. A sizable number may STILL NOT KNOW they have ADHD. How different their lives would now be if they knew that deep inside them was ADHD, the silent killer of hopes and dreams. How different their lives would now be if the professionals they may have turned to for help had bothered to read the “label of evidence” that was affixed to the patient package that arrived at their office each week. How much easier their lives would now be if they knew about this silent killer and had spent their earlier years learning how to accept it, how to live with it, how to thrive despite it.

1. This was the explanation for my many careers and interests according to a psychiatrist I saw twenty years ago.
2. As of 2009 there were about 63,316,000 adults aged 45 or older. If 4% have ADHD that gives us 2,520,000 million adults with ADHD. Population data is from the U.S. Census. Adult ADHD did not exist, as far as psychiatry was concerned, until the early 1990′s. Prior to that, they did not know of its existence. Perhaps Adult ADHD “appeared” during a solar eclipse of the sun, like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

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Have you ever heard a man say, “I have the gift of prostate cancer! I can’t pee straight, sh*t straight, or get an erection! This is the best gift a guy could ever have!!” Not likely you’ll hear a man say that. Instead, you’ll hear how he is figuring out how to get around the shortcomings, how to have a “normal” life without prostate cancer becoming the focus of his life. Of course, its effects are not going to completely disappear, but it doesn’t have to be the center of his existence.

I’ve done the same with my “gift of ADHD.” It is no longer the center of my existence and I feel 400% better for having done so. I can concentrate on my work because I now see my ADHD as some sort of an annoying mosquito. I swat it and it zips away for awhile. I hear its buzz as it comes closer and I duck or swat or whatever I need to do to keep it away from me. Sometimes I don’t hear its buzz, it bites me and then, after a few expletives and a chuckle, I’m back at my work. That’s it! THAT’S the secret sauce to living and thriving with your ADHD. Reduce it to the size of a mosquito and keep fly swatters around — calendars; reminders; physical exercises, etc. — so you can reduce its annoyance and get on with the other 98% of your life.

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