Anybody have ADHD or ADD?

[Sparky]

My daughter has ADD and was not diagnosed until she was an adult. She was never hyperactive, and she was well behaved, so she had lots of problems in school but no one every put it together.

Based on her experience, assuming you have a job you like/want to keep, you MAY want to consider telling your employer and getting documentation. You can qualify for reasonable accomodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This includes things like giving you written instrucitons instead of telling you something while you're in the middle of doing something else and expecting you to remember.

Unfortunately, this could also backfire, so proceed carefully.

[Cooper]

Yeah, I've thought about invoking the ADA for my chronic pain for my ankle, which just means letting me have a chair on bad days, but I could see that not going well at all.

[Sapphire Silk]

... my grandma just told me I should consider accounting.

I dislike math repeatedly..

Disliking math by itself is a reason not to go into accounting. People should do something they have an interest in. If you would hate it, you would never finish the degree.

The art will be better for you if that is what your passion is for. There are many ways to commercialize art, and you can look into some of them to allay any fears that you won't be able to earn a living when you are out of school. Just be careful with the student loans, and avoid a school that will make it impossible to pay them back because it is too expensive.

Yeah, I've thought about invoking the ADA for my chronic pain for my ankle, which just means letting me have a chair on bad days, but I could see that not going well at all.

IIRC there are several other members here who have asked for and gotten that accommodation. I think it will depend a lot on your relationship with your manager, but you should not have to suffer pain in order to do your job when there is a simple solution around it.

I'm allowed to violate the clinical dress code because I can't find a pair of shoes that fit me right that are in white.

[Cooper]

Well, the good news about teaching is there are a lot of federal and non-federal scholarships, special loan rules, ect. I'm at a community college, and there's Big Well-Known-Teaching-School very close, so I'm in a pretty good position.

As for the ankle, since I got a brace I've been amazed how much it's helped. I mean, permanently wearing an ankle brace is a bit embarrassing, but now I only take my painkillers for my jaw when I stress it too much. (After the jaw surgery, just eating can cause me pain sometimes.)

[Seshat]

A chair as disability accomodation is hardly a major issue if your job involves largely being in one place. My friend A has actually claimed a specific type of chair that costs circa $1K as disability accomodation, to support her back properly.

Heck, availability of chairs isn't a big issue even if your job does involve moving around; you just might not be able to use them often.

[Mer-Mer]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with the "Put things in a totally awesome spot, then forget where it is." I actually have developed hidey holes where I tend to put certain types of items, but I don't always use them. And I am so disorganized and I don't think I'll ever be able to counter act that. My mom had a parent - teacher meeting when we first moved here after the divorce and we had been going to school for a while. This was the conversation when she got home:
Me: What did they say?
Mom: Your math teacher says you are the most organized student he's ever had.
Me: *snickers, until I see mom's face* He said that? He was joking, right?
Mom: He was dead serious. He was really insulted when I laughed.
To help me be motivated clean my room, I throw money into it so that I find it when I clean it. And I used to sew a lot in lecture as well. Used to piss off everyone but the teacher. And the reason the professors didn't mind was because I hated to talk in class, but if called on I could answer the question, even if everyone else was completely stumped.
And mountain dew kills me. I love it, but it kills me. My grandma asserts that all soda kills me and makes me high, but I think she's biased. Energy drinks as well, one sip and I'm really messed up.

[Shangri-laschild]

I was actually really lucky in that I was diagnosed early. I think I would have had a lot more problems adapting if I hadn't known why I was acting so different from others. I did have problems though after college. I stopped taking the medication after high school mostly due to a sudden lack of structure and lots of laziness. 2-3 years later when I tried to get back on them I had to jump through a lot of hoops and chance primary doctors just to get back on them despite having been on them since early elementary school.

I've found that certain routines are very useful. I wake up with just enough time to quickly get ready for work usually. I can adjust my morning routine some and it's not like I lay out my clothes or anything but for instance if I forget to put my recently filled meds in one of 2 places, I won't remember to take them in the morning. Stuff like that. Having it click in my head that I needed some things to be routine helped a lot and allowed for me to adjust.

I've found that goal/reward type stuff does not work for me very much. When I was in high school I got grounded for something and was told that I could be ungrounded once I got my room clean. I was grounded for about a month despite the fact that it resulted in things being messed up with the guy I was dating at the time. I've gotten better but usually more so when it involves consequences for others as well. While alarms do help a lot, I've found that this aspect can make them not work at all some days.

Background noise works wonders for me. I have trouble focusing on stuff if I don't have music or a movie going no matter how interested in the project I am.

I've always been amused about the whole caffeine thing and how it changes so much depending on the ADD person. For me, it seems to help. My meds work less when I'm low on sleep and caffeine seems to boost them which is very helpful especially right now because I am possibly building up a tolerance to the dosage I'm on. Only one dosage above what I'm taking right now and I really like this medication. Then again it could just be having been sick a while and then working a bunch of overnights when I'm usually on days.

So much of it really is isolating your problem areas and then fiddling around till you figure out what will work for you personally. The more you look at individual situations (ie, I have trouble remembering certain things in the morning) and tweak how you handle them, the easier it will become to guess how to try handling other situations.

[Sulhythal]

I was diagnosed early, and was medicated throughout elementary up through high school with Ritalin for about 90, 95% of that time. I hated it. I was a completely different person, it felt like my mental functions were ground to nearly a halt, it was an effort to think. But my teacher's were happy because I was quiet and still, my parents were happy that my teachers were happy(and that I was quiet and still) so...despite my protests, I remained on the medication. I'm not going to say anything more about the meds right now, as strongly as I feel about them it's probably better off in Fratching.

I have, since I graduated high school and stopped taking the meds, learned other ways of managing my ADD, not perfectly but at least I'm not a zombie now(And this thread has given me ideas as well, thanks!)

[Cooper]

I wasn't diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but told I needed further evaluation for bipolar disorder! But I did adapt my life-style for some of the ADD symptoms that affect my life, like the PDA, which has actually been really helpful.

As for medication, my opinion on it: It's been super-helpful for me. I'm on a mood stabilizer, a painkiller, and an SSRI, and I would be in a very, very bad place without them. But, everyone's brain is different, and as the thread on side effects pointed out, people react to medications in very, very different ways. (One person reported that after taking ibuprofen they heard voices telling them to kill themselves. Scary!)

So while I am a medicine-advocate, I totally get not wanting to take them, and if you can manage your conditions without medication, power to you.

[Cookie]

I have been diagnosed with ADHD and chronic depression. Cooper, whatever they find with you, I would highly recommended being tested for food allergies. I've found that a lot of the foods I'm allergic to trigger VERY bad mental health symptoms. It wasn't the sole cause of my problems, but eliminating a lot of trigger foods helped me so drastically that as hard as some things have been to avoid, it's WORTH it.

Also, aside from allergy testing, you may want to keep a log of symptoms alongside a log of what you eat. Yes, it's a pain in the butt and I totally suck at it myself. However, even when I failed at journaling that kind of thing, I've been able to notice correlations between eating certain foods and mental health symptoms. In cases like these, you may not have a true allergy to the food, but varying levels of sensitivity.

[Cookie]

Also, I'm not anti-medication. I'm on an anti-depressant myself. I've just been more successful with medication when I'm taking other steps like watching my diet as well.

[Cooper]

Also been diagnosed with gluten intolerance. Haha. Gluten tends to make me more tired, and the chronic pain I have (which definitely exacerbates my depression) gets worse when on gluten.

My mother got migraines, and gluten destroyed her thyroid. She broke down and shelled out money for a specialist, and came back with the gluten-intolerance diagnoses, so she's been trying to get each of us to try a month without gluten. She finally forced me into a corner just when I got on Lamictal, so we weren't sure what exactly caused the changes.

So a few months later, I went on gluten. Didn't even need to do it for two days before I was nearly reaching the maximum dosage of my pain meds.

[fireheart]

I wasn't diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but told I needed further evaluation for bipolar disorder! But I did adapt my life-style for some of the ADD symptoms that affect my life, like the PDA, which has actually been really helpful.

I also had this when I was sent for an evaluation.

Two things which did not work in my favour:

1) The guy I was sent to I had never met before in my life.

2) I was NOT in a good mood at the time, having had fights with my mother and sister.

He put it down to either a mixed state or borderline at the time.
Thankfully my mental health symptoms have recovered to the point where I no longer fit those criteria, although I may ask about getting reevaluated and sent to someone who actually HAS seen me before. The doctor I saw shortly after my more recent discharge from hospital pretty much stated social anxiety and dysthymia and told me that something like 50-75% of borderline patients don't meet the criteria within 10 years, with or without therapy.

As for the medication front, I found that my memory issues were WORSE on the medication and it was also causing some weight gain. Once I came OFF the meds, I found my memory was a lot sharper and I wasn't eating everything left, right and centre. My doc and I agreed to try and manage both cases with lifestyle changes and I was referred to a dietician.

[Cooper]

I'm getting the evaluation continued by my therapist, but I suspect I am going to get the bipolar diagnosis... and I think it might have to do with getting put on antidepressants so young. Shortly after I got put on antidepressants, I went through a seriously 'weird' stage of my life.

I had a journal from that time--in secret ink--about how kids were teleporting across the playground.

I had a tenuous grip with reality for the next three years. After I came out of that, I renounced everything that was even borderline 'unreal.' I felt if I let myself believe in ghosts, then I'd completely lose it again.

I had a brief relapse after going on paxil, but it was less losing reality and more 'WHEEEEEE!!!" and I was pretty happy with that. (One day my sister--who couldn't legally drive--drove us home from school because I put my head to the steering wheel, turned it side to side, and went 'weee!')

[dalesys]

...l because I put my head to the steering wheel, turned it side to side, and went 'weee!')

This little piggie sang WHEE! WHEE! WHEE!all the way home...