Attention Deficit...and, oh yes...Disorder

As I begin this post, it's pushing 11:30 p.m....looks like it's going to be another late night for me. This is a frustrating time because I LOVE sleep. My doctor gave me a preliminary diagnosis of ADD on Thursday (6/24). I was prescribed Adderall XR 20mg. The shitty side effects I'm experiencing (so far) include: INSOMNIA, loss of appetite (I'm o.k. with this one), dry mouth along with an awful taste in my mouth, and random zombiness. This is ONLY the 5th day for me to take this medication! Isn't it amazing that the side effects are immediate, but the helpful aspects of the meds take about 3 weeks to surface?...as if this isn't frustrating enough. Starting in my late teens, I always said that if there was a mild form of ADD I have it. It wasn't until I started working that I realized just how easily distracted I am. Throughout the earlier portion of my life I always associated my distraction with negative personality characteristics--lazy, procrastinator, stubborn, messy, disorganized. I never thought to attribute it to an imbalance in my brain. I always have ideas of how to organize myself, but those ideas are too overwhelming to complete the task. I can start projects, but rarely finish them. At any given moment I have a thousand new ideas running through my head about completely separate and random things, yet I can't seem to focus on just one and follow through. Is this what ADD looks like? I've asked myself that question many times, but doubted that I could truly have it. Why? Well, for starters I look back at elementary school. The "CM kids" were the ones with ADD. They had to have help with their homework. They had to leave the classroom and go to a quiet place to work. They made average or below average grades. They were always in trouble because they lacked impulse control in the classroom. I didn't see myself as any of those things. I made all A's. I never needed help with my homework (once I finally sat down to do it). In fact, I was usually the first one done (so I could hurry up and do something else before I missed my chance). I got in trouble sometimes, but only because I was arrogant (and followed through with my devious thoughts before I could stop myself...that's not lacking impulse control, right?). Turns out, ADD has nothing to do with IQ. I should've figured that out somewhere along the way, but for some reason I fell into the crowd believing that ADD/ADHD=learning disability=bad grades=no future. That wasn't an option for me. It also turns out that kids who have certain "protective factors" in their lives, may never show the full extent of their ADD until those protective factors no longer hold such a strong presence. In my case: the parents. My parents were so good about making sure I did my homework (I say that now, but at the time I figured they were just trying to annoy me). They didn't cut me any slack when I was in elementary school. "You sit down and do your homework, or you can't go play outside." They didn't have to push too hard. I knew what the goal was and I knew that the homework would be easy. Once middle school rolled around, things changed a bit. The homework was still easy, but I was older and thought I could "make my own decisions." That combined with my parents letting up a bit allowed the "procrastination" to slide right into my daily routines. It wasn't just about school work. It was cleaning the kitchen or my room, feeding the dogs, getting the trash together, folding laundry. My family (myself included) just thought I was a messy kid who was stubborn and didn't care what my surroundings looked like. The fact is that I constantly looked at my room and tried to come up with a plan to organize it. I would start with a pile in one corner, play a video game, talk on the phone, play with the dogs, work on another pile (the first pile probably wasn't gone yet), stare at the wall, get a drink of water, talk with my sister (her room was spotless hours ago), chase the cat around, see what my parents were doing, decide to make the bed, decide to wash the sheets because it was too overwhelming a task to make the bed, sort my laundry to see what clothes could go in with the sheets, look through my tapes to find something new to listen to, decide to put the tapes in alphabetical order by genre...I think that starts to paint a clearer picture. I'm not saying that I definitely have ADD. Only a full psychological evaluation can tell me that. I'm just saying it's a definite possibility and too many kids--girls especially--go unnoticed with ADD because they are not like the stereotypical ADHD boys that come to mind. What about the girl who stares out the window constantly or doodles on her paper? She isn't noticed because the teacher is too busy looking at the little boy who keeps going around to different classmates and tapping them on the head with his pencil. But she is just as affected by it. She just may not realize the full extent of it until later on in life. I might just be a prime example of that.
"There is no success without hardship." -Sophocles, 418 B.C.