Love A.D.D.erall
At 21 they diagnosed me with AD/HD & gave me smart pills. My grades shot up & my future brightened & some said I was better. But I am numb inside of this drug. People I love become distant strangers sometimes, so proud of me for victories I didn’t earn. How do I tell them I am not what I do or have done. I’ll never be happy on this drug, but I’ll never be successful without it. If only I could Love Adderall.Archive for July, 2007
The Miserable Happiness of Adderall Equilibrium
The worst thing about taking meds for AD/HD is knowing that a drug (and not aptitude alone) fuels all of my achievements. Without a drug, I’ll never accomplish all the internal & external satisfaction I feel while Adderall is swirling through my bloodstream.
Today I’m at my equilibrium. I took the perfect amount of Adderall: not so much that I’m nervous and jittery, but not so little that I’m preoccupied by the squirrels chasing each other up & down the tree trunks outside my window. As a result of finding this equilibrium, I wrote the perfect article on my other blog, and feel I made my point without chasing any of those tangents I’m often too fond of.
I wish I could do twelve things at once, while my body remains in this perfect state. If I could stay at this equilibrium my whole life, I have no doubt that I would accomplish literally anything. But I know it will fade, and that I cannot exchange all the hours I’ll later spend coming down for more hours of feeling like I feel right now.
Most people never face the joy and pain of knowing what they might have accomplished in a better world. Such is my ever-present catch-22, and why taking Adderall is like being Spider Man: both a gift and a curse.
Adderall and Bad Breath
Adderall is known for its ability to improve focus and concentration, as well as for its major negative side effects–increased heart rate, dehydration, anxiety. But we hear very little about some of the more minor side effects or, if you will, the “side effects of the side effects.”
One side effect of dehydration, for instance, is bad breath. The more dehydrated you are, the drier your mouth becomes and, without saliva, your breath stinks!
Obviously, bad breath is not such a big deal that it warrants discontinuing your medication. You probably won’t even realize it, but people around you will.
Nothing is more nauseating to me than a person with bad breath. I’d much rather be known as the guy with B.O. than as the guy who always has bad breath.
What I found on adderall is that the normal ways a person fights mouth odor (gum, mints, breath strips, mouthwash, etc.) don’t work with the type of bad breath brought on by dehydration. These strategies which do not eliminate the problem but simply mask it.
The only thing that works to my satisfaction is constantly drinking water or some other liquid. This is the best remedy because it prevents not just bad breath but all the problems related to dehydration as well.
Ritalin Stunts (Rat) Brain Development
A new study from the Weill Cornell Medical College found problematic changes in brain development among rats who were given Ritalin. The research found changes in the treated rats’ brains, especially “in areas strongly linked to higher executive functioning, addiction and appetite, social relationships and stress,” said primary research Teresa Milner who added that: “these alterations gradually disappeared over time once the rats no longer received the drug.”
Of course, the study itself necessarily takes a giant leap of faith, starting with two controversial assumptions: (1) that human brains will respond similarly to rats’, and (2) that week-old rats represent human toddlers and month-old rats are equivalent to teenagers. If either of these premises is false (which we have no way of knowing) then the whole study is bunk–or, at the very best, should be taken with a grain of salt.
“Gifted Adults”
Mary-Elaine Jacobsen’s ‘The Gifted Adult’ is about “Liberating Everyday Genius” (also its former title). One of the author’s main goals is “to provide a bridge between this society’s expectations of how we ought to behave in the gifted personality, so that we can understand that it is the desire of the gifted person to live authentically and not suppress the ‘First Nature’ traits that produced what some consider aberrant behavior” (p. 12). Although this book is not about (and does not even mention) attention deficit disorder, I suspect many of the folks Jacobsen calls “gifted adults” also suffer from A.D.D.
I’ve only read about a chapter sop far. Given my inability to finish the things I start, I doubt I’ll get around to finishing this book. But I found several passages from the first chapter to be meaningful, inspiring, and personally relevant:
- “To feel like an outsider, to constantly pressure yourself to hold back your gifts in order to fit in or avoid disapproval, to erroneously believe that you are overly sensitive, compulsively perfectionistic, and blindly driven, to live without knowing the basic truths about the core of your being–too often this is the life of every day geniuses who have been kept in the dark about who they are and misinformed about their differences… No one told them they cannot escape the fact that they will always be quantitatively, qualitatively, and motivationally different from most other people. Nor do they know that these very same things that are the basis of criticism are fundamental building blocks of excellence and advanced development” (p. 17).
- “John’s high energy posed a threat to others when he dominated conversations, used words as weapons, and posed potentially embarrassing questions. John was raw and overstimulated… He openly defied authority and ducked responsibility for his choices” (p. 13).
- “To someone like John, the rest of the world… is lagging behind. From people walking too slowly on sidewalks and those counting out exact change in a supermarket checkout line to others arriving at a solution that seemed obvious to John minutes, days, or sometimes weeks before, everyone else always seemed to be moving at a glacial pace” (p. 7).
- “The world’s a blender on stir and I’m on liquefy” (p. 6).
- “(Gifted adults) have a vague awareness that the root of their problems is far deeper than surface symptoms. They realize they are intense, driven, and complex, but they have been taught that their strong personalities are excessive, too different from the norm, and consequently wrong. In a culture that often equates different with wrong, it’s inevitable that gifted adults point a critical finger toward themselves as the source of their discontent: Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Shouldn’t I have outgrown this type of identity crisis by now? Why can’t I (overcome) this nagging sense of urgency? Will I ever feel satisfied? What’s wrong with me?” (p. 10).
- “For too long the most ardent desire of many (gifted adults) has been to find out what’s wrong with them and fix it. (Instead), every individual should find out what is right with him or her and manage it” (p. 16).
- “Ann lowered her standards to conform and began to distrust herself and her intuition… She had always been consumed by the projects she undertook, and when she wasn’t rewarded in proportion to her efforts, she became indifferent…” (p. 13).
- “(Everyone else) is moving along at twenty-four frames per second, normal film speed, but to me that’s slow motion” (p. 6).
- “One way to think of (the natural traits of gifted adults) is to compare them to hand preference. Unless we have suffered some accident that has rendered our dominant hand useless, we don’t think much about the subject area. Yet, like the (natural traits) of the gifted, our handedness has a major influence on how we negotiate our way in the world. And like those well-intentioned teachers and family members who once forced left-handers to abandon that and use the naturally dominant hand, gifted adults often experience the same kind of treatment” (p. 12)
- “The only way to manifest what is norm for someone with such a highly sensitive sensory apparatus and vision of how things ought to be in a world that seems radically out of sync is to be intense, complex, and driven. As Abraham Maslow pointed out, we are all driven by the urge to meet our needs. What if one of our most fundamental needs is to have things be just so? What do we do if our precise sense of proportion sets off an alarm in our heads when the figures we’ve drawn are slightly skewed? We stop, assess, and start over, again and again, until we get it right. And we don’t do this so much by choice but because of a mandate from somewhere both inside and outside of ourselves” (p. 11).
Even if her entire book is bullshit (as her deliberately eye-catching “Are you a Gifted Adult?” sticker on the cover implies) a lot of Jacobsen’s stuff hits pretty close to home for me. It’s comforting to find there’s also an affirming aspect to being so different!
Avoid Negative People
I am needy. That’s the problem with having A.D.D. I need to feel empowered to follow my dreams, to pursue my tangents even when they lead nowhere. And I need my loved ones to support me, so that I may feel comfortable going nowhere, searching for my song.
Sometimes I feel flammable. I am so capable of burning, a tall and bright and brilliant blaze. But I need someone to be my kerosene, to provide the spark that will ignite the bonfire inside me. All too often I lie cold and stagnant.
The only fortune cookie fortune I’ve ever kept offered three simple words: “Avoid negative people.”
This simple advice is imperative to those of us with A.D.D. But what about the negative people whom I love? What about the ones who love me? Must I avoid even them, too?
I’m still working out these answers, and solutions don’t come easy. But I mustn’t reveal to the negative people who care that they are not helping, for that spells an even greater disaster, turning them into robots who try desperately to show they believe in me. They don’t see how transparent their performance is. I have A.D.D., but I’m not brainless.
I don’t need sympathy or pity. That’s negative, and it breaks my will and my spirit. But don’t compensate with hollow cheeriness. I see through it.
The result: I find myself avoiding not only negative people, but the excessively positive ones as well.
Who remains?
Beck v. Kennedy
Anti-environmentalist Glenn Beck was called out last week for having A.D.D. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Beck to re-read the I.P.P. Report about global warming, and suggested doing it with someone over his shoulder to help with his A.D.D.
Why Robby? You were winning the argument without the ignorant, bigoted comment.
I agree with very little of what Glenn Beck says but respect him for being so open about his A.D.D.
Self-Medicating with Diet Pills
Have you ever heard of the “Freshman Fifteen”? According to urban legend–and supported by my own experiences–people will gain about fifteen pounds during their first year in college. It makes sense, if you think about it. High school is all about sports and exercise–activities replaced in college by binge-drinking and late-night visits to Steak ‘n Shake.
When I was in college in the early ’00s there was a popular supplement available at GNC called Xenadrine. 
It was a diet pill marketed to teens and twenty-somethings and I knew a lot of kids who got skinny by taking it. Nearing the end of my freshman year I became apprehensive about all the weight I’d gained. Pretty soon I would return home where many of my high school friends remained, most of whom had stayed in shape by getting blue-collar jobs working in warehouses or cutting down trees. I knew they’d take one look at my newly acquired beer gut and laugh their asses off. So I went down to GNC and picked up some Xenadrine.
Not only did I shed the weight, but I also aced my finals that semester. Xenadrine proved to be a much better “study buddy” then Pepsi cans from the vending machines. The following year I began to take Xenadrine whenever I had to study for a big test. Nobody thought it was all that weird, because at the time Xenadrine was a legal supplement marketed and distributed by “General Nutrition Center.”
But the active ingredient in Xenadrine was ephedrine, a stimulant. Eventually the FDA took the product off the market when high school kids started overdosing on it in pursuit of perfect bodies and grades. Xenadrine tried to rebound with an ephradine-free placebo but, predictably, the drug tanked without its franchise chemical.
Without ephedrine, my grades went back to the toilet junior year. My advisers were concerned, especially because I’d aced harder classes as a sophomore than the ones I made D’s in as a junior.
It turned out I had been “self-medicating” with Xenadrine. This is a common practice among teens with AD/HD, many of whom self-medicate with much more harmful substances such as speed or cocaine. Unlike most people, who get “high” when they take such substances, A.D.D. people experience a heightened sense of focus and concentration on stimulants–even cocaine.
Unfortunately, the so-called war on drugs clouds our emotions. So when a kid becomes addicted to stimulants, many adults assume rehab is what he or she needs. Instead of recognizing teenagers’ cries for help, many of these rehab centers encourage kids to call on their “higher power” for closure and protection. We overlook that perhaps that’s exactly what the higher power was doing by helping him or her to self-medicate in the first place.
“Offer It Up to the Poor Souls in Purgatory”
How do you explain to someone without A.D.D. what it’s like to have to juggle medications, times, schedules, etc.? It must be like describing a sunset to a blind person, or maybe like explaining the pain of childbirth to a man (no woman has ever succeeded in painting a clear picture for me of the latter).
The other day my adviser asked me to give him a rough schedule of what days and hours I am likely to be in my office over the next few weeks. I balked at his request, and he balked at my excuse.
One of the reasons I came to academia was to avoid the rigid 9-to-5 lifestyle that plagues corporate cogs. The “punch-in/punch-out” mentality doesn’t jive with me. Given that I’d worked with this individual for almost three years, and since we’d established a rapport that at times I find rather pleasant, I decided to take a chance and share with him one of the main quirks of my disorder–i.e., my lack of punctuality and inability to obey strict time regimens.
Most A.D.D. coaches consider this a crucial and necessary step toward maximizing job satisfaction and productivity among people with AD/HD. The problem, however, is that with all the fakers and exploiters, there is a lot of misconception and flat-out ignorance about A.D.D. when it comes to mainstream society. Many professors and instructors have been accommodating to me through the years
He suggested that I “offer it up to the poor souls in purgatory.” Being a devout atheist/agnostic, I’m not positive as to what exactly that means, but I think its rough translation is: “go tell somebody who gives a damn.” I’ve been dumbfounded since entering graduate school, at just how ignorant some of my colleagues are when it comes to A.D.D. How ironic that people who call themselves social scientists are so resistant to acknowledging human variation and the fact that not everybody see the world as they do.
Factually Wrong Anti-Drug Rants
Here is an example of how passionate soldiers in the fictitious “war on drugs” have absolutely no clue what the hell they’re talking about. This blogger’s incoherent assault on Ritalin condemns parents for medicating their children, calling Ritalin “synthetic heroin.” The writer probably felt quite a victory in coming up with this analogy, much like a slurring drunk presumably feels a sense of pride upon hurling punches and four-letter words at whoever pisses him off.
I pointed out on this person’s blog that she could not be more factually wrong in her characterization of Ritalin as “synthetic Heroin,” because Ritalin is a stimulant (which speeds the body up) and Heroin is an opioid (which slows the body down). I doubt, however, that the blogger, or anyone else fighting in the perceived “war on drugs” cares much about facts.
These individuals work themselves up in their contagious frenzy, swallowing hook, line, and sinker the falsehoods churned out by propaganda mills such as D.A.R.E. (which, incidentally, received a generous donation each year from the alcohol and tobacco industries competing against the marijuanas of the world).
I pointed out that, if a scary sound byte is imperative, the blogger might be better served to call Ritalin “synthetic cocaine” because at least these two drugs do somewhat similar things to the body. But if the point is to frighten and alarm parents who are concerned about their children, then the blogger’s entry suffices as is.
Intuniv: Placebo or Savior?
I would love for a nonstimulant to be affective in treating AD/HD. I absolutely hate the way Adderall sucks all the life out of my personality most days.
But none of the nonstimulants prescribed thus far have had any influence on me, positive or negative. If it doesn’t affect the dopamine system it doesn’t help A.D.D., at least not the form of A.D.D. that I have.
Placebos have been shown to have positive affects in curing such mental disorders as depression, People need to be told their problem is not personal detriment, but biological imbalance with a scientific solution. If they see believe their sugar pill is their cure, then it will.
That’s why Stratera was so successful. For a few people, it solved all of their problems, but for the rest of us it only gave us stomach pains. I would argue that the people cured by placebos probably never had A.D.D. to begin with, and instead suffered from laziness.
The latest placebo may be Intuniv, which, in London, has found found a lot of support (aka: it’s been backed my money). I am both skeptical and excited about this drug, but I’ll try to maintain a positive attitude until I hear more about it.
