*SIGH* :( | ADHD Information
madkm, did you know that exhaustion can mimic the symptoms of ADD? If you start work at 4 AM and keep going until 11 PM, you're not getting enough sleep. The most focused person in the world would be all over the place keeping up that pace. Even your narolepsy could be the result of being sooooo tired!
There was a radio DJ down in Florida who just tried to enter the Guiness Book of World Records by staying on the air for the longest time ever. He stayed on for 110 hours, but by the end he was banging his head on the microphone, trying to put CDs in closed CD players, halucinating, etc.
I wish you good luck.
OMG!!!
I have been sitting here reading the messages, and let me tell you i understand how you feel about your husband takes your drawbacks and use's the against you.
I was dx with ADD around the age of 8. Now I am 28. Mom really never let me take rx's because of them being to aditive. She had me do a lot of "natural" remides. LOOONG story short... DIDN"T WORK!!!! Plus just in the past 4 months was dx with narcalepsy.( i now know why i could never stay awake at school!)
Anyways. i have been married 9 yrs. We have 2 kids. our son 9 is ADHD. (Dr. didn't belive me until we had to do summer school for kindergarden!!) and our daughter 3. ( so far no signs) But the husband is sooo hard on my son and I. I have tired many times to have him read, go to the dr's and understand AD/HD. and no luck. He had never had to deal with it as a child.
I am on Adderal xl 20 mg 2 a day. (I work at 4 in the morning and go till atleast 11 at night.)
my husband and i fight over the same thing all the time. the house being "clean" clutter free and the $$$. he has the same ability to turn an argument into all my fault. when i mention any of his "faults" it becuase he is stress because i am lazy and don't do anything around the house.
He is a good person, but just very close minded. and its hard.So Amy i know where you are coming from and thanks soo much for posting "your" bad day. It has helped me relize i am not alone
sorry about the spelling. fell alseep that day!!
WOW!! I soooo had the same kind of day....and althought I do not revel in your pain and discomfort I am glad you posted....makes me feel less like a freak and less alone....anyway, are you doing anything else for your ADHD treatment?.....ie...therapy, behavior modification, getting a coach....reading books that educate you on the parts of the disorder that medication will not fix. My guess is that you were probably irritable and cranky before....one of the reasons family wanted you to seek treatment. But treatment should come from a trained professional in the Physciatric field...not reg doctor...
I am a 31 year old going thru a divorce and parent to 13 year old boy. I was recently diagnosed and have been trying meds and adjusting doses. It is a process..and a team effort...your family needs to be educated and understand....meds don't fix everything...there is a lot of work to be done both on the personal front and a group or team effort involving family members. The more support and understanding you have from the people you have in your life ....the better your chances you can successfully manage your symptoms not controlled by meds...good luck...and hang in there....
I can totally empathize with your feelings of "loosing it", giving up etc....I had a "mental health day today" called in sick to work...didn't go to grocery store (which I was supposed to do on Saturday)....didn't do much of anything...but sit and cry at all the damage this whole ADHD thing had caused....I mean how do you go until you are 31 with out being diagnosed....the trouble...the divorces...the rage and anger....wow...the sh*t i could have stopped or at least been aware of....but....what is done is done....education and action are the keys now...don't beat your self up....let your husband deal with his issues...maybe he needs counceling too..not a bad idea :)
Hey everyone, thanks so much for the advice and input. Yesterday was just horrible for me and I let my thinking get the best of me. I have always said that if I have too much time on my hands and get up inside my head, that its dangerous grounds for me...my head is a scary bad place to go sometimes, LOL
I am feeling somewhat better today. Am still a bit distressed and upset, but can look at everything from a more rational standpoint today. I think a lot of what is bothering me is the fact that I, as well as others around me seem to have unreasonable expectations of me. I mean, yes I have my fair share of problems, bad coping habits and quirks that I have come accustomed to in my past 28 years of life, and I know that I need to work to correct some of these issues...but if it took me 28 years to learn these behaviors, it is going to take a lot of time and patience for these habits to break.
I know I have put my husband through a lot in the past 10 years we have been together, and have caused him a lot of stress and hurt, but at the same time, I have allowed him to use the guilt I carry against me. Its almost like he takes my drawbacks and uses them as a crutch to beat me down into thinking he has a right to be snappy with me. There have been sooo many times he has turned a simple argument totally around and laid all of the blame on me... saying Im too snappy, irritable, moody, cranky, pms'y or whatever... he never seems to want to look at the full picture and realize that yes, I may be a lot of those things, but that does not always mean I am in the wrong. I have a right to my emotions and feelings, just as he does...and I should not have my feeling shot down and dismissed just because his feelings were hurt years ago... its almost like he feels like he can be snappy and rude with me about my shortcomings and its his fair right to do so because I have hurt him in the past... I have let him use these things as a weapon against me and I am drawing the line and stopping it right here and now.
soooo, to make a long story short, after talking to the dr on the phone today, he feels that I am definately stressed out and am experiencing a lot of social anxiety. He felt that it was prob mine and everyone elses expectations and just the stress of learning to deal with this all that is causing me to be more high strung and irritable. He said I seem to be having a lot of social anxiety and felt I would benifit from talking to a councilor/therapist...and I could not agree more... I just have a lot on my mind and I need to learn how to better address my needs, concerns and feelings with my husband, so we arent constantly feeding off of each others negative energy. I think my husband could benifit from talking to someone as well, and possibly us going in togehter but I will just have to talk to him and see how he feels about that...
sooo, all in all, today has been a bit better and things cant possibly get any worse, so there is only room for improvement here... I will be going in tommorow to see the therapist and hopefully I can re begin my upward climb in this battle.
thanks again for your support and for letting me ramble on again.
Amy
I'm sorry you are feeling so badly.I've also wondered about this - I take adderall (regular, not XR) and sometimes I do think it makes me cranky. What has helped me, is taking smaller doses closer together so I'm not getting the ups and downs so bad, and I take a small amount of xanax, which helps a lot. I'm somewhat ambivalent about taking the xanax, but I can't deny that for me it takes the edge off. I've been on adderall for about three months now, and I've had several people tell me they have seen a definite change for the better.
I do find that I have to pay close attention to how the meds are working on me (and they don't seem to work the same all the time, so that is difficult), but the self-monitoring seems to be paying off, if slowly. I definitely have my ups and downs...
Hang in there! Just because one med at one dosage isn't the optimal for you does not mean that you can't find a solution that is workable!
There is a know phenomenon in psychology that when the patient begins to change for the better the family becomes surprisingly resistant and unsupportive. I don't think your husband is necessarily a jerk, he's just acting like one. He's not thinking about you, and your happiness. He's thinking about himself. I think you should just think about what's best for you instead of trying to please everyone else. Trying to please everyone else is a miserable way to live live. Do whats best for yourself and its going to be the best for everyone else. There are a lot of solutions to your irritability besides giving up. Youre Dr. can prescribe another medication or change your medication to a longer acting med, like wellbutrin. One of the best combinations of medications prescribed for ADD is a stimulant plus a small dose of SSRI, such as 10mg prozac, to decrease irritability and increase self-esteem. Self-esteem is something that seems to be lacking in your post.
Hang in there...there's a solution.
Adderall can make you irritable. It does that to me. I think you need to relax a bit, because your at a point in your mode of thinking where you are your own worst enemy. Do your best for your family, and be happy about that. Meds won't change you that much, but on the other hand, what exactly about you *needs* to change? If the answer is 'nothing', then don't worry about it.I have never taken Adderal. I take Ritalin and am very happy with it. I take 10 mg 3 times a day. When I took it just in the morning and afternoon I had a dead spot that sucked in the middle of the day. My heart goes out too you it is so frustrating to not be able to just "think" ADHD away. Maybe you could talk to your DR. about different medications?
One other thing I did when i started meds was a drastic diet change : no caffeine, no sugar, no dyes, no food additives, no preservatives. limited simple starches, high protein. It pretty much eliminates 80% of the Super Market. I had no idea how much crap I ate till I started reading the labels. My Dr. told the diet change was as important as the medication and that people like me were very sensitive to all of the above. I have never felt better in my life.
oh my, what a bad day today has been for me... I figured I would just come here and vent a lil and ask of advice from you all.
In case anyone missed my intro and all, I was diagnosed with adhd years ago but never sought out treatment. Last month my husband voiced his concerns and all, and I decided I would give treatment a shot. I was prescribed to take adderall xr 10 mg 1-2 times a day (dr advised to try both to see what would work best for me, to avoid midday crashes or whatever)
Well, in this past month and a half, I really thought that the meds were helping. I seemed to be more focused on things i needed to be doing/taking care of, and less distressed over all of lifes many distractions and chores. All was going well, or so I thought....
a few nights ago my father made a comment that kind of struck me and got me to thinking. He made a statement that ever since the holidays, I have been wound kind of tight. Ok, sure, sometimes the adderal does make me a little more on edge, or it gets me a little bit more hyper as far as my body goes and such, but my mind seems to be slower and more focused... just figured thats one of the perks/drawbacks of adderall (can be good or bad depending on person and circumstances I guess) Well, it got me to thinking maybe I am a little to edgy at times, or maybe I am too high strung on this med and I am just fooling myself into thinking its doing me good...
sooo, I decided to ask my husband what he thought in regards to me and my being on meds, if he thought it was helping or not. He told me that he thought that they did seem to be helping as far as the focusing and all, but that I had been more snappy and irritable at times. (yet another blow to strike me down when I was finally starting to look up and feel better about things) I had noticed that at times, when the meds were starting to wear off, I would get a little irritable, but that usually went away if I took a second dose and I didnt think I was that bad/irritable/cranky. If anything, I figured that was just the rebound effect that so many have talked about, because usually I get a headache about the same time the cranky/irritableness comes on.
so today, I woke up feeling like total crap, just down and out, thinking that perhaps the meds were not doing me any good. I was mainly taking them because my husband thought that I needed to at least try them. I just wanted to cry..I mean I feel like at times, Im damned if I do and Im damned if I dont... I am a forgetful irritable ditzy person without meds... my husband did not like that...so I take meds... become more focused and lessed ditzy...but I guess am more irritable at times (was irritable before due to distractions that annoyed me and drove me up the wall) and now am irritable cause of meds trying to wear off... so what the hell...why try..why bother...why put my body through this if Im still going to have a husband who really just cannot stand to be around me, and a father who is worried that Im too high strung all of the time.
With all of this going on, I was/am just ready to give up...I decided I would just not take my meds anymore..Id tell my husband to just kiss my ass and deal with it..that he married me and supposudly loved me just as I was over 6 years ago and that I was no different that I am now... and Id be a forgetfull ass ditz who is always hyper and unfocused for the the rest of my life...
But... today has been absolutely dreadful, awful, horrific...I have been more irritable than ever...have wanted to do nothing but cry (part of this Im sure is the whole not having the adderal in my system and my body has grown accustomed to it and I guess also partly because I feel like a total failure and just want to give up all together) I also have been exceptionally scatterbrained and distracted today as well... like for instance, I sat down to watch a movie..and my 3 year old decided to cuddle up next to me...well he then proceeds to make constant clicking noises with his mouth...and is fidgeting with my arm..and making bbbbllltttt type rasberry sounds and it was driving me absolutely insane.... I could not focus on the movie for the life of me because he was constantly distracting me with these annoying little sounds..and it was making me angry with him for distracting me...and angry at myself for being angry with him..I mean hes a kid... kids are kids and they make noise.. I should be able to sit and enjoy the close cuddle time and should be able to enjoy listening to him making all of his cute lil kid noises but instead it made me want to scream, cry and run and lock myself into another room... I didnt want him touching me..and I didnt want him making noises around me... and then it made me wonder, was I always this easily sidetracked and distracted and annoyed with these little things... or is it perhaps becuase I have gotten so used to being able to deal with these things better that I just totally cannot stand or tolerrate them now without meds...or is the whole being without meds and my body craving or needing them thats making these things so magnified...
and i have all of these thoughts, concerns and fears running through me..and to tell you the truth it scares the hell out of me..I mean I obviously did not deal well with being without the meds today..so I dont know that not taking them is much of an option for me...but at the same time, I apparently, according to others around me am not dealing well with the meds... cause Im still somewhat cranky and irritable at times... what am I to do..am I just that bad of a bitch..do I just take the meds and be at least if anything a focused, clear minded, organized and well thinking bitch... Im just so confused..and stressed and I dont know what to do...
I did finally just cave in and took my adderal around 5 this afternoon, and while it did help to calm some of the racing panic and disorder thats going on in my head, I still just feel so confused, lost and overwhelmed...
I know I obviously need to just talk to my dr about this... and will be calling to schedule and appointment in the am..but for the time being, I would really like some advice, thoughts or opinions.
Thanks for letting me vent, and bless you if you have managed to read and follow all of this..I appologize if it dosent make any sense or is too rambly...my mind is just a mess right now.
Amy