Co-Morbidity

Hi Gav, welcome.

I have "officially" been diagnosed as having ADD, primarily Inattentive type, comorbid with dysthemic depression.  However, I have experienced my share of anxiety at times in the past, and I can definitely be obsessive compulsive at times, straightening and re-straightening, trying to keep everything in order in an attempt to simplify things so I don't lose track of something or drop the ball on some responsibility (financial receipts, phone messages, etc.).

For the record, my brother just entered the care of a psychiatrist.  He's being treated for substance abuse and severe depression with mild "psychosis not otherwise specified"--meaning he may be slightly bipolar, he may be slightly schizophrenic, they're not sure exactly.

He has never had any visual/auditory hallucinations, but the doctors have labelled some of his general ideas about life as being distorted.  Personally, I think he's ADD, depressed, and extremely jaded.  He was diagnosed ADD in school, and upon graduation from high school gave up ritalin in favor of pot, then spent the next several years bussing tables and trying to get by financially (he's 23 now).  I think that if the depression lifts, and he is treated again for ADD, and continues to be in recovery from the alcohol/pot, his "distorted thinking" will straighten out somewhat.  How many of us ADD-ers have never felt frustrated, thinking we don't quite get "the rules" for life that everybody else seems to follow?  How many have been told sometime in life that they "march to the tune of a different drummer"?  I know that for me, the downside of ADD has been that I have simultaneously been considered brilliant and an underacheiver by many.  I have both wowed and disappointed college professors, bosses, and significant others, and have worked in positions of great responsibility and reward at times, and struggled to support myself at others (or at the same time).  Who wouldn't that mess up, at least a little.

BTW, hello to those who have responded to my posts in the past; sorry, I only get on here occasionally, and then read all the posts at once to catch up.

-tactile jones