I am unsure but hopeful it will explain.. | ADHD Information

Hi all,

This is my first post so I will try not to bore you too much.

Today, I have come to the realisation I probably have ADHD. I took a few online tests and sure enough the questions all related to how I feel. I am not sure what subtype etc.. as I do not know enough yet.

Anyway, if I give a brief description of myself and history, then maybe someone can relate to how I am and help confirm that this is what is wrong with me.

I am 28 and I run my own Web Design Business.

In Primary School I was very intelligent, Hyperactive and Weird. By weird I mean I had no sense of correct social behavior. I was picked on by other children excessively.

Nearing the end of primary school my results dropped and I had poor relations with everybody including the teacher.

High School was more of the same, I couldn't stand School and found it incredibly hard to be interested in school work. I hated laboring with school work so much that I stayed home 30-40% of the time.

As an adult, I have basically no Social Life because I can't interact with people. I can seem perfectly normal and intelligent and funny, but I will always say something offensive or stupid.

Group situations scare me so much that I will avoid them at all costs.

Basically I am paranoid about what people think about me and this all comes from my childhood. Where I am pretty sure ADHD caused me to behave in a way that was strange to others.

Basically I have my partner and I haven't had friends for so long.

It sucks for my work though as I run my own business LOL

What I do have a problem with is:

I frequently feel very stressed and short tempered. When in this mood I lash out at my spouse and can say excessively nasty things that are inappropriate or unwarranted.

I can't multitask efficiently

I repeatedly check things to ensure I haven't made a mistake to the point of obsession.

I can't read books very well, without either falling asleep or mind wandering.

Very low Self Esteem

I have a gambling problem ( I make my self physically sick sometimes doing it from the stress) but I enjoy the Risk/Win etc.

I have a smoking problem

I have trouble communicating with people in the sense I seem to be on a different wave length.

Basically I am restless, unable to organise my life properly and have ups and downs.

I feel anxious a lot of the time even when there seems to be no apparent reason to be so.

This is a rambling of thoughts, I also find it hard to express things clearly or organise them in my brain and put them on paper without getting overwhelmed.

What do you think?

Welcome to ADHD.

Always trying to reach a higher level of stimulation?

I love to gamble, too.

Whenever I step into a casino I go nuts from the overstimulation. (not 'crazy' nuts. Just slightly salted peanuts) I love it. I could play slot machines for hours, and love to sit at a blackjack table until the sun comes up.

 If i lived in a place where there was legal gambling i'd have a problem for sure. I head to vegas a couple of times a year as it is.

I'm 38 years old and have experienced everything you have mentioned. I was diagnosed about 2 years ago and was relieved to know the reasons for my behaviors and that there were others like me. I only wish i had known sooner.

Anyway, it sounds like you have the frontal lobe of a ADHD guy to me.

 Educate yourself as much as possible. The hardest part can be the mood swings with your partner. Snapping and saying mean things etc. Makes you really feel like sh*t always. That's what made me finally seek help.

There are lot's of cool and positive things about it(ADHD) too.

My thoughts are all over the place today. I should quit posting, but good luck with whatever you decide to do. It's bothered you enough to seek out info on the net and lead you here. My advice would be to see it through to the end.

Best of luck!

DRRRAGONS,

Wow!  Another person who I have a lot in common with.  Let's see...

I am also in the computer field. I have almost no social life...cannot interact well with people, even though I sometimes try.  I avoid group situations to a point that I'm running out of excuses.  Short tempered, often lash out at my poor innocent wife...

Can only work on one thing at a time.  Cannot multitask.  I reread...and reread...and reread when I post to this message board and with emails at work.  I get obsessed with trying to word things just right.  When reading, I have to restart over and over again and I cannot have noise in the background (TV, music, talking, etc.).  Low self esteem.  Used to gamble, but more recently a problem with porn......but SSRI antidepressants are helping.  Cannot communicate well, and hold conversations, therefore makes it difficult to interact with others.  I suffer from general anxiety...SSRI is helping with that too.

Yeah, I have a lot in common with your type of ADD.  I think I am inattentive type.  I would think that you were too, but you mentioned that you used to be hyperactive when you were young.  You might be classic.  Just curious, are you also unmotivated and rather not bother with just about anything except your few hobbies or work?

I think you would benefit from Wellbutrin.  It has calmed me down and helped me be better with my wife.  I don't blow up as much.  It has also helped with my scatter-brain'ness.  I have also be a bit better with interacting with others.  One of the guys I get along with pretty well at work rides a motorcycle.  I've always wanted one and finally talked my wife into letting me buy one.  So, I bought one two weeks ago.  Now I'm starting a new hobby that I have in common with someone else.  I feel like I'm more willing to get out there and socialize a little more.  It's nice to have something in common with someone else and to be able to relate to another person for once in my life.  I just started on Adderall XR...I'll let you know if it helps with my other symptoms.

You should also read the "Friends and ADD" post.  I think you will relate stronly with that one.

Well, welcome to the club...

-JA

Sounds like it to me! Welcome home!   Read the posts here and get a lot of good info as to where/how to go on from here. You will be amazed at the difference knowing other people are going through the same thing will make. It's like you thought you were the last living human and then meet a community full of welcoming, caring people. You are no longer and oddity or weird or strange! You're one of us!         Barb

Welcome Drrragons,

Keep reading.  You will find yourself among many others who are dealing with the same issues as you are.  Best of all, you will learn the methods that others are using to win dispite our common impairment as well as sympathetic ears and encouragement.

Whoa! I wondered about that myself. When I was in my 20s; I smoked alot of pot; and pretty often. It did make me kinda anti-social as I was paranoid all the time worrying that everyone knew I was stoned. I am sure that my social skills really went way out there for that part of my life. My lifestyle was like that for about 10 years or so. They say that studies show there are no lasting effects from pot smoking; but I believe differently. It's been a couple of decades; but I think some of my problems may have something to do with my reckless behavior in my youth. 

Well as far as I can tell all my problems started well before that, especially the blurting things out part. I stopped talking to people to stop that.

I still don't talk to people now, if I was in a room with everyone here, I wouldn't say a word.

So after him shooting me down and saying you don't have it, it's from smoking pot, you need this drug to counter the anxiety you have and the lack of concentration/motivation and risk based behaviour, not to mention bad temper.

I can't even be bothered seeing someone else, because I wouldn't want the same thing to happen.

 

 

I found a lot of things in common here, doesn't make me really happy but makes me feel more sane.

I frequently feel very stressed
I can't multitask AT ALL
I can't read books very well, without either falling asleep or mind wandering.
Very low Self Esteem
I have trouble communicating with people in the sense I seem to be on a different wave length.
I feel anxious a lot of the time even when there seems to be no apparent reason to be so
I find it hard to express things clearly or organise them in my brain and put them on paper without getting overwhelmed.

I was posting a message a while ago and I guess I forgot to write the above symptoms down, thanks for the reminder. Adderal certainly helps, makes me also more aware of things. I was thinking that I would not take Adderal on the weekends not the get used to it that much, had horrible last couple of weekends, till I figure out the reason was me missing the adderal. I feel 99% of my actions are automatic. My mind jumps from thoughts to other thoughts to other. It's like surfing the web, one link to another link to another, to finish a page you need to read whole internet, after a bit you have 20 web pages open, don't even remember which page I was reading initially, get anxious "IT HAPPENED AGAIN WITHOUT ME MEANING IT, HATE IT"

Whenever I start a project I want to show everybody what I am doing because I know I may forget what I am working on, or in case I leave it unfinished.

I love riding motorbike, love to ride it fast too, when I am feeling that I am not allowed to make a mistake and nobody is expecting anything from me my mind is not racing, I get rested.

DRRRAGONS,

Now we have a dillema don't we.  We have a Dr. who says you don't have ADD even though you clearly have all of the symptoms  Somehow you tested negative for the impairment.  I have a fear that the same thing will happen to me.  What if it does?  Do I just keep going from MD to MD until I find one that says what I believe to be true?  The only other options seem to be to accept what others have said about me since I was a kid or to get to the bottom of what is happening in my life.  The fact that you were having problems before you started on pot should be key.  The MD may have hit upon something when he blamed it on pot use, but he/she needs to explain why there were problems before and he/she also needs to explain how it is that so many others use pot regularly and function quite well with no lack of focus.

My advice:  This is too dibilitating a problem to NOT get a second opinion.  I do not know what kind of tests you were given, but my research shows that there are actual brain scans that demonstrate conclusively that the ADD brain looks different from the "normal" brain.  For example, the ADD brain produces chemicals that do not allow for focus when it is needed and instead, produces a narcotic, hence the drowsiness that sets in when we are trying to read.  My guess is that if the forgoing is true, then that would be the ONLY way to be absolutely certain whether one is or is not ADD.  Aside from that, we would have to rely on personal history and symptoms reproduced by stimuli such as that provided for by the AMEN test.

I hope this helps.

 

ChiefB38148.3238657407

Hi all,

Thanks for all your Reponses, I went on holiday for a week which was nice, but when I got back I went and saw my doc and he gave me an anti depressant.

He doesn’t think I have ADD, he thinks that when I was younger and used to smoke pot, this has caused all my problems.

Doesn't explain why I was strange before I smoked pot,

Don't know what to think now.

 

 

 

Hi ChiefB,

Some others on this board have talked about significant side effects from Straterra (there is a whole thread on it). But mine have been very minor. My doctor has very gradually increased my dosage. I am now on 70 MG per day and he has taken about 2 months to work me up to that. Supposedly 80 is the max. With every increase I experience a day or two of headaches that I can handle with Tylenol, then it is fine. I also have dry mouth and sinuses, but that seems to go away also. But others seem to have a really bad time with it, so I guess it hits everyone differently.

The biggest two changes I notice are #1 - I feel like I can stick with a task to completion better. #2 - When I am interrupted, it seems easier to get back to my original task. I also am less apt to unintentionally get hyperfocused on something else. It it is no cure-all to be sure. I still seem to have all my ADD symptoms, they are just milder and more controlable. My diagnosis and treatment are still pretty new, so it is tough to tell. I don't know how much of my behavior is just conditioning from 40+ years of living with this and not knowing it.

I am trying to develop some appropriate coping strategies regarding organization and such. I just bought a book that addresses organization skills for ADDers. The point being that regular organization training does not work well with ADD. I will let everyone know what I think when I have finished it and tried to implement it. I am also starting to explore a career change to something that is more in line with my strengths.

Hope this helps!  

Thank you Chaz,

That helps a lot.  I am on wellbutrin.  When I was upped to 300mgs, I started getting this muscle tension at the base of my skull which invariably develops into a pretty impressive headache.  It's been 5 days and it hasn't subsided.  I take asprin and ibuprophrine for it.  I have notice no improvement in focus or any other ADD behaviors.  I'll finish out the month on this dosage to give it time to run its course.  Thanks again.

 

Dragonzzz, I agree with ChiefB. You should have tests done. Unfortunately, many MDs don't believe in ADHD and would tell you that you don't have it regardless what you told them.

If you believe that you have it, you need to be tested for that and possibly other things which haven't been considered but that have symptoms which mimic ADHD, just to be sure.

As far as pot causing ADHD with the symptoms lasting for years, so what! If you are having a problem, it needs to be addressed and treated. It sounds to me like a "you made your bed when you were young and stupid, now you can lie in it for the rest of your life" mentality.  How it came to be should have no bearing on whether or not its treated. Whatever caused it, the fact is that it is now there and needs to be treated.

Get your testing done and let us know the results. We're rooting for you!  Barb

My doctor started me out with anti-depressants. I have since read that this is a common prctice as many ADD symptoms can also be caused by depression.

The anti-depressants made me feel much better. I still could not focus, concentrate, get organized, finish anything, or remember anything, but I did not really care! I would drive somewhere and forget where I was going and just drive around smiling.

So after a few weeks we realized that this was not helping my symptoms. As it turned out, I was depressed. But I was depressed because of all the fallout from my ADD behaviors. So he started me on Concerta. It worked well, but it is a stimulant and I started building a resistance to it really quickly. So he moved me to Straterra. So far it is helping.  

Chaz,

You say that Straterra is helping.  How so?  Can you now concentrate, focus, get places on time?  What are your Straterra side effects?