Adult ADD

There's a lot that WE wouldn't have wanted to deal with if you turned your colon into A Night at the Improv online.

 

Same. The hundreds of hours I've spent at microfilm machines in my life can attest.

And same in a few other ways on this thread, as I've posted a little about before. As Ragu said, confront, confront, confront. Avoiding these issues didn't work every century before this, it's not going to work in this one. Keep talking about it. ADD, social anxiety, depression -- it's not easy, but keep talking. They're very real, and you can't just "quick-fix" them with a pill or 10.

But keep fighting the fight. And it is a fight, every day. But keep at it.

 

All I know about my obsessive version of ADD is I wouldn't have accomplished the things I'm proudest of without this light kiss of mania.

 

Ha! It's like anything else, you take the imperfections and idiosyncracies you were handed (basically at birth) and you find a way to make them labor for you. This isn't a "disease" so much as a hidden asset waiting to be properly cultivated.

 

That is perfect.

I seriously need an Adderall antidote right now, because I just considered ironing some towels. I didn't even know I had an iron.

 

Look, I can make origami swans with the towels! And then I can paint little portraits of them, and bake cookies while the portraits dry, and knit myself a nice hat, and recover Boom's favorite chair with suede from a wild palomino I hunted myself with a bow and arrow!

Get me out of this body.

 

What's with all the origami talk around here lately?

 

I used Adderall -- ahem -- "recreationally" a couple of times in college and became convinced it was the greatest drug in the world. I became a studying machine with that stuff. I could plow through papers, get things done without distraction. It was wonderful.

There are definitely times when I would love to have that focus today. Is this the sort of thing you can just ask your general-practice doctor about or do you have to see a specialist to get a prescription?

 

21:

Listen to some Allman Brothers and try to mellow out. I'll PM you tomorrow. I have the same affliction ...

 

Glad I'm not the only OH LOOK! A FIRETRUCK one...
Took Ritalin as a kid. Was hell when you didnt eat breakfast. It is not a medication on an empty stomach. Instead of worrying about not doing homework, I used to worry about worrying about not doing home work...
ADD and hyperactivity have probably help to contribute to foot in mouth disease in my adulthood -- including one job that I was given the ziggy for for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
I probably still have some form -- I notice it when I tune people out and I realize sometimes "hey dummy, you need to pay attention to them." And now, when I have tunnelvision, it just drives Ms. Slappy nuts...

 

First ADD guy: How many of those afflicted with ADD does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Second ADD guy: I don't know. Want to go get a beer?

(Sorry. Remembered that one from an ex-girlfriend who was studying to be a shrink).

If this neurological imbalance was as destructive a force as our brains are persuading us to think that it is, we'd be unemployed and really fucked up. That any vocational writer can sit down and pound out copy day after day is proof that ADD in any form is not such a tough master. If the deck is stacked against anyone with ADD, it's artistic types. And many such people have conquered it.

 

No, that's not "proof." Most mental illnesses affect different people in different ways. This thread is, ahem, proof of that. Some can be "conquered," some can't; some are constant every-day threats, some go into dormancy before resurfacing, for whatever reason. So to say that it is or isn't a "destructive force" is a little simplistic, because for the most part, it's very much a case-by-case thing.