Avanza

Starting on 7.5mgs tonight for comorbid depression and generalized anxiety. My psychiatrist was more concerned with helping me find what I can do with my life. We came up with some ideas. It's looking pretty bright. I'll do what I can to get a functional entry down in the near future.

Slouched, much?

I've had to bump down my updates frequency. I have a lot on my plate. I'm just online quickly for the moment and I thought I'd share something. I've decided to totally overhaul a lot of things in my life as a part of my commitment for comprehensive management of my AD/HD. One thing I'm sorting out now is my posture. I've met so many AD/HDers who have bad posture. It might be evident to most readers that I have an interest in general psychology. As such, things like body language intrigue me. If you have bad posture, you may give off the impression that you have low self-esteem. That isn't surprising if you've suffered through attempting to manage a bad case of AD/HD a little later on in life as you'd have liked to. The thing is that once you get through it and life picks up, the damage might have already been done. So I've developed this game plan to sort it out.

Hell Is What You Make It.

Last night, my relationship ended. If time is any indicator of intensity, it was eighteen months to the day. It felt like being ripped in half. This morning I went and saw my psychiatrist as per my appointment. His main concern was my moods over the last few months. We didn't discuss the relationship breakdown for too long, but he did mention that he would withhold treatment for comorbid moderate to severe depression until I re-adjust and finish the grieving process. He did switch me back to instant release Ritalin and helped me come up with a dosing schedule so I could get twelve hours of medication coverage through the day.

I Can Do This.

I woke up today with a big temazepam hangover and only a vague recollection of the night before. That's not quite as dramatic or heartwrenching as it sounds. Its a little confusing though. My apartment is more or less in order. There isn't a lot to go - except the kitchen and the bathroom. There's a lot of rubbish to be taken out, but I'll get to that. I had some friends come over today to help me get it finished a bit quicker. It really did help. I didn't realize how much I hoarded. The day went pretty well, with no moodswings or difficult moments or anything.

Tomorrow I have my appointment. Its first thing in the morning. I figure that getting the place in order before then isn't a total waste of time because the doctor will help me learn to manage my life. Its the same doctor I've always used, but now he's more aware of what's going on. I've really hit rock bottom in the last couple of months. Enough is enough. Einstein said something like "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". There is good evidence to suggest that Einstein had AD/HD. Change can happen rapidly or over a few years - but it is inevitable. Tomorrow will be interesting.

So I Tried To Get Committed...

To a psych ward. I haven't really been coping these last few days. My psychiatrist did help me get an earlier appointment with him. I can't believe how little help there is in Australia for adults with AD/HD. I actually got hung up on by a hospital support line after I told them I have AD/HD and I'm not coping - they told me that they can't help me if I have AD/HD, because they only help "mainstream brains" that aren't coping. And that I should know that AD/HD is highly specialized. Another psychiatric support phone line reffered me to an alternative therapy clinic that use neurofeedback and nutritional supplements to "get me off medication".

I'm trying desperately to take full responsibility for managing my AD/HD but it really gets too much. People start losing faith in you and you can't exactly point to a record of success to show them otherwise. I don't know what its going to take, but I have to wait until Monday morning.

Decluttering. I Tried...

I haven't given up. But I have to say that the sheer volume of crap that I own is staggering. I've lived out of home for nearly four years. I spent the vast majority of that time unemployed, living off scholarship money and Youth Allowance payments. But somehow I managed to acquire the contents of what might make up a museum of early 21st century hobbies in a hundred years time.

I own books on everything. I'm not exaggerating. This will merit its own paragraph.

Gentle or Justified? Part II

Continued from here.

I remember reading somewhere that in our brains, our emotional center is closer to our decision making center than our logical center is. I don't know how true that is, but it surely rings true enough for the point of this post. From a logical* point of view, you can imagine the implications of this theory; we humans (mental illness notwithstanding) are not entirely logical creatures.

If we're not logical, it probably isn't suitable to apply logic in order to explain everything humans do. That's probably why no machine has so far passed the Turing test - it might require a partially logical kind of artificial intelligence, which I imagine would be significantly harder to create than a wholly logical one.

Gentle or Justified? Part I

AD/HD adults can develop some weird coping methods. Especially if they missed out on a childhood diagnosis. Most of these methods are counterproductive, and are often what leads to the diagnosis in the first place. Occasionally they might be brilliant, but this AD/HDer suspects that this case is more the result of luck than anything else.

One coping mechanism that I've developed and still struggle with is the need for a chain of logical reasoning behind everything that happens. This has lead to giving the impression of being controlling of people's lives and various projects that I become involved in. The problem in relationships is that it can be confused with the kind of controlling behavior exhibited by an overly insecure and excessively jealous person (I've been there, but I found it a lot easier to recognize and kick than this).

Medicated, Not Fixed.

I couldn't clean my apartment without stimulant medication. But medication doesn't get me into the habit of keeping it clean.

Medication is an important first step for any useful AD/HD treatment plan. Stimulants are amazingly effective for around 80% of adults with AD/HD. Being amazingly effective and in most cases an essential step doesn't make stimulant medication a cure. Especially for those diagnosed of us who were diagnosed as adults.

Starting My Decluttering Action Plan.

I don't know if I'm breaking some kind of blogger code here, but I will continue the AD/HD in the workplace series. If I don't, put it down to AD/HD. That was a joke. It will get covered in the near future.

I divide my time between two residences. My girlfriend's apartment, which is also my workplace. The other place is my own apartment. While I'm happy to accept it as just a place to store my stuff (as George Carlin put it), it is meant to be my space. The two places aren't that far apart, so I don't know if we qualify as "living apart together" in the postmodern refugee sense. Maybe I'll discuss that elsewhere.

The AD/HD Resume. Part II

Continued from here.

One way to solve the problem is to find a job that requires a certain level of distractibility. It would also have to have enough novelty to be consistently stimulating. One example that springs to mind is software programming or any job that requires a lot of problem solving and creative thinking in order to get a major task done. The distractibility is often channeled into creativity. An AD/HDer may break the big project down into bite sized chunks and hack away at it piece by piece so it doesn't overwhelm them. Eventually, someone with treated AD/HD could get the job done just as well as any equally skilled programmer.

The AD/HD Resume. Part I

Easily distracted, rarely finishes tasks, often late for appointments, chronic procrastination, often fails to follow instructions, is often forgetful in daily tasks, constantly seeking external or internal stimuli, often loses things necessary for tasks and activities...

These are some common AD/HD symptoms (mostly associated with inattentive subtype, so it only covers half of the combined type spectrum - I am combined). It reads like an anti-resume, doesn't it? Kind of an employment binary-opposite. Having AD/HD does make it look a lot like you're wired for unemployment.

Wearing Da Vinci's Genes?

Late last night, an associate of mine managed to peak my curiosity long enough to get me to download an ebook named after something called "The Da Vinci Method". Apparently its the next big thing among AD/HDers. Its even endorsed by Ph.D. holder Dr. Shane Perrault, who is the head psychologist at Entrepreneurs with ADHD. I'm not familiar with his work, but he has a very marketable headshot (and no, American readers, it has nothing to do with the colour of his skin - and that's how we spell "color" in Australia).

I only really skimmed through it, but I read enough to be really put off. It read like the The Secret for people with ADHD, and thats not a good thing. Mostly because The Secret reads like a big American advertisement more than anything else.

Kindergarten.

Just before we all moved on to primary school, our kindergarten teacher gave each of us kids picture books that she thought we could relate to.

I got given a book called "Michael". I haven't been able to track it down anywhere online. I'm pretty sure it might be somewhere in my parents' roof. If I ever find it, I'll scan it.

It was about a kid who didn't pay attention to his parents, dressed like a punk, and didn't do well at school. He had this obsession with drawing rocket ships.

Whirling Dervish.

I've been unemployed lately, and so I've had the chance to watch myself go against no imaginary structure whatsoever. And having been more aware of my AD/HD lately, I thought I'd make a quick post listing some of the rapid cycling 'phases' or 'obsessions' I've gone through in the past six weeks (off the top of my head of course):

The Kitchen.

What's it like being an adult with AD/HD? If I'd forgotten my medication, I'd have started this blog earlier when I was meant to be cleaning the kitchen. Instead I mostly finished the kitchen and planned this first paragraph.

I can't answer that question in one quick post. I doubt anyone could. I'm not really the best at living with it either. I'm still learning and I have a way to go. I suppose thats kind of strange because I've always had AD/HD. I actually showed my first clues at around fifteen months when I began showing abnormal sleep difficulties. Of course, they couldn't diagnose it then. I was first diagnosed at six, and again at twelve. My family and I didn't accept the diagnosis - both came during Sixty Minutes AD/HD hysteria.

Eventually I was diagnosed again at seventeen and I've been on medication since. I'm twenty one now, and I'm finally starting to get some understanding about the disorder. I live in Australia, so the information isn't quite as readily available as it is in the United States.