Memoirs of the Attention Deficit

A Super-Mega-Duper-Triple-Power-Long Post for my first one was probably a bad decision. I'm actually trying to fix that now, but instead of cutting it down I just keep adding to it. Like this.


First off, I want to give a gigantinormously huge thank you to my great friend Hack, I am so thankful to have him there to help me out, and for one of the very few times in my life encourage me to share what I’m thinking.  Hack, your help is very much appreciated!  Secondly, I’m going to apologize for my newbie-ish-ness in the way that I blog.  I will eventually get better at this, but the last time I made any sort of blog was back when I was ten and “Xanga” was all the rage.

I may as well make the first post about the subject that is closest to me personally, which is diagnosis of disorders such as ADHD.  This post is going to be long.  ADHD has more or less become a complete joke in society.  It’s either a joke, or you think everyone and their mother has it.  The truth is, as always, right in between that.  And if I hear another doctor say "it gets better, they often grow out of it" I will punch them square in the face.  You do not grow out of ADHD.  That is an absolute load of crap. Have you ever heard anyone say "I used to be bi-polar?"  If you 'used' to have it, you never had it to begin with. Your brain does not grow out of having a neurotransmitter imbalance that causes it to go into hyper-drive trying to make up for the lack of chemicals that it needs to balance its self out requiring a stimulant to replace those and slow the brain down.  Yes, that was a run on sentence with at least 4 grammatical errors. But you all get the point.

ADHD is not just fidgeting, acting out, or not being able to concentrate.  These are not grounds for medicating a child or an adult.  Yet at the same time, when you've got a teenager who struggles beyond what any study session can help, gets into trouble constantly, and self medicates with marijuana, ADHD could probably be looked into.  The line is incredibly fine, thus it requires a true understanding of the disorder, not hearsay. 

Here's an example. There was a six year old girl whose first grade teacher started to notice the fact that she could not sit still in her chair.  She could never pass the timed math quizzes, and she could never follow directions.  The teacher informed her parents, who ignored her for awhile, seeing as though they didn’t want to get caught up in this “ADHD hoax.”  Eventually, they gave in when she was failing the first grade.  They took her up to a clinic in Chicago to be tested because of her uncontrollable, violent temper (which they just assumed was overall bad behavior that persisted beyond punishment), and inability to function in school.  They tested to see what age level the girl was functioning at to make sure this wasn't an autism disorder or intelligence problem.  The team stopped, however, after she blew through the twelve year olds' test; they decided that was not the issue.  They realized where the real problem was when the instructor read her a simple story and asked her to repeat some of what she had just said.  She had the girl try to answer some very simple questions about it. She had no clue, so the girl was reading the book the instructor was using upside down across the table to get the answers.  Needless to say, they ended up prescribing Ritalin for her.  That ‘oh so terrible medication.’  Night and day.  She went from failing 1^st grade to getting straight A’s all the way through school without having to study at all.  

If you could look at me now, even as I’m unmedicated in writing this, I’m sitting perfectly still.  I was blessed with parents who did not allow me to use ADHD as an excuse for anything.  So I learned how to control myself to a degree.  I was able to learn, and am still learning how to use this gift of creativity and spontaneity to my advantage.  I still have to take medication every day to control it and function well at work and in school.  I always have and I always will.  About 15 years after having been first diagnosed in Chicago, I get retested with a new computerized testing mechanism to test the effectiveness of my medication.  I was to remain unmedicated for 36 hours prior to testing.  The AVERAGE score for someone without ADHD is 100.  That’s AVERAGE.. not the top score, not a great score, average.  It is based on visual, auditory, and sensory information gathered from 15 minutes of doing a repetitive task that requires your attention.  My score was a grand total of….ready?  …..2.  I got a 2.  My fine motor movement was off the scale and my visual score was almost nonexistent.  I retook the test after taking my fairly large dose of medication, and was able to get my score up to 75.  But that’s the best it has ever gotten, and probably ever will get.  The first thing the specialist said was, “you have been pushing the equivalent of a very large boulder up a very large hill your entire life.”  And he’s right.  I could write books on my experience growing up as a kid with severe ADHD.  I haven’t even touched on the hyperactive portion of it, which is the part that ends up messing with your self confidence and the way you view yourself.  This is why I get so upset when people act like ADHD doesn't exist, or that it's something that's completely in your control. 

I did a clinical at an undisclosed location where they were testing college students for ADHD.  I could have absolutely exploded on these people.  This doctor, an ADD guru in the surrounding city for over a decade, had put together a test that consisted of a self-survey of about 20 questions with a 1-5 scale that you circled after each question.  1 being not bad, 5 being the worst.  Questions like this:  “Do you have trouble sitting still?”  “Do you have trouble concentrating for long periods of time?”  “Do you have trouble multitasking?”  “Do you have problems with disorganization?”  Assuming that someone can set paper aflame with their eyes, I got incredibly close while reading this abomination. How many of you reading that have answered at least a 4 or 5 on those. Probably most.  That’s called being human.  People are getting diagnosed with a disorder that is profound enough to make people drop out of school based on a confounded piece-of-crap survey.  This is happening everywhere.  For awhile it was almost a fad.  Just type ADHD in google.  “Do you have ADHD??” quizzes here, there, everywhere.  Anyone can answer yes to those questions.  WAKE UP people.  Just because you space out in class does not mean you have ADD.  When you can stare at your phone that you just put down on the counter in a public bathroom and think to yourself, I’m going to probably forget about that in the next 2 minutes and then actually forget about it within a one minute time frame due to distraction and end up getting your $200 dollar phone that you bought for the sole purpose of having a reminder tool/calendar/homework organizer stolen in a God-forsaken ghetto town because you left it sitting in the bathroom for a grand total of fifteen minutes and go to call back and hearing the stupid manager say that the bathrooms just got cleaned and there was no phone in there.  I hate people. And Verizon Wireless.  And Taylor Swift. And cicadas. And Obama. And Oprah.

ANYWAY.  My goal wasn’t to tell my life story, frankly, we all have our own things we deal with, but its honestly the only way I can get my point across.  People are getting stupid.  Recess is being taken away from schools everywhere, hence the children that can’t sit still.  Self discipline no longer exists, everything is basically just handed to us, hence the inability to sit down and finish a task.  Spanking your kid is pretty much abuse now, so kids are out of control brats.  There are obviously exceptions, but you get the point.  ADHD exists alright, but it is NOT what America thinks it is.