FlashApe

FlashApe » Ritalin is easy, ritalin is good

Ritalin is easy, ritalin is good

August 20th, 2007
10:23 am

I hope anyway….recently I was diagnosed with AD/HD. After talking with doctors and researching it, I am simply amazed at how much of an impact it has had on my life. I always took it as that was “just me”, that’s “just how I am”. Add on to that the affect it had on my wife, who was having a hard time and getting frustrated dealing with “the way that I am” and the impact is that much greater.

How do I feel about the diagnosis? Fantastic. I feel like someone found a missing piece to the puzzle that is me. I’ve only been taking the ritalin for three days so far, and I’m starting off with a pretty low dose, so I can’t really say anything about hte effects yet, we’ll see how that goes. I’ve got my fingers crossed though, and I’m looking forward to days when I don’t have to:

walk out my front foor, realize i forgot something, go back, get what I forgot, walk out my front foor, realize i forgot something, go back, get what I forgot, walk out my front foor, realize i forgot something, go back, get what I forgot, walk out my front foor, realize i forgot something, go back, get what I forgot,walk out my front foor, realize i forgot something, go back, get what I forgot, walk out my front door, finally get to my car, start driving realize i forgot my cell, go back to my apartment, forget what I went back there for
Spend 10 minutes looking for that i was JUST holding 5 seconds ago….10 times a day
Listen to my wife get frustrated because I lost something again, or forget something again
Make careless errors on work because I simply can’t focus
Spend more time than necessary at work because I can’t focus/am easily distracted
Have 4-5 projects at a time that are unfinished for no good reason
Lose track of the conversation I am having with someone else after 10 seconds.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. I’m hoping to post some updates, especially related to how it affects my work.

random

21 People had this to say...

It’s definitely most helpful to the individual to know that they have ad/hd. I can look back and see the ‘why’ to a lot of my failures, as well as see why other tasks or accomplishments came much easier to me than to others. All in all, its a revelation that most people embrace and appreciate. Good luck and I hope you’ll have noticeable improvements.

Un-freakin-believeable — this comment has been removed because the rantings of a scientologist are completely invalid, simply by the fact that they are scientologists.

http://www.lisamcpherson.org/
http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/
http://www.xenu.net/

I don’t wanna say that I can feel how you feel, but I can imagine that it must be a great relief having found that “missing piece” to yourself.

I’m not sure congratulations are appropriate — but anyways congrats!

thanks mattias. i feel like if everything works out the way that we are thinking, then congrats are definitely in order!

You’ll be amazed how much easier it will be to code once you have fewer things distracting you. Medicine is half the treatment, behavior modification (which you’ll need to deal with the fact the world has slowed down around you) is the other half. Good luck to you on this incredible journey back!

Keep us updated on how the Ritalin works out.

Your bullet points read like a mini-biography on my daily life, LOL…

Lee- that’s what i’m hoping for..easier time with work (and home). I’m working with someone for behaviour modification..in fact we were trying to do that first, without the meds, but we determined that at least at this point, we needed to go with both.

Seth - heh, yeah, a number of people have made that same comment to me. Makes me wonder how many more people are in the same situation I was in.

After reading your post, I’ve got a sudden urge to see a doctor… I really identified with your “symptoms”. I already lost 4 cellphones because I bought an expresso, and just left leaving the phones on the counter. I go through a work day and realize I could have done more work if I stayed focused. I forget personal events constantly. I want to do everything new I see… usually 3 or 4 things at the same time… and obcess with it until I start doing it, but never finish… I could go on and on… Hey at least my girlfriend still thinks it’s cute…

saw the ritalin title in my flash blog subscriptions and wondered what sort of joke/demeaning thread would follow….was stoked to see a serious post and that someone was willing to put it out there. i got my official diagnosis about a year ago after having been thru it with my son. recognizing the issues he was having as being the same ones i’d dealt with my whole life, i finally admitted it and went thru the process of diagnosis. while ritalin isn’t the panacea, it has definately been a huge part of changing life for the better…nothing like being able to actually complete a project (or for that matter know when to stop tweaking), not to mention no longer finding myself standing in the basement drawing a complete blank as to why i’m there, going back upstairs and repeating…
thx for your post - nice feeling when you finally understand your own deal and how to start harnessing it.

I hear you brother… I was diagnosed years ago. It was such a relief to realize that I wasn’t a screw up and that a lot of my “problems” were related to my ADD. I don’t like Ritalin too much but it is better that the alternative. I recommend experimenting with other drugs as well.

ADD has it’s upside though, endless enthusiasm, brilliant creativity, active imagination, intense passion and drive and so on. It is a gift and a curse at the same time.

How do you go about getting an official diagnosis? I went to my general physician a few months back and he was of no help. Just curious what type of doctor you went to and the process behind it.

I have to echo Lee’s comment about the behavior modification.

I was in the exact same place four years ago. Once I started taking medication, I realized that I now had a choice whether I wanted to pay attention or not. I still periodically find myself spacing off when my wife is talking to me , but I realize it now and can make the decision to put the focus back on her (which wasn’t possible before).

It takes some time and patience, but the road blocks are out of the way. Best of luck!

jordan - you need to go see a psychiatrist, usually things like this are not a general physicians field (I might even question the situation of a general physician prescribing meds like ritalin). The diagnosis is the hard part…there’s no ‘official’ test for it, it’s more like examining a consistent pattern of behavior over the course of your life, and having those ehaviors exist in different aspects of your life (like at home and at work, for example).

A number of people have recommended chadd.org as probably the top resource on the web for AD/HD information, so you might want to check that out as well.

Goat - thanks, that’s good to hear. I’m definitely working on both approaches right now, the meds and the behavior modification. However, I’ve been trying to find ways to cope with it my whole life, without even realizing it: making todo lists (that I would forget about or lose, or just stop using them), putting things in the same exact spot so they’d be easy to find when I need it (but still losing them anyway), etc etc, and right now, I don’t have the decision to control things like losing track of what I was talking about right in mid-sentence.

By the way, what married man doesn’t space off when his wife is talking?? (babe, if you read this, i love you!! )

By the way, for thos of you who might be just starting or considering these meds, DON’T take it and then go to kickboxing class…

so wait…who drank the last Pepsi?

Rich, thanks so much for that information. I am currently in the GTD/to do list phase but realizing there is much more to my forgetfulness and non-focusing thought patterns. I have had friends blatantly come up and tell me while I am running around doing things in my house that I may need to see someone. I start doing one thing and then end up doing like 5 things at once forgetting what my main objective was. Today at home I had put a dress shirt in the dryer to put on over my undershirt. I am now sitting at my desk at work with just an undershirt on (luckily it’s a black shirt). It can be funny, some of the things i end up doing , but after a while it can affect not only me but the people around me. This hopefully I can get under control soon.

yeah, sounds like a pretty similar situation, and if people are suggesting it to you than that is a pretty good sign you might need to at least talk to someone about it. Good luck.

I was diagnosed with AD/HD about nine years ago. Ritalin is not for everyone but for me, it changed my life. Every symptom you listed above - that was me. I tried explaining it to my wife and the best analogy I could think of was this - know how you have dreams where you run as fast as you can but your legs are going really slow? Thats what it felt like in my head till I was 35.

Good luck.

I’ve got all the situations described and some more. It got much better after several years of body psychotherapy. If you don’t want to be on prescribed drug for all your life you should try something similar. If you don’t care or if you don’t want to invest your time in your health stay with drug.

Welcome to the club. In my experience, itâ€™s all about accepting your interrupt driven nature, even a pill canâ€™t fight it.

Iâ€™m 42 and still your description of your state is still quite familiar. Iâ€™ve got a trail of unfinished projects as far as the eye can see. Depressing in a way, but, really they every one taught me something finished or not and the lesson learned carries into the more important things that eventually do get done. They taught me a lot about focusing my energies on realistically achievable goals, and consequently I gained a fine understanding for what I just canâ€™t get done by myself. And also to remember that pyramids are best built of stone and not bits.

I was on Ritlan for many years (remember the teacher dispensing it to me in first grade at the prescribed times) and my family remembered me as being catatonic and lifeless. I myself remember little of the period up until the prescription was lost and thereâ€™d been a family shuffle so to speak. Essentially I writhed in the floor screaming for hours on end from the withdrawals. Pain in the stomach I can remember the feeling of to this day. I hear the stories about how great it is to people to be able to focus, but Iâ€™d never touch Ritlan again. Not if thatâ€™s what happens when you quit. Iâ€™m happier to just work on the challenge of dealing with the way I am naturally.

Children having this drug forced upon them doesn’t make sense to me. The one example in my life of a child being drugged in this way has produced a jaundiced and zombie like shadow of an active former cool kid. I feel that in this life unusual situations are presented to people allowing the authorized and the merely concerned to do the absolutely wrong thing. Schools and psychiatrists offices are pretty similar in the way they run I think, not much room for dissent or unexplainable behaviour. And thats how cities and everything else in this world works now too right? That’s what keeps this machine rolling along, nicely functioning parts. Scientologists are nuts and so are Psychiatrists. Drugging children because you cannot solve behavior that you object to or can’t explain is wrong. The institution of School is to blame and money and cowardice and a zillion other things, and I am afraid for the future in this land.

Ritalin is easy, ritalin is good

21 People had this to say...

Want your say?