Wasn't there a thread on ADD?

[Merkuri]

Most ADD drugs are stimulants. So is caffene. I'm not sure how the science of it works, but stimulants help banish ADD symptoms.

 

[Nellisir]

Most ADD drugs are stimulants. So is caffene. I'm not sure how the science of it works, but stimulants help banish ADD symptoms.

That's about it, though I think "banish" is a bit strong. "Moderate" is more to my liking. In very gross, broad terms, stimulants can have the counterintuitive effect of focusing and "calming" ADD symptoms.

It's still addictive, and it's still a stimulant. I don't have caffeine after 3 pm anymore because it wrecks my sleep.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

That's about it, though I think "banish" is a bit strong. "Moderate" is more to my liking. In very gross, broad terms, stimulants can have the counterintuitive effect of focusing and "calming" ADD symptoms.

It's still addictive, and it's still a stimulant. I don't have caffeine after 3 pm anymore because it wrecks my sleep.

The common theory is that increasing the metabolism (with a stimulant) triggers a "Fight or Flight" response which improves the person's ability to focus.

Some people self medicate with caffine

Others self medicate with stress

 

[Gilladian]

Hey, all,
I have two brothers who were both diagnosed as ADHD as kids 30+ years ago. Neither were - my older brother probably has borderline Asperger's syndrome (a form of autism) and my younger brother has a very rare (like he's the only one) neurological problem. It involves his optic centers in the brain (they've done tissue biopsies, even) and also causes petit-mal like seizures on a constant basis.

Anyway, there are MANY problems that can masquerade as ADD or ADHD.

As far as tea and coffee and caffeine, here's a chart from a random website that lists a bit of info:
Double espresso (2oz) 45-100 mg
Brewed coffee (8 oz) 60-120 mg
Instant coffee (8 oz) 70 mg
Decaf coffee (8 oz) 1-5 mg
Tea - black (8 oz) 45 mg
Tea - green (8 oz) 20 mg
Tea - white (8 oz) 15 mg
Coca Cola (12 oz can) 34 mg
Pepsi (12 oz can) 38 mg
Barq's Root Beer (12 oz can) 22 mg
7-up (12 oz) 0 mg
Chocolate milk (8 oz) 4 mg
Dark chocolate (1 oz) 20 mg
Milk chocolate (1 oz) 6 mg
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Fudge Frozen Yogurt (8 oz) 85 mg

 

[Ferret]

As a child I acted out in an odd way, pick fights and not do well at school. Thankfully my mum figured out what it might be, and got me to a doctor. I was diagnosed with "Symptoms of Dyslexia and mild Dyspraxia". Later on I got the ADD tag as well. (Symptoms of dyslexia means I don't mixed up letters in words, or read things wrong but sometimes my hands will just type/write the wrong word, silly things like that).

I went through the thread and made notes, to help, so this isn't going to be terribly coherent.

Like some of the others I have an inner monologue, not another voice, but just me constantly thinking (constantly, sometime it keeps me up at night) but it is ME. This can be handy, cos I'm constantly thinking (some) things through, and I have some cool ideas every now and then. But it does mean I day dream, and/or interject a conversation with a random idea or sentence. I can hear someone say something, like a lyric and the song will start playing in my head. That reminds me, I can duplicate someone’s voice in my head, nearly perfectly, except when I have 'romantic' feeling about them, which I think is odd. I can also picture people in my head really well.

I also can't keep my mouth closed, its almost impossible for me to not say something stupid, as a quip to whatever was said before me. This has gotten me a bad reputation. (The other day I said something dirty without thinking about it, as in what people will think, not in a tourettes kind of way).

As a child I was frustrated, and I had a short temper, I'd blow my fuse at the slightest thing. And completely lose it . It wasn't anger, it was more like frustration. Once when I was in secondary school ('high school') I lost my temper over a paper aeroplane I spent ALL lunch time making and someone just screwed it up. I pushed the person over, and attacked my best friend . But that was at least four years ago, and the time before that was 6-7 years ago. I did start taking Ritalin when I was about 10 yrs old, without any real side effects. Except (and looking back I realise it just now) It might have left me a bit humorless. And also across the years I've had spells of thinking 'What’s the point of life' as in not my life but in general, in a philosophical sense but I'd always work myself out of it cos I KNEW it wasn't a real feeling.

This gets me on to music, sometime music is just amazing, it can just carry me away. I can get a bit emotional about it. Not always sad songs, but I did cry when I heard 'Stan' for the first time (what a waste of a life), but also songs like Chapter four, or two little boys. It’s the loyalty thing I think that gets me.

Back to my school days, I was really good at maths, well the mental arithmetic side, but the working out slowed me down and I didn’t see the point. Also I had (if my memory serves) a reading age of a 16 year old when I was about 11, I did try to read Terry Pratchett in primary school but my teacher wouldn’t let me. Later on in secondary school I was ‘good’ at writing, when I could explain myself in writing. The imagination was there but the effort to write it down was sometimes too much, I would get distracted. I also found it hard to work with others, I think mainly cos I wanted to do things my way, cos I didn’t understand why people would do it the way they did.

I also had dreadful hand-eye co-ordination, I really was not and am not sporting. I can barely kick a football straight. I can also be quite random, since taking my self off of Concerta XL I’ve regained some randomness (like pretending to be stabbed by my drinks bottle in my empty kitchen).

I’m not sure what this has to do with ADD, but I’ve always had this need to do well, and I get frustrated and a bit down when I fail, I’m thinking ‘Why did I do so bad?’ not, ‘I’m no good at anything’ though. Also I have an atrocious memory, I think of it like each memory is on a piece of glass, and when I look at them the similar ones pile on top of each other and merge together, so asking what I did last week in physics brings nothing up cos I’ve had just so many lessons. But other things like formulas or events that were out of the norm I can recall easily, oh and my memories are 99% in the 3rd person :s. That description of my memory btw is an example of me thinking too much, whilst distracted.

Oh and the last thing on my notes says ‘Numbers in groups’ which is something I do to.

I don’t know whether writing something this long was a good idea considering its going to be read by people with a short attention span lol. But I just wrote..so yeah.

What do you tihnk

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

As a child I acted out in an odd way, pick fights and not do well at school. Thankfully my mum figured out what it might be, and got me to a doctor. I was diagnosed with "Symptoms of Dyslexia and mild Dyspraxia". Later on I got the ADD tag as well. (Symptoms of dyslexia means I don't mixed up letters in words, or read things wrong but sometimes my hands will just type/write the wrong word, silly things like that).

I went through the thread and made notes, to help, so this isn't going to be terribly coherent.

Like some of the others I have an inner monologue, not another voice, but just me constantly thinking (constantly, sometime it keeps me up at night) but it is ME. This can be handy, cos I'm constantly thinking (some) things through, and I have some cool ideas every now and then. But it does mean I day dream, and/or interject a conversation with a random idea or sentence. I can hear someone say something, like a lyric and the song will start playing in my head. That reminds me, I can duplicate someone’s voice in my head, nearly perfectly, except when I have 'romantic' feeling about them, which I think is odd. I can also picture people in my head really well.

I also can't keep my mouth closed, its almost impossible for me to not say something stupid, as a quip to whatever was said before me. This has gotten me a bad reputation. (The other day I said something dirty without thinking about it, as in what people will think, not in a tourettes kind of way).

As a child I was frustrated, and I had a short temper, I'd blow my fuse at the slightest thing. And completely lose it . It wasn't anger, it was more like frustration. Once when I was in secondary school ('high school') I lost my temper over a paper aeroplane I spent ALL lunch time making and someone just screwed it up. I pushed the person over, and attacked my best friend . But that was at least four years ago, and the time before that was 6-7 years ago. I did start taking Ritalin when I was about 10 yrs old, without any real side effects. Except (and looking back I realise it just now) It might have left me a bit humorless. And also across the years I've had spells of thinking 'What’s the point of life' as in not my life but in general, in a philosophical sense but I'd always work myself out of it cos I KNEW it wasn't a real feeling.

This gets me on to music, sometime music is just amazing, it can just carry me away. I can get a bit emotional about it. Not always sad songs, but I did cry when I heard 'Stan' for the first time (what a waste of a life), but also songs like Chapter four, or two little boys. It’s the loyalty thing I think that gets me.

Back to my school days, I was really good at maths, well the mental arithmetic side, but the working out slowed me down and I didn’t see the point. Also I had (if my memory serves) a reading age of a 16 year old when I was about 11, I did try to read Terry Pratchett in primary school but my teacher wouldn’t let me. Later on in secondary school I was ‘good’ at writing, when I could explain myself in writing. The imagination was there but the effort to write it down was sometimes too much, I would get distracted. I also found it hard to work with others, I think mainly cos I wanted to do things my way, cos I didn’t understand why people would do it the way they did.

I also had dreadful hand-eye co-ordination, I really was not and am not sporting. I can barely kick a football straight. I can also be quite random, since taking my self off of Concerta XL I’ve regained some randomness (like pretending to be stabbed by my drinks bottle in my empty kitchen).

I’m not sure what this has to do with ADD, but I’ve always had this need to do well, and I get frustrated and a bit down when I fail, I’m thinking ‘Why did I do so bad?’ not, ‘I’m no good at anything’ though. Also I have an atrocious memory, I think of it like each memory is on a piece of glass, and when I look at them the similar ones pile on top of each other and merge together, so asking what I did last week in physics brings nothing up cos I’ve had just so many lessons. But other things like formulas or events that were out of the norm I can recall easily, oh and my memories are 99% in the 3rd person :s. That description of my memory btw is an example of me thinking too much, whilst distracted.

Oh and the last thing on my notes says ‘Numbers in groups’ which is something I do to.

I don’t know whether writing something this long was a good idea considering its going to be read by people with a short attention span lol. But I just wrote..so yeah.

What do you tihnk

Quips: I have said before that I always know the "perfectly right" thing to say and the "absolutely wrong" thing to say, I just can't tell which is which.

Frustration: People with ADD often have little patience for interruptions, especially if they are "focused" or "on a roll", because they know that an interruption might prevent them from Ever finishing what they are doing.

Music: How about "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin? Moments of pride/recognition are what "chokes me up"

Memory: My memory tends to be associative (metaphorical) rather than literal. I am terrible at 'names and dates'. For example:

When I moved recently we had a one way rental on the truck. My wife asked me in what town we were dropping it off? All I could think of was 'Silver', but I know there is no such town as 'Silver, Massachusetts', so I thought about it some more, but I kept coming back to 'Silver'. My wife was getting impatient at this point and asked again. I hesitantly answered "Silver?"

"Do you mean, Sterling?

"Yes, Stirling Mass., that's exactly what I mean."

 

[BOZ]

Frustration: People with ADD often have little patience for interruptions, especially if they are "focused" or "on a roll", because they know that an interruption might prevent them from Ever finishing what they are doing.

oh man, that's me for sure. i've gotten angry with my wife a few too many times for this.

for one thing, if i'm trying hard to remember something, and someone interrupts the train of thought that's keeping it in my head, it can be pretty hard to recall it.

 

[BOZ]

Memory: My memory tends to be associative (metaphorical) rather than literal. I am terrible at 'names and dates'.

heh, yeah, that's me too. my mind likes to associate with music. at my job, i often deal with names of people and places. often enough, songs just pop into my head for no reason that i can figure. for example, "Last Train to Clarksville" often comes up. i look at the document i'm working on, and i realize, "Oh, this person lives in Clarksville Tennessee."

 

[Ferret]

I've not heard cats in the cradle, but I'll try and find it.

on the frustration, I get angry when someone tries to talk to me whilst I'm on the phone to someone, I don't know why but I just can't cope. And I often use mnemonics to help my memory, and that really helps, but I've never done the association thing.

 

[Merkuri]

Oh, I know the whole interruption thing. If I'm writing something, for example, and something takes away my attention it can take me as much as 30 seconds to return to my train of thought. This doesn't seem like much, but when it should take you a minute to write something down, a 30-second gap when you're trying to regain your concentration is terrible.

I work in tech support, and we're supposed to keep a log of all calls we have with our customers. Most days it's no problem to take a few moments after the call to type down a log of what happened, but there have been days where it's been rapid-fire calls. Unbeknownst to me, someone is waiting on hold to talk to me, and a few moments after I hang up the phone I get another call from the lady at the front desk, asking if I want to talk to so-and-so. Regardless of who it is, I always ask her to hold them until I'm done writing down the call log, but just saying, "Hold 'em," is enough to break my concentration and it can take me what feels like forever to start typing again. If this seems to happen all day, eventually I will find myself snapping at her, though I know she's just doing her job. She has no way of knowing when I'm done writing the call log, and she has to let me know there's someone holding for me. She sometimes calls up and immediately says, "I'll hold them, but I have so-and-so for you," but that doens't help me keep my concentration.

And I get EXTREMELY frustrated if someone tries to talk to me while I'm on the phone. I cannot drown one person out and hear the other. If two people are trying to talk to me, I hear neither of them. Most people are considerate enough to apologize and walk away when they notice I'm on the phone, or to stop talking and write me a note, but a few months ago I snapped at a coworker for refusing to stop talking to me, even when I made it clear to her that I was on the phone and waved her away a few times. I had to interrupt the customer who was talking to me, ask him to hold, and snapped at the woman, "What?!? I'm on the phone!?!" It turns out she had a simple question that could've been easily answered if she had written it down, allowed me a moment to read it when I felt able, and then wrote her a note back. I felt bad for snapping at her, but at the same time I felt like she was being extremely rude by refusing to stop speaking, even when I made it painfully clear that I was on the phone and unable to pay her the attention she needed.

Even if you don't have ADD, it's very hard to have a conversation with two people at once when neither person you are speaking to can hear the other.