Tag Archives: ADD

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AM VS PM


Week 3 on Strattera and my second day of being bumped up to 60mg.

I’m still gathering notes / thoughts about improved focus, etc…. I’ve been having a hard time articulating the feeling(s) because – well – I don’t think I’ve *ever* experienced them before…

Meanwhile:

Original instructions were to dose at bedtime which I have religiously except for last Friday night when I forgot… I took my missed dose early on Saturday morning and continued on with my day…

I noticed a near overwhelming euphoria come over me while on the way to my Dad’s. I dismissed it thinking it must have been the nice weather or whatever.

Well.. that may not be the case…

I forgot to take my dose last night before bed…. and again – I took my missed dose first thing this morning… (*on an empty stomach).

About an hour later, en-route to work – I experienced a really nasty stomach ache…. but it passed by the time we pulled into the garage at work.

By 30 minutes minutes at my desk – I fell into the very same euphoric state that I experienced on Saturday…. Aside from caffeine from 2 cups of coffee – there’s nothing else in my bloodstream.

Thinking I should maybe call my doctor today and ask if I can switch my dose time to AM instead of PM.

oh look a chicken

THINK

picture this


So it’s been three weeks since I got diagnosed with AADD… and about one week since I really started dealing with it.

I’ve been trying to figure out a metaphor to explain the nature of the “liberation” I mentioned earlier at finding all this out.

Alright – try this for a rambling attempt:

Let’s say your focus / attention is a framed picture… Not your focus / attention on a particular object – but the very ability to itself… Don’t worry about what it’s a picture of… Just think about hanging that picture onto a semi smooth wall.. (sure, go ahead – you can play the metaphor through and say the wall is in a room called your “consciousness / mind”).

The back of the frame has no hardware on it except suction cups… It’s just how it came…. And you have no other tools at your disposal.

So you walk over and stick frame onto the wall.

If you’ve ever tried attaching a suction cup to a painted wall – you’ll know they don’t stick very well. Sometimes it’ll stick for a little bit… sometimes it just falls right off…

But you don’t know that… and just just keep trying… again…..

and again….

and again….

and again….

It gets really frustrating… Until…

Diagnosis finally walks in informs you that suction cups just aren’t good at adhering to drywall and will *never* be regardless how how many times you try to stick them on.

Then – at that moment you’re free. You can just lay that damn frame down and enjoy the other items in your room… look out the window… run your toes through the carpet… go sit down over there in that comfy chair.

Sure – that frame isn’t up… but why spend all day over there trying when it simply won’t…. not by itself.

Ahh… but lucky for you – your friend Diagnosis has brought stuff with him: Extra suction cups… mounting hardware… and porcelain tiles.

Enter treatment.

Medications, (porcelain tiles) change the wall’s surface to something more accommodating for suction-cups…

Cognitive behavior training can add extra suction cups to the back of that pesky frame.

/metaphor

Diagnosis and some education has enabled me to step-outside myself and observe the manifestation of the negative, (and some of the good), aspects of AADD-brain wiring… Sure there’s an impulse to freak out about it but at least now I’m not just endlessly trying to stick that damn frame back onto the wall for the millionth time. I know *why* it’s not sticking and can start moving forward in a constructive manner.

So here I am at the beginning of treatment.

I’ve been encouraged to continue digesting the book I bought, Delivered from Distraction, as best as I can and have been prescribed a fairly new drug called Strattera.

The medicine is one of those “uptake inhibitors” which prevents the brain from re-absorbing these chemicals which inform brain function called neurotransmitters.

Unlike the popular antidepressant medications out there for blue-folks that inhibit the reabsorption of the “happy” neurotransmitter serotonin – this drug inhibits Norepinephrine.

Unlike the more common stimulant treatments – this stuff needs to build up in your body before it becomes therapeutic… They’ve started me on a ramp up of one pill a day taken at bedtime:
7 days at 25mg
7 days at 40mg
then to 60mg which is where they’ll hold to see how I’m doing.

I start tonight… I’m going to try to be extra aware of any oh look a chicken.

LIVE

damn it – I already came out.. I gotta do it again?


*beep*

I’m struggling with the publicity level of this post… I’ve been sitting on it now for about two and half weeks… but I’m learning this is nothing more to be ashamed of than one’s own hair color or shoe-size.

I inferred months back that something was wrong… and it was getting worse… a lot worse… It started about a year ago when the noise of nicotine withdrawal started releasing it’s talons from my head…

What were once what I figured personality quirks due to my dad dropping acid in college, (or whatever), started evolving.

I started spacing out *completely* and as hard as I tried to pay attention….. to anything: A movie… A conversation…. Entire weekends.. I just couldn’t.

I’d just “check out” – off elsewhere thinking about this, that and the other. I’d tell myself that I just had a lot on my mind…

I’d been reading up to that point about “mindfulness” – figuring I had a problem with “presence”… (piecemeal of course because I’d never been able to finish a book… but I’ve read half of a LOT of great books).

/digress

This all came to a head a couple of months ago when I attended a Nikon DSLR seminar a local retailer was having.

Interesting subject material… The speaker was engaging, (not to mention woofy),… the program wasn’t late at night either – only 6PM.

Twenty-five minutes in, I started dozing off… it was all I could do to stay awake…. and at that moment I was rushed with memories of college…. and high school… and earlier…. I *never* could stay awake for any kind of lecture…

A few weeks later I’d find myself sitting in a sparsely decorated psychiatrists office wanting badly to fiddle with the wooden toys on the table before me – but paranoid that might make me look crazy…

Doctor Bhuyan, (a round and rosy featured Indian woman of 5 decades and some change) – sat and watched me while I filled out tests… asked me questions… and scribbled in a manila folder labeled “Jim Corbett”.

I’d discover later a lot of un and/or miss-diagnosed children with ADHD who make it to functional adulthood have extraordinary coping and adaptive abilities…. (The ones who don’t tend to be the ones you find in prisons)….

They also tend to self medicate…. like with nicotine….. caffeine….. alcohol…. marijuana….

Bhuyan was noncommittal about my smoking cessation leading to this profound emergence of latent symptoms. My father’s doctor, (the one *he* sees for AADD) – is quite certain it’s related.

Yes… my dad’s doc… and if you’ve done any reading on the subject – you know that this flavor of brain-wiring is genetically influenced.

duh jim… all the hints have been there all along… It just took a while to put it all together… wrap it with a bow and give it a name.

I can’t explain the liberation that comes through diagnosis.

*It* has a face now… a name… no longer this mysterious source of frustration.

Yeah – it sounds like cop-out… Some would say that – including myself prior to beginning this journey.

I don’t think I should clutter up the public, or friends-only feed of my journal with blow by blow ruminations along the road to successful AADD management… If you *do* want to ride along – drop a comment and I’ll create a filter group… ESPECIALLY if you’re also living with this… because it’d be really wonderful to have (identify) friends who’s brains are of the same flavor.

Shrinky-dink and body-doc are comparing notes before any medications are prescribed… Meanwhile – I’m reading what I can… This book is proving to be really helpful… It’s written in touch-n-go “ADD-friendly” style – and also stresses that the condition shouldn’t be seen as pathology – but rather as a series of traits… some bad… but also good ones too like creativity, the ability to cut straight to and grasp the core meaning / essence of things, zany personalities, unusual senses of humor, oh look… a chicken!

LIVE

pause


Weekend was fine… but felt somewhat non-existent: Catching up on some work trying to get a leg up on the time I’m going to loose while we’re gone next week up in PA…. Andy’s 40th birthday party and Sunday being completely brain dread and unable to do much of anything but stare at the wall, drool on myself, chain nap and unlock eternal mode in Katamari Damacy.

Then it occurred to me: when’s the last time I had a break that lasted more than 48 hours?

If I had a blog I could run it backwards and check.. but I think it’s not been since last year. Speaking of non-existent blogs – at this point – they too have gotten mentally lumped together with these things I’m juggling called “obligations”…. it’s not feeling voluntarily spontaneous anymore… I don’t like that.

So… We’re leaving town Friday… Will be stopping over in Cincinnati to harass some Glass for a couple of days. Then it’s up to PA to hang out with Kevin’s family who are coincidentally camping about 20 minutes from Chad’s clan.

The power receptacle on my PowerBook is extremely loose and the D and C keys have just about given up the ghost… so it needs a break too, (and a trip into AppleCare).

Meanwhile, this little monkey needs to take a break from this two-year-old string of denied journaling to rest, organize, and conquer this feeling of being over-committed…. before of course they commit ME.

Thanks to everyone for lavishing me in the crack that is attention, the nice comments and the friendships.

I’ll be back in August….

…… to not blog.