Self Diagnosis Talk: Raise your had if you've got ADD or Dyslexia

[Razor]

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My problem is I have a hard time staying focused on things that don't interest me. Looking back, someone should have said tough [censored] welcome to the real world. However, my mother is a psychologist and had one of her partners perscribe me ritalin. I can safely say I would not have graduated college without it.

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On one hand you say you should have been told to suck it up and just do it... on the other, you say the you needed pharmaceutical help to accomplish what many people are able to without such help.

If you really did need ritalin to be able to graduate from college, it seems to me it's an over-simplification (and incorrect) to suggest you should have just been told to deal with the real world. In the 'real world' most people don't have that much trouble focusing enough to graduate from college.

[Razor]

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i ended up with a prescription for wellbutrin and adderall. i took these for a while, and it helped me immensely. I really didnt care for how they affected me as a person. i felt like they evened me out, but they kind of robbed me of who i was. its kind of a lot more in depth than that but thats the basic point of things. ultimately i came to a point where i felt like i had to decide if i wanted to live the rest of my life dependent on taking 5 or 6 pills a day. i decided i didnt. i quit taking both of them, and it was really a struggle for a while. i kind of fell down a couple more times along the way, but the struggles were better than being part of the overmedicated mass. im myself now, and i like it better that way, even if things arent as easy as when i was on meds.

I won't say that no one should be medicated for ADD. I have witnessed people who probably would not have been able to function without it. But in my non professional opinion, there are thousands and probably millions of people who use it as a crutch to explain why they suck at life. It's just another thing to assign blame to, another thing to point the finger at, and another reason that you don't have to take personal responsibility for your actions, which seems to be the general mode of operation for just about everyone these days.

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on one hand you admit that things are a struggle without the meds and then you suggest that for most people that use meds those struggles are because they suck at life.

Do you think you suck at life? or do you think you have an extra obstacle or two that you have to overcome that most people don't?

[tuq]

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my story sounds a lot like kipins, but i'll write out a synopsis of it anyway. I was a smart kid, i finished first and second grade in the same year after my first grade teacher told my parents she'd already taught me everything she had and half of the second grade halfway through the year. this was great, and i floated through the entire rest of my schooling paying zero attention to anything that was going on around me, never doing homework assignments, but managing to pull everything together enough at the end that i passed just fine. my organizational skills sucked, but no one really worried about it, my fifth grade teacher told my parents "by the time it matters, he'll have a secretary to take care of all these things for him".

i went to a year of college, and pretty much sunk. the classes still werent a problem, i was just bored out of my mind and had no discipline as a result of never really having to learn it in high school, so i basically let myself sink, to the point that my second semester i was pretty much paying some really expensive rent.

I had a sister who was 3 years older than me, and studying education wanting to be a special ed teacher, and in my senior year in high school she mentioned that in one of her classes they'd gone over ADD and i basically had every symptom in the book, but we never really thought about it because i was still flying through life with no issues.

the first year in college was really the first time that i'd failed at anything, and i had no one to blame except myself. i went back to the family with my tail in between my legs and kind of felt sorry for myself for a bit. my parents finally snapped me out of it, and i started working again, and they asked if i had any interest in going to a doctor... i went, he said i also exhibited some classic signs but referred me to someone else who specialized in non medicinal treatments, but who he also sent all of his people to before writing prescriptions, just for a secondary opinion. some psychologist of some sort. this guy was great, and showed me a lot of organizational things and tips etc, taught me a lot about what doctors know of the disease. explained that there were a couple different types, one centering around inattentiveness, the other around hyperactivity, and told me that they often went hand in hand with depression.

i ended up with a prescription for wellbutrin and adderall. i took these for a while, and it helped me immensely. I really didnt care for how they affected me as a person. i felt like they evened me out, but they kind of robbed me of who i was. its kind of a lot more in depth than that but thats the basic point of things. ultimately i came to a point where i felt like i had to decide if i wanted to live the rest of my life dependent on taking 5 or 6 pills a day. i decided i didnt. i quit taking both of them, and it was really a struggle for a while. i kind of fell down a couple more times along the way, but the struggles were better than being part of the overmedicated mass. im myself now, and i like it better that way, even if things arent as easy as when i was on meds.

I won't say that no one should be medicated for ADD. I have witnessed people who probably would not have been able to function without it. But in my non professional opinion, there are thousands and probably millions of people who use it as a crutch to explain why they suck at life. It's just another thing to assign blame to, another thing to point the finger at, and another reason that you don't have to take personal responsibility for your actions, which seems to be the general mode of operation for just about everyone these days.

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tl;dr. Pretty sure I have ADD though so don't take it personally.

[NorCalJosh]

i was not very clear in my thoughts, and i apologize for that. I feel there are a few different categories of people in the whole "add" thing. there are those who have it very severely and need medication to function. i believe this to be the minority of people. There are those who may have a mild form of it but choose to medicate themselves instead of deal with one extra hurdle they have to jump over. then there are those who don't want to do things, decide they have add, or go to a doctor and confirm this, but do nothing about it, and use this as an excuse for not excelling.

i am not trying to say that this is the correct view point. it's simply my viewpoint,

[NorCalJosh]

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tl;dr. Pretty sure I have ADD though so don't take it personally.

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i declare you weak and sucky at life yo.

[jbrent33]

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My problem is I have a hard time staying focused on things that don't interest me. Looking back, someone should have said tough [censored] welcome to the real world. However, my mother is a psychologist and had one of her partners perscribe me ritalin. I can safely say I would not have graduated college without it.

[/ QUOTE ]

On one hand you say you should have been told to suck it up and just do it... on the other, you say the you needed pharmaceutical help to accomplish what many people are able to without such help.

If you really did need ritalin to be able to graduate from college, it seems to me it's an over-simplification (and incorrect) to suggest you should have just been told to deal with the real world. In the 'real world' most people don't have that much trouble focusing enough to graduate from college.

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You make a valid point. My statement didn't come across quite the way I intended.

Let me put it this way, I think ADD/ADHD is way over diagnosed and the the drugs, however helpful they may be, are not a long term solution. I think that it's something that you have to learn to adapt to on your own. I felt, as Kipin noted earlier, that it's hard to take the drugs day in and day out. When working on a professional level, it's a little bit harder than college to plan ahead as to when you should be medicated and when you don't need to worry about it.

Looking back on it, I probably shouldn't have graduated college. While I don't want to start a huge debate, I think college is not the right thing for everyone. The structured evironment of school was more of a hinderance to me. I have had 2 corporate jobs and have always known I am not cut out for life in an office. I have been self employed for about 5 years and can't imagine ever going back to a typical 8-5.

Sorry If I am rambling [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] but I the point I am trying to make is that I don't think that drugging people to help them achieve in a certain "acceptable" manner is always the right path to take.

[TheIrishThug]

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I'm sure we've all heard this a lot, when somebody fumbles reading something "Oh, I've got minor dyslexia." This is just my guess, but I'm pretty sure you don't. You've read too fast, you're not paying attention, you do that thing where you see a word and make an assumption as to what it is without reading it (I do this a lot), but I'm pretty sure that's not called dyslexia. I think for the most part it's called "not paying attention.".

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This is me to a T. In general, I am a very slow reader and my verbal skills don't match my math/analytical. So whenever I am on AIM or 2p2, I will consistently end up reading a few words and then make a guess at what the others are. I'll joke and say I*'m dyslexic, but I know it's not real.

Just like my spurts of OCD. I'm not gonna be crippled if something is out of place, but I do like certain things a certain way.

[jbrent33]

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i was not very clear in my thoughts, and i apologize for that. I feel there are a few different categories of people in the whole "add" thing. there are those who have it very severely and need medication to function. i believe this to be the minority of people. There are those who may have a mild form of it but choose to medicate themselves instead of deal with one extra hurdle they have to jump over. then there are those who don't want to do things, decide they have add, or go to a doctor and confirm this, but do nothing about it, and use this as an excuse for not excelling.

i am not trying to say that this is the correct view point. it's simply my viewpoint,

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I agree

[mrkilla]

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killa and wakko (and others who responded),

Can you clarify if you were diagnosed by a doctor, or is this just your own assumption.

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diagnosed by a doctor they didn't catch it until middle school though (NYC Public Schools FTW) because I was able to read and write above my grade level.

They took me out of class for "training" or what have you but since I wasn't really falling behind on my work they just let it go. Like the simulations they would give me in class I would insta correct.

When I type very fast I mix up letters (like "teh" even though it's common) my mind will see it correctly. Also my grammar with words like their/there than/then etc. I will also commonly mix up a 2nd/3rd digit of a phone number with the 5th/6th digits . So a phone # like 876 4938 I would dial 894 4738 or similar.

[PITTM]

when i was in first grade i had ADD and i had to do these one on one sessions with this cool old lady. after that i guess they decided i was okay? i probably still actually have it to some degree though.