I don’t question that I have ADD. I was diagnosed at age 12, and I display 9 out of 10 symptoms. I have an exceedingly poor attention span, frequent mood swings and occasional bouts of depression, a limited ability to pick up on social cues, hypersensitivity to touch (and hypersensitivity in general--what most would consider a mildly loud sound, a door being shut for instance, can make me nearly jump out of my skin), overpersistant and inappropriately directed attendence (extended periods of concentration on reading, for example, and blocking everything else out), severe impulsivity problems and general immaturity, ad infinitum. I’m practically a walking textbook of ADD.
The one thing I don’t have, however, is continuous hyperactivity. I’ve never been one of those ADDers to bounce off the walls, although I do get bursts of energy during “high” mood swings (which usually don’t last long). I’ve never been accident-prone...I still have all my bones intact, and aside from my early childhood illness, trips to the emergency room were practically unheard of.
I do have one rather humourous emergency-room tale. My sister and I were about four years old, eating dinner, which that evening consisted of peas. Mom had left the room for a phone call or something, and we devised the hilarious game “Stick a pea in your nose.” (Hey--we were four.) We were so enchanted with this game, we gave it its own theme song. Mom came back, and immediately yelled at us to knock it off. Sally obediently snorted out her pea, but I didn’t quite get it. I kept sniffing, and sniffing, and eventually the pea was stuck. Mom was terrified it would somehow lodge itself in my trachea or my brain. She finally wound up taking me to the emergency room where, if I remember correctly, the trip consisted of Mom and the doctor trying to convince me to sneeze out the pea, but I kept sniffing even more. At this point Mom was afraid they would have to operate. I finally sniffed one last time, then stopped. As Mom and the doctor looked on in question, I explained the outcome: “I swallowed that pea, and it was delicious!”
But I digress... (Actually, digression is entirely appropriate...this IS about ADD, after all!)
Other than that early sign of childhood rebellion, I didn’t engage in too many wacky hyperactive antics. I wasn’t even diagnosed until I was 12, simply because I was so darn smart that I was able to get by until sixth grade. I would sit in class, completely ignore everything the teacher was explaining, finish the homework in 15 minutes after figuring it out myself, and then sit on the floor for the rest of the day, reading. Most of my memories in school revolve around reading, either in class or in the school library during recess. The other kids would gleefully scamper out into the fresh air and sunshine, while I stayed indoors curled up with a James Howe book or nature encyclopedia, reading as much as possible before I had to go back to class and put in my 15 minutes of work, just so I could read again. I would become very confused and irritable if the teacher tried to steer me towards what the other kids were doing.
Occasionally I also engaged in weird behaviours, like making animal noises, standing on desks or hiding inside them, and being a language Nazi. Anyone who has posted with me on a forum knows what a stickler I am for the English language...trust me, this is not a recently acquired trait. I was correcting my fellow students on their spelling and grammar as early as second grade, an idiosyncracy that did not by any means endear me to them. You know Martin Prince, Bart Simpson’s condescending, overachieving classmate? I was sort of like that, only I acted antisocial as well.
I’ve since learned about my ADD, and now recognize what were obviously symptoms of massive attention problems, antisocial tendencies, and signs of impulsivity. Fortunately I never developed one major roadblock for many ADDers: reading and writing disabilities. I’ve always had an excellent grasp of the English language, and thank my lucky stars it’s been that way, or I would have positively sludged my way through 13 years of what were still negative experiences.
I’ll tell you one thing: I’m glad ADD is my only problem. It might be severe ADD, but at least it isn’t mixed up with autism, Tourette’s, bipolarity, schizophrenia, or any number of unpleasant mental “differences”. I know a guy who has ADD, Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of mild autism, with emphasis on limited social skills), and mild Tourette’s. He’s an absolute sweetheart, and one of the most intelligent people I know. To my shame, I have treated him badly in the past due to ignorance about his limitations, even as I’ve expressed frustration to him about my own. The pot calling the kettle black, if you will. I didn’t even know he had those problems until he told me. It just goes to show that you can’t judge people for difficulties equal to your own.
I was reading the self-help guide, titled You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy?!? (a rather informal title, to say the least), and I must say, it’s actually quite good. A bit simplistic at times, but that’s just my own intellectual snobbery coming into play. Since it’s written in mind for people with learning disabilities, the clear, plain style is understandable and even meritorious. However, there is a slight tendency for the authors to blame EVERYTHING on ADD...naturally delinquency, but also workaholism, eating disorders, depression, promiscuity, alchohol and drug abuse, etc etc etc...basically anything that could contain an addictive nature. While I agree that ADDers tend to have addictive personalities (in my case, it’s pets! Can’t have too many around!), it’s not an explanation for the bigger picture involved in such a disorder. Basically the underlining attitude is, “It doesn’t matter what your personal problem is! You have ADD, and it’s not your fault--you just need proper diagnosis!” To the authors, “proper diagnosis” = “diagnosis of ADD”, and if you have a symptom or two of ADD but haven’t been diagnosed with the disorder, well, it just means your doctor doesn’t recognize the multitude of symptomes, so go out and find a doctor who will discover your latent ADD tendencies, so you can finally be treated right! I wouldn’t be surprised if EVERYONE, upon finishing the book, is convinced they have ADD, because after all they can’t committ to relationships or carry coherent conversations on the telephone, or any of the other nine million interchangeable symptoms in the disorder. Of course, maybe that’s just my inherent Virgo hypochondria rearing its ugly head. *sigh*
I’m not criticising the poor folks out there who really and truly have the disorder, and I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I know it does--I have it! I’m also not saying that the authors don’t have ADD, as they both purport. I’m saying it shouldn’t be used as an explanation for treatable personality problems (there are people who are really committment-phobes with traumatic histories, and then are are people who are just promiscuous jerks and like to use the committment phobia as an excuse), and it DEFINATELY should not be used as a crutch. To do otherwise simplifies matters entirely too much. I work very, very hard to minimize the affect my ADD has over my life, but I freely admit that sometimes it’s just unavoidable. Sometimes I break down and get mad and nearly take peoples’ heads off, but I’ve been working on apologizing when it happens, and attempting to deflate my anger before it even comes to that.