My therapist interrupted me while I was describing my inability to get things done and told me that I had ADHD. I was startled. No one had ever suggested that before. I asked her why she thought that. She explained that I had trouble focusing and finishing things which is a hallmark of ADHD. I was bright and was able to get by in school because of that. Most people who suffer from ADHD are bright. My first reaction was, cool. You mean, there is a reason why I am the way I am? I am not just an inadequate human and a waste of skin? It felt, very briefly, kind of good. But then I got home and thought, whoa! If I have ADHD, then a likely solution was to take the drug Ritalin. Ritalin is what is usually prescribed for people with ADHD, but I was not going to take Ritalin. No way. I had heard that it had been over prescribed among children and that it zoned you totally out. And I wasn’t hyperactive at all, anyway. When I told my husband, he couldn’t believe it. He thought my therapist was nuts. When I listed out the reasons why I thought she was right, he had a refutation for each one of them:
Me: I can’t focus sometimes.
Hub: Neither can I and most adults I know.
Me: I procrastinate a lot.
Hub: So do I and most adults I know.
Me: But I don’t’ finish things.
Hub: I go through periods when I don’t finish things, either.
Me: But I mean for years, I don’t finish things.
Hub: But you always finish the important things.
Me: That’s true.
Searching the internet, I found that the ADD association defined a set of criteria to determine if someone is ADHD. It is not a scientific definition, but a loose set of criteria, which defines the basic characteristics of an individual with ADHD. One of the criteria that seemed most important according to the site, however, was that you had to start showing signs of ADHD as a child or teenager to truly have the disorder (experts are starting to change their minds about this since I first started to do this research). This seemed more definitive than the rest of the criteria. I thought back to my childhood. I couldn’t remember any behavior that seemed specifically ADHD. I always did my homework. I loved memorizing spelling words and always did well in spelling. And math. I remember not being able to concentrate with the TV on, but that seemed pretty usual. I remember procrastinating on a paper in college once so badly that I had to stay up all night to write it. That happened once in grad school, too.
Another important criteria was how other people see your behavior, especially people who know you well, like your spouse, parents, siblings, close friends. I already knew that my husband thought I was not ADHD. I will ask my parents. I don’t expect to get much empirical data from them, however, because their memories of their children growing up are rosy-colored and blurry these days.
The most scary evidence in favor of my having ADHD is that I really, really have trouble focusing. While working on one task I am thinking about the next and feeling inadequate because I haven’t already completed both. I move around the house like a beetle. I will be focused on cleaning the kitchen and then I will get distracted by the sight of a droopy plant. I stop to water the plant and then I see cat vomit on the rug and have to clean it up. Pretty soon I don’t have time to finish the kitchen because now I need to be in Boulder for an appointment in 20 minutes. I feel like I leave unfinished tasks everywhere, which is evidenced by the room I write in with its stacks of music and books and notes, and my closet with its boxes of photos and scraps of costumes and craft materials. But my therapist says the distractions of things like housework are normal for someone who doesn’t have an external structure like an office job to dictate a schedule. And that’s me. I left my office job two years ago. So, where does that leave me?
I decided to get a professional evaluation for ADHD from a psychiatrist. He pulled out the official list of criteria from the ADHD Association and asked me to say whether the criteria described me or or not as he read them out loud. I hesitated on at least a couple answers when I really wanted to say “maybe” and said “yes” instead. I ended up with 8 out of 12 “yeses,” which is enough to meet the criteria of the ADHD association. I think in retrospect I should have said “no” to the two questions I hesitated to answer. If I had answered “no” to these two questions, the psychiatrist would have said I did not have ADHD. I couldn’t find the exact criteria the psychiatrist used on the internet, but here are the criteria from the ADHD Association web site.
The psychiatrist identified three types of ADHD:
· attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: combined type
· attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: predominantly inattentive
· attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: predominantly hyperactive or impulsive
Based on my description of my career and my response to the criteria, he said that I was probably ADHD: predominantly inattentive. The psychiatrist told me about three therapies I could try: drugs, cognitive feedback and fish oil. I decided to try the least invasive: fish oil. It is supposed to help brain function. My therapist told me that fish oil components, DHA and EPA, lubricate the synapses in the brain making it easier for the brain to make connections. The internet says that DHA is the predominant fatty acid in brain development. It also states that researchers have found that adults with ADHD have less of these fatty acids in their brains. (Any evidence of this nature would seem to be inconclusive because there is no definitive test for ADHD. Assuming that those adults actually had ADHD is a faulty assumption.) I figure that it couldn’t hurt to try fish oil and it has been proven to help with heart health. The first brand of fish oil I tried, Walgreen’s, made me irregular. My psychiatrist recommended the Pharmax brand, but I haven’t tried it yet. It seems to be only available at high-end pharmacies or the internet.
Overall, I am struck at how off-hand the psychiatrist’s approach to diagnosing me was. He was also quite free in “prescribing” fish oil to me, although there is not proof that it helps to take supplements of it while there is a risk of mercury and other heavy metal poisoning from it. This has been a weird experience for me in general. I’ve found out that at least two of my friends, my therapist, and my psychologist all have been diagnosed with ADHD. It’s beginning to sound like an epidemic. Can there be that many people walking around with it?
My conclusion is that some ADHD criteria describe me, some don’t, so I don’t know if I have the disorder or not. I think having more data from the people that know you well is essential in understanding if you have the disorder or not. But if you don’t come up with an affirmative diagnosis, you still have to deal with the issues you perceive you have. So, perhaps I don’t care whether I have ADHD or not. But I have these issues, and I want tools to help me resolve them. Right now, the standard tools for dealing with depression seemed to work: cognitive therapy, meditation, exercise, and anti-depressants.