Apparently I have ADD too

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A few days ago I started looking into ADD because I suspected I might have it and I fit the description almost perfectly, I was skeptical though because I knew it had a lot in common with autism. Today I brought it up with my mom and she informed me that I have already been diagnosed with ADD. Good to know, that explains why on my math test last week I was like "Solving a triangle, seems easy enough I just have to- Oh look a bird!". My life makes a little bit more sense now.

Thats great,

Understanding why and how we tick helps use overcome these issues. If your aware of the issue you can take steps to correct it with practice and medication. They suspected I had ADHD for a while and gave me several test as a child but I always just barely passed so I guess I have ADHD tendencies.

Yeah, I have been working on that. Hopefully I will come up with something that works soon.


In my case it's apparently quite obvious to others that I have ADD based on my dad's response to this whole thing.

I probably would've been diagnosed with it, too. I was told I didn't need a separate diagnosis because it was explained by the ASD. Except the psychologist didn't see how hyperactive and distracted I am at home. I think I likely have ADHD.

I think it just makes us more interesting and unpredictable. I can't tell you how many times I suddenly change topics, or forget what it was that I was doing, then remember, then as I'm going to do whatever it was, I get distracted again.

I can focus really well at certain times, like during tests (usually). During the day when I'm trying to get things done, I get distracted by all kinds of other things I need to do, and things that I shouldn't be doing at all, so maybe I'll end up researching topics on Wikipedia for 2 hours rather than doing the laundry or my homework.

^Yeah it definitely is annoying sometimes, and I can relate with all that stuff you mentioned.

I love real time strategy games but I am perpetually terrible at them because of my executive functioning problems and ADD, and my opponent is usually my 13 year old brother who has an extraordinary amount of talent at beating the crap out of everyone in every strategy game ever made. I have beat him a few times, which I am happy about although he often goes easy on me. That doesn't stop me from having 8 strategy games on my computer though, I really want to be good at them but there are people on the leader boards of some of these games who have logged less time in the game then I have.

Speaking of forgetting to do things, it's 1:00 AM right and I have school early in the morning.

You definitely should go to bed! Don't be like me; it's after 3 here.

Don't feel too bad; I'm usually not great at strategy games because I'm too impatient. I tend to also get bored quickly.

I learned I had it at 14 when my mom showed me an article about it and it had a list of questions at the end about if you have ADD or not and I answered yes to about every one of them. Then I found out at 15 I had already been diagnosed with it in 4th grade. My attention span was short and I had a hard time concentrating and would always be the last person finish with their test or school work. I was also easily distracted. But I feel it's gotten better after I got out of high school but I still have a short attention span I am often multi tasking with what I do. I often switch from one activity to the other. I will want to read something but then I want to read something else so I do that and I get too impatient to finish so I don't finish it and I go to something else. I do that a lot online. At work I can get myself back to task if I get distracted but I think I do good for the most part staying on task. I don't know if this is ADD but I cannot listen to lectures or else I zone out an I start to day dream. Plus it makes me tired to have to listen to all that bla bla bla.

For a brief period I thought I had ADHD because it sounded like me too, the impulsiveness, the hyperactivity, but my mom said I didn't have it, only ADD. I found my other medical report by my psychiatrist and he said I didn't have it, only ADD the inattentive type but with impulsive and some hyperactivity. I just didn't have enough symptoms for ADHD, I was only two away to fit it so I have ADHD traits. But I don't think I am impulsive anymore (even as a kid I didn't think I was either) or hyperactive. I can control my hyperactivity so I don't get goofy anymore like I used to as a kid. But I am not sure because I read that hyperactivity is different in adults than it is in children so they probably outgrow being goofy when hyperactive. But when I read about ADHD it sounds like it fits me so much but maybe that is the autism I am seeing because they overlap. But I have gotten a lot better so it fits me less now. I have gotten better at not interrupting but it still happens sometimes, same as for butting into topics. Sometimes it's hard to resist.

In '68 I was diagnosed as being "hyperactive" and treated with Phenobarbitone (that didn't go well) - I never heard the term ADHD until the 80's and then a lot clicked into place. Then in the late 90's my son was diagnosed as having an ASD and my own "traits" re-surfaced for scrutiny. I work in mental health and there is still reference to "Adult" ADHD as if it is something different from that in childhood. Of course it was supposed to magically disappear when you reached your majority...

Yeah "adult ADD" is the new term now as if they didn't know adults can have it. Supposedly it affects adults differently than it does for children.

Had the LPN tell me that something I described sounded like ADD or ADHD.


I dunno, but my thoughts are not derailed by external processes. My thoughts are derailed by tangents related to it, or when I read, my eyes jump a bit, miss lines and other things. But, when I read or do problems, I can focus no trouble, just the settling on the right line is part of the problem. Make sense?

I dunno. Not gonna take an LPN's word for it though.

I found one of my old medical reports from 1995 and the clinical psychologist wrote my thinking was very tangential. That is a symptom of schizophrenia. But yet I am not crazy so she didn't say I was psychotic. She said I had ADD. But my speech therapist in 6th grade was convinced I was showing signs of schizophrenia because I have a aunt with it so she thought I could start showing signs because it's genetic and I was at the age where it starts to show but I read it usually appears in late teens and early adulthood on average. But it can start sooner or later but it's rarer. My mom said it was because I was visual so I would get a thought in my head from something and I would then have to ask a bunch of questions until the pictures matched what they were telling me because what they would say would give me a different picture and plus I was literal so my school counselor kept joking and just saying things and they didn't get that. So that explained the problems I had in 6th grade with the school staff because I was being treated like I was mentally ill all because the speech therapist convinced everyone to look out for signs and honestly if you want to see something, you will see it. It's like when I first started to learn about Asperger's I started to see symptoms everywhere in people including my own family. It was very confusing and it made me think for a brief period of time that AS was a bunch of bull and I wondered why I had to be the one diagnosed and why doesn't everyone else get diagnosed too. I didn't know then it was about impairments and that those symptoms have to impair you and they have to happen all the time, not sometimes or once in a while. But at least it did boost my self esteem about myself but then I used it to justify myself to not change because if everyone does it, so can I. I just wanted to be like everyone else than perfect but that is another problem when you have the diagnoses. Everything gets blamed on it so there are pros and cons to a diagnoses.

But IMO I think tangential thinking is also part of ADHD because of distraction so they will jump from one thought to the other and get distracted by other thoughts. I had a boyfriend who thought who can think ten thoughts at once and when he explained it to me he was basically describing jumping from one thought to another which sounded very much like ADHD. But he thought it was thinking ten thoughts at once.

I also think it can be found in autism too but I never see any results about it when I do a search about it but wikipedia mentions it about thought disorder.

I think that most people with ADD or ADHD can focus at times. It sounds like you may have it, but the symptoms overlap so much with ASD that it's hard to tell.

I feel like I'm half ASD and half ADHD. I have a lot of hyperactive symptoms, and I lack some common ASD symptoms, particularly clumsiness and inability to read facial expressions/tone of voice.

This was the same person who kept asking me if I was sleeping while I was telling them that the meds she prescribed are still making me drunk. Would not address the non-functionality other than asking if I was sleeping.

And, sorry, but I would not take anybody's 5 minute assessment over specialists who have evaluated me, tested me and actually talked with me. And, I did explain that to the evaluators as well.

She may be right, but, not after five minutes and not being a specialist, well....we'll see.

^ I don't think it's uncommon to have both. But no, I wouldn't trust her word, either.

I really get sick of medical professionals sometimes. There are many good ones, but also a lot of bad ones. I don't trust them anymore because of so many bad experiences.

Not bashing medical professionals, though, just the incompetent ones.

All I can tell you is that if the person who is talking, used to be a party animal, and tells you that it's making him very high and unfocused: I don't think sleep should be the only question. I don't even think it should be a question. If I slept for 14 hours and still woke up drunk and in a stupor, then the focus should be on the cognitive effects. Especially if they're the ones telling me to not smoke pot, "Because of what it does to the brain."

Seriously?

Oh, and my comprehension is shot, my spelling is hell (compared to usual) and my typos are ten times worse.

So, yeah....the 'safe drug' that has been prescribed actually has more negative effects. And it's been 14 hours.

Definitely don't take it. I've had bad effects from drugs, too. Not everyone is going to react in the same way, and they should take your concerns seriously.