Adult ADHD Blog

Archives: May 2009

Being Big Pharma's Guinea Pig

A focus group meeting for attention deficit adults brought the good—free food, cash, an ADHD reunion—and the ugly—paperwork.

I’m whoring myself, and not ashamed of using the ADHD diagnosis in these economically tough times. The other day I signed up to be a guinea pig in a focus group for a large pharmaceutical. The carrot was $125 in cash.

So I show up at 6 p.m. at this neat office in midtown Manhattan. We are told to fill out more paper, the bane of my ADHD existence. A pint-sized middle-aged woman points to a small pantry of sandwiches, potato chips, and M&Ms, and says we can help ourselves. Free food, my ears perk up.

As I’m biting into a sandwich, I spot Larry, one of the guys from the time-management focus group I attended a year ago, and then I see Bess, another girl from our posse. Wow, this is like an ADHD reunion. We immediately feel at ease in each other’s presence. Again and again, I compare the feeling of being among fellow adult ADHDers as returning home. Finally a place where I can be myself and not apologize. “Sorry” doesn't exist here.

It turns out that there are eight of us in the group, three women and five guys. I find it interesting that the men, except for Billy, who doesn’t even look old enough to drink, are all married, while we ADHD ladies are all single. Maybe men have a greater license for being disorganized.

Billy kind of scares me. He keeps picking at the dirt caked under his cuticles, and started folding napkins into paper airplanes. When his turn came to describe his history, he said he’d been given Ritalin since he was seven, and he was misdiagnosed with something called, “Tier Six, the ring of fire.” I’d never heard of anything like that before, but, in the annals of diseases, it sounded pretty terrifying. Thank God, it wasn’t a ring of fire but ADHD.

Later, Dr. Psych, who was running this focus group in the name of big pharma, asked him to describe what it was like to live with ADHD. “Torture,” he said, matter of fact. “I lie awake for five hours sometimes because the thoughts won’t stop. I start here, and end up there.” I shook my head and swallowed a familiar sorrow.

Dr. Psych asked if he’d ever gotten into any car accidents. “No, but I’ve been hit before,” he said. “Not very hard though, the car was going 35 mph.” It sounded really funny, even if it was sad.

Behind a tinted window was the big pharma’s representative. I could see the man's shadow and I wondered what the drug maker really wanted to know. Did they want to know how we were doing, if their ADHD medications were doing a good job, if they were failing miserably? If God couldn't change anything, how were they going to make it all better? I looked into the silvery reflection and grinned like a Cheshire cat, and stopped myself from sticking out my tongue at the human silhouette.

Patience, Planning, Persistence Pays

If adults with ADHD can find ways to create their own destiny, they might not have to fear being fired or lose control over life.

The career counselor is working wonders. I met with her the other day (just before a phone interview!), and I told her that I've been told that I have ADHD.

To this day there's been a lot of fan fare before I talk to people about the attention deficit, even to those adults who have ADHD, too.

I decided to "come out" at the onset with the career counselor, since I figure she'll find it odd that after nearly six months of unemployment, I still struggle to write a single cover letter, or remember to follow up on leads and calls.

Interest hits and then wanes when it comes to potential careers. For a brief minute today I flirted with the idea of becoming a genetics counselor, and then I thought, what are you thinking, Jane? Are you nuts?

The career counselor reads me to a T. After doing a mock job interview, she said I needed to listen more carefully to the question being asked. Twice I seemed to misunderstand the question and give a vague, totally different answer.

I also wasn't specific enough, she said. I needed to give an answer and back it up with examples. Despite the shaken self-confidence, I scored fairly high during the role-playing, but, as the career counselor said, I have to take a step back, write down the question, and take notes during the actual interview.

The father and stepmother meanwhile call the career counselor a little angel. "Well, I am paying her $160 an hour," I reminded them.

"Yeah, well, look at the Buddhaman," replied the father. "He took advantage of you and didn't do a damn thing." The father is right. The former shrink not only took my money but also took a nap during our therapy sessions.

So despite some uncertainty and the heavy task of reacquainting myself to networking and job seeking, I feel empowered. If I can be happy and make a living with ADHD, without a full-time employer—creating my own destiny, really—then I will never again fear being fired or have my fate in someone else's hands.

When Friends Don’t Stick

From awkward moments to fleeting friendships, sorry social skills can bring lots of problems and little else for adults with ADHD.

I don't know how I leave them hanging—this trail of broken friendships and connections. I attended a fifth-year reunion for graduate school over the weekend, and ran into two girls who I had once been good friends with. They nodded at me and barely said hello. I think one of them is upset that I frankly did not email her back one time. I had most likely forgotten and now she regarded me with the cattiness of a high school cheerleader. But that is the way that life has been for me, and the same pattern goes for those with my condition, apparently.

I live life with a critic's eye, quick to judge and conclude something about others. It is not the way that I'd like to be treated, and yet as an adult with ADHD I feel that I've lived my whole life being judged. I am tagged too lazy, too inconsiderate, lacking in common sense and initiative, self centered, selfish, and poor with deadlines, but I get an "A" for effort. Friendships are fleeting, and so it is with Mr. PhD who enters the Hall of Former Friends.

I hate it. I wish I had friends who would sustain me through ups and downs, but unfortunately they fizzle. I want to attend a workshop or a support group on "how to keep friends." It comes down to what an old lady at the hospital where I volunteer said, "Accept them first and then respect them." In the end I could not accept Mr. PhD and regarded his social behavior as arrogant. But I continue to mourn what I considered a friendship. I am sad about losing another.

The Price of a Makeover

I can spend hundreds on a new suit and a new coach, but my gut tells me to invest more in myself. Can an adult with ADHD afford not to do that?

I met Lisa A. at an unemployment group that I am paying to attend. She is a fellow victim of the current economy, who on top of that has bipolar mood disorder. She looks a bit like Bea Arthur and has the natural peace and calm of the Dalai Lama. That we hit it off as friends — her yin, the BMD, to my yang, the ADHD (adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) — isn’t surprising to me. She also has a positive disposition, and—this may sound depressing—next to her I am the sour grape.

I am shelving over $300 for five meetings in the group and another $160 an hour for a career coach. Somehow though my gut sense is that I need to invest in myself in order for things to happen. As I jokingly tell one of the roommates, it beats attending layoff camp or competing in the Unemployment Olympics. I wish I had gone and tried for a gold medal in the phone toss or cubicle demolition. Okay now I am being facetious.

What has changed since the relay race in Florida is that I feel a push to move out of the city. We ADDers are dreamers and idealists, and although the vision — an apartment by the sea — didn't seem so far off when I was in Gatorland, maybe I am just looking for an escape.

I look around at people my age and wonder how anyone does it. How people sustain relationships, get married, have children, keep jobs. Everything about my life is fleeting.

I shared this rant with Ms. Z, my new career coach. She seems to understands where I'm coming from. She said that the most important thing is learning more about myself, my likes and dislikes and how I can communicate better with others, and be assertive rather than aggressive.

She noted that the layoff in December was pretty traumatic, and that I was "unwittingly sabotaging my job search efforts." I have not yet told her about the ADHD because the career crisis was bound to happen, given that I've never spent the time accessing my career and myself.

We planned the next steps and here it is:

1. Work on your Two-Minute Pitch. Let’s start with the basics and take it from there.
   
   
2. Make a list of your previous freelance assignments — who it was for, what type of writing you did.
   
   
3. Provide me with your resume.
   
   
4. Make a list of the writing you have done on your own — what it was/is about, whether you have posted it online, are shopping for a publisher, etc.

Every feat, no matter how small or long overdue, is a step forward, right?

No Luck: New Meds, But Still Fidgets

The switch to generic Adderall medication has come and gone with no vast improvement in the symptoms of adult ADHD. Honestly? It's as if I want to pay attention, but I simply cannot.

I have not been able to get over the reasons behind Mr. PhD's very odd behavior. I'm the kind of girl who would give someone the shirt off my back. I've always had a heart for underdogs (something a lot of adults with ADHD can sympathize with), and despised the pompous and arrogant—the people who think they are Porsches when they are really Kias.

The sister saw the email from Mr. PhD and said it is only human to be hurt and mad at the "prick." I would think I could trust someone I've been friends with for two years. Instead I was tossed over the boat like a bag of potato chips after the swim. "Okay, done with you," Mr. PhD seemed to say. We never had a sexual relationship but I thought we had a friendship.

“Next on the Rolodex,” friends say, but I am a sentimentalist on top of that, and I wonder what I did wrong as both a woman and a woman with ADHD. I know that I do have trouble keeping friends. Maybe it is the musical chair-like moves that have defined my professional and personal life, or the inner critic, who has a sixth sense but judges others as if they were contestants on American Idol.

Anyway, it is day three at a conference I am attending on the future of writing (which seems like it is all headed to Twitter). I've been taking the Adderall, or the Kmart version of it, but still I find that I've been fidgeting a lot and making lists as I attempt and struggle to listen effectively to the speakers. Yesterday it wasn't simply boredom—it was as if I wanted to pay attention, but could not.

It is my last day here, and I will miss the slower pace of life. I don't really want to return to reality. In bright lights, big city, I feel more lost than ever, and for the ADHDer who knows that less is more, it is like a death trap.