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Bill Mehlman Blog

Spinning My Wheels ADD Blog: Treating Adult ADHD With Humor - and Meds

Archives: May 2008

Make It Work, People!

Mayhem or meditation: Do what you love, love what you do. Follow your heart and it will lead to the best career path for you.

I should clarify something. Lots of things, actually, but most of them aren't any of your business, so let's talk about your choice of profession.

Your choice of profession should be whatever interests you the most. What gets you up out of the nice warm bed in January and off to the office/store/lab/driving range, full of new ideas for doing your best. It's not the profession that matters, it's your position therein.

Now before the clarification continues, let's look at one of the many paradoxical aspects of ADHD. You would THINK that we, the many, the twitchy, the impulsive, would do best in a quiet, even monastic setting. No noise, no interruptions. And, conversely, that we would be at a terrible disadvantage in a high pressure, rock'em-sock'em kind of job. Not necessarily.

I spent most of my working life in kitchens. Forget Iron Chef, that pathetic farce. If you can ever get into a real kitchen, a kitchen in a big, busy restaurant, on a Friday night, you'll see what Hieronymous Bosch and Dante were trying to depict. (Can't you just picture old Dante, slapping his doublet and saying, "Now that's what I'M talkin' about, fratelli!)

It's a study in controlled — and sometimes uncontrolled — collective insanity. And yet, those sauté lines were where I spent some of my happiest hours. Why? Simple. It was so busy that NOTHING could distract me. Hence part one of the paradox.

To be a good cook, I had to do all the thinking and planning and preparation before service started. I had to have my mise-en-place. Once the orders started coming in, there was no time to start mincing shallots. I didn't think, I just did. My world was reduced to a little area between the range and the counter, maybe six or eight square feet, and the temperature was about 125º F. The orders came flying in, and all I could possibly think about was getting them done.

Years later, I got into catering. This, you say, would be perfect for an ADHDan. Lots of time to prepare. No one yelling. You knew your schedule a month in advance. And guess what? It made me insane. I detested it.

One classic sign of ADHD is time management, or perhaps, time perception. I loathed having to figure out schedules, organize workflow, stuff like that. Eventually I got pretty good at it, but it was a struggle. I used to lay in bed at night sick to my stomach, knowing that I was totally disorganized, couldn't plan, and had to get out a perfect five-course dinner for 300 guests in a week. Some very dicey moments, I assure you.

So, to return to the clarifying: you need to find out your ssssttttyyyylllleeee.

You love finance? Don't let anyone tell you that you can't work on Wall Street with ADHD. But you do have to figure out what your comfort zone is. You like the action? Get into trading. The day will fly by and you'll love it. You want peace and quiet? Get into research. Find a slot where they'll give you a little office and you can spend your days reading 5,000 line spreadsheets and making notes.

It's up to you, mayhem or meditation. And even within a given slot, there are distinctions. You hear the call of the legal profession? You have the same choice. Spend your days and nights reading the tax code and asking your secretary to bring you some more tea? Or are you a jungle beast? Get in the courtroom, my friend, and litigate. Scheme, scream, connive, browbeat, whatever you have to do. It's a great stage for you.

Just stay out of catering.

Noise! Distraction! Tuna!

Even the smallest sound can provide a big distraction. Do you know how to filter out all the noise?

If you think of noise, what do you imagine? Sound? Loud sound? Maybe, maybe not. It's the old eye of the beholder standard.

Been to a rock concert? Very loud. Painfully loud. Loudest one I ever got to was a Jefferson Airplane gig in the old Fillmore East. It was so loud that I couldn't hear well for two days - and I was sitting in the back! But was it noise? Not to me. Back then I'd have braved sniper fire to kiss Grace Slick's hand. It was loud, but it was all signal.

Electrical engineers refer to the "signal-to-noise" ratio. Same principle as the Airplane concert: if you have something in your broadcast, it's signal. If it's not, no matter how low the volume, it's noise. When you're trying to sleep but outside your window the wind is brushing a dead branch against your shingles, that's noise. The decibel count could be so low as to be insignificant, but if you hear it, and you can't catch your zzz's, it's noise.

You know where I'm going, right? Sure. You're working on something that requires a lot of concentration. All of a sudden some rogue part of the cerebellum (or cerebrum, I never got them right) fires off a message saying that there's still a half of a tuna sandwich in the fridge from lunch. Must be nice and soggy by now, the way you like it. That's noise. No matter how hard you try to keep the old bean focused on your work, pix of that sammich just keep flickering across the screen.

Your filters don't work. Best move now? Take a break, go gobble down that tuna, have a glass of iced tea, stretch, and get back to work. As I noted in an earlier posting, don't fight the tape.

It's the tuna by a TKO every time.

Crash! Smash!

Would you like some wine with your disorder?

This is a good one.

I was talking to an old friend last week. The usual kind of chitchat: “How're the kids, Have you eaten at such-and-such restaurant, Aren't you glad we don't live in L.A. (sorry, folks, I call 'em like I see 'em), What else is new?”

So I mentioned to her that I was doing some blogging for a website devoted to ADHD. My dear friend's nostrils flared and her face took on an interesting shade of puce. Not terribly flattering, but obviously indicative of an imminent firestorm.

"We were at a cocktail party last week at the _'_s. You know I've been trying to get her to throw her support behind the new addition to the junior high. So I thought this was a heaven-sent opportunity."

I should pause here to note that her husband is an orthopedic surgeon of some renown. He's also notoriously forgetful, and we know what that's about, don't we? Like so many doctors, he won't take medication and, in fact, refuses to believe there's anything wrong with him. When he's working, he has laser focus. When he' s not... not so much.

"So we get up there — have you been to her place? Gorgeous, all that Biedermier and — oh yes, so we're standing around having drinks. She's using the cocktail glasses that her grandmother brought over in her luggage from Venice before the war. It's going well, even when my husband asks the housekeeper for a bloody mary. I mean, really. But she didn't bat an eye. Out she comes with the drink. He's on about some new kind of screw that they use for broken ankles. She's bored stiff, her husband looks mildly interested, must have been wondering if he should find out what the company is and buy some stock. But now Josh needs both hands to demonstrate his point, and asks me to hold his glass. I reach out for it, he moves his hand toward me, and then, bingo, he drops this gorgeous Venetian crystal right on the marble in the foyer. All over me. All over _'_s new ecru dress. Nightmare. I tell her to send me the cleaner's bill, grab Josh, drag him out the door.

In the elevator, I'm screaming. Can't help it, screaming, they must have heard me in Central Park:

"WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? ARE YOU CRAZY?"

The big oaf is miserable.

"I'm sorry, honey. I thought I'd given it to you."

"He FORGOT. In that microsecond, he forgot that he had a glass in his hand, and opened his fingers to grab the metatarsal he was thinking about, and CRASH. End of glass, end of new addition. It's hopeless."

Snake Eyes

Like many adults with ADHD, I am the lucky recipient of bonus "co-morbid" conditions as well - learning disorders, depression, and just being pissed off...

Looking back over the posts from this month, I believe that I've tried to be informative and pleasant, perhaps even humorous on occasion. For the most part, I've succeeded, although I may overestimate the amount of chuckles I've provoked. Sadly, if this is the impression I've created, it's hardly a complete picture.

ADHD is co-morbid, a word introduced to me in a comment to a posting for which I sincerely thank the commentor, with many other dysfunctions, syndromes, glitches and crossed wires.

Depression leads the parade. I'm not going to comment on any physiological links between the two, because I can't. But introspectively, how else could it be? Everyone I know who's been diagnosed with ADHD, and with learning disabilities in general, has some sense that he's flawed.

As a child, one easily falls prey to guilt: my classmates don't behave like this, why do I? Everyone else can read, why can't I? No matter how often, or how persuasively, parents and teachers tell a victim — for that's how I see us — that it's not our fault and that they can help us, it doesn't root out the suspicion that we're different. And all too often, to a kid, different = bad.

I'm not getting into the whole hullabaloo about meds, alternative treatments and so on. Let me tell you this: kids today have options. What about my generation? Or, specifically, since I really don't care that much about you, what about me? When I was a kid, no one knew beans about LDs, especially in the middle-class suburb in which I was raised. "He’s very bright, if only he'd apply himself," is the kind of commentary that followed me through school, right up to my college commencement. "If only." Damn right if only. If only my teachers could have seen past the facade of ceaseless, glib banter. Understood that loal:/adhd/article/1973.html:"I really couldn't sit still". Comprehended that I didn't do the homework because I didn't remember that I had any.

It's not the teachers' fault, nor my parents' fault. It's no one's fault. But it was a lousy break, one that just made a mess out of my life. One that kept me from accomplishing anything close to what I could have.

Just a lousy break — I try not to feel sorry for myself. But I'll tell you one thing: I'm pissed off, and that will never go away.

Glass Houses, Anyone?

Where'd I put those keys? A system isn't a good system unless you remember to use it.

Three weeks ago my car refused to start. I had AAA tow it to the closest garage where the Chief Mechanic allowed as the starter motor was shot, and I'd need a new one, and it would cost about $400. Being over the proverbial barrel, I agreed; there's a follow-up to this tale of woe, but it involves litigation rather than ADHD, so we'll skip it for now.

The old clunker (a 1996 Mercury Sable — the Royal Palm edition, with a landau top and heated rearview mirrors, which apparently serve some as-yet-undiscovered function in Broward County) ran as well as it had been running until this past Tuesday, when it reverted to a state of unresponsiveness. The engine turned over, but wouldn't fire. So, once again, AAA towed it to a garage, this one in Manhattan.

Now, I'm not a financially savvy guy, but even I can figure out that sound fiduciary judgment would argue against putting a couple of grand into a car worth about $1,500 (in theory). I waited anxiously for the verdict. When the mechanic called me, he asked if I had another key; his diagnosis led him to think that the little chip in the key I had provided might be damaged, thereby preventing the engine from firing.

This was potentially good news. Find the spare key, slip the mechanic fifty bucks for his time (you never know) and drive off, ready to hit the Jersey shore big time next month. Then commenced the Great Key Hunt. It wasn't in the ceramic bowl where we always had kept it. Wasn't in any of my jacket pockets. Wasn't in my desk or my dresser.

I called my son, who occasionally drove the Royal Palm. He held out the possibility that the key was in his apartment. Fortunately, I was able to find the spare key to his apartment and I trucked over and began to toss the place. I found lots of interesting stuff, but no key. After 45 minutes of searching, I gave up the hunt and went home. Without the key, it was looking like the mechanic would have to embark on a series of diagnostic enterprises guaranteed to exceed my proposed budget for getting the heap running again. I grabbed a beer to help me think.

As I stood in the kitchen, my gaze fell upon a little table near the front door. Hope grew as I neared it and noticed a silver dish hiding under a baseball cap. Under the cap was some mail and under that was the key. I was quite happy and proud of my determination to find the key, until I remembered why the silver dish was on the little table in the first place.

I put it there so I'd always have a place to throw my car keys I'd that when I came home.

So I wouldn't have to remember where I'd put them.

<<Cue sardonic laughter>>

One Out of Four Ain't Great

Why email and text messages are dangerous business for nuance-starved ADHDans like me.

The other big hazard of email (and IMs), and one that those gathering around this particular campfire should pay particular attention to is that due to the abbreviated, bare-bones nature of the medium, nuance disappears. Let's say we're sitting vis-á-vis and having a nice chat. Even if your attention span is as addled as mine, at some level you'll be aware of four streams of communication: my words themselves, my tone of voice, my facial expression and my body language. If we're talking on the phone, we're down to two sources, my words and my tone of voice. Email, text message, IM, chat: words. Only words. And probably not the most carefully assembled, went-to-the-dictionary-and-considered-every-possible-meaning words. Oh, no.

More like, if-I-could-type-faster-I'd-have-more-to-say words. Without the winks, smiles, heavy breathing, fist-clenching, room-pacing clues to meaning that help us in our face to face discourse. These implications that say "I may look angry, but I'm really proud of you," never appear, and your listener leaves with an inaccurate sense of your intentions or emotions.

ADHDans are notoriously poor at reading these clues anyway. We don't see the condemnation behind the polite smile, nor the boredom lurking under the attentive expression, in the best of circumstances. When we eliminate three out of four possible means of conveying our meanings, and understanding the intentions of others, we're often way out over our skis, headed for a nasty tumble.

The dangers in e-communication are inherent and universal. Those of us whose focus is less than perfect should at least get in the habit of taking a breath and re-reading what we've written before we click on "SEND."

Beehive

Those scattered thoughts of yours aren't going to line up single file and get organized on their own. You need a system, my friend.

There's a camera/optics/consumer electronics store over on the west side. At midmorning on a Tuesday in July, it's very busy. On a Sunday in December, they have guys at the door regulating the number of customers who can enter the store at any given time. Inside, it's like — scratch that, it looks like a huge model of Brownian motion, hundreds of people milling about in constant, random collision. But it's not. The system is the slickest thing I've ever seen in retail.

When you get a salesman, and make your purchase, he gives you an invoice and directs you to the cashiers. The long line of buyers moves smoothly and quickly, directed by flashing lights and some urging from a manager on a small raised platform. You get to one of the fifteen registers, pay your bill, get a ticket and move around the cashiers' enclosure to a long counter where a dozen milling men off-load purchases from an overhead rail system. It's worth going there just to see this thing in action. Hand over your ticket, get your purchase, and you're out the door. From the time you get on line to pay until you're looking for a cab on Ninth Avenue probably doesn't take more than ten minutes. Honest.

The point here is not to shill for B&H Photo, which hardly needs my help. I'm trying to illustrate that just because activity seems random and frantic doesn't mean there's not a perfectly functioning system underlying it. If you're trying to regulate your thoughts, which seem to look like a powerful break in 9-ball, you need a system.

This is all about prior preparation. The overhead delivery system at B&H didn't just happen. Management evaluated the situation and thought, way outside the box, about solutions.

Meds, martial arts, meditation, I believe in them all for us ADHDans. But life presents problems to us all, and my experience, hard-won and frequently bitter, shows that even if you've utilized the chemical and spiritual aids to help you with your ADHD, you still need to learn to create systems if you want to function at a level you find gratifying and productive.

One last thing: don't head over to B&H after sundown on Friday, or on Saturday, or during the Jewish holidays. Management is extremely observant and will not transact any business during Shabbas. Some systems, after all, outrank others.

Uke and Nage

Got dojo? Aikido teaches self-control, concentration and calm in the face of frustration. Sound like anything you could use?

Unlike many of the martial arts, which struggle to trace their roots back to an itinerant monk who got the idea from watching a lizard fight a crane, aikido has an unquestioned provenance. The form was developed in the early 1930s by Morihei Ueshiba, known to students as "O-sensei," the Great Teacher. Regarding the nature of the art, he said, "To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace." Which isn't to say that that those skilled in the art can't kick ass (see Seagal, Steven, who was a seventh-dan black belt and teacher — in Japan — before going Hollywood).

Like many of the martial arts, aikido depends upon inner focus, self-control and cultivation of one's ki (in Chinese, chi or qi), which translates roughly as one's life force. Any of this sound familiar? If I had little children, ADHDans or not, they'd be taking classes in aikido. It's not a panacea, but its principles and practices seem to mesh perfectly with the needs of a child who has issues with impulse control and concentration.

In a properly run dojo, respect and calm are taught before the actual physical training. I've seen a shihan (master, also referred to as a sifu or sensei) have young students help sweep the mats or check the locker area for trash. There is no subservience or exploitation implied in this; students do it to demonstrate respect and to maintain a clean and orderly facility. Don't get me wrong. There's no life-and-death tooth-gritting here. Aikido is one of the most cooperative, communal enterprises I've ever seen.

Beginning akidokata may find themselves working with senior students. Aikido students practice in pairs, alternating between the roles of uke and nage, which are, in the simplest terms, the attacker and the attacked, a system that seems to minimize the overly-aggressive tendencies cultivated by some other forms. The cornerstone of learning the art is to learn to be calm at all times, and even calmer when attacked. Again, ADHD or no, couldn't all of us profit from learning to deal with a stressful situation by relaxing and examining it rather than getting frantic and unproductive?.

I would be remiss, not to say disrespectful, not to mention the dojo at which I attempted (and, with more determination, could have continued) to learn aikido. The New York Aikikai is a non-profit organization serving as the headquarters of the United States Aikido Federation (USAF). The guiding spirit is Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei, one of the most revered teachers in the world, and chairman of the board of the USAF. If you wish to see the personification of this wonderful art, he's the man. Go to YouTube and watch this. And if you like what you see and hear, it would probably be an excellent idea to find a dojo through the USAF, rather than go to the one with the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages.

Easy Calendar Tool

Use this free online resource to keep from overbooking your life or overlooking an important deadline.

Taxes? Hey, I got an Uncle that lives in Taxes. He lives in Dallas, Taxes!
- Chico Marx in A Day at the Races

This is a beaut. I'm assuming that you have, even if you don't use, the Google Calendar. What you may not know is that you can import calendars from outside sources and incorporate them into yours.

Want an example? Do a Google search for "tax calendars." You'll find ten of them there. If you can find one that's applicable, click on "Add to Calendar." That's it. You can modify your settings to change the alarms. What does it cost you, except for an excuse for not having paid your estimated income tax, or the payroll taxes for your widget factory?

I've got my calendar set up with over a dozen subject-specific subcalendars. For example, I've got calendars for all of the publishers for whom I do regular editing work, each in a different color. When I get a gig, I enter it so that it spans from the date I receive the material until the date it's due. This enables me to see, in bright colors, all of the impending work I've got and get a picture in my head of how I'm going to schedule myself to get it done on time.

And, just for another level of reinforcement, I print out a copy of the calendars for the current month and the following month, and put them on my bulletin board. All I can tell you is that more than once it's kept me from overbooking myself and, consequently, blowing a deadline. And it's a lot easier to keep an established client than it is to find a new one.

I Have a Dream... Job

If it's legal, and you can support yourself doing it, and you love it, DO IT.

I worked for three years for a very clever, very wealthy, self-made man who had reduced the rules for successful conduct of one's life into a handful of hortatory maxims. These included "Control your own destiny," "Communication solves all problems" and "Don't fight the tape." The first two explain themselves, but the last one might not evoke a usable image for those of you who grew up with computers.

Before Quotron, and then Bloomberg superannuated stock tickers, they could be found in any brokerage or financial services office. Operating on telegraph lines, they provided the closest thing available to real-time reporting available in those days. They became an icon of capitalism (and now you know the genesis of the "ticker tape parade" which is now the "waste basket parade" because Bloomberg monitors are too expensive and too heavy to heave out the window onto the head of the Super Bowl winners). The import of "don't fight the tape" was not to move against the flow of public opinion. If everyone wants creamed spinach for a vegetable, don't buy a ton of broccoli rabe.

The hook to ADHD? Don't fight against your own personal inclinations, abilities and pleasures. Mom wants you to be an accountant? Dad favors med school? You feel like you're getting hives if you have to spend more than an hour sitting at a desk? Guess what, Alicia Mae? You're going to be miserable if you listen to them.

It's not impossible — there are blind lawyers (physically — we’re stipulating “morally”) and crippled physicians and amputees who run marathons. But these people presumably want to climb these mountains. If the idea of reading a 3,000-line spreadsheet, or the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, makes you want to kack, don't go down that road.

I once met a tax attorney, a man who made millions of dollars a year as a consultant, and he attributed his success to his massive inertia. "I'm a real dull guy," he said, "but I can go into my office and read the U.S. Tax Code every year, and my work saves corporations tens of millions of dollars. Talk about boring? But I can do it and not many people have that kind of sitzplatz."

Sell Maseratis. Become a cabinet maker. Bake bread. If it's legal, and you can support yourself doing it, and you love it, DO IT. There are enough miserable CPAs and resentful bankers out there. And if something intrigues you, find a way to do it without putting yourself in a situation that makes you miserable.

I knew a guy who supervised the proofreading department of a huge law firm. Hated every minute of it. Was fascinated by real estate, but was too shy to be a broker and couldn't tolerate the idea of an office life. Started studying appraisal and got his license and then, as if a higher power felt he deserved a reward, he found a job as an appraiser, working for a man whose entire practice was valuing golf courses. And did I mention that my friend Duncan was born and raised about five miles from St. Andrew's?

It's out there. Go find it.

Were You Saying Something?

If my mind goes wandering during our conversation, don't take it personally -- that's the ADHD staring blankly into space, not me.

It's like the line about the guy who gets a courtesy call from his bank, telling him that he's considerably overdrawn: "What! How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks!"

I must take issue with the impression, one that I've heard expressed far too many times, that ADHD is a "memory problem." This totally ignores the mechanism of ADHD.

It's not that we have trouble remembering. I can remember things just fine. What I have trouble doing is listening effectively. If someone's telling me a story about a mutual friend, and I get home, and my wife asks me if I've heard about what Cyril did. Well, if I say "no" it's not true, but if I say "yes" it's equally misleading.

If she'd asked me if someone told me about Cyril's latest contretemps, the answer, unequivocally, would be "yes." But if I drift off, trying to remember when high tide will occur tomorrow, and trying to remember if I have any more frozen bait, and if I remembered to cancel my appointments for tomorrow afternoon — well, I was there, but I sure as hell didn't hear about Cyril. And it's a good bet that I was thinking about the Yankees when I checked the tide tables yesterday, so there's no way I'll remember that info either.

Can't remember it if I never heard it. A downright vicious circle.

But as the other famous graduate of my high school, a Mr. Joel, once wrote:

And so it goes, and so it goes,
And you're the only one who knows.

So Sue Me

I am weak, but not so foolish to deny the link between nutrition and ADHD. Lower cholesterol = better health = higher self esteem = improved concentration.

I try to practice what I preach. I quit smoking. Quit smoking cigarettes, anyway, and I figure that smoking a couple of Robustos a month doesn't add much, percentage-wise, to what living in Manhattan does to my lungs.

And I'm trying to watch my diet. But I'm weak. One of the kids came buy for an impromptu breakfast yesterday, and left the better part of a half-pound of scallion cream cheese in the fridge. But I didn't eat it this morning.

I ate it last night, a little snack before retiring.

Right. What does this have to do with ADHD? Just this. I believe, based on my own self-observation, that anything positive is helpful. Sluicing out the cholesterol so it's under the 180 mark has no direct bearing on whether you'll remember how to get to your cousin's house, a route you've taken six dozen times. But part of the war against inattentiveness and distractibility is knocking off the easy victims as fast and as often as possible.

This is another one of my forays into purely anthropormorphic etiology, which means that I see problems as little (or big) bad guys, like the devil that used to perch on Bugs Bunny's shoulder when he was trying to be good. For every distraction rattling around my brainpan, I picture a guy sitting on a stool, tap-tap-tapping on a piece of tin with a ball-peen hammer. The more distractions, the more little tinkers hammering away, and the more general confusion. So if I get my cholesterol under control, I feel better about myself, and self-esteem is a Very Good Thing, and there's one fewer little noise in the background. Makes sense to me.

So read Harry's Blog.

And get rid of those chili-cheese-fries, wouldya?

The smell is driving me crazy.

An ADHD Drug Diary

ADHD medications impact every patient differently. Here is how two popular meds converted me into an 'alternative therapy' guy.

Most of my postings here at Spinning My Wheels are, to borrow a term from my days as a chef, panaché. In other words, a little fact, a little opinion, a little whimsy, a little cynicism. Or, as we used to say in the Italian kitchens, a giambotta. Whatever. The following material, however, is based on my own experience, and I present it as objectively as I can.

About three years ago, my life was even more chaotic than usual, and I was scrambling. One of the things I could do to make money was freelance proofreading for the major law firms in New York. These firms, especially two of the giants that most regularly desired my services, are multi-national enterprises. They tend to have their largest proofreading and typesetting operations here in the city, so they never shut them down. If there's no emergency here, there's stuff coming in from Singapore, or Moscow, or London, or Buenos Aires. Hence, there are three shifts. Because I'd been off "the circuit" for a while, I'd lost my seniority, and had to take a lot of third-shift work.

Third shift is midnight to 8 am. It sucks.

I was taking Ritalin in those days. As needed. Which meant that if Dewey Fleecem and Howe, LLC, called at 11 pm and said there'd be a car service waiting downstairs in 20 minutes and would I please shake my butt because a 300-page debenture had just been emailed over from Frankfurt and it had to get proofed by sun-up.

So I'd jump, and take a Ritalin on the way downtown. And lots of coffee all night long (do you have any idea how boring debentures are?) to keep going. By the time I'd finished, and walked out into the flinty glare of a Wall Street morning, I was quivering like a tuning fork. F sharp, usually. And many was the day I stopped in the sleazy ginmill across the street and shouldered my way between two desperate white-collar alcoholics to toss down a couple of drafts in the hope that by the time I got home I'd be able to get a couple of hours sleep.

The astute among you will have realized by now that this modus vivendi was a nightmare. So you'll understand that when I read about Strattera, a new, non-stimulant drug developed by Lilly to help those of us with ADHD, I was enthralled. I called my therapist and got a prescription. Focus, concentration, clarity, with none of the jangling nerves. Too good to be true.

I started to take the Strattera, in slowly increasing doses, as suggested by the manufacturer. Didn't feel much for the first week. Midway through the second week I thought I was a little sharper, and sleeping a little better. I also realized, however, that... well, not to be indelicate, but my plumbing was steadily slowing down. All of it. I checked the website and noticed that "urinary retention" was a possible side effect, as was constipation. You betcha. A few more days and I felt toxic. None of the substances that were supposed to be leaving my body were doing so. My bladder was killing me, and I started to wonder how long it would be before my kidneys failed. Ditto my intestinal tract.

I didn't even bother calling my doctor. I just started to taper off, at the same rate that I'd built up my dosage. Some ugly days passed, but within a week I was back to normal.

That's the whole story. I make no claims for this being a universal reaction. It's just not a drug I tolerate well. I'm sure others find it a blessing. I found it a horrible, ineffective course of treatment. For me.

That's all.

Polishing Up that Golden Rule

How 'Please', 'Thank you', and 'Yes, ma'am' can build confidence in your ADHD child. Some call it manners; I call it beautiful, predictable structure.

Every now and then I take pleasure in slipping into my curmudgeon outfit (itchy, three-piece wool suit, starchy shirt with collar stays that are too long, a narrow tie in a single Windsor and shoes with laces) and rail about today's youth. C'mon, now, I deserve an easy target sometimes, no? And what could be easier than the death of etiquette?

I'm not talking about prissy, Mrs. Grumblebottom's Guide to Behaviour for Young Men and Women of Quality. We're never going back there. No one has the time, no one cares. And how many of you own, let along know how to use, a fish fork, or know the difference between spoons for clear soups and thick soups? Basically, that Victorian bushwah can be condensed into a few simple concepts: watch your hostess and do what she does, use your silverware in the order it's been laid in, from the inside out, don't eat with your butter knife, and, no matter what you do at home, no icecubes in the Haut-Brion, you yahoo.

The rules of etiquette that concerns me are the guidelines that grease the interactions between people. Again, I don't mean removing your hat in the elevator when a woman enters, although that's not a bad idea. It's stuff like holding the door—not just for a woman or an older man, but for anyone who might happen to be walking behind you. It's helping your neighbor when he's overloaded with packages. And most of all, it's "Please," "Thank you," "You're welcome" and "Excuse me."

Try to instill this mindset in your kids. All your kids, but especially those who are ADHDans. Why? All goes back to what I'm always harping on: try to remove from their daily lives as much doubt, confusion, ambivalence — anything that distracts them — as you can. They shouldn't have to worry, when they're introduced to their best friends' mothers, what to say or do. No rocket science, no Lord Fauntleroy folderol. How about, "OK, so when you go to Bobbie's house, and you meet his mother, offer to shake hands, and say, "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Cramden." And if the adult who reacts scornfully or incredulously to this — and trust me, those clowns are out there—your kid probably shouldn't be hanging out in that house anyway.

Security and self-confidence are excellent antidotes to anxiety and doubt. Keep it simple, keep it meaningful. I'm trying not to mention the Golden Rule here, but in the long run isn't that what it's all about?

Can you see a downside to any of this? I can't.

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Black-Belt Therapy

The search for composure and concentration in tai chi can provide concrete, and frequently elusive, focus to ADHDans.

I tend to be contrarian, but not dogmatically so. For example, I'm totally in accord with the notion that appropropriately vigorous exercise is an unmitigated positive for everyone. Furthermore I think that it's essential for ADHDans.

Name your game: cycling, swimming, soccer, jogging, anything that gets you to break a sweat and burn off some of those heebie-jeebies. (As much as I love a good game of nine-ball, time spent in the pool hall doesn't count.) I think that martial arts fulfill this requirement, and bring an additional, specific set of benefits to us.

The martial arts I'm going to talk about in this and future posts are the "soft" or "internal" disciplines. Those of you devoted to shotokan karate, taekwando or capoeira or any of the other more aggressive forms, knock yourselves out, so to speak. All aspiring writers are taught to write what they know, and my experience in this area is limited to tai chi chuan and aikido.

"Soft" should not be construed as "wimpy" or "ineffective." Advanced — and I use that adjective deliberately — students of tai chi frequently win competitions open to all martial artists. Friends of mine, undercover cops, who find themselves in distinctly non-dojo situations, advocate aikido as the most practical, efficient form of self-defense in the street. Aikido students may not be able to break cement blocks. Wrist and legs, yes, but not cement blocks; personally, I've never been threatened by a cement block.

Tai chi comes in many flavors. For those who are resolutely non-violent, there are forms, such as Taoist tai chi, that eschew any and all combative activity, concentrating on the spiritual and health benefits of the art. At the other end of the spectrum, you can find instruction in weapons forms and tai chi boxing, which will definitely satisfy your aggressive instincts. And, while aikido claims to have no, none, zilch, offensive moves, the defensive moves will deter pretty much any aggressor, unless he likes being bounced off the sidewalk, very hard.

Both of these forms emphasize balance, both physical and emotional, and some notion that developing one's inner strength is more critical than any bodybuilding routine. This search for composure and concentration can provide concrete, and frequently elusive, focus to those of us in the ADHD community.

So we’ll get to both of these in short order. Meanwhile, I hear a plaintive chorus sighing, “What about yoga?” What about it? I’m sure, as the punchline to the old joke goes, it couldn’t hurt. But I know nothing about it, never did it, and you’ll have to look elsewhere in ADDitude to find information thereupon.

A Life Less Boring

The meandering path of a ADHD brain on (and off) the job.

At first glance, copyediting might seem like an excellent vocation for an ADHDan. You sit in a quiet room, all by your lonesome. There are no (non-spousal) distractions. You don't have to worry about interacting with other people. You work until you're tired, or your eyes ache, and then you take a nice break. What could be bad?

Are you mad? It's the worst possible situation. Copyeditors sit in quiet rooms, surrounded by reference material, joined at the hip to their computers. Time passes. You started to check whether Henry II was a Plantagenet. When you come to your senses a half-hour later you've investigated Henry II, Henry IV, Henry Ford, Ford Madox Ford, Elliot Maddox, T.S. Eliot, Thelonious Sphere Monk, checked for the next new episode of Monk (we're suckers for shows about other people's disorders), OCD, OCM, opm (and speaking of other people's money, when is your brother-in-law gonna pay you back?), "Mother-in-Law" by Ernie K. Doe, Ernie Kovacs, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Edsel Ford, Henry Ford II, Henry II... Yup! The author was right, he was a Plantagenet.

And you've just blown forty-five minutes of your work day looking up stuff that's of no possible use to you. Stuff you really don't actually have any interest in. And if you go off on a random walk like this a couple of times a day, you'll find that your deadline for this project hasn't made a corresponding retreat, and you're facing a very long night. Better TiVo that episode of Monk, brother.

Is there a point to all this? I think so. You've got a problem. Your brain dances to a slightly different drummer than the majority of brains. Maybe, even if your parents have always wanted you to be a lawyer so that you can join the Fine Old Firm that your great-grandfather founded, you should find something less... boring. Are you actually going to be able to read an entire book on contract law? Or would you be much happier, regardless of what Mom and Dad want, being a landscaper or an auto mechanic? It's your life, and you should find something to do with it that makes you happy, and that you can do well.

PS: So how do I get through my days of copyediting? Simple. Rent. Food. Insurance. Tuition. Not the highest and best of motivations, I assure you. Not having a choice is not the same as making a choice.

Blog... Interrupted

We all wish to leave footprints in the sands of time, but often much simpler feats prove far more challenging.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
"A Psalm of Life"
Longfellow

I'd be willing to bet that if we were to poll 10,000 Americans under the age of forty, fewer than 500 could identify Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and fewer than 100 could honestly claim to have read any of his works.

Having been exposed to what seemed, at least in eighth grade, to be the stifling, irrelevant and interminable bathos of Evangeline, I can't see this as a major cultural tragedy. Nonetheless, like so many of the poets who wrote [here I get lost for three-hours, while I wander, lonely as a cloud, through various discussions of poetic theory, culminating in a lengthy, albeit fruitless, consideration of negative capability]... narrative verse, Longfellow does speak to the dilemma of the common man.

Anyway: it's widely understood that man is driven, in significant measure, to create some monument to his existence, some ontological...

A typical ADHDan tragedy: I started to write this yesterday. Got a phone call. Forgot to write even the briefest of notes so that I'd be able to pick up the path again. And here you see the result: a half-done, useless, depressing (I was really into something, honest) mess. Once again, metaphysical considerations are trumped by the failure to use a Post-it. If the thread of this comes back to me while I'm out fishing this afternoon, I'll finish it; otherwise...

We Interrupt This Program...

How to tackle that impervious to-do list without falling prey to monster distractions: save the worst for first.

Most ADHDans would probably put prioritization near the top of their lists of problematic areas. (Yes, that's one of those lists we make and never look at again, but that's another story.)

I'm sure this rings a bell. You've got about a dozen or so things on your calendar. The peril is that you'll start thinking about which one to do first. Odds are you'll bat them around for a couple of hours and then it's lunchtime and then its... What you need, my friend, unless you can find Trapper John and Hawkeye to triage your to-do list, is a simple, foolproof algorithm for deciding what to do next. By the veriest coincidence, I just happen to have one that I'm willing to share.

Take the to-do list. Find the item on the list that will probably be the most fun to do, like "Revamp the Yankee's pitching rotation." Put that at the bottom. Then find the item that you think is most critical. Maybe something like this: "Save Earth from rogue comet." Put that just above the most-fun-to-do task. Keep going like this, arranging the tasks in order of their appeal, until you find the task that you really, truly, viscerally hate to do. Some examples: doing your estimated taxes; making an appointment with the periodontist; sending out that condolence card. Find the most hateful, boring, potentially embarrassing item on the list: THAT'S the one to do first.

Here's my thinking. If you don't get that horrid task finished, you'll never get anything else done well. Even while you're trying to figure out if Mussina should start before Pettitte, part of your mind is gnawing away at you because you haven't filled out the tax forms. So you can't concentrate on correcting Joe Girardi's mistakes. And what do we call this kind of situation? Nice and loud, class: DISTRACTION!

So get the ugly stuff off your list first thing every day. Not only will you enjoy the more frivolous items, but you'll do a better job with the critical ones. And you'll feel like such a mensch.

PS. I think Pettitte definitely gets the nod.