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My ADHD Mind Doesn't Wander, it Plots

posted: Friday January 29th - 11:00am

This ADHD public speaker living with comorbid Bipolar 2 learns how to share what it's like living with attention deficit disorder without having to lecture his audience.

“If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind wanders.” -- Unknown

One, I know where my heart is. Two, my mind doesn’t wander. At night, using the distracting cover of dreams, my mind makes plans and plots quietly in secret. Then, sometime during the day when my guard is down, and when it can do the most damage, my mind breaks out of prison and flies into the high grass laughing like mad, the blood hounds braying in pursuit far behind.

I’m in a meeting with a principal at a private school where I’m being hired to do my ADHD show, Pay Attention. The principal, a kind and thoughtful woman in her thirties, has seen me do the show and thinks it’d be good for the teachers to experience ADHD “from the inside.”

All the teachers have a few students with ADHD, and many are having a hard time dealing with the individual inattention and class disruption that seems to have no solution. A few in the faculty think these kids are simply challenging their authority in the classroom and that ADHD is just an excuse, or even believe it doesn’t exist at all. Consequently the entire faculty will be required to attend.

Not only am I supposed to do the show, I’m supposed to do a Q&A afterward for an hour or so –- to let them see that though I too was an ADHD kid, I grew up to be at least a moderately solid citizen.

In a pre-show meeting we are reviewing a few aspects that the principal feels are vital for the presentation. “In the Q&A afterward, I think it’s important that the faculty doesn’t feel they’re being lectured to. We want them to be as receptive as possible to the insights you’re providing.”

I nod to her, and just as I begin to respond in a thoughtful, adult manner -- my eyes glaze over as I fixate on the L-shape and small size of the principal’s office.

Is this a purposeful slight to her? Does she suffer everyday under cruel disapproval communicated to her only by the configuration of the walls surrounding her while she works -- a dark, constant reminder wearing her down? Well, that depends on the relative size of the headmaster’s office, doesn’t it? He seemed like a nice guy when we were introduced, not the type to play punishing cubicle politics, but I was focused on him and his story about his ... was it his brother? Somebody in his family with clinical depression, but the point is I didn’t take in his office.

When did I become the guy everybody tells their family mental illness stories to? I guess I don’t mind. I obsess on my own craziness and advertise publicly for sympathy. My new shrink says no. Not my pattern. He says I’m an honest person. But I lie to him. But not about important stuff, just little lies to keep the sessions interesting, and he’s a straight shooter –- last week cleared up some new psychiatric classifications I got concerned about.

“Do you know that hypomania is now classified as bipolar 2"?

“Um, no...” the principal says.

My eyes, unglazed, are now locked right on hers. “I’m comorbid hypomanic. I like the term 'hypomanic.' It sounds easy-going, nothing to worry about, right? But 'bipolar 2' sounds kinda dangerous. But not dangerous enough for people to give you that step-back crazy space that straight 'bipolar' gets. 'Bipolar 2' just sounds second-rate, like you’re trying to be scary but you don’t have the stones to pull it off. My shrink says it’s just the medical profession trying to reflect the truth as they discover it. And that everything’s on a spectrum. If I’m on the bipolar spectrum I want to be scary. But then, like my therapist says, ADHD is on the autism spectrum, but I’m not autistic. Well, maybe compared to some people I am, but my therapist says not to focus on the labels, focus on the day in front of you. And I listen to him about that stuff, because mostly he makes sense. Don’t you think?”

There’s a beat as she stares at me. I better try to explain, tell her I was daydreaming before I lose this gig before I even get it. Then she bursts out laughing. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Frank. Like you and your therapist, it’s not a lecture if you listen.”

Whoa. That was a lucky landing, after that prison-break move my brain made. We talk more, and later I find out that she’s got family with some mental health issues so she has practice making metaphors out of mud-pies. Sometimes it takes a talented listener to understand what you didn’t even know you meant. We finish up, make plans and I’m set for my presentation and Q&A next month. As I’m leaving, she leans back against her office door and smiles.

“By the way Frank, don’t worry. You’re plenty scary.” I wave and head off to my car chuckling to myself, because that’s exactly what I needed to hear.

Do you suffer from comorbid ADHD conditions like bipolar disorder or depression? Connect with other adults our ADHD forums.

ADHD and Middle School

posted: Thursday January 14th - 3:30pm

My ADHD daughter wants to get away from all the social pressure and craziness of middle school and study at home until she starts high school.

My 14 year-old daughter brought her report card home last night, and it’s fine – one A, the rest Bs, and two Cs. If I’d had a report card like that at her age I would have strutted home with banners flying in front of a brass band. But Coco’s not proud at all. She’s miserable. She buries her head in a pillow crying hard, then hugs it to her chest, doing her best to hold her tears and sobs under control.

Coco is embarrassed by the raging sorrow breaking out all over in front of people, especially her parents. Especially me, because she says I get too "emotional". Tonight she’s invited me into this intense mother-daughter talk. Coco’s cross-legged on our bed next to her mom with me planted at the foot under strict instructions not to interrupt, or get all gooey, hug her and tell her how brilliant and talented she is.

All she wants me to do is to listen to her. My wife, the only non-ADHD in the family, already knows how to listen so she gets a pass on the instructions.

As Coco starts telling us what’s going on, I’m not even tempted to interrupt or get gooey, because I discover, as I have repeatedly in the last year or so, that my daughter’s not a kid anymore. I’m listening to a smart, perceptive young woman with a clear idea of what’s making her so deeply unhappy. And what she wants - more than us trying to jump in and make it all better - is for her mom and dad to sit here, be patient, and hear her out completely.

No matter what we say, she knows her grades should be better. “I’m trying hard, and then just as I start to get it, somebody says something, or something happens in the classroom, and everything gets nuts and then I forget what the teacher was saying and I have to start all over but then it’s too late. A lot of the other kids in Special Ed… mostly the boys… just don’t care about learning anything – they swear all the time, talk sex junk, call their moms bitches. The teacher can’t really control them. I can’t take it anymore.”

It turns out that today one of the boys in study hall kept taunting and goading her and she hauled off and punched him in the arm. She accepts that she was wrong. She understands that you can’t hit people no matter how aggravating they are – a lesson I finally got through my own thick skull sometime in my twenties. But the fact remains that she’s desperately unhappy and frustrated in school, and she’s come up with a solution.

“I want to be home-schooled for the rest of the semester,” she says.

Now, her middle school has a bunch of dedicated teachers in Special Ed, and our meetings with her teachers about starting to slowly mainstream Coco have been great. But, she wants to be able to get away from all the social pressure and craziness at school and study at home until she starts high school when we move to Georgia.

I remember Middle School being a nightmare when I was in eighth grade, but I don’t remember thinking as clearly about solutions. I just brooded in my room working out revenge scenarios where I was the wise-cracking TV gambler Maverick and the other kids were dimwit losers.

Coco looks at us from behind her hugged pillow, waiting to hear our response. She doesn’t look too hopeful. I can imagine what she’d think we’d say to her idea – something along the line of, “Are you out of your mind, sweetheart?”

But Margaret and I look at each other for a second, and then turn back to Coco and say, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yep, we’ll call the school tomorrow.”

Coco smiles. “Thanks,” she says. Then she looks down at the pillow in her arms, “I guess I better wash this. It’s soaked.”

Margaret and I scoot together and hold hands, watching Coco as she walks out of our bedroom. Crosby, Stills, and Nash had it wrong, I think. It’s not “Teach your children well.” It’s “Shut up and listen.”

ADHD, My Son, and Me

posted: Friday January 8th - 11:25am

My son’s ADHD and my ADHD are very different in a lot of ways; but we do share a few ADHD habits.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to do the kitchen or not?”

There’s no answer. At least I think there’s no answer. It’s hard to tell because I’m talking to a closed door. “Harry!”

My 21 year-old ADHD son is in his room on the other side of the door. We’re trying to break him of this rude habit of communicating to the family through hollow-core plywood. I’ve taken the door off the hinges and carted it out to the garage a couple of times, but then we’re all subject to the sight of his incredibly messy room. When he promised to be a more responsive member of the household, we let him put it back up. Once I took it down and put it back up before he even came back from school because I couldn’t take even walking by the open entrance of the nuclear waste dump where he sleeps, plays video games, practices guitar, and eats Ramen noodles.

My son will tell you he’s not ADHD. He thinks terms like ADHD non-hyperactive type are stupid. He’ll cop to being maybe a little ADD, but he refuses to take his ADHD meds, and since he did pretty well this semester at community college, we’re not fighting him on it.

But Jeeze-Louise, the kid’s 21 for God’s sake, and I can’t get him to clean the kitchen when I ask him to, or even open the door to his room when he’s talking, or in this case, not talking to me. We’ve always been a engaged full-service parenting operation, equipped with the standard arsenal of love, respect, rules, manners, discipline, expectations, rewards, consequences, and blah-blah-blah.

We get tired and space out sometimes; but most of the time we’re there pushing for the best for our kids, I think. These days it seems that’s all I do with my son – push. I’m tired of always being the cop in this relationship. I’m tired of always being on his ass. Yes, he’s got learning disabilities; but so did I growing up.

Just before I go into a “When I was your age…” self-righteous rage, Harry opens his door and says, “Okay, okay… I was just getting my Ipod.” Then he walks past me with headphones on and starts cleaning the kitchen – slowly, with one hand. His other hand is occupied with Ipod adjustments. I’ve told him a kazillion times that cleaning is a two-handed job. I was a professional dishwasher at his age before moving up to grill cook and you have to grab work with both hands, the same way you have to grab life if you expect to get anything from it… anyway, you get the idea. Harry does too. That’s why he’s got Eminem pounding in his ears.

My son Harry’s ADHD and my ADHD are very different in a lot of ways. I’m an on-edge, jumpy, combined ADHD type with comorbid emotional and psychological doo-dads lurking in my head like unexploded bombs that go off with the smallest nudge, who has learned to use meds, power tools, or whatever it takes to bolt down my concentration to what’s in front of me. Harry’s ADHD, combined with his co-morbid auditory processing delay (which he also doesn’t like to admit to), has him buried down in a cavern, looking at the stuff that he’s gathered around him and not all that interested in venturing out into the sunlight to experience anything new.

For awhile it seemed like no matter what either Harry or I did, we were going to be stuck forever in this boring dance of hyperactive discipline and passive-aggressive rebellion. Then I noticed that when we talked to each other we barely looked each other in the eyes. We’d start with eye contact, and then we’d both slide off as our attention was drawn to other things while we were talking. It’s a small ADHD habit we share.

So, I’m trying something new. I keep my eyes on his when we talk – through the whole conversation. And, yes, I also try to talk about other stuff than what chores he should be doing. But, the eye-contact really seems to make a difference. He looks back. Yesterday we shared a smile.

ADHD Fireworks

posted: Wednesday December 30th - 11:05am

My ADHD-self apparently doesn't like fireworks exploding around him – the loud noises trigger an anxiety attack.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2003 and I’m curled up in our bed in a fetal position, eyes closed, hands over my ears. I’m working on calm, deep breathing – trying hard to not hyperventilate.

I’ve been in this position before when I had some panic attacks, and completely cracked up and had to put in some serious time with the doctors. Cracking up feels exactly like this – the world around me is pounding and exploding, getting louder and more insistent, like a rising climax of insane fireworks. Our dog, zonked out on veterinary Valium, has joined me on the bed, both of us trembling.

In Hawaii, especially in the local kind of neighborhood we lived in at the time, New Year’s Eve is all about fireworks. Big fireworks at home, in the driveway, lanai, backyard, front yard, and roof – all going off at once and building to a smoke-clogged midnight crescendo.

The explosions shake the walls of our little house. It’s LOUD - howitzer, carpet-bombing, end of civilization as we know it LOUD. Then again, maybe I’m a little over-sensitive to the gunpowder blasting away all around us. I’ve never liked fireworks.

I begin to feel that cowering in the bedroom spooned with my petrified dog, while the rest of my family oohs and aahs at star bursts and pinwheels on the lanai isn’t a very manly way to act. Pa doesn’t hide from danger in "The Little House on the Prairie". He protected his family. But, how do you protect your family from something that only freaks YOU out? How to you convince them that the prudent move during any noisy community celebration is to huddle under the covers with your drugged-up dog, who now has begun a panting, drooling action that’s making things messy?

Not a good example to set when you go around preaching to your kids to face their fears. I stand up on wobbly knees, and step out to the lanai. I casually lean against the porch rail, a picture of easy confident calm. “So, howzit goin’ guys?” All that manly effort and nobody even notices me. They’re all watching the neighbors’ rocket-spouting Freedom Fountain explode terrifying burning embers all over dry leaves and roofs, while letting out an ear-piercing whistle that sounds like a screaming Kamikaze plummeting out of the sky to kill us all.

At the same time, our other neighbor has set off the longest string of firecrackers in all of Polynesia. In the beach picnic grounds across the way, cheers fill the air as dozens of M-80s boom, blowing apart Parks and Recreation trash cans.

People call this fun? This is horrible. The family notices me now. I must have said that last bit out loud. "What are you doing out here? You hate this stuff."

"Whoa Dad, really,you should go back inside. You don’t look so good." I guess my macho act needs a little work. I stumble back to join the dog in the bedroom. Later, as the noise begins to die down, Margaret lays down with me and the dog. "I never knew that junk got to you so much." I shrug. “I never let on that much I guess. Maybe I didn’t know.”

And that’s the truth of it, in a way. I’d been working with a new therapist and new meds. I was in my second year of sobriety and feeling out who the hell I was. I was discovering that the more I stopped covering up who I really was to myself, the more that real-self was exposed to others. Apparently my real-self doesn’t like things exploding around him. That’s okay.

Besides, if I remember correctly, Pa in "Little House on the Prairie" didn’t protect his family by shooting and blowing up the prairie. He just worked hard for them and stayed honest. And that sounded like something I should try to do too.

Under the ADHD Christmas Tree

posted: Wednesday December 23rd - 6:46pm

Our poor Christmas tree just couldn't stand up to my ADHD impulses.

The clear glass angel shines and sparkles. It’s in the perfect place, with a blue light right behind it. It’s not hanging straight though. It’s caught up on a lower branch of the Christmas tree. If it was hanging free it would look a lot better, more like an angel is supposed to look. I can’t reach it yet. If I scoot back under and get back behind the tree I can fix it. Just a little farther, I’ve got it, but I need to break that little piece of the lower branch off I think – almost got it, if I get up on my knees… And then it’s moving away from me, the whole tree is moving away, falling, oh no… with a whoosh and a crash, the family Christmas tree falls to the living room floor. The water from the stand spreads on the rug, soaking through the wrapping on the presents.

My mom and dad rush in from the kitchen to find me standing over the lovingly decorated family tree like a seven-year-old Paul Bunyan. A blubbering, wailing Paul Bunyan terrified that he’s going to be punished horribly. His presents thrown into a pile and burned in the front yard, and he’d throw himself on top, a Christmas funeral pyre. This Paul Bunyan has an over-dramatic and morbid imagination.

“What happened? Are you all right?” My parents hug me, and tell me not to worry about it, accidents happen, "but what were you doing behind the tree?"

I try to explain, but being and ADHD kid (undiagnosed – it’s the 1950’s, so I’m just… unusual) I get side-tracked into the soaked wrapping falling off the bottom of the presents and getting a peek at what’s hidden, and besides they’d never understand about the angel. I'm a normal, curious kid, maybe a little strange; but hey, lesson learned right? I’m afraid not.

Next year, this time on Christmas Eve, I’m scooting under the tree to drape tinsel behind the crèche scene so it’d look like icicles hanging over the barn to make it more dramatic for baby Jesus and maybe pull the one tree light down to be the star… whoosh, crash the tree goes over. This time Paul Bunyan doesn’t get much sympathy at all – my dad’s face is flushed with bottled up fury, “For God’s sake stay out from behind the Christmas Tree!” No front-yard funeral pyre, but the look he gives me is scary.

Okay, now that will burn the lesson into my brain for sure.

The next year, I’m nine, old enough to understand. As soon as the tree comes into the house, I’m warned that no tree tipping will be tolerated this year. Even my little brother knows that I’m not allowed anywhere near the back, or even the side, of the tree. I only decorate the front. Eye-level only. We’re not fooling around here. This year the tree stays standing up until it’s time to toss its tinsel-covered carcass in the gutter after New Years.

The day after Christmas, when dad’s upstairs, and mom’s in the kitchen with my little brother, I have to make one little adjustment. The big red ornament should be higher and closer to the window. I move it; but then it slips from the branch. I try to grab it and timmmmberrr. . . I think that year Paul Bunyan was lucky to get out alive.

I don’t know if this is symptomatic of ADHD or some other co-morbid disorder; but sometimes, it’s like my alarm system for even the most important relationship, career, or life-saving warnings can be completely blown away and over-ridden by the smallest impulse. Don’t go behind the tree. Got it. I won’t, I promise. Really. Yes, I know I promised, but the tinsel.

These incidents crossed my mind last night as my wife and I once again try to talk to my 21 year-old ADHD son about buying Christmas presents for others this year before spending what little money he has on “other stuff”.

He says he’ll get the presents if he has enough money left after he gets the “other stuff”. Around and around we go, until finally he seems to understand.

That’s when I hear, “For God’s sake stay out from behind the Christmas Tree,” echoing in my head. We’ll keep reminding him, and maybe this year the alarm in his head won’t get over-ridden by impulse at Game Stop. No matter what happens, we’ll all be happy because we’re all together and it’s Christmas. And our tree is still standing.

ADHD Stories My Mom Never Told

posted: Wednesday December 16th - 1:18pm

When I read my mother's poem now, I imagine her as a young woman trying to work through the frustration and fear of raising the mysteriously difficult ADHD child I was.

But no escape, my darling,
No turning place to hide.
I offer you no amulet,
No stone to fell Goliaths.
These mortal hands protect you
Only as my shadow halts the moving sun.
Believe the trust you give, I will not
Betray you. A shadow is a shield.
-Berna Deane South (my mother), from her poem “For Trey”

In my last post, I was in the middle of trying to fight off an episode of my ADHD comorbid depression when a chance reading of Kay Marner’s blog "My Picture-Perfect Family” sparked me out of my drama. Her stories of being a non-ADHD mom raising an ADHD child with complex comorbid conditions made me think of my mom. Above is a stanza from a poem she wrote to me when I was a kid -- “Trey” is my family nickname.

When I read her poem now, I imagine her as a young mother and poet sitting down at the kitchen table after everybody in the house is finally asleep, and trying to work through the frustration and fear of raising the mysteriously difficult child I was. This last summer, I also found a raging letter to Dr. Spock from that time folded up in a picture album. In it, she desperately pleads for some answer, some way to wrangle their daydreaming, unfocused, and willful boy, Trey, through childhood and adolescence without her and my dad going completely crazy. As I was finishing fifth grade, I think my father was becoming more concerned with the damage I might inflict on the rest of the world.

I went to elementary school in Villa Park, a working class suburb of Chicago in the 1950s. Nobody knows nothin’ about attention deficit disorder. "JDs" -- juvenile delinquents -- is the buzzword for unruly teens. We younger kids were constantly warned by teachers and scoutmasters that it’d be better to be dead than to turn into one of those sneering, gum-chewing punks on the corner cleaning their fingernails with their switchblades. But look back at Rebel Without A Cause now. James Dean’s got all the ADHD symptoms -- especially in that over-the-top, rambling speech to his dad, Jim Backus. Nobody to this day knows what James Dean was screaming about. And Sal Mineo is just a complete unfocused mess. Everybody in that movie could have used some goal-oriented therapy, ADHD meds, and hand-fidgets that weren’t so pointy and lethal. Except for Natalie Wood -- she was the non-ADHD “normal” who tried to keep everybody together, but she was in way over her head.

Which brings me back to my mom. I was in no danger of becoming a JD no matter how much I’d have liked to. I was a doofus ten-year-old with thick glasses and a tendency to breathe through my mouth and walk into things. Dad was gone at work all day during the week, and he worked at home a lot on the weekends. So it was primarily Mom who dealt with things -- like a cop who’d saved me from drowning in deep, fenced-off slough surrounded by warning signs at a construction site where I was playing. Or the other cop who showed up at our front door after he saw me running away from a brush fire -- that he was putting out -- by the community center that I’d accidentally started. Or the expensive bicycle I borrowed from a friend and then turned around and loaned to a stranger who promptly stole it. Or walking out of the classroom for recess and erasing the lesson the teacher had just finished putting on the board, and then telling the teacher I was acting out because my mean Grandma was visiting -- but my Grandma wasn’t mean, I liked her a lot, and she wasn’t visiting, which my teacher found out when she called my mother.

I explained every time that I didn’t know how whatever happened ended up happening. I didn’t mean to say or do whatever it was. I just wasn’t paying attention. I could see the frustration and concern in her eyes. But she never lost it with me. She stayed as calm as she could, let me know about whatever consequences I had to face, and still left no doubt that she and dad loved me no matter what inexplicable thing I did next.

This amazes me, to this day. My kids are ADHDers. They have their challenges and sometimes act out, but they are dyed in the wool saints in comparison to me at any comparable age of their lives.

At any rate, back in the fifties and sixties, there wasn’t nearly the understanding and help available to parents of ADHD kids that we have now. But when I look back to my childhood, I remember the main thing that my parents provided for me and my brother that got us into adulthood in one piece: unquestioning, constant love that doesn’t go away -- no matter what. Then or now, or in the future, I think it’s always the main ingredient for any kid to succeed on their own terms.

Or any adult, for that matter.

Not to say that parents, spouses, and friends of ADHDers should never give voice to their frustrations. Sometimes it’s necessary for your own survival, if nothing else. My favorite reaction from my father came on a Saturday about a month after I’d been drummed out of Boy Scouts for stealing from another Scout and lying to everybody about it for weeks. He looks out the window and sees me across the street playing with matches and accidentally starting yet another fire and then panicking and running off. After running across the street and stomping it out, he tracks me down, drags me home, and on our front lawn, howls, “My god, you’re a thief, you’re an arsonist, what’s next? MURDER?”

That made an impression. At ten years old, I honestly felt sorry for my dad. So I promised I’d try harder to change my behavior, and to pay attention. And I did. I tried.

Seeing ADHD from the Non-ADHD Point of View

posted: Thursday December 10th - 1:43pm

After reading her words, I realized, on a whole different level, how hard our “normal” loved ones work to help us ADHDers.

"I have one final fall-back strategy for those times when my brain fails me, when I can’t come up with a parenting strategy effective enough, fair enough, creative enough.

It’s love.

I simply hold (read: restrain) Natalie, make sure my hands, cheek, or lips are touching skin, close my eyes, and concentrate as hard as I can on filling her with love. Does it help? Not a bit. It does absolutely nothing. But as the last resort of a slow-thinker, I could do worse.

- Kay Marner, from her blog “My Picture-Perfect Family”

Because I want to broaden my outlook and explore new information, perspectives, and ideas, I try to carefully read as much about ADHD and other mental health issues from as many and as varied sources as I can.

Okay, that’s a big fat lie. I don’t do anything of the kind.

I tear into articles and blogs about attention deficit disorder and the rest of it when my stress level reaches some internal red-line and starts shaking the crap out of the foundations. Then, I attack the reading in a big hyperfocused, rushed, scramble-search for a psychological life preserver before my ADHD’s comorbid pals -- hypomania and depression -- blow things to pieces and let in the darkness.

I’m not looking for new ideas. I want tried-and-true, and I want it quick. I’m scanning through material like a human Google looking for keywords that signal ideas I already agree with. When it comes to ADHD (and probably a lot of other things, too), I prefer reading stuff that supports what I already believe, and that’s written from a perspective I can identify with. If pressed, I’d blame my ADHD for this -- my wiring needs the familiar to settle enough to concentrate. Or, I’ve got the disorder and I struggle with it every day, so who knows more it than I do?

Well, a number of people, as it turns out.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to escape an approaching, large-looking depression that’s gathering on the horizon. I see my therapist on Monday and we’ll hash it out, but I really don’t want to go on anti-depressants again. So I’m dashing around trying to ignore the darkening clouds, hoping that keeping active will diffuse them. But they keep growing and getting darker and begin to take over the sky like a Midwestern summer storm -- with tornado warnings. But this storm comes from within, and two of its sustaining fuels are isolation (feeling like you’re utterly alone and friendless as you desperately try to find some way out from the closing darkness), and the relentless self-pity that grows from the hopeless muck of this belief.

So I’m zip-scrolling through blogs looking for keywords that agree with me, when I find myself slowing down and carefully reading a post in Kay Marner’s blog, “My Picture-Perfect Family.” Kay’s young daughter has ADHD, but Kay doesn’t; she’s a “normal,” and is primarily, as she describes herself, “a glass half-full person.” Then why am I stopping here? This is no place to find a tried-and-true life preserver to get me through my ugly, dark storm...

Yeah, I’m mangling my metaphors here, but bear with me because I can’t do anything about it now, and besides, the point is Kay Marner has gotten me to forget about my own ADHD drama for a second. I’m reading about attention deficit disorder from the other side of the experience. This is the side I always dismissed as not knowing, at a gut level, what it's like to live with this kind of ADHD brain, day in and day out. But now, as I read Kay describe pulling out of her despair after a particularly tough day trying to help and understand her daughter, I realize on a whole different level how hard the “normal” loved ones work to help us. And, more to the point: how much they really do know about us and how we think and behave and why, and how much, despite all we put them through, they care.

This may be no big insight to ADHDers who are less prone to self-obsession than I am. But for me, reading Kay’s spare, honest words about her life has given me a wider perspective. Best of all, it has helped me re-appreciate my amazing wife and family, my friends, and what they’ve all done for me over the years.

Later in the day, in the middle of checking production proofs of my mother’s book of poetry and stories –- pencil tracking back and forth across the page, nosing out errors in spelling, spacing, and punctuation –- I’m brought up short by a poem she had written for me decades ago. I’d read those words many times over the years, but now -- on that different level -- I get a glimpse of my mother as the young woman struggling to understand and discover what she could do to help her mysteriously difficult child.

Next –- ADHD Stories My Mother Never Told

ADHD Dad, Lost in the Supermarket

posted: Monday December 7th - 8:47am

Like a good ADHDer, I have a shopping list, but it never does me any good. I always forget something important, because eventually, the list goes in my pocket, and then it might as well be on Mars.

I’m in Safeway trying to get my shopping cart past the fresh-baked oatmeal raisin walnut cookies and into the produce section. But I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do.

This is the weekly grocery shopping, and before you ask, yes, I have a list, and I remembered to bring it with me. It’s right here in my hand. Not that it does any good. I always forget something important, no matter how many circles or boxes I draw around it, because eventually, somewhere in the supermarket, the list goes in my pocket, and then it might as well be on Mars -- I won’t see it again until I discover its remnants in the bottom of the clothes dryer. But that’s not the problem, right now. Right now, it’s the cookies. Should I get some?

If I do get them, should I get two of the 18-count boxes? That seems extreme since the kids don’t like raisins or walnuts in their cookies, so there’s no disguising the fact that this purchase is just for fat, old me. But my wife, Margaret, also likes them, but not nearly with the intensity that I like them -- though she’s been known to plow through a bunch, given the right DVD on the tube. So if I don’t get the extra box, it’s possible that not enough cookies will survive after I get them home for me to get the deep satisfaction of an even dozen fresh Safeway oatmeal raisin cookies sitting next to me late at night in the white china mixing bowl on the end table along with my iced tea and detective novel. So maybe the cookies aren’t the whole problem.

Maybe since I no longer drink, smoke, do drugs, or stay out late catting around with those that do, I’ve made these particular cookies my addiction of choice. These innocent snacks are my last living sin. And I treat them with the same hypomanic, hyperfocused, addictive obsession that I used to bring to booze, cigarettes, drugs, and haunting after-hours clubs. I never grab and dump the cookies into the cart. I always carefully pull a package from the back of the display, checking the date stamps to get the freshest, and then put them gently in the little shopping cart baby seat. Now, I’ve told myself to stop with this, already. I don’t need these cookies to be happy. (Yes I do, I do!) And I certainly don’t need any more sugar in my diet. (Who cares? So what?) Why deny yourself? To see if you can. Is that a reason? It should be. Why? Oh, shut up. No, you shut up.

I’m putting the cookies back on the display kiosk for the third time, determined to kick the habit and get to the broccoli just fifteen feet on the other side, when I hear my name called.

There’s a familiar-looking woman trying to get her cart around where I’ve blocked the aisle for anywhere from five minutes to a year -- I have no way of knowing. She shakes her head and smiles as I rejoin what’s called reality by everyone else. I wonder if I’ve been talking out loud. That would not be a good sign.

“Frank, I thought that was you. You seemed so preoccupied. I didn’t want to disturb you, but you’re kind of holding up traffic here.”

Then I remember her. It turns out she used to work on a show with me. She’s good at her job and we always got along well. We get out of the way of other carts and do a quick catch-up and she says she saw my attention deficit disorder show when I did it here in town. Whew, she says, you really are crazy, and she twirls her finger by her temple in the universal nutso sign. We both laugh. “Are you okay?” she asks.

I assure her I am, was just you know...thinking for a second. No, she says, she means in the larger sense, are you handling life okay? Yes, fine, really. Super. Thanks.

She heads off and I wince to myself. Hawaii is a small place and I fear pretty soon folks we know will hear about me standing in the middle of Safeway playing with cookies and mumbling to myself.

Maybe so, but I can’t worry about that. I need to get broccoli, bananas, and...and where did I put the grocery list?

An ADHD Thanksgiving

posted: Monday November 23rd - 12:00pm

Just as I was starting to feel like a scatterbrained, worthless, ADHD fraud again, I realized the dinner I’d made was perfect. Every dish had wildly different cooking times and prep, but they all hit the table perfectly done, hot -- and at the same exact time.

“Kids! Get away from the damn pie. I told you already.”

Margaret shoos out the little dressed-up mob of our kids and guest kids through the swinging kitchen door as I tumble a pot of hot, boiled Yukon Gold potatoes into a mixing bowl, turning my head away from the steam.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine, fine...but where’s the butter and milk?”

“Next to the mixer” she says.

“My martini?”

“Behind you, next to the sink,” Margaret says, and takes the potato pot from me as I take a slug of gin. “How many is that?” she asks.

“Only my second and no more today.”

There’s a beat as she looks at me. Has she been counting? She turns to the stove.

“I’ll start taking things out,” she says.

“Everything but the gravy,” I say, “that’ll go out with the potatoes.”

Margaret heads into the dining room with string beans and sausage stuffing as I start the mixer, pour the butter and milk into the potatoes. As soon as the kitchen door swings closed behind Margaret, I pour more gin into my glass. Okay, maybe it was more like three. Anyway, this only makes it three and a half, or four and a half -- I’m not sure.

It’s Thanksgiving 1997 and, drunk or sober, I’m acutely aware that I’ve got a huge undeserved mountain of luck to be thankful for. I’m still a couple of years from getting my ADHD diagnosis, and anyone can see I’m on a roll. I’m a show-runner on a hit TV series. My wife and I have two gorgeous kids. We’ve just moved into this sprawling classic Pasadena house with a circular drive where we park our German cars. Friends and family are gathering around the dining room table to toast us and each other -- everyone will be honestly grateful for the blessings life has bestowed on each of them. But in the kitchen, as I spoon the mashed potatoes into a serving bowl, I know that there’s no amount of thanks I can give to any higher power that can make it right that this life I’m living here is mine.

Other people might be fooled for a little while, but I know what a screw-up I am, and soon they will, too. I wasn’t just having trouble multi-tasking; I could barely task half the time. I'm always back-filling for important things I forgot and mistakes I made, even though I get to the office hours before anyone else -- just to organize and nail down each day before it happens -- and to practice looking like a calm, articulate show-runner in the bathroom mirror down the hall from my office. There is no way that I’ve earned the fairy-tale life I’m living. And when that comes out, boy -- it’ll be a mess.

Now, as it turns out, I did end up losing that particular job on the hit series, and after a couple of other show-runner jobs, I ended up leaving the business. But it wasn’t because I was discovered to be a scatterbrained, worthless fraud. Well, I did go through a period of calling myself that in the shower, but that wasn’t really the truth.

I wasn’t an idiot. I just wasn’t interested.

Getting diagnosed, getting on ADHD meds, getting sober, and getting into therapy have all helped me become infinitely more honest and comfortable with myself, but for just an instant, a glimmer of truth shone through on that Thanksgiving in 1997. I brought out the mashed potatoes and gravy; we all said grace and toasted our thanks. Then, as another scatterbrained-worthless-fraud tape-loop started playing in my head, I realized the dinner I’d made was perfect. Every dish -- the gigantic beer-basted turkey, the sausage stuffing, the acorn squash, the sauteed green beans, the mashed Yukon golds, and the made-from-scratch gravy all had wildly different cooking times and prep, but they all hit the table perfectly done, hot -- and all at the same exact time. If you don’t know, this takes some serious skills -- like multi-tasking, concentration, and okay: being interested and happy in what you’re doing.

That glimmer of truth went away for awhile, but I remembered it in time. And though I wasn’t going to go back to working in kitchens like I did in my twenties, I was going to go back to doing work that interested me, and only work that interested me. So this Thanksgiving, we’re gathering around the table at a friend’s house giving thanks. And I’ll give thanks to that 1997 Thanksgiving and promise to remind my two ADHD kids of that glimmer of truth I saw back then. Because I want them to remember that when ADHDers are doing what honestly interests them, they can show the world some serious skills.

ADHD Is Real -- and We're Not Stupid or Lazy

posted: Tuesday November 17th - 10:38am

Hey, I have ADHD, I’m kinda crazy, but I’m no slacker -- I’m working here.

It’s last week -- no, the week before, and it had been building since the week before that, and I have a therapist appointment the next day which is good timing because thick dark water is swirling around me getting higher, darker, and thicker by the minute. It’s right up under my chin, licking at my lips, slipping up and up and I can’t get away from it. It’s inside and out -- sucking me down -- my own personal Drowning Pool of certain failure. But that’s okay, it is because I’m doing well with the new shrink, and I see him tomorrow. Wait...no, I missed it -- the appointment was yesterday.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the ads popping up announcing simple and/or instant ADHD cures. This kinda gets on my nerves after a while. Do these people really think we haven’t educated ourselves on what’s actually going on in our ADHD brains, chemically, and that we know that there’s no cure -- there’s work, acceptance, knowledge, medicine, love and faith, but no cure for ADHD. We don’t want to cure who we are, for god’s sake. We want to be able to handle it better. Maybe try to see the humor in it.

Then, there are the articles arguing that ADHD doesn’t exist at all. That attention deficit disorder was made up to trick parents to drug their spoiled kids or as a way for sneaky teens and adults to cop speed scrips. These folks are out there telling us that we’re making this stuff up -- that we’re hiding behind med-happy pharmaceutical companies and complicit doctors because we don’t have the will to enforce old-fashioned hard work values on our kids or ourselves. They’re saying we call our kids or ourselves ADHD because we’re undisciplined, unmotivated, or just plain lazy.

This really gets on my nerves. Okay, yeah, it pisses me the hell off. I mean, I don’t know how it is for you, but oh yeah, sure -- I’m just scrambling with everything I’ve got not to be sucked under this wet foaming mass of raging indecision, self-loathing, shameful fear, guilt, and at least a week of residual elevated stammering if I ever even get out of this idiotic mess -- because I’m lazy.

When my brain goes down here -- and it’s sneaky, slippery quick -- my life, which, objectively, is just fine, disintegrates into a foul soup of problems I’ll never be able to solve because I can’t sort any of them out. The soup swirls around making it impossible to figure out which problem I should try to fix because I can’t figure which one is the important one and if it is, I’m sure I’m not the one to fix it, and if I try anyway, I’ll be ignoring the one problem I can fix, but I can’t do anything if I keep hyperventilating and yelling at people to shut up so I can think. That kind of behavior puts a little stress on the family unit. So I try to do less of that. And crying? That gives everybody, including me, the heebie-jeebies. I don’t do that anymore.

I’m working hard here -- giving it everything I’ve got -- but what the hell do I do? Which do I choose? Is it my looming work deadline, or my dad’s health, or the pile of undone laundry growing by the washing machine? There’s Coco’s school problems (she’s transitioning out of SPED and needs support), or Harry’s school problems, or the dirty kitchen (including the floor), or Margaret’s company problems, which goes to cash flow which goes back to work deadline. But what about Margaret’s mother’s health? And speaking of cash flow –- where’s ours? I’m behind on proofing the galleys for my mother’s book, but the dirty kitchen floor is nothing compared to the filth hiding in the living room carpet which I can’t fix because of the stupid broken overpriced freaking French vacuum cleaner, which I’d take in except for the Pontiac’s cooling system. And besides, we’re moving and I’m getting fat because I never exercise even though I promise myself I will tomorrow morning. Moving? We can’t move, I can’t move, it’s too big, but I better move -- I better get off the island quick before everybody finally sees what an immense incompetent putz I really am. Hey, I’m kinda crazy, okay, but I’m no slacker -- I’m working here.

So here’s the truth.

1. ADHD people are not stupid. So keep your snake-oil.
2. ADHD is real and ADHDers are not lazy, spoiled or weak-willed. So shut up with that stuff. It’s ignorant and insulting.

I made it out of that particular panic pool without embarrassing myself -- too much, anyway. (My daughter did see me sort of bonking my forehead on my desk when she came home from school, but she just said, “You okay?” I said, “Yeah” between bonks, and she went to the kitchen, with its just-cleaned floor, and got herself a snack.) I got it together enough to solve another problem that day. I rescheduled with my therapist, and tomorrow we’ll do some work on this, and maybe have a few laughs.

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