Living with ADHD

Any big thing in my family has always been somehow centered around me- I'm not trying to be self centered or egotistic or anything, I'm just saying I've been a big shit stirrer in anything that I do.

My sister gets sidelined a lot, and once in a while, it becomes obvious and we go "oh." And then joke about how she'd boring; doesn't do any new tricks. However, this isn't always the case. When me and my sister were in primary school, she'd get much more praise than I- for good reason.

I've only been diagnosed with ADHD and medicated for less than a year. Being a Junior in High School, you can tell I've been functioning, or at least trying to function, with ADHD for a very, very long time. When I'm off my meds, I'm very short tempered, argumentative, prone to outburts of anger or tears. I forget any mundane task I'm told to do, and I jump from subject to subject with frightening ease. I'm an emotional, empathetic person on or off my meds, but combined with the short attention span and subject jumping symptoms that go with ADHD, I'm a very unlikeable person.

I also talk a lot, make off color jokes at the wrong time, and I have trouble gauging any given situation off my meds.

Combine this with the fact that I've spent a vast majority of my school career being scolded for speaking out of turn, being teased for crying at silly things, and being grounded for talking back and insulting my parents without thinking, It can be said that I get a lot more attention than my sister- and most of it is negative.

With ADHD, people tend to be more creative, more innovative than your average person. And I am a very creative person, and I have a tendency to find different ways to solve problems because I wasn't listening when I was told how to. But more often than not, when someone with ADHD goes undiagnosed for a long period of time, and isn't given the proper tools to function in the way society wishes, they fail in crucial areas and get punished or scolded.

This is the first time I have ever gotten good marks my first marking period of school. The first time ever I have not been grounded for doing poorly. Instead of bad comments by my teachers, I get positive, 'she goes above and beyond' comments.

And my mother now feels like shit.

You see, I can't count how many times I have been grounded, scolded and punished for bad behaviour in school and in public, how many times I've said something out of turn, said something I shouldn't have, and was punished for it. My mother has been told twice at the very least that I may have ADD or ADHD, and refused to get me diagnosed and medicated because she was worried that the meds would take away my personality, make me boring like my sister (she goes by the book on everything, and has problems solving things on her own).

Now that articles and studies are popping up, saying that punishing children with ADHD for behaviour they can't control may actually push them towards substance abuse and overall abusive behaviour to others, now that studies are saying that kids who aren't medicated would actually set them up for mental illness. Now that studies say that medication doesn't make a child with ADHD turn to more serious drugs, Mum is feeling horrible.

She is meeting people with children my age who are immensely talented, creative, intelligent AND with ADHD, who have been medicated since they were 8, she tells me she is very, very sorry.

ADHD, like behaviour and mood disorders, aren't things you can turn off or tune down with ease. I've met people who are Bipolar who tell me they hate how their parents and partners tell them to just tune it down and control themselves, because their disorder doesn't work like that, and I empathize with them totally. I go through that everytime I forget my meds. "Mel, control yourself. Mel, calm down. Mel, relax". It's insulting to people with ADHD to tell them to "tune it down a bit" when you're on a hyper spree and careening to some sort of emotional explosion at the end.

It's also demeening to call one's medication 'Happy Pills'. It's like saying your frustration and anger and distress doesn't mean anything when you're off your meds, and when you are on your meds and having an emotional breakdown, to have your mother ask you if "you've taken your happy pill today." My emotions are genuine and credible. My ability to take character attacks and mean comments just increases when I'm on my meds, I don't get 'happier', I'm just calmer and less unstable. What angers me when I'm off my meds still angers me when I'm on them, I'm just less likely to cry and scream because I can take more of it without breaking down.

This is probably one of the biggest reasons why kids with ADHD are more likely to be chronically depressed. When they go undiagnosed, no one understands why you can't be 'normal' and when they ARE diagnosed, well, all their emotions just get discredited because it's the ADHD that's making them upset- not us!

Right.

You are totally NOT making us feel like our feelings and frustration doesn't mean anything.
You totally aren't attacking the validity of our thoughts by saying "It's only because you're unmedicated that you're even acting like this"
You totally aren't undermining our opinions by asking us if we're medicated when we get emotional about a subject.

You totally aren't pushing us to a mental breakdown because of your dangerous ignorance of our disorder.



Living with ADHD openly is like openly admitting to any other disorder. You meet a lot of people who have no idea what it's like to function on or off your medication, who think the meds 'cure' you, and wonder why you get so angry when they vocalize these untruths and misconceptions. Maybe you meet a normal person who understands what you're going through, but usually, your best friend is going to be someone who is in a similar situation in life like you.

I love talking with my friend Kaitlyn, who also has ADHD. She knows what I'm talking about when I vent about how mean and ignorant mum can be about my ADHD, and also knows what it's like to come to school on your meds and totally feel like they aren't working, because you're just feeling down an thinking too much about heavy subjects. And when one of us forget our meds, we keep each other in check, in an empathic way. "Kaitlyn! You're totally wackier than normal- d'ju forget your meds?" "Mel, girl, you're talking too loud- relax!" Of course, the fact we both hadthe same condition may have something to do with how we're okay with each other telling us this. If our mothers said these things to us, we'd freak out.

and of course, when we both forget our meds, it's fun, because we have our subject jumps in either the same or opposite directions, and laugh about it, and just babble. It appears ADHD gets exponentially worse if others with it are around.

But it's not always fun. You feel left behind in class because your mind is elsewhere. You don't feel on top of things, because you think so fast, but rather, behind. Thinking so fast makes you miss out on crucial information, and the lack of control over this doubles the frustration of missing out on info. In conversations with friends at school, you feel bad because they're boring you, and you want to talk about something else, but no one else will move off that damned topic. And when it's really bad, you bounce from conversation to conversation, looking for meaningful exchanges of ideas and opinions, but you actually miss out on them BECAUSE you're bouncing from conversation to conversation. It's like channel surfing. Something good is on TV, simply by mathematical probability, but if you just flick through, you probably end up catching the commercials. You miss out on the substance because your convinced you might be missing out on the substance elsewhere, and then as soon as you leave, what you're looking for pops up, and you never even know it was there.

ADHD isn't all sugar highs and giddy, chatty people. It's also frustration and feelings of being unfulfilled, missing out on crucial knowledge and a lack of connection with other people. I'm convinced I never made that many friends simply because of my channel surfing nature in human interaction. 'Something better must be happening elsewhere!" and you kick yourself when you find out something exciting happens after you leave- you kick yourself for not making the friends you should have in your year because they didn't have the substance you wanted, when really, they did, you just were never there to witness it.