When and when not to take a ritalin vacation

Or

Flap heel toe, shuffle AH-HA!

Sunday, 8/03/09:
For the record, I just walked in my apartment and barked an order at Jason that he must not talk to me until I say that it is ok to. Sorry, Jason. You see, I have the idea for what I want to write in my head right now but I feel much like when I first wake up from a dream and I know I have about 30 seconds to remember the dream before it all slips away, dispersing like morning mist.

I should have taken my ritalin today.

Yet, not taking it gave me a magnificent AH-HA moment where I suddenly remembered an experience from the past and saw it through the eyes of a now-diagnosed with AD/HD present self. (Yet, also, not taking it is frustrating me to tears right now because I’m afraid I’m not going to fully capture my ah-ha moment before the dream slips away.)

So, I went to another tap class today. Since last week’s class was a TEENY bit too easy for me, I decided to take the next level up, which is still called “beginner,” but, since The Edge Performing Arts Center is hard core, is still pretty, uh, hard core. I was hoping it would be the same “whatever!” dude teaching from last week who wore baggy basketball shorts and tap shoes with no socks, but instead I saw a spry young woman who, although she kept complaining that “high school seems so long ago, all of a sudden!” looked about 16. I got to class a half hour early (because you either get really really early or really really late with Shannon) and saw her planning the combination we would work on in class. That was probably a mistake since it looked REALLY complicated but I tried to convince myself that maybe she was just planning a combination for another class or just for fun, like, she was going to dance for her friends at a party later and wanted to come up with something really complcated to impress them.

The class went pretty well for the first half – no, actually, I should say it went pretty well the whole way through, I just had some issues near the end. The steps were honestly not too hard for me and the speed could’ve been dialed back a wee bit for my taste but I made do. The 16-year-old who complained about her impending HS reunion kept reinterating that the important thing was to do the steps at our own pace and not worry about speed so much. As I said, I did pretty well through the warm-up and the across-the-floor combination.

Then we started learning the combination which, again, I could keep up with and made me feel confident. I could even do it rather quickly. Stomp, toe, toe, step; stomp, toe, toe, step; shuffle heel-toe-heel; scuff toe-heel heel, shuffle ball-change. WHEW. Got it. We started out with four counts of eight, went over those a few times, and then move on to the next four counts of eight. As soon as I started committing to memory the next part of the dance, I felt the first part I’d already learn starting to fade form my mind like Marty McFly from the polaroid of the future where he didn’t exist. (You know, in the scene, where he's playing the guitar, and then he looks at his hand and it's starting to disappear...nevermind...) The teacher kept smiling from ear to ear and saying “Got it? Go on?” as she nodded her floppy pony-tail head and I said, weaker and weaker “um..yes…what was the last part with the flap heel toe…um, nevermind…”

As soon as I would learn a new part, it erased more and more from my brain of the beginning of the combination. What I really needed to do was either slow down, do the whole beginning part about 12 more times until it was completely committed to memory and THEN move on, or go back in time and take a ritalin this morning. Since the time and space of the classroom and universe allowed for neither of these things to happen, I just tried to keep up as much as I could, and stick to the parts of the dance that were really easy for me and try to catch back up whenever those happened.

And then: AH HA. I totally remember feeling like this ALL the time when I was a kid in dance class. Whenever we learned a new combination or dance, I would start out confident, and, as we went on, grew less and less able to retain the new steps I was learning, let alone remember what had happened at the beginning of the song. The only things that stuck with me were the parts that really “gelled” with me, i.e., a move I really liked doing or a part that really fit with a particular part of the song at that moment. I totally had a flashback to being 12 years old, wearing my black spandex shorts (with the neon pink stripe up the side), having my hair in a side pony tail, and trying to keep my feet up with all the other feet in the class and feeling stupid and frustrated that I couldn’t. (And then doing something silly and distruptive to make everyone laugh and get yelled at by the teacher.)

I suddenly realized: if I had known about the AD/HD back then, if I was on some sort of stimulent medicine or at least if I had the education and awareness, I might not have been so frustrated. I might not have quit and re-joined ballet 2x and ended up a sixth grader in the class with the 3rd graders, wearing a pink leotard while all of my friends had graduated to the sophisticated black leotards of level IV ballet and above, and later, received the honors being able to dance en pointe, i.e., wear the really awesome shoes with the hard toes that made them able to dance on their toes.

It’s so funny to realize this all of a sudden because I remember really enjoying and yet really being frustrated with dance as a kid, and not really knowing why. I’m not saying this was the only reason, but it did take me back to that “oh, crap, everyone else is getting this and I’m not” moment and treat myself with a little more compassion than I did as a pre-teen.

Back to the present: by the end of the class, I was mostly lugging my body to this side, then that side, then spinning it around, to match the pace of the other dancers. I was actually not doing all that bad, but I know I could’ve done much better and had more fun. Not only would I struggle to remember the steps, but then I would start thinking about struggling to remember the steps and how this would make a great blog and then I would realize I had totally not been paying attention for like three sets of eight counts. The more I struggled to whip my brain into shape, the more mentally fatigued I got and the harder it was to remember even the easy stuff that I had repeated over and over from the beginning of the dance.

Still, I DID have a good time and I do plan to go back – maybe to the basic level again and armed with 30 mgs of FOCUS SHANNON, FOCUS pills. And realizing during the class WHY I was having a hard time made me much kinder to myself and prevented me from getting really frustrated and throwing in the towel as I have done in dance classes of yore (there was a really challenging hip-hop class that comes to mind from the summer of ’02 where I was frustrated with not only my lack of focus and short-term-memory but also the fact that I have very little “soul”).

Are you there God? It’s me… wait, I’m sorry, who did I call again?

I have to admit something, which is: once I started on this series of posts about the 5 steps of acceptance of one’s ADHD diagnosis, I got bored with it and wanted to write about something else. One of the ever-increasing number of ironies attached to ADD – “I’m bored and don’t want to keep writing about the same thing in my ADD blog.” Or “I keep meaning to work on my ADD blog but I just can’t stop procrastinating.” Or “I have a really great idea for my ADD blog but I can’t find it! It was just here a minute ago! Ok I remember the phone rang and then I set it down and then I picked up my hairbrush…oh damn it all to hell!”

Who is this on my internet radio? Is this Kate Bush? She is so weird. Oh, no, someone else. Whoever it is, I haven’t heard of her but she has a weird Kate Bush-type voice. That’s what I get for listening to the folk station I guess.

But yes, back to ADD diagnosis and the havoc it can play with your brain/life/loved ones/amazon.com account. So far ADD has brought us relief, denial, anger, irresponsibility, and guilt. Let’s see what else is in store, shall we?

Step Four:
ADD IS COMPLETELY MADE UP - JUST ONE OF THE LIES I HAVE BEEN TELLING MYSELF

Somewhere in my progression towards acceptance of my diagnosis, I became extremely fearful that ADD wasn’t real. I can’t tell you how but it somehow spun out of me being relieved that I had it combined with being embarrassed of my symptoms. I was suddenly so aware of all of the little nutty things that I did through the day than I had been before the diagnosis and therefore so grateful that this new awareness came with an explanation for all the little nutty things. I clung to this so much that I became paranoid that I was going to lose it – ADD was my safety raft from having ADD. It didn’t make sense but then my brain didn’t really either.

I think this sprang from me trying to find a balance between my 2nd and 3rd stages of diagnosis. I had realized that I couldn’t just say “Sorry, I have ADD” every time I did something spacey or inconsiderate, but I also was trying to stop beating myself up when my symptoms appeared. I was working on having a “kinder self-dialogue.” (Yes, I got that phrase from my shrink.) But my self-dialogue has always had a bully side to it. It’s the side that would make me think about Freddy Krueger when I was 8 and alone in my dark bedroom telling myself “Don’t think about Freddy Kruger. Don’t think about Freddy Krueger. Damnit, why am I thinking about Freddy Krueger?” This “Wah ha!” part of my brain started pointing and laughing and saying things like “You’re so pathetic. It doesn’t matter how many books you read or how many hippies tell you to feel good about yourself; this is all a lie made up by drug companies to make money. You’re just buying into it because you don’t want to take responsibility for your lost credit cards and your messy bedroom.”

My head-bully is so mean, right? But my mean head had help, because a lot of people – people who don’t live in my head – don’t believe that ADD is real (unlike the people in my head, who are very real). Or they think people with ADD shouldn’t be medicated. Or they think that it’s over-diagnosed. I actually had a conversation with an HR person at a former job of mine who TOLD me “You know, I really don’t know anything about ADD.” After we had talked about it for a while, me feeling so great that I was spreading knowledge and understanding, she finished by saying “But you have to admit; it does get over-diagnosed all the time.” She didn’t know what it was, but she did know that it was over-diagnosed. She didn’t know what was being over-diagnosed! I really hate it when people have really strong (and, in this case, redundant) opinions on things they don’t know anything about.

People really seemed to feel very strongly about whether or not ADD existed. Especially people who didn’t have ADD and didn’t know anyone who had ADD (sort of like Gay marriage…). Blogs were dedicated to the subject. The internet was full of postings on “health news” sites about it’s illegitimacy. The fervor was nearly religious. I suppose I can see how, if you thought there was a disorder that was made up just to sell drugs that are mostly given to children, it would get your blood pumping a bit. But time and time again the people who were so adamant about denying its existence seemed to be people who didn’t understand it at all. They also didn’t understand that the medication was not a sedative to knock out hyperactive kids but actually a stimulant to help them focus when they weren’t getting enough or the right kind of stimulation.

Anyway. There were all too many voices out there to fuel my nasty self-dialogue. But I researched. I read. I went to support groups. I met people. I talked to friends. And I finally realized that, whatever angry ADD-haters said, the only part of ME that didn’t believe my ADD was real was the part that wasn’t ready to accept myself and like myself. Once I was ready to do that, I stood up on the mountain top and proclaimed:

Step Five:
CAN YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT ADD IS AGAIN? I DON'T THINK I WAS REALLY PAYING ATTENTION THE FIRST TIME...

One could also call this step “synthesis.” It was me stopping swinging from the extremes and learning to balance my approach to my ADD. Now I walk a sort of tightrope when I examine a certain symptom of my ADD. A tightrope that is very short so that I don’t bang my head or get rope burn when I frequently fall off and need to get back up again. For example: I have one messy-ass apartment. Really, if you’ve come over to my apartment and thought it was clean, that’s because I ran around for a half-hour before you got there and stuffed everything in the closet/bathroom/car. So I’ll come home and look at my apartment and say “Jesus, who lives like this? Oh yeah, me…” But I try to remember that I have a certain brain chemistry that, for some reason, makes me want to “organize” using the “pile system.” I don’t know why this is but almost every other person I know with ADD also has “piles” in their house. It cracks me up because it’s almost like you can tell who we are from our footprints or our scat. So I tell myself “You know what, organizing and consistency are not the easiest thing in the world for me.” However, I don’t leave it at that, because I don’t WANT the apartment to be messy. I don’t want to use the ADD as an excuse – maybe I’ll give myself a break and realize that it doesn’t need to be perfectly clean. Maybe I’ll look for a fun way to clean it or ask for help cleaning it. But the important thing is that I stop saying to myself either “This place SHOULD be clean” or “I can’t clean this place. I have ADD. It’ll always be a mess.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find something to do to distract me from cleaning my apartment.

BULLETIN: PERSON WITH ADD ACTUALLY GETS SOMETHING DONE FOR ONCE

If you have ADD, you probably understand how proud I was when I finally made myself sit down to write the title for my first ever entry to my blog.

And here I am, a mere six hours later, writing the blog. Everyone clap! Sorry -- don’t clap; I don’t want you to get distracted from reading. Someone’s liable to walk in the room in a few minutes to see you clapping and ask you what the hell you’re doing and you won’t remember.

But hey, if they’ve known you long, they probably won’t think much of it. (Unless you are also yelling “YAY!” at the same time, in which case you’ve just convinced them you have a bit more than ADD.) Anyway. Sorry. I digress!

Ok don’t worry I’m not going to make “But I digress!” some sort of tagline. I don’t have a bicycle horn here that I honk every time get to say “But I digress!” I have, in fact, had the idea of this blog for many months, have had ideas half-formed in my brain for that long, and have had the title in my head probably much longer. The point is, it really was a pain in my ass to make myself actually sit down and write this thing. And look, I’m having so much fun already! Really! It’s fun. Even though I just writing this now, I am picturing all of you thousands of happy ADD people out there, reading this and saying “Oh my god; that is just like me!”

Because, let’s face it. There is only so much someone can do to “treat” ADD. Yes, I have about seven or eight books on the subject, some very good, some I even read all the way through. And by all the way through, I mean parts from the front of the book AND the back! But after the meds, the therapy, the fish oil, the exercise, the brain-building activities, and the purchase of many different day planners, you are still going to have some shitty days. You’re going to forget to do something really important at work, you’re going to bounce a check, you’re going to lose that last ADD book you just bought under a pile of “to-do” action items and accidentally buy a second copy. You’re going to…ok, I think it’s fairly obvious I’m actually talking about myself here, so let me share some real situations. One time I got a chicken breast out of the fridge, got a knife out of a drawer, cut up the chicken, put the chicken in a little baggy, and then put the chicken in the knife drawer. Another time I was getting ready for the day and took the cap off of a tube of toothpaste, squirted the toothpaste onto my finger, held my eye open, and then suddenly realized I was about to put toothpaste in my eye as if it were my contact.

My point is a) having ADD can sometimes suck, no matter how much therapy you have. And b) (making lists helps me keep my thoughts organized) ADD is actually quite funny. When I was first diagnosed, about a year ago, I did a google search on for “ADD” and “Humor.” I was really hoping to find a hilarious book or blog about ADD that would just help me “deal.” Something I could laugh at when I had had a long day. But there was nothing! Nothing, at least, that I am aware of… I got bored after searching for a while.

So here you go! If you have ADD, if your roommate/spouse/child/barista has ADD, or if you enjoy laughing at others’ problems, stop here for your heapin’ helpin’ of weekly ADD-related humor. And if you made it this far, NOW it is safe to clap your hands and yell “YAAAAAY!” Just take that football helmet off your head or someone is really gonna start to wonder.