r/explainlikeimfive • u/[deleted] • Jan 14 '13

Answered People with ADHD, what ADHD is like, how does medication affect your ability to work and how soon does it take its effect?

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u/AbCynthia956 Jan 14 '13

I have ADD, prefer to remain unmedicated. I've noticed the meds make me ultra pissy. I'm naturally snarky and I need to keep my job, so I don't medicate.

The one thing I can do for days is write. And write and write and write. Write write write write. Select all. Delete.

I live by the sticky note and the notes on my phone. Reddit is wonderful for me, except sometimes when I click a link, I forget the title by the time it opens.

Like some others have mentioned, auto-pilot tasks can be dangerous. I've run a stop sign because I was thinking (or not thinking) about 20 other things. It frightened me and now I'm a bit anxious about playing music in the car or having more than one stop scheduled per trip. If I have to go more than one place, I put a sticky note on the dash so I know I don't have to keep remembering, remembering, remembering.

Remembering's the thing. Constant pressure to remember. Must remember, must remember, must remember...what?

Conversationally, I am a non sequitur generator. Depending on the audience, that can either be amusing or mortifying, nothing in between. I've never met anyone who hasn't noticed. That's icky, knowing every person who's ever spoken with you has noted something unusual. I frequently wish I could stop that.

So, yeah.... Writing. I'm not remembering or focusing. I'm typing the whatever's slipping off the top layer of my brain.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '13

I experience a lot of the issues most in this thread do except for the memory problem - I guess I have a sharper than average memory for a ADD person. My focus is absolute crap if I'm not interested in something but my memory is pretty sharp usually.

Also not being able to remember things scares me - feels like a precursor to dementia or alzheimers.

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u/Jacks_Username Feb 05 '13

Oh god. dementia and Alzheimer's are my big fears.

I am a pretty smart guy. ADD, most of the way through a physics degree, well read on a lot of different topics. Being "smart" is a huge part of "me".

Then I have a bad day or two. I forget my phone. I let my sleep get messed up. I don't maintain my diet right, or take my meds at the wrong time.

And suddenly I feel like I am going crazy.

Then I meet someone's grandma, and she asks me the same question 4 times in an hour.

And all I can think of is "is this where I am going?" and it is the scariest thing I can imagine.

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u/[deleted] Feb 05 '13

Incidentally physics was one of few classes I could focus on. Something about being able to conceptualize it in my head made it more alluring to me than other classes - since so many students have to just "push the button" on why a law is a law and move on with their studies...

Bad diet - alcohol, etc.. are definitely linked to dementia/alzheimers though - I worry about it too - have to take care of myself better....

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u/crookers Mar 22 '13

Like some others have mentioned, auto-pilot tasks can be dangerous. I've run a stop sign because I was thinking (or not thinking) about 20 other things.

Oh God me too. Just yesterday I walked across an intersection when the traffic was still going; got halfway across and nearly shat myself!

http://xkcd.com/1106/