Tired of ADD

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	Education Issues Topic Index A-Z Index	Tired of ADD

"I'm tired of ADD," said a friend of mine in a recent email.

"Tired of the whole subject."

Me, too, friend. I was diagnosed ADD nearly 11 years ago. My whole life had been shaped by this marked distractibility. I grew up believing that I must be either "Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy." My school years were simply hell, not to put too fine a point on it.

The diagnosis came as a tremendous relief, a label for a tormentor that had stayed just out of my vision and beyond my reach. It was as if a light had been switched on and the shadow where "it" was hiding was no longer an effective hiding place.

I tried Ritilin, Prozac, Imipramine, and Ginko Biloba. I read many, many thousands of pages from a wide variety of researchers. After all this time, the most effective treatments for me have been personalized organization methods, exercise, and self-acceptance. The defining model used to imagine ADD turned out to be as important as the chemistry behind it.

It's time for ADD to acquire a new name. I don't know about you, Tovarisch, but I'm not "disordered." I'm just different.

Now I am experimenting with NLP, or NeuroLinguistic Programming. This is a way of re-shaping the brain by harnessing the imagination in powerful ways. It has an old and very respectable tradition, under other names. Of these, the best known is "Positive Thinking." Applied deliberately and with the benifit of scientific research, it looks very promising.

I'm not using any medication at all anymore. I walk at least two miles a day. Exercise seems to help. At 230 pounds, it certainly won't hurt me to get out and walk. I'm also trying to fine-tune my diet for better nutrition.

Medical doctors are nearly useless to me. They don't seem to have a clue - about anything - and I only see them for regular checkups now. My chiropractor has been of great help for my back pain and (surprisingly) my carpal tunnel syndrome. I created a web site for him, mostly out of gratitude, partly because he paid me to do it.

And I'm tired of ADD. Tired of the whole subject. Oh, I'm just as ADD as I ever was, though I manage it a darn sight better than I used to. I've been involved in the SGAADD support group for nearly 8 years and the public image of ADD has gone mainstream in that time.

There's a lot more information available now. Websites like this one abound. ADD has become big business, while hardly anyone addresses the things that are wrong with society that make life difficult for people with ADD. Much of the public perception about ADD has settled into an apathetic cynicism. It's time for a new support model, based on activism, aimed at the interaction between ADD people and society.

There's still a place for the support group, though it's less necessary than it was 8 years ago. I'd like to hand the convening role for the support group over to someone else - 8 years is long enough - and concentrate on activist issues like making schools more "ADD-friendly." Any takers? Send me an email at