So Far No Good

I once had a problem with a computer monitor. So I clled SONY and the customer rep listened to my problem and asked to go to the back og the computer. "There's a cable plugged in with a little box attached to it. Unplug the cable, pry open the box and tell me what you see." I did as she instrcuted and discovered a series of little switches flipped up or down. I described what i saw and she instrctucted me to switch one of the little aswitches that was up down. The she told me to plug the monitor back in and tell me what i saw.

It was fixed! Just like that.

Maybe I should expect more form machines and those who know how to operate them. These days I'm a bit more optimistic that most computer problems can be fixed with an educated eye on the lookout for wrong settings and other minor problems. I happened to apply this optimism to my ADD.

Once diagnosed, with my prescription of Concerta in hand, i expected the world to bloom and all to be right. It was for two and half days. I could hear, think, and even talk clearer (my hebrew reading improved astoundingly). but then it went away. After a few days and even after changing the dosage, my benefits seemed to be a quesitonable memory as I find myself puttering around, wasting time and feeling overwhelmed and underacheived.

I really believed it would work. I'm going back to the doctor tomorrow and I'm going to ask him to nuke my brain with stimulants. i need to get my work done. I haven't efficienctly worked for years -- perhaps my whole life.

Now that I know why, I just want to be normal.

Driven to Distraction

It's funny how something could be world famous, but if it doesn't apply to you, you'd never know.

I get diagnosed with ADD and they tell me to buy a book. It's called 'Driven to Distraction' by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey.

Then the other day I'm reading an article about Adult ADD and the writer makes an ironic reference to 'the gospel of Halloway and Ratey." Evidentally, the gospel is the ADD Bible, too.

It's been one week since I've been diagnosed and now ADD is all I think about.

Imagine looking into the mirror for the first time in your life and discovering you have two heads. It would come as quite a shock, though might answer a couple of questions.

When you look into the mirrow and finally understand why you've always had the problems you've had -- after all those years of just accepting your limitations as part of who you are, you're amazed and gratified and overjoyed and relieved and grateful. and confused and soon....doubtful.

"Have I made all of this up?"

"Am I bringing this on myself?"

I can't speak for everyone diagnosed with ADD, but I have been my own worst enemy for my whole life. I can tolerate others, but seldom myself. And not because I'm crazy.

Very much the opposite.

ADD is an attention disorder. It's not a personality disorder, a psychosis, or anything particularly mood altering.

So you're normal in most respects. But there's always something holding you back. There is simply something different about your brain wiring that makes it very difficult to get things done.

And whn you're your own worst enemy YOU are that something. Your laziness. Your lack of drive. Your sluggish motivation. You. You. You.

Everyone with ADD, even those who cope well -- as I know I have to a large degree, must work harder and slower their whole lives.

Everything takes longer to do and hard work is always harder to finish. The simple things to do are a chore-and-a-half. No matter what. That means waking up, getting dressed, starting your day and doing your work is an exhausting, mind consuming effort.

The slowdown starts early in school, extends to camp, college, and colors every decsion you make in life.

Careers are scuttled before they ever begin -- simply because the prospective candidate has ADD and can't even begin to contemplate certain possibilities. And when undiagnosed, never even knows why.

I see already that those who are diagnosed early in life get training, workarounds, meds, and self-help. You know you can do it and you know why it's feeling hard to do. Those who didn't get diagnosed but received a strong education and the career assistance it takes to start out organized, with strong training and generous mentors also do well.

But when diagnosis comes in your 30's? By then you've long ago acepted that there's you, and everyone else.

Imagine parking your car on a hill and engaging the parking brake. Now you're back, but you forget to disengage the brake. Even if you floor the gas pedal, you're still only going to be moving at half the speed.

It's very frustrating. And like those brakes, the friction really grinds on your personality. Until the moment you realize why.

When things are happening in your brain, there's no red ight on the dashboard to tell you the ADD is engaged.

So instead, you move forward, slowly. and all the while the voices are saying: "dummy....lazy schmuck. It's always in the background; piling high and ready to collapse on top of you at endless junctures in myriad circumstances.

Most, me, build and live a life. It could be a great life. But you never fully understand why you know you're going to have to refuse plenty of billable work because you know that by taking it, it's going to kill you to get it done in time.

And you spend that life you've built in the office behind a desk from dawn to dusk and them some -- struggling to get those few projects you did take finished before anyone realizes they're past deadline.

Until one day someone tells you what you wished you could hear all along: it isn't your fault.

All along it wasn't you. The wrong button in your brain was flipped off, and there's a way to flip it right back on.

Naturally, after a lifetime of self-doub, self-hatred and self-criticism, you can't believe it. How the hell can you? It's too fantastic.

Being told it's just ADD, that it's something you can fix with meds and some coaching.....you can't believe that. It sounds too convenient.

And for those of use who are our own worst enemies, the counter-cheerleaders on the sidelines are always there -- booing and sneering. "We know all about it," they heckle. "ADD is just another one of your phony excuses for not getting your work done."

I want to believe, but seeing is believing. And now I still see that pile of unfinished work on my desk.

Plus, I'm barely halfway through the ADD Bible.

Maybe Hallowell and Ratey provide the answers in the next chapter....if I can ever reach it.

He Tried to Shake The Laziness Out of Me

But it didn't work. This water is long under the bridge, as should things that happened in 1979. Really, though, how can I forget such an important moment? The moment in life when I first learned that I'm lazy.

Rebbi wanted to know why I wasn't writing. I can't remember the assignment, though I'm pretty sure I had no idea of anything that ws going on in my first grade class.

Rebbi was walking the aisles and he stopped at my seat. I wasn't writing as were the other students.

It was a big classroom with long straight rows of desks neatly aligned like crosses in a military cemetery. I was sitting on the right side of the classroom, towards the middle to rear of the room. The classroom was quiet and he stopped by my desk. What he asked I can't recall, though to his question I answered that my pencil had broken; most likely a lie. He informed me that I was lazy.

"I'll shake the laziness out of you," Rebbi announced.

I don't think he yelled. While he may have been irritated at this extra bit of work he was being forced to do, he probably wasn't angry. In fact, at the root of it all, he may have felt he was performing a public service. Perhaps expected my father's gratitude and I have no idea if my father gave him anything for this devotion.

As soon as he said it, he grasped me by my upper arms, lifted me out of my chair, and proceeded to vigorously shake my body forward and backward several times.

I imagine after a couple of shakes he let go and I sat down.

I'm sorry to say it didn't work. Though I never thought of myself as lazy until that day, most 6-year-olds tend not to, I've understood that I am ever since.

Maybe Rebbi was doing it wrong.

I Can't Start From the Beginning

I never would have imagined it was ADD. I always knew I was smart. I always knew I was different. But I also always figured I was lazy, a procrastinator, just slow and a bit thick headed when it came to learning gemarah, math, and science. I've never been a good planner, although email does help get things done. Without email keeping track and the instant back and forth, I don't know if I could ever fully stay on top of a project or plan something.

I've never been particularly fast at anything I wasn't fully enthralled with. There are some things I picked up quickly, mostly writing, public speaking, matters of current events and opinions about social, philosophical, religious, and educational matters. But never fast at most other skills -- I cannot learn another language, though I've tried; I still cannot remember the multiplication tables, though I've tried; I cannot form the words of davening quickly enough to maintain the pace of a minyan. I just always figured there was something wrong with me. There were times I suspected a miniscule stroke in utero. Other times I wondered if I had a long undiagnosed learning disability. But I never thought of ADD.

There are plenty of reasons. One, I never thought of myself as particularly hyperactive; I'm fidgety and gregarious. I can be the most dramatic, arresting personality in the room at times. But I can also sit for hours, and hours, and hours, riveted to a book, the computer, or just hang around reading the paper. Hardly symptomatic of a hyperactivity disorder. So I just thought I was slow.

And lazy. I can procrastinate for days, not hours. Weeks sometimes. If a project is giving me some trouble, it will linger on my desk for an eternity. Then, I'll pick up the folder one day and feel the crush of realization that a month has passed with no activity. Clients feel the delay and some even complain. But I'm successful and talented so many stick around. But eventually, many leave.

Projects can take on lives of their own. Depending on the complexity, or more accurately, the passivity of the person demanding the work, a project can sit unaided, unattended, unfinished. Forever. I have a few of those in my drawer. The client never called back, so the project just died. But the weight of those unfinished projects weighs heavy as I flip past those forgotten project, uncompleted, unpaid. I wish they were finished. In so many cases, there was no reason not to finish. I just didn't.

Those projects that must get done, perhaps they started slow and then the pressure was raised a notch, are killers. They must get done and there's no one but me. Those become larger than life. After days of procrastination, ignoring the vital tasks that lead up to completion, I begin to panic. Late nights turn to overnights. Frantic paper shuffling becomes feverish mental back flips that prevent me from getting a toehold on what needs to be done. The tsunami of other unfinished work occupies my desk, computer screen phone calls, and thought waves. The stuttering, fluttering messes of confusion that I feel paralyzes me and holds me back further. The computer is a steady lure, blogs, news, Google searches, the distractions are abundant and 9 a.m. becomes 3 p.m. before I can even get to open the offending folder. Day turns to night and midnight to mid morning. Minyan is abandoned and in the frenzy of anxiety, often talis and tefillin. Phone calls thrust themselves across my desk further thinning my threadbare attention span. There's too many thoughts, too many distractions, too much anxiety, and too much to do. But too few hours of the day, to few bursts of creative energy, too few hours in my never-ending days in which to actually accomplish what I must do to make a living. And then somehow, the work is done. I smile, feel the relief and in the front of my mind verbally marvel at the fact that the work is complete and the client thrilled. I don't know how, I don't know why, but the clients think I'm a genius. If only they know.

So it couldn't have been a disorder of any sort. The depression, which once ruled my moods, days, and thoughts have subsided this past year. A creaky a.m. schedule preserved by the kindness and understanding of two chavrusas has kept me to a daily seder of some degree Instead of rolling their eyes on the days I don't make it, they accept my mumbled apologies and meager explanations of overnight projects and unforgiving deadlines. They don't even know how they have saved me and kept me from sinking deep down again into the potholes of my insecurity and self-loathing.

But my inconsistency and poor discipline were to blame. There was nothing a little gumption and will power couldn't fix; if only the morning rituals of feigned normalcy and paternal responsibility didn't leave me so drained and distracted when 9 a.m. rolled around. The stress and effort that went to waking on time, showering, getting out of the house and to learning and shul, then to get coffee, eat breakfast, read the papers, drive the kids to school and to be supportive and effective in between my early morning and workday was a day of work in itself. Forget working out. Every ounce of energy went into placing my proverbial left foot in front of my right foot, just to get myself started in a manner that would look and could felt respectable and normal. It's just a shame I was out of gas when it came time to work.

ADD is what I've described above. Every fiber of my life experience has been screaming ADD since the day I entered first grade. My experiences and joys, frustrations and achievements, my coping and my meltdowns. ADD is a real thing I’m being told. It wasn't my fault that the very effort to appear a normal, functioning, at peace with my life were gargantuan and carefully orchestrated; even if unconsciously.

Now that I'm diagnosed, my challenge will be letting go of the blame and self-hatred. To forgive the agony and disappointment. I have to allow myself to be helped and to help myself. I am normal. The fact that my brain has led me to believe otherwise all my life is something that can't be helped. And it will help all the more if I just moved past it.

I'm in my 30s. I'm a religious Jew. I was just diagnosed with ADD

Who cares? Plenty of people have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Even more people suspect they have ADD. Heck, plenty of people like to pretend they have ADD. All good reasons not to care.

The news, frankly, is far from spectacular.

But not to me.

I wasn't born yesterday. I've been on this planet for 33 years; almost 34. Learning I have ADD is akin to discovering that I'm actually from another planet and the sense of not fitting in that I've felt my whole life suddenly has an explanation.

Here's my story. I think it's an important one to share. Maybe you'll agree.