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.