AD/HD = A Day of Hell & Disorder

So, yesterday wasn't so great a day for me. Maybe I've mentioned it, and maybe I haven't, but I'm one of those people who (should I find my way into a psychiatrist's office) would be diagnosed as having adult AD/HD. I actually was diagnosed as a child, which is a key element to its diagnosis as an adult, but I pretty much personify about every other symptom it has. But first, what happened...

One characteristic of the job I do is that I actually do multiple mini-jobs. I made a list once, and there are six things I'm actually either known for or held responsible for. The only way I can deal with six things is to do them one at a time, because that is the only way I can ever hope to "multi-task." Sometimes, I can switch back and forth, but not easily, and I can feel overwhelmed rather quickly if I'm not careful (or simply get lost in what I'm doing).

Yesterday, I managed to have several things dumped on me at the same time, so I had little choice but to deal with them all at once. But for someone who has difficulty focusing on more than one task, this created an enormous amount of frustration, and I was forced to step back several times to regain my focus on what I'm doing. I continually flipped through my open windows and such to try and remember everything and try desperately to get it all taken care of. I'm actually very thorough when I get things done, and they get done well, but it's acquiring the necessary focus to do them that's the difficult part.

The popular conception of AD/HD is somewhat accurate. The drifting attention span does happen, but when it happens is actually very random. It does not always occur when something shiny floats past. One aspect rarely mentioned in the se popular conceptions is that of hyperfocus, and it is this hyperfocus that serves to contribute largely to the attention drift everyone (hyper)focuses on. AD/HD folks don't always have an attention deficit, but they tend to focus on whatever is interesting to them to the detriment of everything else. This means (in my case) if my attention drifts off of whatever is going on right now, it probably means I'm drifting to something I find immensely interesting. To make this more confusing, a drifting interest to something else does not automatically mean that I don't find whatever I drifted from un-interesting.

But so far, I've only managed to talk about one single symptom. Here's a cut and paste from wikipedia.org of a short list: "The most common symptoms of ADHD are distractibility, difficulty with concentration and focus, short term memory slippage, procrastination, problems organizing ideas and belongings, tardiness, impulsivity, and weak planning and execution." How do I rank? Well, I was written up for tardiness at other jobs and although I aim to be at my current job at 7 (I'm actually scheduled for 8), I usually arrive at 7:05-7:10. The Queen will attest to my "short term memory slippage," and probably can give more examples than I can remember (haha). I'm procrastinating right now. For organization, my bedroom and my desk at work look cluttered (but I swear I can find everything; it's all about their perception). If you get the Queen started on "impulsivity, and weak planning and execution," you'll probably get an entire evening.

Naturally, the DSM IV, which provides specific diagnostic information has a lot more detail to it, and I noticed this list left out a lot of the hyperactivity stuff, but I'll throw that in later. Too boring at the moment. Basically, reading the wikipedia article (again) is like reading about me since I fit so much of it so closely. I could fit 9 out of 9 of the attention symptoms, but anymore, only 5 out of the 10 hyperactivity ones. Now, you may feel like I'm grasping at something to be a bit of a psychological hypochondriac, but here's another acknowledgement.

One of the criteria is that the symptoms have to provide significant impairment. Guess what? I've learned to control the hyperactivity, and some other aspects of my personality allow me to be un-impaired. What it amounts to is that while I have an issue being attentive, I'm also smart and quick enough to catch up whatever I was supposed to do that I got distracted from. So if I were able to maintain focus, I'd probably be 3 or 4 times as productive as a normal employee in the workplace, but woth my drifting attention span, I just appear nominally productive in comparison to everyone else, especially since I learn so quickly and provide an intelligent and thorough answer to a problem I've only spent a few minutes on.

So how do I go about "treating" this so I minimize all this distractability? There's a fabulous irony to this because what I use (since I have no medication for it) is caffeine. Yup, stimulants have been the primary treatment method for this for years and years. Ritalin, one of the more popular drugs, is a hyper-stimulant. The reason this works is because of the brain functioning behind the condition in that one piece of the brain functions slowly, so the stimulant properties of the ritalin or Mountain Dew serve to stimulate that portion of the brain and actually calm me down. If you run across someone who caffeine "doesn't affect" or even "calms down," you've probably found someone with AD/HD, whether they know it or not.

Yesterday, I was getting beyond frustrated and I was bouncing about wildly. I kept on the Mountain Dew, having a total of five, I believe, by the end of the day. It wasn't helping. I did get through everything, but it was very difficult, and I had to step away multiple times and regroup by going back over and back over my open windows to figure out what I was doing. It's hard sometimes, and people don't really understand too much, and even get frustrated themselves since they feel like I'm being rude or lazy or what have you.

Ready for another wrench in this bit of fun? I'm really, really introverted. On a scale of -10 to 10 whether -10 was the most introverted and 10 was the most extroverted, I scored a -9.4. The primary difference between introverts and extroverts is how they "recharge" their brains. Extroverts require the presence of others and those personal interactions are what fuels their brains and makes them happy. Introverts, by contrast, require time alone with their own thoughts to ponder whatever they want to, and it is the actual lack of any interaction with anyone else that makes them happy. One thing that added to my being overwhelmed was that I spoke with people almost all day yesterday. Normally, I have time where I work in the system quietly and that allows me my "recharge time" during the day. I didn't get much of that yesterday, so I was on edge when I got off.

When I get off work, everyone wants my attention and rightly so. I want to make sure the Queen and the princesses are attended to, and I always make sure I'm available...ok, I try to make sure I'm available, but it doesn't always work.

Yesterday, when I got home, I opted to play my favorite game at the moment: Guitar Hero. The Queen likes to watch stuff at 7, so I wanted to get in a couple songs before then. Well, the Queen needed to clean since she's having someone over tomorrow to babysit, so there was a lot of activity as the princesses were picking their things up and the Queen was running around like crazy. For the record, I asked if she needed me to help, but she said she was fine for the moment.

The princesses were being over the top in being kids, which to my already overwhelmed head, only served to make it worse because I couldn't lose myself in the game, which is what I desperately needed. I finally had to stop playing the second time the Queen vaccuumed because attempting to play the game in that choas got me even more frustrated than I already was.

Oh, what was I trying to play on Guitar Hero? If you've ever gone through Guitar Hero III, you've probably heard of this "song," using the term as loosely as I can. It's got 2 stars on my iPod and is removed from the general shuffle. I only keep it for completist purposes for the game. It's a very short song, fortunately, but it's relentless and hard as hell to play. It's the only song in the hard level I have not yet finished because it's so difficult. Scorehero.com had so many threads started on this one song that they consolidated them all and asked their members to not start any more. Have you guessed it yet? It's a song by Slasher called Raining Blood.

The song sounds like it's all the random crap ideas the band had while composing an album and they just tossed them all together and called it a song. It's the only song I haven't scored five stars on on the medium level because the way I play Guitar Hero is to feel the music and just follow the button scheme on screen based on what I hear. The concept of the game is to press the button and strum as the gem crosses the line at the base of the screen. That's way too complicated, and being a musician, my way works rather well...well, it does on songs that have a melody or music of some kind to follow. My best on medium is four stars...once.

Raining Blood is not only difficult with a ton of ridiculous runs, but it is impossible to follow the music leaving you to stare at the screen and try the whole "strum as the gem crosses the line" bit. This is the only song I've practised on more than one day. I've played it through on multiple slowness levels. I've played through it multiple times on full speed in practice. I've played this song more times than any other song in the game. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to get through it at this point, but I just can't. I looked for cheat codes and it would figure that there isn't a cheat to just "no fail" Raining Blood on career. Argh!

Believe me, the Queen and I are both tired of this song because we both just hate it. It's actually sad, too, because I like almost every song in this game, many of them getting 4 or 5 stars on my iPod.

So, my frustration is then compounded by this one song that I can't get through to face off with Lou on a good song, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It's also getting to be time for dinner and close to 7 anyway. She watches Big Brother and I watch that with her along with a movie on my iPod, and later, while the Queen is sewing, I have another go. I play it a few times more, but when I can't get it, I play some of the other songs. I whip through several of them without a problem, even scoring five stars on one of them. But when I go back to Raining Blood, I get 35-36% through it again. This is as far as I've gotten every time I've played it. Every time. Every single freaking time!

The sad part is that once I get past this section (called Mosh 1 in practice), the next section isn't much better, and no where in the song does it let up for a little repreive to get the level out of the red. But I've got to get past 36% first.

I took a short break in the middle of playing it for a little Lego Star Wars which was very relaxing. Just played one level before I got it into my head that I might be able to use a cheat code to get through the level. Ah, perfect. I looked and looked and no cheat to beat just that one level. I was hoping for a "no fail" code or something, but it doesn't work on career, as I said earlier. I tried one, but it turned out to be a big waste of time to look for something.

So I went onto other songs after that code didn't work, and I do worse as worse as the night goes on until finally I start bombing out on easy sections of songs I've played from the early levels as I was hoping to get a higher star level. I had to turn it off before I stressed myself into a coma.

Coming off of something like that where I was failing at something I knew I was better at was very, very depressing. The Queen tried to cheer me up. She did everything she could, but I was not to be helped without that quiet time I'd needed all night. I should have kept playing Star Wars (like the Queen told me to). I would have been fine. In the end, I calmed down enough to change for bed, and then I lay next to the Queen and finished my movie.

Today, I just feel like I could have handled it all better, but that's the curse of AD/HD: you don't do the snap good decisions very well. Reflectively, it's always crystal clear what you "should have" done, but in the moment, it never makes any sense, and it always feels like the ok thing to do. I always tell the Queen that I need to listen to her, but again, that's the reflective answer, and in the moment I never listen. It's kind of dumb, and I wish I could control the attention deficit part as well as I control the hyperactivity, but I can't. It sucks.