5 ms·

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to put my perspective down for once. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 7-8, by advice of a teacher. If I had to

by mwill 14y ago

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to put my perspective down for once. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 7-8, by advice of a teacher. If I had to put a severity to it, I'd guess severe. When I was in young, it was a physical feeling of pain in my stomach when I fought against the urge to stand up and walk around. Before I was diagnosed, I literally couldn't write my own name without help, because I wouldn't sit and do it. After being put on medication, I basically got straight A's and B's through to high school. Half way through high school, I started to hate the medication, I was depressed and tried to take myself off them secretly. Within the first week, most of my teachers started raising eyebrows and the school called home to see what was going on. After a few trips to the paediatrician, psychologist, and agreeing to weekly therapy at the school, I was taken off the medication. It got pretty grizzly. One of my teachers would routinely send me out of the classroom for entire periods because he figured I wasn't going to learn anyway, and I was disrupting everyone else. I started to struggle in classes I loved, which got incredibly frustrating, I remember clearly knowing the answer to a problem in math class, but struggling to actually write it down, or being in music class (I was the school bands drummer), and struggling to to finish a single song because I couldn't help standing up and stepping away from the drum kit half way through. It was devastating to me to find I couldn't do these things I knew I was good at without the help of the medication I fought to get off. I'd get off of school and just walk around town. Somehow, one day, I ended up walking into the local TAFE/Curtin (This is in a town in Australia), and for some reason started looking at their class lists. One of the admin's started talking to me, and convinced me to go talk to one of the teachers, who convinced me to give it a try. Being a small town, the classes were basically empty, so I was almost one on one with the teacher, who let me work through at my own pace. I ended up powering through all the work for the Certificate III and Certificate IV pretty quickly, and he asked me to enrol in the Diploma (For those that don't know, here in aus a Cert/Diploma is under an undergraduate degree), introduced me to the teacher, and she gave me the entire course load in advance, which I also powered through. They called me in and sat me down and told me I should apply for an undergraduate degree program in the city, and wrote letters of recommendation for me. I did, not really expecting anything to come of it (Remember I was about 14-15 at the time, and still attending high school, and basically failing), and after a few weeks of frantic phone calls, and incredible support from my amazing parents, I got accepted. I ended up graduating just after my 18th birthday, with an award for grades. I think about it pretty regularly, what my life would have been like if I hadn't discovered programming via TAFE. I'm 100% certain I could not have finished high school without medication, with high enough marks to get into Uni. And even if I could have, I probably would have assumed that my body would fight me every step of the way just like high school, and opted not to go. I wish I could tell all the people who are in the position I was in at that age, terrified of the future, feeling trapped in a body that won't let them be normal, that, hey, maybe there ARE things you can do. I've described programming as a 'blind spot' for my ADHD. And if I have a blind spot, maybe others do to. I'd like to hope that everyone has something they can do that helps them feel better. I still struggle with ADHD, I still have trouble sitting through a movie, I get frustrated at myself at the drop of a hat, hell, to be honest, theres a part of me that's proud I managed to type this story out in only one sitting. But I can program, and I honestly feel like that saved my life.

mortdeus 14y ago
Your dosage was probably too high if it made you feel abnormally different. Though I agree people with adhd each have their self medications. Mine was actually music growing up. My best friend likes cars. Can you read text books and stuff? I have a hard time studying code, thinking about problems without my meds. Are you inattentive too? Or just hyperactive?
- mwill 14y ago
  A bit of detail on why I hated the meds: I had pretty negative side effects from the get go, and eventually problems with tolerance, which eventually led to her prescribing an increased dose every checkup (6 months like clockwork). Over the treatment, side effects I suffered were massive loss of apetite (And everything that goes with not being able to finish a meal, general feeling of faintness, malnutrition), stomach pains, headaches, constant anxiety (Maybe better described as a fear you can't shake?), tired all the time, eventually a sort of zombie feeling, where I'd only leave the house to go to school, didn't like talking to people, etc. I really felt like a different person. When I took myself off the meds, I made different friends, and my old friends stopped hanging out with me. When they forced me back on, my old friends came back and my new ones left. When they permanently took me off the meds, my old friends left and my new ones came back, and most of them are still close today. None of this was conscious, and none of the people involved were actually told I'd gone off or on medication until well after the fact, it just sort of happened, and discovering that some people who'd been my friends for years didn't like me if I wasn't medicated (Thats how I saw it at the time) really frightened me. I'd refuse to take the meds over school holidays (Which was OK'd by my doc), and I'd feel significantly better, so I quickly grew to resent them as a child. The paediatrician tried lowering doses very early on once I started showing side effects, and almost immediately my teacher sent home a letter asking what was going on, after spending a while exhausting other options, the paediatrician basically said it was unavoidable, we'd just have to cope one way or the other. I guess I'm saying I understand they're a miracle for some people, but from age 7(ish) onwards, no type or dosage helped without harm, so I hated them. In the last few years, I have strongly considered (And still am) giving it another try, since rationally I know it likely won't be as bad as it was growing up, but I still have a pretty strong phobia of medication in general. About text books, I'm actually pretty good with theory text books, things that present new ideas and concepts I can absorb, but 'How To' books I have trouble with, and mostly I can only read the code and learn by example. Also: I suffer from both. Official last diagnosis is ADHD-C.

by mwill 14y ago

mortdeus 14y ago

Your dosage was probably too high if it made you feel abnormally different. Though I agree people with adhd each have their self medications. Mine was actually music growing up. My best friend likes cars. Can you read text books and stuff? I have a hard time studying code, thinking about problems without my meds. Are you inattentive too? Or just hyperactive?

mwill 14y ago
A bit of detail on why I hated the meds: I had pretty negative side effects from the get go, and eventually problems with tolerance, which eventually led to her prescribing an increased dose every checkup (6 months like clockwork). Over the treatment, side effects I suffered were massive loss of apetite (And everything that goes with not being able to finish a meal, general feeling of faintness, malnutrition), stomach pains, headaches, constant anxiety (Maybe better described as a fear you can't shake?), tired all the time, eventually a sort of zombie feeling, where I'd only leave the house to go to school, didn't like talking to people, etc. I really felt like a different person. When I took myself off the meds, I made different friends, and my old friends stopped hanging out with me. When they forced me back on, my old friends came back and my new ones left. When they permanently took me off the meds, my old friends left and my new ones came back, and most of them are still close today. None of this was conscious, and none of the people involved were actually told I'd gone off or on medication until well after the fact, it just sort of happened, and discovering that some people who'd been my friends for years didn't like me if I wasn't medicated (Thats how I saw it at the time) really frightened me. I'd refuse to take the meds over school holidays (Which was OK'd by my doc), and I'd feel significantly better, so I quickly grew to resent them as a child. The paediatrician tried lowering doses very early on once I started showing side effects, and almost immediately my teacher sent home a letter asking what was going on, after spending a while exhausting other options, the paediatrician basically said it was unavoidable, we'd just have to cope one way or the other. I guess I'm saying I understand they're a miracle for some people, but from age 7(ish) onwards, no type or dosage helped without harm, so I hated them. In the last few years, I have strongly considered (And still am) giving it another try, since rationally I know it likely won't be as bad as it was growing up, but I still have a pretty strong phobia of medication in general. About text books, I'm actually pretty good with theory text books, things that present new ideas and concepts I can absorb, but 'How To' books I have trouble with, and mostly I can only read the code and learn by example. Also: I suffer from both. Official last diagnosis is ADHD-C.