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Post by Jamessaaaaaaah on Oct 13, 2015 23:45:47 GMT
I read with a bit of sadness, the posts of most on here
"I have ADHD... I have ASD... I need pills." Etc. I was placed on Ritalin aged just four. This was in 1996. When I turned 18 and told my parents I had enough of it and wouldn't be taking it anymore. My mum said I had to or move out. I still refused. Being me was much more important than being what everyone else wanted me to be. That was far too boring.
Meds never stopped me setting fires
Meds never stopped me getting thrown out of school.
My only set back with it is it's a struggle to find a female. I'm very much an acquired taste because of my attitude. I'm an adult (lol) now. I have friends that totally understand me. They get me. They understand I'm really full on and they understand I'm annoying and can sometimes just run around like a mad man. But this is me, I'm happy. I spent 14 years of my life trying to be drugged into normality. To be what everyone else wanted. To get a normal boring job and have a normal boring life. Now. I'm doing a degree. I've got two businesses. One very small. The others just getting started. But I did it. And I didn't use 4 letters to hold me back. I used it to push me forward.
Hang in there fellow ADHD'ers. Your brain makes you unique. So what if you can't concentrate? Go burn off your energy. There's no law against it (I'm also doing law at uni now. So I know this is true) the only thing that can hold you back is others. Find people that get you. Live your life and don't worry about the labels. Let your mind race. Why the hell not? Because everyone else doesn't do it??? Well. You're not everyone else, and thank god you aren't. What a boring world it would be if we were all the same.
Much love to you all. Keep living the life of pretty colours and such.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2015 17:57:34 GMT
I'm sorry you have had such a hard time. Four is a terribly young age to begin medication for adhd symptoms. As an adult I think of ADHD as one aspect of my life, but I don't think it defines me. I feel that I am making an informed choice to use meds, based on a careful assessment of my own lived experience. But I do feel a sense of burden that my meds were effectively "trialled" on children before me, and I think that there is so much more that should be done in education and child & family services before drugs are ever considered for little ones. I am glad you are finding success and happiness now.
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Post by tessaract on Oct 15, 2015 1:06:51 GMT
Good for you, I have to say though, there is a difference when someone is diagnosed as a child and knows why they are different and the experience of an adult being diagnosed in their mid 30's. I spent my life always wondering why I fucked up all the time and at the age of 36 still in the same position as I was in my 20's. I was diagnosed in April after a lightbulb going off some time around january. It really takes its toll on you when you have to re-assess your life from a different perspective. A lot of people are going through that here, myself included. You may have been able to not be so hard on yourself over the years. Different perspectives and all that. But in the process of writing a business plan, making jewellery to sell and doing a computer course. Since ADD diagnosis I feel like I can move forward with my eyes open and look for those times when it all goes to shit. I figure now I understand myself a bit better I think the only way I will ever get on in life is to be self-employed, so working towards that. Feeling focused. Pretty suspicious of the meds myself but I just generally hate taking tablets of any sort so would rather not take them, not for any ethical reasons. Plus I think add meds without occupational therapy, adhd coaching and/or counselling is moot. Anyhoo, hi
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Post by vagueandrandom on Oct 15, 2015 10:22:41 GMT
I was going to reply to this when it first came up but, as a guest, James probably won't be back. I think it's important what tessaract says. Being undiagnosed well into adulthood can cause a whole lot of other problems. James was diagnosed as a child, so has always been aware of his differences. A lot of people here haven't been diagnosed until their 30s upwards. We probably do come across as a bit miserable and angry and looking for answers, and a lot of us have a right to be so. We have struggled for a lifetime, beating ourselves up, being self-destructive, or just feeling lost, or anxious, or depressed because we don't 'fit'. I kind of agree that we should try to embrace our difference and not try to change too much. We post here more often because we are experiencing problems, and when something amazing and brilliant happens, we stay in RL and enjoy it. Some of my ADHD traits are the things that I, and others, most like about me and I wouldn't want to change them! and I'm prepared to adapt my expectations to help me manage the traits that I'm not so keen on. I'm actually quite pleased with my diagnosis. What I'm angry and upset about is the psychological problems that I have that are probably more severe and now deeply ingrained than they might have been if I had been diagnosed earlier.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 12:18:00 GMT
I think all of our perspectives are valid and I struggle with posts (particularly hit-and-run posts) that seem to imply there is something wrong with those of us who choose to use medication.
However, I have had such a bad experience of psychiatry and mental health services in such a short time, that I feel relieved in many ways that I did not enter the service in childhood. I would love to think early diagnosis = early help, but I don't doubt that many people have very good reason to feel angry about their childhood experiences with the label of ADHD.
I think a very difficult part of this is the certainty with which diagnoses are often made in young people, and the gung-ho attitude to "treatment" of individuals, when life is so much more complex than that.
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Post by vagueandrandom on Oct 15, 2015 12:44:05 GMT
@pelargonium I agree with your views on the treatment of children. Medication should be the last, not first, line of treatment.
Children's brains are still developing. I don't wish that I was medicated as a child, but it would have been useful to have educational help and support.
I was shocked to find out that my sister's child was taking prozac at the age of 7 or 8 for social anxiety.
I've taken anti-depressants on and off for 20 years, but they're mind-altering and I've avoided them over the past few years because of the side-effects.
I'm not anti-medication, but think that understanding yourself and working with what you have is a good start. It's not knowing that can be harmful.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 13:31:45 GMT
I agree. It is only looking back from my own perspective that I am glad not to have been involved in formal services in the context in which I grew up. And I am in my 40s so ADHD was not really recognised at all in my generation of school children.
Services are not currently helpful to everyone and I think there is going to be an inevitable tension when dissatisfied service users direct their frustrations aound the unwanted medicalisation of their childhoods at those of us who are still grieving for having felt our needs were invisible when we were growing up. We have seen the world from such very different places.
I think there is so much more that should and could be done now though, so that future generations of children can have their actual needs met, without either denying the difficulties or medicating children into oblivion.
I think that is why the professional anti-psychiatry crowd gets on my nerves so much. We actually have so much common interest, and could be allies in creating a better future, but their current campaign against any kind of psychiatric diagnosis just serves to alienate us and to engender the same feelings of invisibility that many of us experienced growing up.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 14:23:38 GMT
Paediatric psy comes across as polar to me - either naysayers or gung-ho 'medicate them to hell' psychs.
There is the issue that nobody reports the completely mundane, which adds to that impression.
I'm constantly seeing adult ADHDers who stopped taking meds, when they reached majority, and have slipped into unrewarding patterns with hostility to meds and psychiatry.
Compared to the 'happier' types that discover meds for themselves it's another world.
It really helps if you have mind enough to realise that it's hard work, no promise of a cure and only the entry to a life of looking after yourself.
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Post by blaze on Oct 15, 2015 16:12:49 GMT
I'm happy enough with my Adhd, I'm confident of the strengths my miswired brain brings me, and *mostly* I have ways of coping with the limitations it causes- one of which is medication, used at *optimal* dosage- which is the right dose of the right med/s for me- that's not being 'drugged into normality'.
Your experience is valid, but its only yours and important not to dismiss others with judgemental terms like the above. Also using the term *a female* is likely the reason you can't find a partner- no woman finds that type of termenology & underlying thinking it implies attractive.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 18:10:56 GMT
A miracle he's survived this long
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Post by blaze on Oct 15, 2015 20:17:51 GMT
@pelargonium I agree with your views on the treatment of children. Medication should be the last, not first, line of treatment. Children's brains are still developing. I don't wish that I was m/edicated as a child, but it would have been useful to have educational help and support. I was shocked to find out that my sister's child was taking prozac at the age of 7 or 8 for social anxiety. I've taken anti-depressants on and off for 20 years, but they're mind-altering and I've avoided them over the past few years because of the side-effects. I'm not anti-medication, but think that understanding yourself and working with what you have is a good start. It's not knowing that can be harmful. There's research that indicates that medicating children can help improve the neurological connections- because brain development is use dependant using medication that can help kids focus creates the nuerological pathways as the brain developes. The side effects in kids who are too young to accurately report them or recognise them scares the hell out of me though. The only other 'help' generally offered are parenting classes, these tend to be the likes of 123 magic or triple p type systems- basic behaviour mod that has long been recognised doesn't help children learn ordevelop emotional skills - even 'opositive' behaviour mod is long out of favour, Skinner did experiments on rats after all and humans are a lot more complex. Ime the initial benefit of such systems is long outweighed by the long term damage. There should be other help offered, but there isn't as standard so often meds become better than nothing while parents figure out more helpful approaches. Nice guidelines say 7 as minimum not four though, although 7 seems shockingly young to me I wouldthink wiwithholding meds from an older child, especially exam age, would be wrong. I was never medicated constantly as a kid so can't really comment on that, and I never got reasonable adjustments til uni- and even then few were actually put in place. Disabled students advisor was great, but none of the lectures followed what she told them to do. My own room for exams was good though, that made a significant difference.
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Post by blaze on Oct 15, 2015 20:18:52 GMT
I think the guidelines are 7 anyways- maybe 6 or so
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 20:36:09 GMT
In education, where resources are available and where things come together, diagnostic labels are seen as a broad brush that help to develop general approaches to teaching that are suited to the particular clinical population, but alongside that each child gets an individual plan which reflects the fact that there is a huge spectrum of difference underneath any given label. I think that would be a good model to bring into health and social care, rather than the polar extremes which @planetdave mentions. But proper care costs more. Four does seem ridiculously young for medication, but some parents seem to be worrying about adhd in 2 year olds these days. It is frightening that there are so few support mechanisms available to give parents a break, and avoid the desire to put a name on behaviour without first looking at what is going on in the whole environment. I grew up in a time and place where we played outdoors as much as possible, and I went to a progressive primary school where there was lots of "time and tune" and "music and movement" and nature walks on the curriculum. The formal education was bad, and high school was a massive shock, but I am glad for my early experience. I recognise that some difficulties were present even in that environment. As they were related to my internal experience it would have been helpful to have support to recognise them and start putting external mechanisms in place to manage my inner attention and organizational chaos. But I would still not want to go back in time and take my pre-teen self off to a doctor for diagnosis. By the time I was in the sixth form though, I do wish I had had educational support, eg, mentoring support to manage my time, and possibly a note requiring exam invigilators and library staff to wear soft-soled shoes and sit in silence during the entire year of my A-levels... I have friends who consent to their pre-teen's wish for medication and I can't imagine choosing that for myself at that age, but I don't feel it is vaguely my business to judge a situation I am not living out myself.
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Post by vagueandrandom on Oct 15, 2015 23:36:50 GMT
I'm quite amazed that this thread has gone so long!
I don't agree or disagree with the majority of opinions, it's kind of what you feel is right. . .
I was just trying to say that WHEN you're diagnosed and the situation you're in has probably MORE importance than the actual diagnosis. .
I'm going to shut up now. . .
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Post by vagueandrandom on Oct 15, 2015 23:46:21 GMT
. . . and anyone who says 'a female' doesn't deserve one . . . . we are women. or girls, or . . .anything that is not bloody FEMALE (I'm not keen on 'ladies')
We're people, women, of female gender, who have vaginas and have brains. . . as women we are not guaranteed to fancy you - even if you identify as 'a man'
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2015 10:48:51 GMT
. . . and anyone who says 'a female' doesn't deserve one . . . . we are women. or girls, or . . .anything that is not bloody FEMALE (I'm not keen on 'ladies') We're people, women, of female gender, who have vaginas and have brains. . . as women we are not guaranteed to fancy you - even if you identify as 'a man' I didn't mention the issue of "finding a female" because I don't think ADHD is either the cause of or solution to misogyny...
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