Living with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder
A 60-year-old retired woman – we’ll call her “Mary” – whose childhood ADD lingered on into adulthood and middle age, was asked to describe what it was like, living with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. We asked her first about organization, which is often a problem for ADD sufferers:
“It’s awful, it’s just horrible. For one thing, I have an awful time getting organized. Right now, I have no idea where my car keys are. I haven’t seen them for days. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go anywhere! Just the other day I left $75 in cash in a phone booth. Why? How did it happen? I have no idea! All I know was I was pretty excited because I’d just learned that my daughter was pregnant. My mind was on that, not on the cash I’d tossed down on the shelf under the phone. I went to scrabbling around in my purse for my keys, and just walked off and left it there. That kind of thing happens to me all the time.”
Mary says if she ever gets lost her husband will easily be able to find her – “Just follow the paper trail,” she says, chuckling. The top of her desk looks like a squirrel is in charge of the filing, and she’s constantly looking for things she has misplaced. Worse, even if they are right in front of her, she often doesn’t see them:
“I walked into a cafÃ?© one day and sat at the counter. For what seemed like a long time I sat there, wondering why the waitress was ignoring me. Finally, I caught her attention. “Could I have a menu?” I asked, as politely as I could. The man sitting next to me reached over and put his finger on the menu, lying right on the counter in front of me. I was so embarrassed I got up and left. I heard the waitress snickering as I opened the door. That kind of thing…hurts.”
As well, Mary says she’s so distractible she has difficulty paying attention to anything:
“I’ll walk into the kitchen to get a drink of water, but then I’ll see I’ve left the mayonnaise out, so I put that away. As I do, I notice a strange smell in the fridge, and the next thing I know, I’ve got its entire contents spread all over the counters and I’m cleaning it. But then the phone rings, and I talk to my mother for a half hour. She reminds me of the flowers she gave me the other day, and have I planted them, and I promise I’ll plant them right away. So I do, and somehow or other the fridge doesn’t get finished until the next day – if then. I say, ‘if then,’ because the next day the same thing will happen. Every day is like this for me.”
Mary says this kind of thing caused her endless trouble in her career as a legal assistant. Her boss would give her instructions in regard to a certain document, but when it’s time to do the task, Mary can’t remember the middle part, and has to go back and ask him what it was. She was never promoted, she says, earned only one raise in five years at that particular firm and was eventually fired. She was bewildered, couldn’t figure out why they let her go – she thought she was doing a good job.
It’s common to find sufferers with AADD working long into their 30s, 40s or even 50s as receptionists, file clerks or telemarketers. They watch their friends move up the ladder into increasingly responsible jobs while they’re stuck with work, as Mary says, “A monkey could do.” Tasks are attempted and abandoned. Self-regard sinks. Failure follows failure, until the sufferer is worn right down into the ground. Many will search for any excuse to avoid applying for another job – what’s the use? They know they’ll only fail again.
It’s also common to find AADD sufferers moving from job to job, perhaps quitting to avoid getting fired, which Mary says she did many times, or possibly due to extreme restlessness or what Mary calls “terminal boredom.” She says she loved being new on the job since everything was novel, and therefore, interesting. But once she learned the routines she lost interest, and would soon quit to continue her search for “the right job.”
Since retiring, Mary has taken up a career in writing, a hobby she has always held close to her heart. “When I’m writing,” she says, “I can lose myself completely, and that isn’t always a good thing. I’ll let pots boil over on the stove, or forget to bring the dog back in for hours.” She has begun eight novels, but has not finished one. Unfinished short stories, essays, poems and full-length manuscripts litter her office. She admits she also has 15 unfinished needlework projects (she counted for this article), four or five wood-carving pieces abandoned midway. Her bedroom is half papered (she ran out of paper and somehow never got around to finishing) and new curtains for her office are with the sewing machine, waiting to be hemmed. They’ve been waiting five months. It seems unlikely that Mary will ever succeed as a writer.
Mary smiles as she reports that Leonardo da Vinci only managed 17 paintings in 67 years, and some of those he never completed. “He must have had ADD,” she says.
ADD sufferers seem almost to be determined not to finish things. Perhaps it’s because they can’t tolerate having nothing to do, or perhaps it’s because they love the process more than the product. Although ADD sufferers aren’t very good with deadlines, they often do their best work under pressure.
We next asked about priorities.
In one way, Mary says, children with ADD or ADHD are fortunate. They have parents who can oversee their activities and help them learn what’s important and what’s not. Mary has no such help. For her, everything seems about the same when it comes to setting priorities. Questions constantly plague her: “Should I go to the store, or stay home for that phone call I’m expecting? Should I drive to work via the freeway, which is faster, or go the back streets, which is safer?” It is difficult to make decisions when you can’t decide which is best.
“It’s so troublesome,” Mary reports. “I walk into a store and have to stop in my tracks, because everything is so bright and colorful, it overwhelms me and I can’t really see anything. People behind me bump into me – they can’t understand why I’m just standing there. If you live in a small town like I do, it’s not long before word gets around: ‘That woman is crazy.'” When she enters a room she is conscious of every sound; she hears people talking, a dog barking across the street, a car honking and the clock ticking at the same decibel level. “People are supposed to be able to block out the unimportant,” she says with a sigh. “Whatever part of the brain does that, mine’s broken. And I can’t tolerate noise. I just can’t! Things that don’t seem to bother other people just drive me GAZAA!” (Her own word).
One very odd aspect of ADD is that it too often makes life dangerous for the sufferer. Mary says she often drives too fast (and gets tickets, and pays twice as much for insurance than she would have to, otherwise), and sometimes recklessly. With a nervous laugh, she confesses that she almost ran her car off the road a month ago, for no reason at all. “I came real close,” she said, flushing pink. “It was frightening and embarrassing. I’m afraid one of these days I’ll actually do it.”
She smiles as she reports, “And speaking of taking risks, did you know that Nikola Tesla came close to drowning on several occasions, was once entombed in an old ruin overnight, often fled from mad dogs, furious flocks of crows and wild hogs? He was also almost boiled alive in a tank of hot milk and just missed being cremated? I believe he must have been a fellow sufferer.”
The incidents of substance abuse and other forms of addiction are high among ADD sufferers. They have a tendency toward self-medication, the aim being to take away the pain of failure, the frustration of constantly trying and getting nowhere, and also, they crave novelty.
Asked if she suffered from impulsivity, Mary frowns and says she certainly did:
“My problem is impulsive spending, and also speech. I have three credit cards maxed out. When I want something, like new oil paints, I just go out and buy it.” (Mary, like many of her fellow sufferers, is most creative: she writes, sings, plays instruments and paints). “But the worst part is the speech. I constantly blurt out things that hurt other people. For example, I was asked to read a story in writing class the other night – it wasn’t mine, but someone else’s. I read the first paragraph, then handed it back, saying, ‘I can’t read this, it’s a piece of crap.’ The minute I said that I let out a cry and clapped both hands over my mouth. I did think it was poorly written, but I NEVER intended to say that. I apologized over and over…I don’t know where those words came from. I…don’t have many friends.”
Mary’s friends say she is a most interesting person, extremely funny, and enjoyable to be around, but sometimes she does embarrass herself (and them). Mary says that’s all very well and good for friends, but when it happens in front of strangers she says she wants only to die.
It may seem as though ADD sufferers don’t think the rules apply to them. They seem to perceive time differently. Mary says that while time’s relativity applies to all people, it seems to be especially relative to her. “Things never move fast enough for me,” she says. “I’ll sit in traffic behind someone who’s not paying attention, and what turns out to be five minutes I will swear occupied a full half hour. Sometimes I’ll look at my watch and the hands in my perception will prove it’s been a half hour. So I’ll start honking. You know people hate that – I hate it, and vow I’ll never do that again. But of course, I do.”
Children with ADD often have a hard time in school due to their “selective attention span.” They may be unable to focus in art class, but in music they excel. “See,” the teacher says, “he could get good grades in art if he just tried.” But that’s not the case at all. It’s all a matter of focus. It’s much easier for anyone to focus on something that interests them rather than some boring thing.
These children cannot seem to pay attention in math class yet can sit for hours watching TV. This again has to do with their attention span. On the average, a TV image stays on the screen for three seconds. Even an ADD or ADHD child can concentrate that long!
Mary had this final thing to say:
“I wish more people would educate themselves about conditions like ADD. The level of ignorance in this country around mental defects is pitiful. We’re supposed to try to understand each other. Instead, people with ADD are shunned, ostracized, called “crazy” to their faces. I hope this article will help people realize what’s going on around them.”
Thank you, Mary. Go well.
