Yes folks, ADD it is! Good to know.

                            Tosca: I do not think she has any kind of neurological condition.

Yes folks, I have ADHD! I know it might sound strange, but I feel really good about it. I can now do something about it. 


 Julie's brain tumour operation has been postponed as her doctor was sick. That's hard on Lisa; she took time off from work (doing extra shifts in order to cover costs) and travelled from Whangarei to Wellington to be there for Julie. Now she's had to go all the way back up North and wait to find out when they will operate. I'm wondering how I could help; it's times like this I wish I was really rich. Oh yes, I'm rich in spirit, but cash would be more useful to Lisa right now.


Now back to the ADD:

When I was 19 I asked my mum’s boss if I might have ADD because I’d read something about it, and it sounded a lot like me. I exhibit the hyperactive state to a lesser degree; it’s the lack of organisation in my environment and inability to track time that really stands out.

Mum’s boss was a doctor, she was a medical receptionist at the time. He was a bit of a dozy character. He gave me the checklist, of which I ticked something like 25 out of 30, and then nothing more came of it. I assume he simply didn’t know enough about it; not many doctors pick it up. ADD  people may have symptoms that could be mistaken for depressive illnesses, general anxiety, or possibly bi-polar or alcoholism. Obviously there are sometimes cross-overs with conditions. I know that my excess drinking in my mid twenties was due to a love of high stimulus. I loved (and still do to a point) being with people who were just a bit unusual or over the top. Fortunately my desire to continue living kicked in; excess drinking tends to lead to rather dangerous situations (fractured pelvis anyone?).

ADHD people are also impulsive verbally or physically, or both. We’re intense, often not fitting in at school and called ‘weird’. I accepted that I did tick a little differently from most people, but I didn’t know why. I was bullied at school and sometimes that pattern repeated in work environments. I would just open my mouth and say what I thought and then not understand why people couldn’t handle it. I learned to slow down and bide my time before speaking, trying to make sure I didn’t dominate all the conversations I had with people. What helps is that people are my ‘thing’. ADDers can focus if they are truly captivated by something. I am rather captivated with the human race. I think we are truly amazing and bizarre, and I love us.

ADD people have a problem with attention, but we are capable of what’s called ‘hyperfocus’. So, I can read all day, I can do this blog and not have any idea of how much time has passed, but nothing else will get done. It’s a strange paradox. The shifting of gears is a problem, one of the reasons why lateness is often an issue. We just don’t have the same connections in our brains that most people do; we lack dopamine. That must be why we seek stimuli; we’re trying to keep the dopamine flowing.

There is so much to it, it’s really interesting.

The appointment with Dr Hanne in Howick revealed him to be a dear little man, the sort you’d actually want as a grandfather. His surgery is attached to what I presume to be his house, it overlooks a sprawling garden and the sea, I felt like I was in a fairy tale. The house was made of stone; it seemed as though Snow White’s mother, the one who pricked her finger whilst embroidering, might be busy arranging flowers in one of the upstairs rooms.

The appointment mainly consisted of telling my life story as well as some basic short term and longer term memory questions. I laughed quite a lot, as I tend to do when it’s obvious that I have some rather funny gaps in my memory. Why I can’t I remember much between being 19 and 21? I’d have to go back to my journals to find out. I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t take any drugs till I was about 25 and learned quite quickly that I couldn't handle them anyway.

When asked if I was compulsive, I tend to think I’m not, but then later that afternoon I did something and realised … ‘shit. I’m impulsive.’

It was this: I was walking across Aotea Square and it was getting dark. There was a young Japanese couple kissing on a seat. I noticed that he didn’t know how to kiss. 

He was stiff, his face was hard, he pushed his mouth onto hers and grabbed her arm to pull her closer. She struggled a little bit, and he pushed harder, I could see the tendons across his hand standing out a little bit and he tightened his grip. I walked a little faster. Now she was trying to pull her face away from him, but he wouldn’t let her get away, he was determined to keep that hard kiss going. I don’t even think his mouth was open; it seemed he was trying to simply press his mouth on hers as hard as he could the way they did in old movies.

His right arm was around her, pulling her close, the other hand reaching across her body to hold onto her arm. She struggled more. It was about then that I realised I had walked right up to them.

“Excuse me,” I said, and his head snapped up in surprise, “you need to be gentle.”

The poor girl hung her head, not once did she look at me during this encounter.

“Oh yes, yes, yes” said the boy, his eyes wide behind his glasses.

“You must be gentle because she is very precious. You must kiss softly, it’s nicer.”

I demonstrated a soft kiss on my own hand.

“Soft, then passion. Softly. Gentle. Okay?”

“Oh yes, yes, yes,” he nodded like a loose necked car mascot.

“ Gentle.”

I then knelt down and said to the girl “I am sorry to embarrass you, but he must learn, that was not nice. If you say no, he must stop.”

Now this wasn’t something I thought about. I just do. When I was 26 I heard an argument between a Chinese couple and what sounded like him giving her a hiding. I ran straight up to their door and started yelling “let me in!”. They didn’t understand me, but I tried to make sure they did.

 “No hitting! Very bad. I will call the police.”

When I later related the story to a flatmate he said “what a stupid thing to do”. Huh? Why? “Well he could have attacked you.”

Oh. I didn’t think of that.

And so it goes. I often feel I’ve attracted amazingly odd situations.

I’ve sometimes said that when shit goes down, I know what to do. I’d prefer that shit didn’t go down. I’m aiming for a life of peace, but it still has to have a lot of stimulus in one way or another. Walks in nature (up into gorse?). Swimming in a rough sea. I’ll find ways to stir things up, but hopefully not in a way that risks my life.

Oh yeah, exhaustion. It is an ADD thing (mind working too fast and expends excessive amounts of energy, body can't keep up). Nice to know though, as I have often wondered why I get so tired. I’m only working part time hours, but when I come home I have to sleep for an hour. Obviously exercise, diet and routine will all help immensely with these issues, but babies, it’s medication that I’m looking forward to. It takes a couple of weeks for some sort of notification to come through and then I’ll get a script and let you know what it’s like to take Ritalin. It's been around for nearly sixty years and is very effective in helping ADDers gain a bit of control over their lives.

I don’t do anything else (unless you want to count coffee) and so what I will experience will truly be the result of Ritalin. I had someone warn me that Ritalin was the ‘poor man’s blow light’, but that doesn’t make sense if you’re genuinely ADD and not taking any other drugs or drinking to excess. If you are already getting wasted, then of course Ritalin probably isn’t going to help. For people who have ADHD, Ritalin doesn’t get them high. It just increases dopamine which helps to focus and order the chemistry of the brain.

Bring it!