WARNING: This post is too large. I regret nothing. That's a lie. I'm sorry.
I'll add another first-hand account. A lot of this is meant for those who think they might actually have it. Do note that ADHD doesn't affect everyone to the same degree, and several of the clinicians I've worked with have said I have a rather severe form of it.
I was diagnosed with the inattentive subtype of ADHD (ADD aka ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive)) at the start of my third year in college (now soon to be on my fifth). As others have said before, it's like putting on glasses for the first time for your brain. Unmedicated, I'm a swirling mess of apathy, fatigue, distractability. I forget what I'm doing constantly, can't remember a thing other people say (unless it's interesting). The most annoying issue in my case is the inability to direct my attention to tasks that don't have immediate reward or consequence.
After the discovery I, of course, had to research to confirm. My favorite source thus far is Russell Barkley. He pioneered the current accepted model of ADHD, which is the executive function / self regulation model. Barkley was a speaker for ADHD for a long time, you can find hours and hours of it on YouTube and elsewhere. He does the words well, and he relentlessly cites research/studies throughout. If you're questioning if you have the disorder, I recommend watching some of the videos where he talks about the underlying features of ADHD. Here's one, part of a playlist, that starts off talking about one of the main features: sustaining action to a goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQNhh44GeV8&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY&index=3
The executive function model applies to all types of ADHD. He tends to bring up narratives that apply to the hyperactive/combined ADHD subtypes, which might lead you to believe that every other thing he's said has been directed toward the other subtypes, which isn't the case. He's referring to all the subtypes most of the time, he just doens't want to waste time saying "For the combined/hyperactive subtype, [narrative]". He instead just goes on with "[narrative about the combined/hyperactive subtype because most of the people at these conferences have kids with this subtype, as it's more easily spotted/diagnosed]".
Other ADHD sources I like:
-Video description of the inattentive subtype
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdSSKFKZNU
-Article on ADHD characteristics:
http://www.russellbarkley.org/factsheets/adhd-facts.pdf
-Article on the "Science of ADHD". Also a good site for ADHD resources
http://www.chadd.org/Understanding-ADHD/About-ADHD/The-Science-of-ADHD.aspx
-Small ebook on the inattentive type, $6.00
http://www.primarilyinattentiveadd.com/2011/05/adhd-inattentive-ebook-10-tips-to-help.html
Some of my general day-to-day ADD issues (non-medicated):
-In lecture, despite extreme intent to pay attention, I'll be able to semantically process around a fourth of what the professor says. If it's not one-on-one, or within a very short duration, I won't be able to pay attention to what is said. Even in one-on-one conversations, if I'm unfocused (most of the time), I will litter the conversation with phrases like "Sorry, come again?", "Before you said [this], right? Oh, okay", "Sorry, so you mean [this]?", and lastly, my favorite, "[uncomprehending silence] Ah, got it".
-Talking to people in general is a task. "Sorry, could you repeat that?", "Mhm, mhm (no idea)".
-Reading can be a major issue when unfocused. Repeating sentences 5+ times over, then breaking them into fragments until comprehension is achieved, is par for my unfocused sessions. If I'm not being graded on things, I tend to side step the comprehension, and aim for a general idea of what's going on (this kills me. makes reading less desirable).
-Rarely notice physical discomfort:
-My back has hurt immensely for the past hour. Never adjust posture for the rest of the night? Great idea.
-Steadily increasing wrist pain while gaming throughout high school? Never tell anyone about it, and ignore it entirely? Seems apt.
-Rarely notice mental discomfort:
-I'm massively bored/unhappy while doing this activity. Never search for other things to do? Right-o.
-When studying, I'll have to speak aloud to gather enough attention to focus on the problem at hand. I've found I do very well with visual diagrams (visual learner perhaps), and found on the googler that menards and home depot sell 8 foot by 4 foot sheets of melanine that work as whiteboards for $30-40, and put several of them in my room for diagrammin'.
-My focus on moderately boring tasks starts to drop off into a zombie-like state within 10 or 15 minutes, to where my judgment/efficiency is very much compromised. Barkely refers to this as your EF (executive function) tank depleting. He suggests short breaks every X minutes, 10 or 15 for me. If the task is very stimulating, you can of course raise X to something like 40 or more minutes. Once your EF tank depletes, it takes awhile to regain the levels of mental stimulation you had prior. This whole take-a-break idea goes for everyone, but typically the ADHD person will require more frequent breaks.
Medication:
-General information: I nearly shit myself when trying medication for the first time. When people spoke to me, I heard/semantically processed every word relatively effortlessly. I was more engaged in conversations, had energy, had motivation, several Ne explosions were had. This will settle down into a constant source of energy and focus you can rely on day-to-day. It's helped me develop routines, strategies, and a general dealing-with-life skillset, to the point where I can handle being off meds now, though I very much prefer them. I need to engage in ideas and theories day-to-day, so that focus is much needed. Studies show low doses of amphetamines have no negative long-term effects on patients. Patients return to their original brain functioning within 1-2 weeks when taken off it.
-The details: I've tried Adderall IR, Adderall XR, and Vyvanse. Research has shown that amphetamines (Adderall, Vyvanse) are more effective than methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta) for the inattentive type. Adderall IR and Vyvanse worked the best for me. It's advised you take the smallest effective dose to minimize side effects, and that's what's I've been doing. I get the zombie effect if I go past 10mg of Adderall IR (which is the starting dose for a lot of doctors, I'd recommend starting at 5mg, and going from there (what studies suggest)). 5mg 3x daily works decently for me. It helps with the fatigue, the tension headaches I get when I'm understimulated, the sustained focus, and more. My side effects initially were dry mouth, and biting my tongue a lot. Both go away within a few weeks in most cases. I have virtually none now.
I guess I'll further saturate this post with stories.
Story 1:
Senior year highschool, studying for AP English vocab test the night before. Start studying around 11pm. It's a typical vocab list. 10 words you'll need to spell right and use properly in your sentence of choice. Takes the average person a half hour or so to memorize? Spent the entire night on it. I sat down, put the vocab list in front of me, with all the definitions written down. Started attempting to commit them to memory. I would audibly read out the definition of a word to start. I'd give my brain 10 seconds to take in that information (it takes awhile for me to convert language into semantic understanding when the sentence is sufficiently complex to the point where my working memory cannot store/process it all at once), and then repeat. I'd do this until I could recall the general definition of the word in my head, so I could use it in a sentence. I would get one word down, and move onto the next. Upon returning to previous ones, I couldn't remember their definitions, so I'd repeat the process again. I eventually found the rate of progress to be insufferable, so I resorted to looking up their usage in sentences. Didn't help. Same loop. I grew frustrated at the level of mental expense in attempting such a simple task. And then, an idea struck me. Spend the entire night on it. See how far my ineptitude will go. The willful stubbornness morphed my frustration into self-deprecating apathy (oxymoron, you get the point though). I went all in, spent the whole night in foolhardy devotion to the mission. Just hours of reading definitions, and trying to fragment or distill them into understandable chunks. Come the vocab quiz, I got 6/10. I know the late time of night would be partly responsible for the struggle. At the time, I was just fed up with this intangible source of struggle, and this was me sort of lashing out at it.
Story 2:
Freshman year college, general day-to-day struggles. I struggled a lot with organizing my time, interacting with people, paying attention to lecture. By this point, I had realized that I lacked something other people naturally had. Internal monologue/inner voice. Others would use this to talk to themselves about what they're doing or going to do as they go about their day, and to me, that seemed so helpful. I usually just did whatever was in front of me, with no guiding principle or reason to it, inner voice entirely silent. No use of the English language was involved when deciding what to do. I think I'd just imagine myself doing something, and if it seemed to feel good, I'd go do that. The issue was getting the boring things taken care of. The schoolwork. So, I decided to try to mimic this inner voice that many others had. At first, I'd just talk out loud to myself in my dorm room, quietly, trying to guide myself in choosing activities to do. It was life changing. Blew my mind. It actually worked, for about 2 minutes, and then I'd forget to keep going. But ah, I was devoted, so when I eventually noticed I'd forgotten to use this "inner voice", I'd start it up immediately, devoutly declaring that I'd do better this time. The general trend was, I'd do it ~5 times for ~2-5 minutes each, and then after the 5th, I wouldn't remember for the rest of the day. I then tried to use helpful phrases. There were certain sayings or phrases that would help me focus in the past, and so I'd condense them into an acronym. One might be "use inner monologue whenever you can", and that would be the "I" in my acronym. I'd have maybe 3 or 4 of these helpful sayings "stored" in my 3/4 letter acronym, and I'd repeat them in my head whenever I remembered to do so, and try to abide to one of them and see if it helped. Like the inner voice, I would do this initially maybe 5 or more times, then forget for the rest of the day. I went through this cycle with several strategies throughout college. None ever worked.
-Story 3:
Surfing away, start reading quotes on some webpage. Come across a particular sentence that interests me. For the life of me, I can't take it in. I look at it, read it, and no coherence is made. I eventually give up, move on to something else. Later, I ask my friend about it, and he explains it. It still doesn't coalesce. Like the vocab list night, I felt like devoting myself to see this through to the end, to get the result I wanted. I ask him to repeat what he said. He does. I sit for awhile, bring it up again. He tries rephrasing it. We go back and forth for awhile. Eventually he got frustrated, so I apologized and left it at that.
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I don't think I've ever drunk wine, maybe once or twice. In general I don't have an appetite for alcohol and even suspect I could be predisposed to alcoholism so I stay away from it outside of social events. They say 1-2 glasses has health benefits but I would remind to be careful not to replace dopamine deficiency with addiction.
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