Would like to hear your experience with gettin treatment for ADD. Please only answer if you have been diagnosed ADD (or ADHD, still not sure what the difference is). Please answer the following questions:
Pretty much everyone I have ever known thinks they probably have ADD, but for those who were actually diagnosed, what were your symptoms?
How did the medication affect those symptoms?
Did getting treatment affect your life in any way that you did not foresee?
Still on medication now?
Any effect on your social life?
Yup. Medication wears off quick, like within a couple weeks, so you keep having to up your dose. And there's no real long-term studies to show how taking them affects you later in life. I tried some meds, but I'm off them now. They have weird side effects too.
Basically the biggest thing that has helped me is going to bed early, as in like 9:00pm. Nothing helps de-scramble my brain like an early bedtime. You have to do it for at least 3 days in a row to start seeing any benefit, which is really hard if you truly have ADD because it's super difficult to go to bed. I just use an audiobook to help me fall asleep, since I get really bored in bed.
Also cleaning up my diet helped a ton. Sugar really amps up the ADD - soda, gatorade, candy, anything with like more than 10 grams of sugar in it. Also avoid preservatives & chemicals, anything processed - those are HUGE. Try making homemade food for a few days or a week (to get all the crap out of your system), along with going to bed early, and see how you feel. Exercising of course helps (especially for falling asleep), but I can really only do it in the morning when I have the energy to.
Another thing you really have to do is clearly define what you have to do in a day. Like, figure out the exact things that you want and make an action list for each thing, not just "I want to do homework", but "I need to do 10 problems in my math book on page 66".
Cliffs:
1. Go to bed early (9pm for at least 3 days to see some benefit) & use an audiobook to help you fall asleep (a TV is too distracting)
2. Get sugar/processed food out of your diet for a week
3. Exercise, even like 10 or 15 minutes is plenty
4. Clearly define your tasks for the day, and make they're doable (i.e. don't list 20 thing to do, list like 5 max)
That's pretty much what's worked for me. Getting to bed early is my hardest thing, but it makes me "normal" basically, so it's worth doing. It's really easy to think that taking better care of your body won't help your ADD, but I can tell you it does, a ton, especially the bedtime thing. Don't brush it off - just try for a week of early bedtime, 10 minutes of exercise (like biking or an elliptical or whatever), homemade food, and defining like 5 tasks to do before bed for the next day (and keep that list with you, on your desk). Give it a shot. HTH.
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