My negative disorder.

I started talking about this in my Friday's Letters but, then I realized I had a lot to say about it. Sometimes I'm amazed at the way people see certain disorders. I'm currently taking an abnormal psychology class and I absolutely love it.  I love learning about different disorders people have and how they function with those disorders.

Lately, I've noticed a lot of negatively directed towards ADD/ADHD. I mentioned yesterday that someone in one of our discussions was talking about it. They mentioned all of these lifelong issues someone they know has simply because they had either ADD or ADHD and took medication.

I woke up Friday morning and read a Facebook status about how people who take medication for these disorders are trapped in their own mind and can not express their own creativity.

Dr. OZ recently had a show all about the dangers of Adderall. The drug given to people with ADD.

I am personally someone with ADD. 

I've mentioned this before and I'm not embarrassed about it. As a child I was never diagnosed with ADD. I honestly thought I just hated school. I never wanted to try in school because it took so much effort for me to sit down and actually focus on something. Once I started college I really started to realize that I was having issues in school. I started consuming caffeine in order to get a simple task done. I was drinking about a pot of coffee and anywhere from 5-10 energy drinks a day. I honestly had a caffeine addiction, I could not function without it. I went to the doctors and expressed my concern about not being able to focus. I was diagnosed with adult ADD and this was also the same time I found out how badly caffeine was affecting my body.

I was hesitant about taking any drugs. I didn't want to be someone who had to take a pill in order to do things other people had no issue doing. Throughout the years we tried a couple of options and Adderall has worked the best for me. When I first started taking medication my parents really weren't that happy. They felt that I didn't need it and they didn't feel that I had ADD based on the things they heard about the disorder. Now, they see how much medication has helped and they understand the disorder better.

One story in the news that has really had a big impact on people's views about this drug was the story about Richard Fee. You can read the story about his Adderall addiction that ended in suicide here. His parents were on the Dr. OZ episode that I watched and it's very sad. However it was more about the abuse of adderall and not about the effects of taking medication properly.

I also noticed that in my discussion for class that people kept expressing how "sorry" they were that someone had a family member with ADD and I kept reading responses saying it's really sad to hear that someone they know has this disorder. Is it really a disorder that should cause other people to feel sorry? I don't think so. 

I truly believe that the abuse of Adderall is one of the main reasons that ADD gets such negative thoughts. People who don't need Adderall truly believe that it's the miracle pill or the supermodel pill. People fake symptoms just so they can get a script and take this drug legally. It's highly addictive if you're taking it and don't truly need it. I wish that there were more doctors out there like mine. There's some kind of test that doctors give in order to figure out if you have ADD or ADHD, it's simple questions anyone could bluff but then on top of that she went more in depth with her own questions. I have check ups often, she monitors my weight, does blood work more than I'd like and she truly cares about specific details when it comes to how I'm doing on my medication.

I don't think that people are wrong for having negative thoughts about these disorders. I believe that they're not educated enough about these disorders and they form opinions about a story they heard. 

Having ADD is a constant struggle and sometimes it's completely frustrating. 

But it's nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed of.