Limbic ADD

Last night, I had found information that might be detrimental to my mental health.

 In elementary school, I was rambunctious. Teachers and counselors tested me for ADD, of which they found I possessed. Nothing really came of it. My father had a degree in Psychology and felt like he knew everything about the field. ADD? What is that? It's made up, that's what it is! My daughter has no such thing!

I performed poorly in school in my teenage years and well into my young adult life. Never have I ever been able to concentrate on anything I found uninteresting. It's like pulling teeth. So, if it wasn't art related, I never had an interest in learning it. This didn't mean I didn't appreciate the subject. I just never wanted to indulge in it like one should when being a student. After all, they do have a set, boring, curriculum. This led to bad grades. Bad GPA's. No colleges. Bad future. Or, so, I was told.

 I knew I suffered from depression and sought out help when I was 23. It was one of the darkest times of my life. My depression always came to me in waves but at that time was when it became unbearable. My recovery came with a monthly appointment to my psychologist and a prescription to Prozac. This was first time I had ever received help for this illness in 8 years at this point. When I became healthier the year after that, I realized I didn't need a prescription. Eating healthy and exercising did to me what Prozac did. My depression depleted and I was happy Kate again. I was seeing friends, waking up at a reasonable hour, and keeping to my schedule. Hooray!

I felt like this for years. Years.

When I found help it turned into this over time: 

Over a long period of time, of course. But I got there. :) What's most important is I know how to get there again if my depression relapses.

This newly found body and mind made it okay to spoil old cravings. Sure, I can have a piece of cake. Just this once. Yeah, I think gulping down this milkshake will be okay, just this once. And so began the downward slope that has been the past two years. I wasn't terribly unhappy. I have been the most stable I have been in years. This was a great help from Andrew. But sometimes, on bad days, the blues come back. It is apparent that my eating habit attribute to my mental health.

Andrew and I have been having issues communicating since he quit drinking. Nothing huge. Little things here or there. He seemed easily distracted and found it difficult to pay attention to me while I was speaking. To anybody. He became aggravated easily. He would answer my questions but forget that he did so.

 K- "Can I take Leia outside in the backyard?"
A -  "Sure"
K - "Cool."

-Takes Leia outside. Comes back in the front door. -

A - "Where did you go?"
K - "I took Leia outside..."
A - "No! I didn't fix the hole in the fence!"

This is a perfect example. It's been happening a lot. He forgot his wallet at the gas station, the post office, and Starbucks in the time span of three days. Luckily, we live in a safe suburban area. Once, he realized it was missing, he would retrace his steps back and, thank god, retrieve it. His termination of alcohol has flared up his ADD. BAD.

I started doing research. I need to find the best way to help him and myself. He is now aware of my feelings and is trying his best to observe his behavior. After my week of Biology tests is through on Thursday, I will go full force into investigating how I can help deal with his disorder. However, in my research I found that Andrew had half of the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. I had the other half. Oh, yeah... I was diagnosed with it as a kid.

-zoning out
-extremely distracted
-struggle completing tasks
-tendency to procrastinate (which reminds me- I should be studying)
-chronic lateness
-forgetting deadlines, appointments, and commitments
-underestimating the time

Hmmm. Yup. That's all me. But I'm not overly hyper. So what gives? I discuss this with Andrew. He doesn't know. But he remembers a website that shows PET scans of people's brains with ADD. Not what I was looking for but, sure, let's go with that. Dr. Amen's website. Yeah. Amen.

http://www.amenclinics.com/the-science/spect-gallery/attention-deficit-disorder-addadhd/

Well, look at that! There are different types of ADD. Different symptoms. And Limbic ADD is the winner for me. Depression and ADD. Together. I bet that's fun to deal with. No. It's not. I know you shouldn't self diagnose but I know myself. I know my body. I know what I've learned through out the years about depression and ADD. This one hits the nail on the head. It is so refreshing to understand all my problems are affiliated. Interconnected.

Symptoms of Limbic ADD:

• Inattentive
• Low energy
• Socially isolated
• Moodiness
• Excessive guilt
• Chronic low-grade sadness or negativity
• Sleeping issues
• Feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness
• Decreased motivation
• Depression
• Irritability
• Impulsivity

Each and every. single. one. I have had. Not just once. All the time. These are issues I have been dealing with since I was a young teenager. Fifteen years I've been dealing with these issues and, after, all that time, I feel like I found the answer as to why. I want to hang out with my friends but, sometimes, I just don't have the energy to go out and socialize. If I happen to have the energy, good luck to me for trying to remember I made a date with them in the first place. Today is Tuesday? Crap! I'm sorry! I forgot I said  would hang! It's not that I don't love my friends. I, absolutely, 100% do. They are great people. Good friends. Interesting and lovely. I just plain forget. It happened this last weekend with J. I told her I was free on Friday. Nothing came of it. I bumped into her at a spontaneous Ikea spree and she punched my arm. 

"Ouch! What the...?"

"We were suppose to hang out yesterday! You never called!"

Same old tune. Or sometimes, I just won't wake up for the 3 o'clock lunch I arranged with them. Yeah. THREE O'CLOCK PM. I'm a night owl. I will lose track of time, scrolling websites or watching Netflix until I realize it's 5am. Set the alarm for noon. Never hear the alarm (I would turn them off with out remembering). Sleep ten hours and BAM. It's 3 pm. I'm late! This is a problem I've dealt with for over a decade. Sometimes I would try to stay awake 24 hours to go to sleep early the next night. By the time it hit 10pm, my second wind came and I'm up til 4am again. Sometimes I would force myself to read a book or turn off the lights to go to sleep. Then, I would sleep for twelve hours and it's already late morning. Or let's say I did go to bed early at 10 pm and woke up early at 7 am with the alarm- that I was lucky to hear. I get sleepy around 2pm. Take a nap. And BOOM. Nap turns into three hours and I'm up til the wee hours of the morning. Point is: I get sleepier than most others. I sleep more. I need sleep more. I hate it. This is all if I was mentally healthy too. Imagine how bad it would get if I didn't care. If I didn't want to care.

After missing appointments and meetings my friends and co-workers are disappointed and I get an overwhelming sense of guilt for letting them down. I want to be there for the ones I love. Sometimes, I mess up. I never mean to do it on purpose.

These are just a few of the issues. You say to yourself, "Kate, what did you do when you had early morning jobs?" Well, I was late. I was late a lot. I was lucky that they never fired me for it. They should have fired me but they didn't. I guess I was a decent worker. When I was there. Serving jobs were always the best schedules for me. Get there in the early evenings. Get off around 1 am. Sweet sched. Terrible work. Nothing will make you hate people faster than being a server. If you're a server and you don't hate people. Kudos. You are amongst the few. It's good money but I didn't think it was worth it. The back aches and the attitudes of the customer- a lot of them are SO RUDE. Honestly, servers get treated with such disrespect. Not always but a lot of the time. Foreigners were the worst. Do I hate foreigners? No. Only when serving them their damn meals and having to depend on their slashed tips to live. Serving makes you hate people. Not serving makes me like them again. But I do love going to restaurants now, spotting the asshole customer, and being a total dick to them. On behalf of all the servers everywhere! Sure, that customer did nothing to me. But they were being a dick to that server over there, and I shall take revenge for them, for the server can not. Because they need that douche bag to tip well, otherwise they wasted biting their tongue for nothing. But I don't need to be nice. I can talk shit to them. I can glare at them menacingly. I can bother them as much as they bother the server. Hehe.  Oh, crap. See? Distraction. At this point, I would normally erase this paragraph and keep on track but I think it points out my issue well.

The end result is that I found the source of my problems. Limbic ADD causes too much activity in the limbic part of the brain and decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. I emailed Dr. Amen for an appointment and will call their center, here in Atlanta, first thing in the afternoon. ;)  In the mean while, I will follow the suggested diet for Limbic ADD sufferers: exercise, fish oil, and whole wheat. I'll take the supplements: SAMe, tryptophan, DL-phenylalanine, L-tryosine, and wellbutrin. Andrew will stick to 5 HTP, saffron, inositol, and tryptophan for treating his Over-focused ADD. He, also, needs to avoid high protein diets. We are getting on top of our shit here at the Stallard-Carter household. 

Here's to eating bananas, swallowing pills, and riding bikes! 

For the depressed and food servers. I send my love.