Issue Date: July 15, 2001

In this article: You probably don't have ADD if... Adult ADD expert David Goodman chats online Monday July 16 at 1 p.m. ET

PAY ATTENTION!

If you can, that is. It's not easy if you suffer from ADD, better known as a children's condition but now afflicting more and more adults --including our author.

Writer Stephanie Brush, 46, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, also works as a singer and actress.

I need to tell you this: While writing this article, I panicked. I hit the "on" button on my computer and nothing happened. Frantic, I unplugged the thing and drove to the local college, where I ran to the tech-support department cradling my computer like a sick infant and begged for help.

"There's nothing wrong with it," they told me. I'd simply been pressing the wrong key. I stood there, rooted to the floor, wanting to will myself out of existence, cringing with embarrassment. This was the computer I'd used on a daily basis for six years. I'd suddenly, inexplicably forgotten how to turn it on, and my calamity button had gone off once again. You see, if everything in my life starts going too well for too long -- it had been a fairly calm week -- I start thinking, "Uh-oh. What scary thing is going to happen now?" And I brace for the onslaught.

Some would label me a "drama queen," a "career ditz," a "perennial screw-up." I wish it were that simple. I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I've had it all my life, although I don't really believe ADD is something you have so much as something you are.

Children have it; adults have it. For many, it's a cradle-to-grave deal, and there's no time off for good behavior (whatever the heck that is). My ADD brain is apparently missing vital chemicals that sort of "glue" thoughts together; it is physiologically different from what's considered "normal." This thing I have is neurobiological; it has nothing to do with my attitude.

Got that?

See, I receive lectures from other adults on a fairly regular basis on how I could "pull my life together" if I just dug in. If I just concentrated. If I just followed a handy system to be determined, in most cases, by the person delivering the lecture.

"HEY! FOCUS!" I hear all the time. And I want to say, "HEY! LOSE 10 POUNDS, PORKCHOP! How dare you tell me how to be?"

In most states, ADD is considered a (manageable) disability. In other words, I am not a "mentally ill" or "nuts" individual who deserves to be thrown in a loony bin any more than a dyslexic person or someone in a wheelchair. But political correctness is not often practiced around me. I don't imagine you'd make silly faces at a blind person for your own amusement. But people let fly with the "blonde jokes" around me every day because I have a hard time concentrating and seem always to be in three places at once.

I found my phone bill in the freezer one time, and I don't really believe I put it there on purpose, though you never know. I sometimes find myself brushing my teeth and getting so distracted halfway through that I may not finish the job until an hour or so later, though I may have sat down at the piano and written a song in the meantime; or logged on and sent a couple of e-mails; or figured out the distance from Seattle to Portland by car in case I ever want to have the gas money saved in advance for a road trip I may or may not take in the next decade.

My mind works very, very well, actually. And I probably do not ever do anything in any kind of sequence that makes sense to you. My internal alphabet starts at "P" and moves on to "L" and goes on to "T," and then maybe jump-starts at "ABCDE" just to confound other people, then probably starts inventing other "experimental" letters you've never, ever heard of. And then the did-I-pay-my-phone-bill voices start up in my head, and I get overwhelmed and need to go lie down for a while. It's funny. No, it's scary. No, funny. No, scary -- except when it's tragically, wrenchingly, stomach-churningly funny.

So many wonderful ideas float around in my head every day. I call them my "dead babies" -- a gruesome image, I'll grant you. My brain utterly lacks the organizational skills to bring these "lost" ideas to fruition, is the thing. I know my (real) goal in life is to be a singer, or an actress, or a political cartoonist, or an educator, or a children's book illustrator, or a geologist, or a motivational speaker, or a novelist, or a makeup artist. (Luckily, I'm over 40 now; I have that list narrowed down to a manageable size.)

A psychiatrist once told me I needed a husband to keep me on track, and I thought, "I'd need to give the guy combat pay. Not to mention weekends and holidays off." When I meet a man, he often thinks that I'm not interested in him because, if I am, I often get nervous and start fidgeting. It makes for an uncomfortable first date -- and it's unusual I get asked out for a second. When I see a "JUST MARRIED" procession passing on the street, I think, "How the heck did they do that?"

As a child, I got yelled at a lot for not finishing things I'd started, though I was not considered hyperactive. (Hyperactivity may or may not accompany ADD.) Since I spent so much time in my private inner world, I missed out on developing a lot of social skills children need. I heard (through third parties) that boys found me "weird" or "twisted" or "stuck-up" or "from a solar system other than our own." Everyone said I was really creative. I never wore "outfits" to school; it was more like "costumes." I'd show up wearing ski knickers, construction boots and earrings I had made out of discarded office supplies. (This inventiveness, this "power-of-synthesis" talent, by the way, is a hallmark of ADD.) Nowadays, they simply put kids on Ritalin.

I bring up medication because it's such a flash point in any discussion of ADD. It's never had any effect on me, personally, though I have taken antidepressants, just to keep my frustration levels manageable. I believe in medication as an option, certainly, but I think it's important to try all the options available, because each ADDer's brain chemistry is unique.

I have friends with ADD who say, "There's no way I'd want to be any different. I'm cool just like this." I'd give anything to be normal, though, or closer to it. I wouldn't have asked for this thing. I die from shame each time I make a simple error. I probably try 10 times harder than the average person to get it right, and take 10 times longer to finish a job, frantically checking for errors that, ironically, often aren't even there.

I'll give you an example: I recently worked as a temp at a real-estate firm. (Financially, I always seem to be on the edge of a yawning precipice with komodo dragons at the bottom.) I spent the week squirting out faxes, filing invoices, routing phone calls, even sorting soft drinks alphabetically in the company refrigerator. At the end of the week, I had not made a single error. But when it came time to call up the payroll system to log in my hours, I simply forgot all about it. I literally forgot to get paid that week. I had put so much energy into not letting anybody else down (and I was exhausted at the end of every day) that I let down myself.

That's one reason I avoid having a "real" job. I prefer not to inflict my blunder-ready nature on any poor, unsuspecting, profit-minded organization, not to mention I also have a tough time reading the subtle signals of human behavior that are the bread and butter of office politics. Plus, my sense of humor usually terrifies anyone over the age of 5.

People tell me, "Grow up." Indeed, there's some controversy over whether people do, in fact, grow out of ADD. I say the very idea is hogwash; it's like saying you can grow out of being left-handed, or being tall, or having brown eyes. What an ADD person becomes adept at, rather, is "passing." Just as light-skinned African Americans "passed" as white not long ago, and just as many gays and lesbians have hidden their true identities, a lot of ADD people are "in the closet."

At the moment, I'm working as a temp in a bank, pasting colored labels on file folders, then lining up the folders, one by one. I make up little stories in my head about the people whose names are on the folders. They're pretty good stories, actually. By day's end, the folders are all perfectly arranged. Everyone says I'm doing a bang-up job. By the time I get home, though, I have usually forgotten all the stories. If I thought about it, I imagine this would be depressing.

Do YOU have ADD?

So, you forget things and have a short attention span. Who doesn't? Such traits by themselves do not mean you have ADD, says David Goodman, medical director of the Adult ADD Center in Baltimore. (Talk with Goodman this Monday at 1 p.m. ET at usaweekend.com. The chat is co-sponsored by usatoday.com.) A simple checklist:

Go to top

Oh, yeah ... this article is By Stephanie Brush
Photograph by Colin Mulvany for USA WEEKEND