The Dirty Little Secret

addworking — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:20:35 +0000

There are a lot of dirty little secrets that need to be aired. The first is that having adult ADHD today is like being gay or lesbian in the workplace in the 1950s. If you have ADHD, you’re generally desperate to ensure that no one at work finds out less you be thought stupid, disorganized, lazy, nonconformist or generally unreliable. And just like gay individuals, none of us chose to be like this. Sure, we can do things to control certain aspects of the condition, but we’re going to have ADHD until we shed this mortal coil. It’s also a pretty good bet that if you’re fired unfairly, it’s very easy to justify the action simply because you have ADHD. Even without the drama of getting the ax, plenty of us still rightly fear that if anyone knows that we have ADHD, it will hurt our career prospects. So most of us simply decide to keep our mouths shut about what may be the biggest, personal revelation of our adult lives.

I should also note that like all comparisons, this one is flawed: I’m not gay and cannot pretend to understand that state of being just as my gay friends who don’t have ADHD cannot perfectly comprehend mine. Clearly, I need to spend some more time in the company of gay adults with ADHD!

Workplace aside, when friend find out that we have ADHD, they tend to treat us differently for a while, even if the admission is the only thing that has changed. Some assume that you’ve got the diagnosis of the month so as to get your hands on controlled substances; others believe that there’s no such thing as ADHD or dismiss the possibility in light of your achievements. Fortunately, if you can stay patient, most such people come around to being accepting of the reality that knowledge of ADHD helps us to improve our lives and doesn’t change who we’ve always been.

Even the professionals can be anything but that when it comes to adult ADHD. So very many of the them turn out to clueless, ignorant or mercenary. Let’s just start by stating the obvious: many ‘analysts’ make money by analyzing how ‘we feel’ rather than paying attention to the obvious signs of adult ADHD, which are best treated in other ways. That’s unethical at $250+ per hour: so therapists, if you suspect that an adult patient has ADHD, please suggest that a qualified psychiatrist evaluate them for it!

Of course, some psychologists do just that. My good friend and co-author figured out within 15 minutesof first meeting me that I likely had adult ADHD and sent me a child psychiatrist to diagnose it. (More about child psychiatrists in later entries.) In doing so, he very quickly lost a patient, but I started getting the help that I actually needed.

Mercenaries aside, most MDs and even most psychologists haven’t the faintest clue that ‘lucky’ adults retain their ADHD. And so, they jump to the conclusion that we’re depressed or bi-polar (either of which may also be true) but fail to do anything to help with the actual ADHD. I meet lots of people who later get diagnosed as having ADHD but have formerly been treated only with anti-depressants. And in case you don’t know, Zoloft, Paxil, etc. do nothing to treat the condition. Don’t get me wrong: these are all fine medications when used in the proper context.

And then there are the adult psychiatrists who do recognize, diagnose and treat adult ADHD but who maintain that if you can drive a car without forgetting what you’re doing then you don’t ‘really’ have ADHD. I analogize such professionals to surgeons who wouldn’t sew you up because you’re not bleeding badly enough to expire from the would. They think because we can function at all means that the sub-optimal part of our life are irrelevant. I’ve got no trouble with the doctors who only want to treat the worst cases, but by anything that you might hold holy, don’t deny that some of the rest of us might benefit from a little assistance as well.

In the face of all this, I’ve decided to do something entirely different with my dirty little secret: I’ve decided to share it rather widely. If it’s relevant in conversation, I bring it up. I speak to people who think that they might have the condition and encourage them to see professional who can help. I’m writing a book with Steve Josephson about why ADHD makes some business people so damned successful. I’m even starting a new business to help bring together the best quality service providers with people who need the help.

No more dirty little secrets for me!

39 Years of Unrecognized Bliss

addworking — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:11:55 +0000

Hi. My name is Michael Laskoff, and if I had the ‘good luck’ to have an old-fashioned substance abuse problem, then I could spending this time at a local ALANON meeting networking with other drunks. Ahh, to be so fortunate. I’m not, by the way, trying to take anything away from the people with drinking problems, or any other kind of substance abuse issues. Indubitably, addiction problems are bad and addicts – as well as those around them – suffer mightily. But at least they’ve gotten themselves a sometime sympathetic awareness of the reality that they exist and that their condition is not always their own fault.

So let’s try this again: My name is Michael Laskoff; I’m 40 years old and I have ADHD, aka ADD; I’ve always had it but didn’t know that until I was 39. And yes, there are support groups out there that I could attend as a result. But that’s where the similarities end.

Alcoholism has, as I think you’ll agree, been recognized from time immemorial; Adult ADHD has literally only been on the books since the mid-1980s and if you’re over seven years old, then you can’t currently be ‘officially’ diagnosed as having the condition at all. (I’m not kidding; check your DSM-IV.)
Alcoholism is considered an adult’s condition; ADHD is only ‘supposed to’ impact children. (No one had the courtesy to remind me to outgrow the condition when I turned 18.)
Alcoholics and the massive community that supports them have helped the rest of us understand that it’s a disease; adults with ADHD live isolated, furtive lives spent feeling stupid and certain that if their condition were known that they’d lose their jobs at the very least. (Even the very wealthy business people who credit ADHD with contributing to their personal fortunes don’t want anyone to know.)
And finally, while I’ve heard much mention of the ‘functional alcoholic’, I’ve never hear anything analogous about adults with ADHD.

Put it all together, and I find myself living in a world in which something that I was born with condemns too many of my fellow travelers to a losing battle of spectacular desperation. And yet, like so many others, I’ve done things that grown-ups with ADHD aren’t supposed to do. I’m proud of that. So welcome to ADD Working where I’ll show you mine, and you can do whatever feels right.