It’s 2am and I’m still up. 3 days, 9 hours of sleep total and I’m still wide awake beginning day 4… I hate to admit but my ADD is back. Not that it ever left me…but I am trying Concerta and compared to Adderall, symptom wise, it’s wonderful. Aside from a little dry mouth I am symptomless, unlike Adderall which at only 20mg gave me the worse tinnitus and come down headaches.

I hate meds. Anyone that knows me knows that I hate taking pills. I fight it all the way. When I was pregnant with my first I had build up of spinal fluid in my brain…something called Benign Intercranial Hypertension ( or the scarier version: Pseudotumor Ceribri). Anyhow, here I was 2 months with child, and had to take a diuretic called Diamox. I tried and tried to get the Neuro to lower the dose, all the while terrified of the effects on my child…but it was either that or loose my vision or perhaps, eeek stroke.

But where was I? Ah yes, ADD. How appropiate…at least I was halfway on topic. Yup, so Concerta has no side effects that I feel, and my appetite was good and it’s really gentle. But the 18mg did nothing…and 4 weeks into 36mg and it’s also lost it’s luster. So I’m back to tangents, or hyperfocus or minucia that doesn’t matter at the moment…or ever. Today I spent 2 hours searching for a MathCad opensource substitute for Mac, when I already have Maple AND Mathematica installed and can use both perfectly well. All of this because I visited the bookstore to get my $9 MS Office and happened to walk past and my eyes caught the non-site licensed version of MathCad priced at $99. Somehow that extra order of magnitude in price prompted some obsessed search of an alternative to a program I don’ t need…. do you see where this is going?

What I need to do is a) ask the doc to up the meds and b) get me back into the college ADD coping skills group…which means more waste of time to hear someone blabber about to do lists, and choosing whats important…yack yack yack that I need to hear anyhow. Even though to an ADDer, it doens’t really matter what’s important when you’re hyperfocused…because you don’t see the time fly by.

Don’t get me wrong…I enjoy my hyperfocused state sometimes. For example…the twilight hours I stayed up these last 2 nights I got at least 1+ weeks worth of data and movement on my thesis…and nothing like hyperfocus to help you learn a subject just days before an exam. The problem is that I can’t turn it on/off or refocus it. ADD is a really bad name for what this really is and it should instead be called: Hyperfocus Refocusing Disorder or HRD, get it? HyRD…HeaRD ! nevermind…

But I digress, again. I’m really on a kids dose and for my size, physically I should probably up it now that the metabolism got used to it…but I hate taking meds…specially since it’s really because I feel that it’s not ADD that is a problem, but my line of work that makes it so pronounced…it’s the statistical part of the research that I can’t stand…graphing, regraphing, legend, normalizing, abcissa tick size, colors, spreadsheets, numrical analysis…in other words minucia. If I were a banker I would starve.

Maybe I should have continued my music career and the conservatory…no I take that back because sitting through a 20 minute symphony with a 36 measure rest is a sure way to make me miss my entrance and get a baton thrown at me…yup true story.

What I should have been was an emergency room doctor…all that action and adrenaline get’s me pumped and thinking on my feet…something ADDers do really well is thinking on in a time of need…like when I give presentations I’m pretty awesome at it.

If only my research could mix graphs, numbers and analysis with someone else’s imminent death… but wait! that would make me a health insurance exec!

I know I know…bad joke…what do you expect on 9h/3days of sleep? As my friend would say: Booooo!

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