Theme
12:57am June 7, 2014

dendriforming:

The DSM sucks at explaining. I’m autistic, because I can be described by certain phrases, and what that means is I can be described by those same phrases. Same for ADHD. In reality, there’s probably some specific neurological explanation for why I’m inertial and suck at organizing things. It just gets explained by two different terms, because that’s how the DSM works.

So, I never know whether to describe myself as ADHD? I’ve taken Adderall. It helped with my productivity and organizational skills a lot, but I was worried about what it was doing to my heart rate. I take a non-stimulant ADHD medication now (Intuniv), that helps me disengage from things. I also get pretty much the same productivity benefits from benzodiazepines as I do from stimulants (but my organizational skills stay crap). That last bit makes me wonder if I basically have standard autistic executive dysfunction, plus anxiety.

(I don’t know why I’m writing this, exactly? But I suspect that people like me are the reason the DSM-IV didn’t let people get diagnosed with both ADHD and autism.)

I’ve always had ADD traits (that’s why I didn’t think ADD was real when I was younger, because “but I’m like that and I’m normal”, I shit you not), but I respond terribly to ADD meds.  People have always told me “If you really had ADD, you wouldn’t respond the way you do to powerful stimulants.”  But to me that’s both really simplistic and kind of scary, to base your entire idea of a diagnosis on whether someone responds to meds or not.  I don’t know any diagnosis, physical or psychiatric, where someone always responds properly to meds, or always responds in a particular way.

I’ve had Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine, and one other, and all I got was jittery and my heart racing and really hyper.  I know it’s classic for ADD people to have the opposite reaction.  But surely it can’t be universal.

Or it could just be that because I’m autistic, I have ADD traits but not ADD.  Who knows.  I’ve heard it happens.