Victories and challenges: An A[u]DHD community and support fortnightly thread #6

I'm struggling right now with work. The team I'm a part of is transitioning to a new project and the last few weeks have been really weird. A lot of familiarizing myself with a new code base, a lot of writing tech scopes, a lot of meetings, etc. Very little code-writing and I'm struggling to stay focused during the day because there's no threat of a deadline and not writing code is incredibly dull work.

And this is old familiar behavior. I'll have a ton of "free" time like this where my tasks are vague, spaced out, and fairly self-paced and I literally cannot focus on them as a result. Then a week or two later I'm in the middle of the ACTUAL work and I'm left wishing I'd spent more time preparing during the "free" time.

It's such a dumb cycle that leaves me feeling like a lazy failure. Which is all very classic ADHD stuff, but still. It's frustrating.

I signed up for a local Neurodivergent meet up my therapist recommended. I don't know how it'll go or whether it'll help in any way. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

I guess since I got diagnosed late in life, I've been feeling like the diagnosis was a mistake or something and have terrible imposter syndrome.

So I'm hoping meeting other people in life might help in some way? Although I have a feeling they're all going to be significantly younger than me.

Bizarrely work is something of a refuge at the moment, I'm involved in lots of interesting things (if occasionally frustrating) and its providing a distraction from near constant back-pain and the ever worsening political situation in the UK.

Trying to stay motivated to exercise daily and finding it something of a struggle. In the long term it will help my back problems, and general health, in the short term trying to get started exercising when you are in pain is not easy. Currently managing to do some exercise every day, even if it is small, to just keep the momentum going.

Ugh. I posted way back in January about needing a new job for increased potential, opportunity for growth, etc. Went through round after round, dream role, aced it, then the summer of tariffs & will-they-or-won't-they economics led to freezes, layoffs, and most recently budget cuts, which cost me my promised spot. They are still saying I have a position, but they don't know when, & I can't tell if it's something to wait for, or give up on lol, because I don't think I had ever really been hopeful for anything before this year. So that is good & obviously important to know, but also it suuuuucks, & if I had a non-soul-sucking decent-paying job already instead of the potential for one in the nebulous future, well that would be really helpful.

Taking Ritalin (slow release) for the first time tomorrow morning. Does anyone have any advice for me? Like anything I should watch for? I set timers to remind me to eat.
Not sure how I’ll fit sports into my daily rhythm. Doctor told me to take it once a day for 7 days. It’s 10mg, so I think it will be kind of like taking 5mg twice in a day?

We got the long awaited "she's ADHD" message from my daugher's teacher today. To be clear, she didn't literally say that, but she said that my daughter was having difficulties focusing and talking over the teacher. Teacher said when she calls out the behavior, daughter apologizes, then returns to it shortly thereafter. Which is textbook ADHD...or at least how it presented itself in me as a kid (and now...). A lot of the signs were there at home, but she was doing well in school (how many of ya'll, especially the ladies, have heard that one before?) and I thought maybe I was just looking too much into things.

Next step is obviously a diagnosis, but for now I'm processing the reality of maybe having a kid with ADHD. I was talking to my mom about it and I told her that I'm fortunate that I have this life time of experience with ADHD that I can use to help guide her. Because my parents didn't have it (or at least were never diagnosed), so they kind of blindly got my brother and I through my school years with ADHD. I can try to help her avoid all the blame and guilt I continue to struggle with.

I keep getting rewarded at work for my over-fussy meticulousness. Three more complicated projects delivered without issues in the last two weeks, kudos, spot bonus... And I'm hella bored. I want new challenges that aren't just "more of the same, please, only faster."

I don't know if there's a diagnostic category for the kind of serial obsessiveness that Susan Orlean chronicled in The Orchid Thief. I feel like I've squeezed everything I wanted to learn out of my current job, I'm spearing white whales on a regular basis. But there's no new passion itching for pursuit yet.

Where to start?

I've got so many diagnoses -- Autistic, ADHD, Bipolar (formerly MDD), Substance Use Disorder (alcohol & marijuana) -- it can be hard to disentangle what's related to what. I'm also 'gifted' (read: legitimately "genius" level IQ, had a full scale WAIS-IV result of 142 that was under-representative of my full IQ measure because I capped out in multiple subtests).

Basically I always got by on the autistic front because my mental hardware is so damned good... I just figured out how other people behave with pure computational power. I wasn't even diagnosed as Autistic until I was 35, nor as ADHD until I was 20. I just didn't appreciate how much mental effort I was expending on social interactions until life became overwhelming -- it never mattered before I had multiple children because I was so efficient in my work that I would have enough alone/recharge time to not feel overwhelmed basically ever. But when I had my third child literally 2 weeks before starting a new job with no paternity leave, and then in the first month my dog died... I turned to substances in a bad way. Alcohol and marijuana were how I coped. Because my wife never actually provided me the support I needed, even when I could tell something was wrong and couldn't exactly explain it.

I ended up losing my 6 figure research job because of my substance issues, and went to rehab. When I "came back" to the family, I was the stay at home dad while my then wife became a teacher. I did my damnedest to be a good partner, father, etc. during that time, but being completely frank -- being around my kids and/or wife nearly 24/7 just got to me, in the end. I ended up relapsing on MJ and introduced cough syrup, as the effects were easily concealable.

Until they weren't. I had a drug-related psychotic episode in January of this year, some of you may even recall it as I had some very... 'unique'... posts here on Tildes during that time. And then I was betrayed by my wife, who rather than meeting me with empathy and concern during the worst mental health crisis of my life, instead decided to legally ghost me with a TPO (temporary protection order). I couldn't even speak to her, legally, any more. Came out of the mental health hospital after 6 days to find myself homeless and alone (sans support of my parents), not even allowed to see my children.

The last 8 months have been difficult. I had to fight for any chance to see my kids, with emergency orders being done without me, and having to fight my way in to being present in the court proceedings.

So now I'm divorced, and I only get to see my kids with supervised visitation (that I have to pay $60/hr for), roughly every other week. I get some video chats as well, but my young children just really can't connect over those.

In the meantime, I had to get employment for obvious reasons, and I couldn't find anything that would use my credentials (PhD Cognitive Science, MS Statistics) either locally in Reno, NV or remotely. So now I'm a Table Games Dealer at the GSR in Reno.

But fucking of course, I'm finding that to be a bit overstimulating in many respects. I'm expected to be constantly ignoring all the stimuli in a casino while maintaining positive social interactions with the guests playing at my table. A lot of the time it is quite enjoyable -- I get to play games for a living basically, and games are my jam. But I would be disingenuous to say that it isn't draining to me. I work swing shifts (~9pm-5am) which fucks up normal sleep, and I'm pretty exhausted mentally after most shifts.

So of course, I've found myself relapsing as of late, both alcohol and MJ. I just feel like I need the relief after some of this shit, even though I'm consciously aware it is a bad decision overall. I just... stop caring. I'd rather feel better now and deal with the consequences later, a lot of the time. Which I hate feeling, but I dunno what else to do.

All that to say... things aren't going ideally, but I am coming around I hope. I think/hope I've mostly got a handle on the substances, but am always afraid they will spiral out of control once again as they are wont to do. I'm really hoping that when I finish 'dealer school' and move to a part-time dealer position with a consistent sleep schedule and only 24/32 hours of work per week I'll be able to reign in my negative behaviors and start working myself in a positive direction again. Fingers crossed.

Ooh, I'm happy to see this! Thanks JurisSpecter for posting – in true ADHD fashion, I completely forgot about this thread's existence in its absence, but stumbling across this post (even a week late) was exciting! I'm always happy to read these and see how others are doing.

My life has been crazy lately, but I think I've been doing a decent job at handling it. The past few months have seen my wife and I moving into our first house, struggling with surprise plumbing and renovations, and my starting a new job. I just became a teacher in my own classroom for the first time after working as a parapro for years while finishing school.

In a manner very typical for the company I work for (an ed. service center in my area), I didn't receive my roster (including grades and schedule) or even my room number until two weeks before school started, meaning I could do basically no lesson planning or curriculum prep until then. Aside from that, the previous teacher left the room trashed, with abandoned garbage, food, and even student data just laying around. So, I worked outside of contract hours and days for around a month just to get to a place where I felt like the room was pleasant to be in and where I have enough activities planned that I can get some rest before heading in the next day.

There have been a lot of days where the balance has been all work and no life, though those days are thankfully becoming the minority. This past week I finally decided I need to do some Sunday meal prep, because I can't rely on myself to pack a lunch from scratch every morning and eating out of the staff vending machine is not sustainable. I'm still exhausted, but feeling waaaay better than before. Still not really any long-term plans for lessons, though 😅