Like many folks, I have ADD. For the past nine months I have been taking 15 mg of Adderall XR (the XR means extended release) a day to treat it and until this week I had no idea how well it has been working. Today is day ten without the Adderall in my system.

Feeling like the medicine was not working as well as it initially did, I told my doctor and he decided it was time to try a “drug holiday” and evaluate how I felt after ten days. Honestly, I was pretty surprised how nervous I felt about going off the medicine. For the past nine months I have felt like most of my ADD symptoms were gone for the first time in my life.

Days 1-6: Getting Adderall out of my System

After stopping the medication it was all I could do to stay awake. Most ADD medications are stimulants, with the notable exception of Strattera which is stimulant free. Adderall is a form of amphetamine salt that is believed to increase the production of neurotransmitters to counteract the ADD symptoms. It took me about five unpleasant days to get to the point where I felt back awake.

I also immediately became hungrier. A very common side effect of Adderall is appetite suppression. Amphetamines were used as diet pills for a long time. I’ve a pretty good sweet tooth normally, but it went off the deep end for the last few days. I’ve wanted breakfast (very rare for me), and invariably wanted sugary things. I ended up getting desserts at meals and wanted snacks. I got cookies and M&Ms from the vending machine. At one point of desperation with the tiredness and sweet tooth I actually got a frapuccino (I HATE coffee).

Days 7-10: Just How do I Feel?

By Thursday I was conscious again. This was about the point where I could really start to analyze the effect of the medication (or lack thereof). I was stunned to see how little I got done this week (sorry co-workers reading this!). For me, the best way for me to describe ADD is that I know what I need to be doing, and I can do anything but that. I am productive, just on everything that I’m not eager to be productive on (notice the relative frequency of blog posts this week). It is deeply frustrating and troubling to not be able to do what I need/want to do.

Over the next few days I’ve been thinking to myself “Yes! this is what it felt like a year ago where I would go through a days at work getting lots done but never what I needed to get done. Now that I have had nine months of relative control, a week without it feels pretty devastating. Before, I never had any other perspective to know how bad things were. Now I know what treatment feels like and I will be very very prompt for my appointment tomorrow.

It is interesting that since I had no context for feeling any way other than I did before treatment, I had no idea how bad things were. There is really very little way for us to ever know how “normal” something is that is going on in our brain since we have no way of experiencing anyone else’s brain. Now that I at least have the context from the medicine, it is a wonder I made it through school!

Some interesting behavior changes I noticed this week in both work and play:

• I’ve blogged more
• I’ve read blogs less
• I’ve read novels more (I feel like I can’t put the book down even though I am tired and need to get up for work)
• I’ve played video games more
• I’ve been making more “To Do” lists
• I’ve needed to listen to music at work
• I forgot a meeting

The reading part is pretty expected for me. Non-fiction has always been very difficult for me to read. Unless I am reading something that I think of as entertainment I have a very difficult time focusing. In fact, one of the things that I am least proud of is that I rarely read in college. I made it through a few novels in English and Spanish Literature courses, but the rest I just faked it and went off listening to lectures. It is something I wish I could go back and redo. I can’t imagine how much more I would have learned! On the medication I’m still not an avid reader of non-fiction, but I can apply myself to reading documents at work without too much problem.

I am a bit more surprised about the gaming though. After spending the weekend playing Metroid Prime Echoes (a game I bought but didn’t really play right when it came out) I realized that I really have played very few games recently. I play some games with friends at work, but have played almost nothing at home in almost the whole time I’ve been on Adderall. I never really noticed until this weekend.

Day 11 (Tomorrow): What is Next?

I plan to ask my doctor to put me back on Adderall. This is pretty significant for me as I really don’t like the idea of patients requesting things of their doctors. I’m generally of the opinion that a patient should describe symptoms and the doctor should reach a diagnosis free of coaching. For this, I am pretty sure that the doctor will reach the same conclusion as me, but I am completely prepared to ask for what I want if he disagrees.

The reason I feel this way is that even though there are some trade offs for choosing to treat ADD, I like myself a lot less when I am off the medicine. I waste a lot of time and it impacts my life both personally and professionally. If taking a small blue and white capsule a day can change that, it is well worth it.

If you don’t believe in ADD, or feel like writing a negative comment, please read this “

David Lawrence asked me on his show tonight to talk about my recent experiences with ADD treatment and lack thereof, and to generally talk about my experiences. It should be interesting. If you want to tune it, it is available on:

XM Satellite Radio - 152 Extreme
Sirius Satellite Radio - 148 TalkCentral
KBNP/Portland

Over the last 25 years I’ve gone back and forth on being open about my ADD and learning disabilities. Since I am going on the radio, I guess I am back in an open phase.

Well, sort of. Until my blog post I actually was pretty quiet about getting treatment. I was a bit surprised by the negative reaction I got from a fair number of friends when I mentioned I was even thinking about going on medication. If I was getting the reaction from friends I figured it would be better to keep it pretty quiet overall. After a week though I felt quite a bit better hearing comments like, “Ok, something is very different with you recently (in a good way), what gives?”

Before seeking a drug for ADD, I concentrated on behavioral changes to deal with it. This includes changing some of my techniques for getting things done, but also it is about creating a good environment that is more conducive to my needs. In a workplace though, creating a good environment often required asking for thing that you need changed at work, whether is your workspace or your work tasks. This is when it gets pretty sticky.

The sort of modifications that ADD folks need for their work space are things like privacy, quietness and no visual distractions. These needs make cube life very difficult. A private cube is better than a bullpen. A cube on the edge of a cube pool is better than one in the middle. An office trumps any sort of cube. Do you see the sticky spot? Things that help an ADD person are environmental elements that everyone wants, and are often granted by seniority or rank rather than need.

To get a better workspace based on need before you would have “earned” it in that passive aggressive office one-upmanship, marks you to your co-workers. Getting what you need means frequently damaging relationships with co-workers. Mentioning that you have a medical condition requiring it, will generally just make things worse with comments about how ADD is a fad condition, or that you must have some sort of unscrupulous doctor.

This is all to say that behavioral treatment can get you where you need with a lot of work, but often with a lot of social consequences. Taking a small pill once a day gets me to the same place or better without the need to “stand out” in uncomfortable ways. A more positive way of looking at it though is that Adderall gives me the ability to function in a variety of environments now, where before I was limited to working in optimal conditions. That flexibility is worth a lot to me.

My guess is that we will be talking all about this tonight 8-9PM PST.

Lewis Black has a routine where he scoffs at the optimism of each new year filled with thoughts of “this is going to be the year!” asking where the poor soul is sobbing in the corner mourning the ending year saying things like “NO!, no! *this* was the year, it can’t be over already!”

While I am looking forward to the things to come in 2006, 2005 has been an amazing year. 2006 has some big shoes to fill. In 2005 I celebrated my tenth anniversary with Ray (the best meal I ever had EVER was our anniversary dinner), celebrated my 30th birthday, and made many new friends. I also finally got treatment for ADD which enabled me to get my life back in order.

Professionally, I have gotten the job I have really wanted, and have been very fortunate in my personal Flash development, winning a TV, and getting to travel to Asia and speak at several conferences. I know nothing is more obnoxious than people gushing about their success so I’ll stop now, but 2005 pretty much started off with a bang and kept going.

And the icing on the cake is that I actually started a new blog and kept blogging. Thanks for reading it!

With this tutorial you can add a Favicon to a Blogger. I figured out how to add a favicon to a Blogger blog. This works with both the “old” Blogger.com blogs and the Blog 2.0 blogs.To add a favicon to blogger.com:
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Some days back most of the reader ask me a question that is there any way to add rating in there blog and post too. So they will let know which post are most viewed. So this post will help you all to add ration to your blogs.

Outbrain, a free service for rating and delivering content to site publishers. Outbrain lets you add inline, 5-star ratings to your blog entries, providing you with an interactive way to see what your readers do and don’t like on your site. Outbrain also offers a blogroll widget that will provide links to quality blog articles based on their user ratings.
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Most of the Beta Blogger wants to know hot to add Adsense in between post. Coz that one is difficult method to ad adsense in (New) Beta Blogger. But there is hack from which you can use adsense in beta Blogger. So here is the method to how to use Adsense in Beta Blogger:-

Go to your Beta Blogger template page, and click on ‘Edit HTML’ tab and tick the checkbox of ‘Expand Widget Templates’. Wait for a sec and look for the following lines of Beta Blogger template HTML code usually found somewhere after the half-way mark of the entire codings:
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