Thank you, I'm excited for the relationship!

not to bug you but this ADD thing is really itching my brain, I'd love to hear how you came about getting checked and prescribed.

I was officially diagnosed at eight years old. My parents always had trouble getting me to "listen" to them. When they would ask me to do something whilst on the computer, the situation would go something like this:

Mom walks in room

Delta, you need to go downstairs and wash the dishes while I run an errand. Okay?

I turn around in my chair

Okay mom, will do.

I go back to working on the computer and the conversation is immediately eliminated from my attention

Mom comes home hours later

Delta, why didn't you wash the dishes?

I remember the conversation

Oh...sorry. I guess I forgot.

---

It was things like this that happened on a regular basis that caused my parents to take me to a doctor. I was tested for ADD and ADHD. This involved tests to make sure it wasn't another condition, surveys for teachers, interviewing my parents (my father's opinion carries weight, he is a high school counselor), and questioning me. Everything came together to point to a conclusion: I have ADD, but not ADHD (no hyperactivity).

The doctor didn't give me any kind of medicine when I was first diagnosed. He instructed my parents to use psychology to attempt to manage it. They utilized physical contact to grab my attention so I wouldn't "pass them off." I think the technique had a minimal effect.

Fast-forward to years later--I'm having trouble with grades in school. This shouldn't be the case, and my parents know it. I tested into my school's gifted learning program in the third grade, and gifted kids normally make all "A" grades in elective classes. I was making low "B" grades. They knew something was up when I made a genuine effort to get good grades and couldn't. I told them what was going on--I just could not pay attention in class. It was more difficult in classes I didn't enjoy, but the difficulty was present in all of my classes.

I told my parents I wanted to know if I had ADD. They had been pretty enigmatic about the subject up until that point, an effort in which I assume was to keep me from making excuses for laziness. My parents took me to my general practitioner, who questioned me about why I wanted to be medicated for ADD. I explained some of the above to him. He told me I needed to see a psychiatrist first, to make sure I wasn't attempting to abuse amphetamines. I turned to my dad and asked him, "Was I diagnosed when when I was eight with all of those tests?" He responded with a yes, the doctor checked the records, nodded, and told us that it wouldn't be necessary to re-diagnose. He prescribed me with Adderall.

This stuff makes me feel like a genius. I can learn anything I want...get any grade I want. I can pay attention to anything. I'm by no means addicted (I haven't had a need to take meds over break and have not taken any), but it works wonders for me. I can pay attention in any class. I haven't dropped a single dish at my restaurant since I started the medication. My grades have improved significantly.

If you want a bit of evidence that I need it, then here you go. Normally when people take Adderall when they don't have an attention disorder, their heart races and they are jittery. I don't experience this. It has to do with the mind's stasis. My natural level of stimulation is lower than the average person's level. The Adderall brings me to a "normal" level because it is a stimulant. If someone with a normal level took the Adderall, their stasis would be above average, inducing the symptoms described above.

TL,DR: I love amphetamines.

OK, so, there needs to be backstory. I indirectly talked about a certain girl here. I thought I had told Hubski what she'd actually done but can't see that in a scan of comments. This girl, who I've known for 20 years, slept with the last person I told I loved while I was sleeping with that person. (Not at the same time, geez guys. They hooked up in August; my interaction with him ran from Juneish to Septemberish. She was well aware of it) She lied to me to my face about doing so when I confronted her. Since that day I've cut her out of my life (almost) completely. That was over a month ago.

About a month ago we were both at a mutual friend's birthday party. She insisted upon talking to me, literally sitting next to me, telling me she was going to be obnoxious and talk to me until I talked back. Knowing this person as I do I had anticipated this and dreamed up a task for her. I had left a shirt at the guy's place and knew I wasn't going to be able to get it back from him. I told her if she wanted to talk, she had to get me the shirt. Then we could talk. I made no other promises. I honestly did not believe she'd be able to get the shirt. Or, well - I knew the kind of crazy determined she could be, so I knew there was a chance, I guess. This was a brilliant plot for a couple of reasons in my mind, including the fact that she'd have to go back and deal with the guy face-to-face, and so on.

Turns out she finally got the shirt. Friday she wanted to meet up and talk. We did.

Clearly she had thought she would return the shirt and we would become buddy-buddy. We met at my bar and had some sort of a discussion. She did not like the way it went. I consider what she did essentially unforgiveable and I also believe that forgiving her for it would send a message to her that she could do the same thing again in the future and I'd get over it. Nope. With a 'friend' like that I wouldn't need any enemies. (If anyone's going to say "You should be mad at the dude too!" yes, once I found out, I also cut him out of my life. They both get consequences for their choices but frankly, I've known him for 9 months and her for 20 years. What she did was worse.) This woman is certifiably and diagnosed as unbalanced, by the way. When she realized she wasn't going to get the outcome she wanted she began lashing out, both at me and anyone else at the bar she knew. When I finally walked away from the table, realizing things were going nowhere except downhill, she went outside and tried to start a fight with someone else. A girl found and told me and I went out to try to prevent it. For those of you that've met me, it may sound hilarious, but I was bigger than both of the girls that would've been involved in the altercation.

She ended up getting thrown out. Good. I'm proud of the way I conducted myself that night but it was extremely emotionally draining for me. She'd been saying things to try and hurt me and most didn't but one did, even though I know it's false: she said the guy didn't care about me and had never cared about me. Not true. Data demonstrates otherwise, and so on, but it played on an insecurity I hadn't realized I had and that colored my entire weekend. I went home early that night.

The rest of the weekend I had trouble sleeping and became despirited about poetry stuff. I saw someone I knew a long time ago who I'd carried a torch for for a long time unexpectedly on Saturday and that threw me - he'd moved out of state. I got trapped at my parents' house for several hours when I really only wanted to run there and back. I had a headache from Saturday on. Sunday was actually the first time I shed any tears about the crazy girl/stupid boy stuff. I get emotional when I'm tired. I was also worried I was sick/running a fever but I appear well enough today.

Things aren't great but they're absolutely liveable. I need to buy my cat food and litter today and then I'm just getting Chinese food and passing out at like, 6. I'm trying to quash the critical poetry voices in my head. It's okay to be at work today, despite my groanings yeseterday.

In the long run this will all just be a blip on the radar. But in the moment, I am just not quite yet my usual self.

Also, I totally love that song.

You know, I don't think you should let the overuse or overpopularization of things prevent you from enjoying things. Fads come and go, but someone who says they're totally stoked bout something in a genuine way, or uses "Radical" or "Tubular" to express amazement in something and is completely joyful and unironic in its usage - they're they people who you want to hang out with, if only for their emotional honesty.