Thanks, VenusHalley and AniManiac.

I think "if a stimulant helps you then you must have ADHD" is a myth, and I find it kind of irresponsible that mental health professionals would be saying that. Stimulants would help people having impaired cognitive symptoms due to a variety of causes. For example, cognition is impaired if a person is sleep-deprived, and stimulants will help one's thinking in that case, in addition to helping one stay awake. Another example--College students take stimulants to boost cognitive performance and thereby improve test scores. Another example--people with depression will sometimes have impaired cognition and stimulants will help with this symptom. There are lots of reasons for cognitive impairment and stimulants will help quite a few of them.

Part of what I struggle with is that for ADHD, it is deemed OK to treat it with stimulants. But for a number of other cognitive impairments, it is not deemed OK. It is just too bad if you have this problem and sorry there is no treatment available. While help is just one prescription away... There seems an unfairness about it. People with ADHD are special and deserve treatment. Others do not. Or so the thinking seems to go. Maybe that is why I have received an ADHD diagnosis, because without it, I could not be prescribed medications that would help.

I have 3 treatments for ADHD: a stimulant, a non-stimulant (Wellbutrin), and behavioral techniques. I found a great paper on "Development of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adult ADHD" and just knew when I read it that the techniques it described would be helpful to me. I'm trying some of them on my own, and next week in therapy, my therapist is going to help me with a behavioral strategy very similar to one outlined in this paper. I've whittled down my Wellbutrin prescription to almost nothing (75-100 mg/day) and find this amount adequate. I found it almost impossible to function in certain ways with no Wellbutrin, which I tried for 2 months. Some of the ADHD type symptoms were just impossible to overcome. So I went back on very low dose and that has really helped. I take the stimulant (Vyvanse) as needed, and do a lot better with it than not, but I am hoping that with continued effort at behavioral therapy, I might be able to completely eliminate this. When I tried no Wellbutrin or stimulant for 2 months and had difficulties, my prescriber suggested I take stimulant only, but the help this gives, which is significant, is quite different from having some Wellbutrin on board. The Vyvanse is indeed helpful, but by itself is not quite what I am looking for.

I guess this is what it boils down to. Thanks.

"Development of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adult ADHD"
http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/...hd.2011.19.1.7