I am glad to hear cooking and painting did it for you yesterday, pat. I like constructive solutions. For me it is too easy sometimes to either eat or sleep. I am glad these things can calm me down, but the eating has become destructive. I picture the kind of negative thinking you are describing and that I think I do too, as a gerbil running up and down each of ten mazes partially--halfway up one, then back down, then a quarter of the way up the next and so on. When I started on my ADD meds, this thinking went away, I was very confused that first day. That night when the medicine wore off, my mind started running over"tragedies." It felt so familiar and comfortable for a few minutes to be my usual obsessively unfocused self. I realized what was happening and I calmed down. I was and am still amazed. I don't know if this thinking would come back if I stopped my ADD meds but I don't plan to stop for the moment.

I am working on instituting things like meditation and prayer into my routine so I have behavioral changes to support me. I only worry now that somewhere down the road the ADD medication will quit on me, like so many antidepressants. So I am also going to church and 12 step meetings. I don't mean to bore you with all this stuff fellow posters but it really helps me to set out all this stuff and then return back and try to reminds myself and learn from it.

Meta