I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 6 or 7 but my parents didn't believe in medications... so I was never really treated. Luckily, I was motivated to suceed in life, despite feeling like I had to work 500 times harder than my peers... of course I struggled a lot through high school. I got offended once when a math teacher asked me if I had ever heard of a disorder called "ADD"... because I didn't want to be different or have a learning disorder. I just remember all my life know that I thought differently than my peers, but didn't understand why. Why in first grade all my classmates had these nice organized desks, while mine was just a bunch of papers crammed into the cubby... why i couldn't keep a locker or binder organized the way my classmates seemed to easily do... how everyone in the class knew to bring in something the next day but I had absolutely no recollection of it being mentioned... Despite all that, I'm currently an RN in an ICU and in grad school.

As an adult, I've come to terms with the fact that I still have ADHD and I always have... I hear people say often "oh, I have that too"... and it almost annoys me, because it just seems like I suffered a lot growing up and currently with just feeling different... this was mentioned to me a few times when I was younger... but now as an adult working in a fast pace environment it's even more obvious... people state that I seem too relaxed, slow moving, that I don't seem like I hear people when then talk, that I don't communicate well enough, that people can't read me, that I seem to isolate myself at work and be in my own world... Almost a year ago I started strattera... it seems to kind of clear up some of the fogginess I had... but I still seem to day dream a lot... I still seem to kind of be slow to respond and react and seem to not have the appropriate physical and expressive reactions for all situations. I feel worn out and tired a lot. Sometimes I'm not even sleepy. My ex boyfriend would comment that I yawned a lot and repeatedly. I was wondering if this sounds like I have whats being called sluggish cognitive tempo or concentration deficit disorder? I just recently heard about it. I see my psychiatrist at the end of the month and I'm going to ask him about it... I always seem to downplay how severely my symptoms affect my life when I talk to him for some reason. I just want to feel normal and didn't know if anyone else with this problem had success with any medications. I started zoloft a couple months ago and i think it may have worsened some of the symptoms. I sometimes will miss doses of the zoloft and strattera due to some GI upset it gives me, so i don't know if that is messing me up as well.