Behind the bar at Starbucks is no place for a woman who has trouble concentrating. Just ask Sarah Schwartz.
One day, between juggling non-fat lattes and double-shot espressos, a customer blew up at her. "You know," the woman said, "you've gotten my order wrong every single morning I've been here."
"I burst into tears," Ms. Schwartz says.
Then she got laid off.
It was the boost she needed to get help. She was diagnosed with adult attention-deficit disorder soon after, at the age of 20. "Every moment was like going up a flight of stairs," says the Vancouver film student, who is now 23. "It was hard for me to keep work. Every day I would go home and lie in bed and think about everything I had said or done during the day and regret everything."
Life changed, though, once she got treatment — she has tried a number of drugs and now uses Dexedrine, an amphetamine. "I didn't realize how bad it was until I took medication. It's like finding out how bad your eyes are when you finally get glasses."
- Please see: How to combat ADD
Ms. Schwartz is one of a growing number of adults who are being diagnosed with Adult ADD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the newer term used by many in the medical profession. (There are actually three types of the disorder, which is classified based on two clusters of symptoms involving the extent of inattentiveness and hyperactivity.)
Its hallmarks include severe inattention and distraction and/or impulsivity and hyperactivity. Common elements of the disorder in adults include a racing mind, a tendency to interrupt and major difficulties in sustaining a job or a relationship. People with ADHD seem to be accident-prone too. Some describe the ADHD mind as being similar to a computer that has too many windows open — and constantly freezes.
Just before being diagnosed in 1999 at the age of 32, Torontonian Marianne Moore says she could not keep her head above water at work. Her finances were out of control. Her apartment was a "wreck." She was seeing a therapist and her family doctor, but ADHD never came up.
"Nothing I did was enough to stem the tidal wave. I never lost this constant panic, constant dread that I was going to be discovered, that I was stupid, that I couldn't do it all and that I just needed to be committed."
Driving home from work one day, she had an anxiety attack. "I couldn't drive the car," she says. "I had to pull over. I had been having anxiety attacks in my sleep, but now they were happening during the day. I thought I had to call my dad and have him take me to the Clarke Institute [of Psychiatry]."
Later, Ms. Moore, who says she used to buy up to 25 magazines a month for their "Ten ways to a better life" articles, "went cold" when she read a story about an ADHD sufferer. Her therapist sent her to a specialist, who began the extensive testing that is required to determine adult ADHD.
As with any relatively new diagnosis, ADHD is plagued with misconceptions and skepticism. ("It isn't real." "Don't we all have it?") In common conversation, we toss off "I'm so ADD" as if it were an ironclad excuse for being tardy or forgetful. It would explain so much if we could all claim we had ADHD.
In fact, about 4 per cent of the adult population has ADHD, and whether they realize it or not, they have had it all their lives. There is no such thing as adult-onset ADHD. You may feel distracted and frazzled, but don't assume you have ADHD — you may just have a severe case of what some experts call "modern life." (For a self-test, see sidebar.)
According to studies in Ontario, 4 per cent of female and 9 per cent of male children suffer from ADHD. About 70 to 75 per cent of these children will still have major symptoms of ADHD in their adolescence. And about 60 per cent will have most of the major symptoms in their adult years.
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