[procastatron]

I saw a school psych when I was in college and all it really did was piss me off.

The guy spent 30 minutes asking me these types of questions except even more generic and then afterwards said "Yep, you have ADD".

I hardly talked about myself and the way he phrased the questions made it super easy to say yes to all of them. He wrote me a prescription and I never got it filled because of how little I felt he actually had done. I've taken all kinds of ADD medicine from friends, etc but somehow getting a prescription from what seemed like a bullshit therapy session made me stop taking ADD drugs altogether.

If you read some of my other comments, when I take adderall, ritalin, daytrana etc I end up just being more focused in my procrastination. It's like my brain says, "I know what you're doing drug, and I'm going to fuck with you"

[skue]

The meds are not magical at all: they just help you be less distracted.

If you have been procrastinating for years and have a regular routine and numerous personal habits built around procrastination, those don't go away when you take a pill. All the meds do is make you more present, which would understandably make you more conscious of those routines and habits. That might not be fun -- but it is the first step in changing the habits.

Have you talked to anyone besides the school psych? If it is ADHD (and sorry to hear they half-assed your assessment), then meds are only part of the solution. Regular exercise, a more structured routine, eliminating distractions, finding a partner who supports you, etc. are also important.

You can learn more on your own via books or trial-and-error, or by finding a clinician who can be like a coach to help you figure out what works best for you. The book I listed above talks about all the non-med things you could be doing: one of the authors has ADHD but doesn't find meds helpful for him, so he uses a number of lifestyle changes and natural alternatives instead. Also, the authors have a specialized clinic outside of Boston, and there are other centers like this around, with people far more competent than the school psych who can spend the time to help figure this out.

[chernevik]

That you took a bunch of meds doesn't mean you took the ones right for your particular condition. That you spoke to one psych who seemed a disinterested quack doesn't mean all doctors are.

The human brain is very complicated, executive function is one of its highest and most complicated tasks. Fixing it with Pill Powerball doesn't seem likely to me.

That you felt you were fighting the drug may suggest you have other issues to work out. Which really isn't surprising. If you've got serious ADD / ADHD, the hookup between events and your feelings / reactions to those events has been seriously impaired. Which means that all the internal mechanisms for monitoring and managing your emotional state, and the mechanisms for monitoring your relationships with other people and their reactions to your behavior, were seriously fucked up. Which your emotional development to date has been working with a distant echo of good information about how you and other people react to stuff.

That doesn't mean you have these conditions. It does mean you are improperly excluding the possibility.

Think about why that may be. Why might your brain fight a drug that might be helpful? Are you embarrassed by the possibility you have such a condition? Worried you'll be dependent on a drug? Well, too bad. If that's what's going on, that's what's going on, and running from it won't get you anywhere but right where you are.

I take a pill every day so I can think. I hate needing that pill. Well, boo-hoo for me. Again, I don't know whether you have this condition or not. But you certainly have a deep problem, and fixing it is going to take a long hard look in the mirror, and probably admitting some shit that you really don't want to hear. If you're batting away plausible explanations with responses like this, you aren't going to figure this out.