Welcome to Send Me On My Way.
I'm your host, Audrey Dean Kelly.
And on this podcast, we're going to talk about everything from music to pop culture to reality
TV to pretty much whatever I want.
So let's get into it.
Welcome to the ADHD episode.
I was actually inspired to do this episode because I've recently have had quite an aha
moment with understanding my own ADHD.
And it happened, believe it or not, on TikTok.
Surprise, surprise.
I learned so much there.
But I will give credit where credit's due.
This girl's account, Micah, I came across this video that she was sharing where she
was reading an article about hyper-focus and ADHD.
And I'm just going to give you this quote as we kick this off.
So, people who think ADHD means having a short attention span misunderstand what ADHD is.
A better way to look at it is people with ADHD have a dysregulated attention system.
All right, we're going to get into that.
But first, I'm going to back it up.
We're going to talk about my history with ADHD, my journey with Adderall, being diagnosed.
So let's go back to, God, what grade was it?
I think I was in fourth grade.
Yeah, that seems right.
I was in fourth grade when they put me on Adderall.
I think I had been struggling in my math classes.
And here's what I don't remember.
I don't remember ever getting any kind of testing.
I do remember being put on medication.
I remember going to a doctor, that doctor being like my pediatrician, and being prescribed
this, not a psychiatrist.
There was absolutely no evaluation other than my mom just taking me there and saying, I'm
hearing she hasn't been paying attention in school.
And my mom was a teacher, so maybe they just took that authority.
But also, I'm 37 years old.
So this was really the onset of Adderall even being a thing.
This was really the guinea pig days.
My generation, we definitely, us kids that were put on this medication were definitely
guinea pigs.
One of my friends had been put on Ritalin at an early age, and then had then transitioned
to Adderall, I think maybe a year before I was put on it.
So just to give you that framework, the drug had not been prescribed for that long.
And in my experience at that time, they were starting to put kids on it.
Maybe not every kid was on it the way you saw like 10 years later, or maybe even now.
I mean, 10 years later, it seemed like every other kid was on Adderall.
But at that time, it was a little fewer and far between.
And yeah, I mean, I remember the first day that I took it.
I remember just feeling like I can do anything in the world.
I mean, in hindsight, and having lived a full life, we'll just leave you with that.
Yeah, I know what was happening right there.
And then what would happen in the afternoon is I would be a grumpy little brat that was
coming off of a high, a synthetic or legal extended release, andphetamine.
And so yeah, on the one hand, I felt great in the morning.
I would focus, I guess, in school.
But I remember just feeling like so anxious, not hungry.
What I also found later in life, and we'll get to this, was that sometimes the things
that I would learn, I wouldn't retain them as long when I was in that kind of state.
It was hard for me to eat because I wasn't hungry.
That led to later on eating disorders, and I would have trouble getting to sleep at night.
I struggled a lot with UTIs when I got older.
That's very TMI, but it's true.
And I definitely think it's related to this, and I will get to that later in the episode.
We'll bring it back.
But basically, I feel like my experience with the drug was not great.
And with that said, I was on it for a very long time.
So we're talking fourth grade until through college.
Now granted, there were a couple of years there where I had to go off of it because
of the eating disorder.
So I did take a little break from it then, but I got right back into it my senior year.
I had a prescription in college.
And again, I mean, getting the drug was as easy as going to my general practitioner at
the time, saying that I had been prescribed it before, and getting it.
That's the truth.
And so, yeah, I, in college, was the first time I really started to abuse it in the sense
that I knew that I could cram for a test and take in so much information overnight before
something so it made it so that it really messed with the way that I approached learning.
I didn't approach for the things that I didn't enjoy.
I would basically wait until the end, stay up all night, take out or all.
I remember just basically living in the library sometimes.
And my library was 24 hours at college.
This is so many of you are probably listening and be like, yeah, all of us were doing that.
We all were doing that.
Even if you didn't have a prescription, people were taking other peoples.
It's just, it was so prevalent.
And I ended up stopping it in college.
And I just got to a point where I was like, I don't like how I feel on this.
And so basically, I started to treat my ADHD with cannabis.
And I think when I was younger, I mean, granted, I lived in California.
It was legal.
So just going to give you that framework.
I had every right to.
But I did find that if I would get into these states where I was very focused on some things.
And I think the longer that I wasn't on Adderall and the longer I got away from it, I realized
how awful it was when I was on it.
And I think I kind of resented my mom for putting me on it, which, sorry, mom, I deserve
that because so many parents did it and they didn't know any better.
But I started to convince myself that I was like, I, and this was after I got out of school.
So like, we'll give you that framework.
After I got out of school and I wasn't having to study things that I didn't want to do,
I didn't feel like I had any problems with focusing.
And I started to convince myself, I was like, I don't have ADHD at all.
Like, I don't know why they put me on that.
I was a guinea pig.
I was a victim for being put on it when I was a kid and like, look at all of the things
that did to me.
And you know, I just didn't, I was like, how could I be, how could I be have ADHD?
Well, because the ADHD part of it was like, I would think it was like hyper, hyperactivity.
And I was never a hyperactive person.
In fact, when I got into things that I liked, I was very focused and I, I mean, God, to
be a musician, to be able to teach yourself an instrument and, and learn, I just, I could
spend hours and I did.
And I would just pour myself, you know, until I was based, you know, I, and so we'll get
to this article, but I would forget to eat.
I would, I would get into these states where if I was doing something I liked, I wouldn't
do anything else.
And so to me, that wasn't, I didn't have a problem with focus.
So I wasn't ADD back to the point that I'm trying to make with all of this, which is
this article about hyper focus made me realize that I absolutely have ADHD.
I always have.
I was given a medication that did not work for me.
A, but B, let's, let's hone in on this.
I'm going to read you the next part of the article.
What causes the ADHD brain to hyper focus like distractibility, hyper focus is thought
to result from abnormally low levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain's funnel
lobes.
This dopamine deficiency makes it hard to shift gears to take up boring, but necessary tasks.
Okay.
I want to focus on that for a second because that is definitely something that I have done.
If I get into this hyper focus state, I will forget to do other things.
I mean, I really will, I will ignore, ignore things that I should be doing, at least in
my experience.
And so this really helped me.
It was really eye opening to see that like, I totally do this.
I mean, they talked about one woman who had it so badly that she didn't even realize her
house was on fire until the fireman came into the room and like the rest of her house was
on fire.
Um, she was like working so intently.
Um, but the point of all of this is, is that if you have ADHD, you are able to focus, you
have a dysregulated attention system.
You don't want to focus on the things you don't like because it's not fueling that dopamine
in your brain.
So that's why you can get on, like for example, you can get on dopamine spiral.
So someone with ADHD really should not open their social media first thing in the morning,
ever.
Like I feel like most 99% of the population knows that fact now, or at least I hope they
do.
Your brain, if you open your, so when you first wake up, your dopamine levels and your brain
are gradually rising to the level that they should be for the day.
So what happens if you open your social media first thing in the morning is that you are
getting a surge of dopamine from your social media and the rest of the day, you're going
to be chasing that.
And so at least in my experience, and I think with a lot of people, um, if I do that, if
I make the mistake and I open it first thing in the day, I will be on social media all
day long.
I really will.
I, it can be, it can be debilitating.
It really can.
I think, um, I mean, look, when I was, I'm on maternity leave right now.
So like when I was at work, I couldn't really do that.
But like being home, being on maternity leave and like we'll get it, I'm going to do a whole
postpartum episode, we'll get into how I, that really, I think ties into this as well.
But like basically you shouldn't open your social media first thing in the morning ever.
You should let your brain warm up for, they say at least an hour in my experience, I need
to give it like three to five hours.
And I just, my day is so much better.
I focus on things in such a different way when I do that.
I really have learned that over the years.
So if you didn't know that, maybe that can be of help to you.
If you find that you're scrolling all day and in what they call a dopamine hole, try
that out.
It can help.
But to shift back to hyper focus and why I wanted to make this episode and we're going
to tie it all back to music because I feel like I'm going to tie most of these back into
music.
Musicians for sure.
I think a lot of us have ADHD.
I think a lot of us are tapping into this hyper focus state.
And so the point of all of this is you can actually yield your ADHD to your advantage
to learn something that you, but it has to be something you like.
So knowing that you need to be in a career that you like.
If you're someone with ADHD, you, it's so important for you to find something that you
like to do.
Your day will go by so much quicker.
Like look, if I have a lot of work when I'm at work, I am so much happier.
I like want the day flies by.
I'm into it.
I'm going, you know, I just, and like, look, I have some days where I'm like more in the
mood to do one task over the other.
Some days I'm like really jazzed to do this and like, but once you kind of tap into what
that is for you, you can use this as a superpower.
And maybe I mean, look, I think I'm not saying everybody should get off of medication and
Adderall.
I'm not saying that at all.
It does help some people and it works for them.
I'm sharing my experience.
That's all I'm trying to do on this podcast period, but my experience with it was not
good.
It wasn't good for my body.
And I, having come from the guinea pig generation, I do worry about the long term effects of what
that's going to do to my body and my heart.
Like let's be real.
It is, it's not good what amphetamine is doing to your heart if you're taking it every
day.
It's just not.
Yeah, I really enjoy an unmedicated ADHD journey.
And now I'm going to say that and I do take other medications, but not other medications
for ADHD.
And it works for me.
So if you're finding that you're having to like live your life medicated, like taking
Adderall so that you can really focus on your work and really hunker down on something
that if you were not to take that, you, it would be like the last thing you would want
to do.
Maybe you should shift because you might find a superpower in doing something that you really
enjoy.
And I mean, my God, it's, I was lucky to find that.
I was lucky to find music when I was younger.
I'm not going to lie.
Like even doing this podcast, I'm super excited.
Like I really enjoy this.
I really am excited about this.
And like it's something that I could spend, I mean, Jesus, I've, I've released three episodes
and past three days.
Like I could just do it for so long and it's because I enjoy it.
I like it.
I'm hyper focused on it.
Um, now granted, there is a downside to being hyper focused, um, which is why I brought
up the UTI earlier.
You can be so focused that you forget to do things like I talked about, I'll be so focused
that I'll forget to eat.
I will be so focused and they talk about this in the article, you'll be so focused that
you forget to pee.
And like reading that part of the article was like that alone was so interesting because
I, it just brought me back to being this like young girl who was like getting, you know,
kitty infections and like, you know, pretty bad urinary situations.
And I think it was because I was as a young girl, I was like, when I was hyper focused,
I would like forget to go to the bathroom and I would like hold my pee.
So you guys are going to get a real unfiltered glimpse into me all buckle up.
But that might help some of you look into it.
If you are getting really bad UTIs, um, maybe you aren't remembering because you're so focused
on something that you're liking.
I don't know.
But, uh, yeah, you do have to check yourself with it.
So I think, um, setting timers can be a good thing.
I am someone who, my God, Alexa is my, she's my bitch.
I mean, the amount of timers that I set with her is just out of control, but it does help
me with staying regulated with it.
Um, but yeah, I really, I will hold on.
I should give credit where credit's due on this article.
So, um, this article was from Attitude Magazine and it's called Hyper Focus, the ADHD phenomenon
of hyper fixation by Royce Flippen.
Um, and, uh, yeah, it's really interesting.
It talks about, you know, the ways it can hurt you, but I, I really want to focus on
the ways that you can use this to your benefit.
And I really think the key thing here is since when you're hyper focused, like you're doing
something you love, you need to shift what you need to shift gears if you're not, you
know, and I know that's not the easiest advice, trust me.
Um, but yeah, maybe find a different way to do it.
It doesn't mean like necessarily upending your job, but even like I said, like I've
always been someone who can like manage my own tasks and like, yeah, I'll have days where
I like really want to work on like math kind of like it more analytical things.
And then other days I want to work on more like project management.
I don't know.
I just have different days where I'm into other things and knowing this now, um, it
makes sense the way I have structured my work life historically.
Um, and I think I've just, I've naturally been doing this for a while.
So reading this article and realizing that, oh man, I definitely do have ADHD, but like,
hmm, that's not necessarily the worst thing.
It's not.
It really isn't.
I mean, there's a lot that comes with it, but I think a lot of us have this.
So, uh, I think that's all I've needed to say on this episode.
And uh, yeah, let me know if you guys have questions and once again, thanks for listening
to me all.
Love you.
You can support this podcast by subscribing.
The
Yeah, we soak up the last resident like the summer morning
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the cold days of the summer, so
We can take a drive in the moonlight sometimes
In the summer, summer, summer, summer, now
Sit back on the beach with a friend
We all took something we didn't ask for
We were so ways running
I don't want this feeling at the end
Yeah, we soak up the last resident like the summer morning
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the cold days of the summer, so
We can take a drive in the moonlight sometimes
In the summer, summer, summer, summer, now
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the cold days of the summer, so
We can take a drive in the moonlight sometimes
In the summer, summer, summer, summer, now
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the summer, summer, summer, summer, now
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
Now I know it's the last river
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the cold days of the summer, so
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
In the summer, summer, summer, summer, now
Here we sit back, can we wake her up?
All the days are so good, let us feel it like something new