Lora Loves ADD!

Growing up in a "normal" world with ADD (if you believe in that) is a HUGE challenge.  However now that I am a corner away from my 30th birthday, about to cross the threshold into my adult years I finally feel appreciation for that gift I have been given. I have come home, to myself.

In the early 90's, a good friend of my mothers, introduced her to the subject of ADD and supported her with literature and phone #'s of doctors who specialized in the treatment there of.  Soon after, the four of us (mother, father, brother and self) found ourselves on the couch of Dr. Bacon's office. A fretful man, terribly distracted who rolled himself back and forth between computers, frantically typing, talking and no sooner Prescribing.  I must say that after this meeting I felt happy, relieved and unlike my brother quite willing to try the meds.

Until then I had spent my life as sleepless, messy,  lefty who spoke, read and wrote backwards, had an imaginary friend and social anxieties. You can understand why I was relived, as though these magic pills would fold me nice and neatly into the rigid box labelled NORMAL and TOLERABLE.

I had coasted through my early years in public school, seeking and finding trouble (to get me out of class), mastered the art of skipping, and found that drugs, alcohol and playing very, very dumb was the  only way I could make it through school. My act was up in grade 9, when one of my teachers contacted my mother regarding my inability to read and write and about my aimless wandering through the halls.

Then there was my brother.  A brilliant artist and genius writer, who has his way with words and is very, very talented and focused, some might say tunnel minded. He too survived his education!  I liked to follow him around. I was born in the same year, the same month and followed him to arts school, faking my way through music, playing the trumpet just so I could be near him. And then beside him on the couch of Dr. Bacon's office. Together, fixed.

Being "fixed" did help me experience a clear head and kept me in the class room a little longer. I felt more organized and even. Because I was taking amphetamines (speed), I  also dropped some baby fat, and quickly too.

 It wasn't quite a year when being fixed became boring. I felt my creative edge slipping way, no more poems, interesting thoughts, day dreams or music head. Music head is the only way I could explain what happened when everything was quite, like lying down before bed. I could hear music,  my own arrangements, playing loud inside my head as though there were a radio implanted in my brain. I would lay awake listening and watching the shapes and colours dance behind my eyelids, until finally falling asleep, well hopefully.

While familiar pieces of me lay dormant, and anger wasn't easy to express, I did what a lot of teenagers do; rebel. I crushed and snorted and shared my drugs, experimented a lot, and finally got myself kicked out of school. Looking back I think it was the best thing that happened. It somehow led me to nutrition school and the desire for all things natural.

Now, 8 years later and with the chaos of 3 active boys I find my self home. Home with my own rules and many creative outlets. I feel blessed and have come to see the beauty of my journey and totally appreciate the differences that led me here. And sometimes I sure can get a lot of stuff done!!