This post shares my ten most popular blog posts on Adult ADHD, with a snippet about each. They touch upon relationships, medication, scientific research, management tools, and much more.
As you can see from the wide range of topics, I focus on Adult ADHD from many angles. Why? Because ADHD is complex! The more we connect the dots, the more we can make sense of—and elevate—our lives and our relationships
I started this blog in 2008. That makes it the first website devoted to Adult ADHD – and still going strong. At last count: 310 posts and 7,000+ comments.
Readers tell me they love poking around the archive, discovering one original and informative post after another, including
- Consumers stories about generics and genetic-testing
- Poignant first-person guest essays
- Research highlights
- Relationship strategies
- A series of posts based on reading my first book—by two late-diagnosis ADHD women married to men with with late-diagnosis ADHD. They make one thing very clear: Relationship challenges involve much more than “ADHD vs. Non-ADHD”
Today, I’ll make it easy for you with highlighting these ten best blog posts, according to blog visitors. I hope they take you from one fascinating topic to another.
Thanks for riding this coaster with me!
1. When Adult ADHD Feels Like “Not Being Good Enough”
Left unrecognized or poorly managed, ADHD can wreak havoc with the people who have it—and everyone in the vicinity.
This powerfully written essay offers the “non-ADHD partners” a glimpse of how their “ADHD partners” might feel. Before diagnosis. Before treatment. Before education and acceptance by both partners.
2. ADHD and Empathy: A Study, Book Excerpt, and Empathy Defined
Misinterpreting ADHD-related patterns can make our lives so much harder. The idea is not “making excuses for bad behavior.”
Rather, it’s knowing that sometimes ADHD makes things a little more…complex. That includes the ability to empathize.
3. Six Key Management Tools for Adult ADHD: Time, Tasks, and Memories
In my experience, organized people are mostly made, not born. Especially in this 21st Century, we must all maximize strategies to stay on top of our time and priorities.
4. What You Don't Know About Your Concerta Pills Might Hurt You
Concerta generics are wreaking havoc with millions of people for whom this stimulant works beautifully—and has for years.
What can you do? The status changes often — and quickly. I keep you informed.
5. Breaking Out of ADHD Relationship Dysfunction—After Not Breaking a Fall
As I learned first-hand and share in this personal essay: Thriving with ADHD in one’s relationship often means treading seas of gray area. Our human brains, however, prefer easy black and white.
When we misinterpret a partner’s ADHD-related patterns as “not caring” or “not loving,” we risk making things so much harder. Yet, we also must recognize that understanding does not mean excusing hurtful behavior.
6. “I Was Addicted to Meth When I Was Diagnosed With ADHD”
If for some reason your heart needs breaking, read this post and comments. This is an unrecognized public-health disaster: The numbers of people with undiagnosed ADHD who stumble into improved functioning—courtesy of methamphetamine.
Many seek an ADHD evaluation and pursue proper treatment. Too often, though, the psychiatrists whose help they seek tell them: “Be off meth for a month and talk to me.” Meanwhile, lives and jobs hang in the balance.
7. ADHD and Sex: Post-Orgasm Irritability, Jerkdom
I love identifying topics that reduce readers’ feelings of isolation—that “I’m the only one with this weird problem”—and offer rational explanations. Explanations based in neurochemistry, not psychological theory. Especially when there is an ADHD connection.
This is one of those topics.
8. Research: ADHD, Balance, and "Postural Sway"
Can ADHD create physical balance problems? Yes, we’re hearing more about ADHD-related challenges with something called “motor control.” Simply put, balance. I’ll share a few examples and then results from a very interesting study.
This issue is important because poor coordination is associated with physical injuries, some of them severe. It can even affect the results of roadside sobriety tests.
9. When ADHD Leads to “Self-Medicating” With Argument
Some people get a kick from provoking conflict—consciously or not. It might feel good in the moment. But it can have disastrous consequences. And even land “trolls” in Facebook Jail.
Again, this is one of those topics that I wrote about first, including in my first book, Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? More than 14 years ago. Many who publicly scolded me for posing this idea — calling me “negative” —now post their own version of it.
10. FAA Guidelines on ADHD — No Rx for Commercial Airline Pilots?
This post explores FAA policy guidelines on ADHD. Specifically, being a commercial pilot while having ADHD and taking medications to treat ADHD symptoms.
Originally published in 2012 and updated February 2022, it’s one of my most perennially popular posts. At the end, I’ll share a new FAA Safety Briefing.
Hi Gina. I literally wanted to cry when I found this website…. Someone who KNOWS what they’re talking about and might actually be able to listen to me with real insight and knowledgeable suggestions to offer. I’ve read lots and lots of your blogs and posts but decided to comment on this one because there were fewer comments.
An ADHD rollercoaster has literally been what I’ve been on for at least 5 years now. I was diagnosed with severe depression most of my life and was finally diagnosed ADHD about 16 years ago (I’m 42). I started out on Vyvanse and felt I should be a spokesperson for the company because it literally CHANGED my life. I was finally able to be the ME that I always knew was in there but just could not, for the life of me, bring that person out. For 10 years, I was AMAZING! I went to college and got a degree in Psychology with a 3.8 GPA, I was an amazing parent and we did all the fun stuff. I even went to the stores by myself! I was very much a functioning adult and life was good.
Five to seven years ago, I started feeling maybe my medication wasn’t working so well. I had my Dr. switch up my medications, we tried Adderall IR, Adderall XR, Vyvanse chewables, taking me down to lower doses and then bringing me back up hoping to get the same help I once had from ADHD medications. I started going down the generic Rx rabbithole, switching pharmacies because the generic I was on was being claimed on Reddit was useless… The past two years started going downhill fast and I finally went back to Vyvanse and settled that my life would never be good again because I guess my tolerance level has maxed out. My anxiety had become debilitating and everything was overwhelming. I tried nootropics and supplements; added magnesium, and GABA and B-vitamins, L-tyrosine, etc… I even game myself enimas in an effort to detox my liver!
I have an autistic/ADHD 5 year old that is very time consuming and busy and she NEEDS me. I am desperate to help myself so that I can help her, but instead we are couped up in the house most of the time because my anxiety is so extreme and I’m overwhelmed by the thought of anything. Executive Dysfunction has become a very real thing to me.
I tood a genetic Rx test recently and it was found that methylphenidate was more compatible with me genetically than amphetamines because of lack of eficacy (not positive what that means exactly, but I think I get it). I finally found a little bit of hope… I’ve been on generic Concerta (methylphindate ER 40 mg) for about a week and I’m done for. It’s awful and I question if it’s even working at all. I slept for 12 hours the other night. I don’t think I’ve slept that long my entire 42 years of existence. The generic brand is Amneal. I read your blog about OROS and the “approved generic” Patriot brand and will most definitely be talking to my dr. and pharmacist about what we can do to switch but my question is this… Is this my last hope? If this medication doesn’t work, do I eventually have to settle and accept that my tolerance is maxed out with ADHD medications?
Surely, I can’t be the only person who has grown a tolerance and NEEDS something additional, right? What do other people do in my situation? My doctors tell me to stop reading and investigating so much, but I do it because I’m desperate to help myslef and if they won’t help me, I’m all I have. LOL I say that while laughing and crying at the same time. I apologize for this comment being so lengthy but in reading your blogs, I feel that you are the most educated person on this topic I have ever come across that can actually give me some real advice and direction. Thank you so much. I will be waiting anxiously for a reply. God bless!
Dear LeeAnn,
Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate the difficulty in solving this puzzle.
Your doctors tell you to stop reading and investigating…..wow. I guess all your questions and lack of satisfaction makes them feel incompetent. Too bad for them. 🙂
Here are the things that stand out for me:
1. As you figured out, you haven’t tried the methylphenidate class. That’s worth a try, following the basic protocol.
It’s rather shocking to me that your Dr. only gave you more amphetamines. But I get shocked a lot by prescriber stories. 🙂
It might be, in the end, that Vyvanse or other amphetamine still works best for your neurochemistry, but you won’t know until you try.
The gene-testing is often misinterpreted. So I’d consider that one piece of data, potentially, but nothing concrete. Unless it also indicates you are a slow or rapid metabolizer. That part’s useful.
2. You have a 5-year old daughter with special needs. And you write that “five to seven years ago, I started feeling maybe my medication wasn’t working so well.”
Think there’s a coincidence? 🙂 Six or so years ago….pregnancy, then a new baby, then toddler, then…a young child and COVID.
Pregnancy itself can throw off hormones, and hormones affect brain function.
Moreover, the extra demands you’ve been trying to deal with might be beyond the help of a stimulant alone. This requires serious organizational strategies.
Vyvanse might have given a false sense of “working” because your life might have been less complicated then. Maybe you could get by without learning organizational, goal-setting, time-management strategies…but now….no longer a luxury.
And you have other children as well, it seems?
3. It might also be that your child should be considered for medication. In more severe cases, stimulants are sometimes prescribed for children under 7. Better managing the ADHD can also help to better manage the ASD. (Or to see, perhaps, that it’s more ADHD than ASD….misdiagnoses happens a lot.)
4. You’re 42, which means you might be nearing at least peri-menopause. The estrogen fluctuations can also exacerbate ADHD symptoms.
Here’s an article about that from CHADD:
https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/the-complete-picture-how-estrogen-affects-women-with-adhd/#:~:text=Quinn%20writes%20the%20changes%20in,and%20symptoms%20of%20premenstrual%20syndrome.
5. Anything else changed in terms of sleep or diet or other Rx? Sometimes taking an anti-depressant will sort of “cancel out” a stimulant’s effect.
6. It seems there are plenty of avenues to explore here so I don’t think “this is as good as it gets.” 🙂
I hope this helps.
Best of luck!
g
I’m needing Help I’m a Small Business owner who needs an executive assistant don’t really know where to turn.
Hi Chris,
Check out the directory for the National Association of Professional Organizers (and Efficiency Experts)
https://Napo.net
You can search for someone who has experience with small business and ADHD. Or just small business.
Gina