I genuinely believe that if you did a study of late-diagnosis ADD/ADHD adults, you would discover that the leading cause of depression in those who are finally being treated and taught how to handle this Disorder* is the intermittent realization of just how terrible a job they did of managing their lives (and the lives of those dependent on them) while they were untreated.
It is not unusual, for example to find an ADD/ADHD adult who will never be able to get a credit card again. We end up paying ridiculous interest rates on those loans that we can get (my last car loan was 18%), and things like home ownership or big expensive vacations are just dreams.
I'm sure that utility companies and service providers just love us, though, given that the most common way an untreated ADD adult remembers to pay the phone bill or the electricity is when they shut off the service. By our mid 30's, we've probably paid enough late fees to put several employees' children through college. Not that our own kids have college funds, though. When I was untreated, anything above and beyond the bills would get eaten up in late fees or reconnect charges.
And then there's the phenomenon of "did I buy this yet?" in which the haphazard, squirrel-on-meth ADD brain can't remember whether you picked up the toilet paper or bought that book before. Having extra necessities isn't really bad - as long as you have the storage space for them. But buying multiples of non-essentials just leaves you with two whatevers and no money.
When you're finally being treated, the results of all your failures burst upon your awareness like methane bubbles in a swamp. What's worse is that they usually occur to you one thing at a time, but the negative thoughts and feelings they bring with them have a cumulative effect. It's no wonder, then, that a significant percentage of ADD adults are on anti-depressant medications as well as treatment for the ADD.
The accumulation of actually knowing what effect your inability to manage your life THEN has on your life NOW can be so overwhelming that you can't see any way that you can possibly make up for it all. It's a burden that can get so heavy you wonder if it's worth carrying on at all.
If you have a family, you also recognize the things they have been forced to carry just by living with you and it's hard to keep believing that they wouldn't have been better - or be better now - if they had not had to deal with your issues and how hard they made life for everyone around you.
Late diagnosis and finally getting help can feel like a fresh start and, in many ways, it is. Suddenly, you remember what you need to do, who you need to call, what you need to pick up at the store. Every bit of progress feels like a victory.
When you try to share your victories, though, that's when you learn another hard lesson: it doesn't matter that you're finally succeeding. The fact that you should have been doing these things - paying bills on time, keeping appointments, getting the laundry done - means that no one but you can see what a big deal these things are.
After all, life doesn't reward us for doing things that we are expected to do: the rewards only come when you surpass those things and distinguish yourself as above and beyond your peers in some way.
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I said all that to say this:
Sometimes it feels like I would be better off still oblivious to the repercussions of my various failures. When the fact that I have failed to remember something that should have been seen as a necessary routine of life for years - despite having ample time and money to have taken care of it - results in a real disaster, I'm tempting to crawl back into the chaos and blur that was life without an awareness of my failures.
Yesterday afternoon, we had to take our beloved black "cat who thought he was a dog", Jack to the vet. He was very ill. We had been closely watching him for a day or so, hoping that he had just eaten something he shouldn't and would recover. He'd been down that road before.
When it became obvious that Jack wasn't going to get any better, we took him to a vet. Notice I wrote "a vet" and not "the vet". This is because we have lived here for five years and Jack, the outside cat, had never seen a vet. He hadn't had any shots in longer than that.
And so, the worst of the "I'll do it later" ADD chickens came home to roost. Jack, who we loved dearly, who made us all laugh when he came when you called his name, who was the scourge of every neighborhood squirrel and the boogieman local mama rabbits told their babies about to keep them in their burrows at night, didn't get to come home with us.
There was a possibility that he'd ingested something he shouldn't. There was a possibility he'd been snake-bit. The vet, though, seemed relatively certain that he was suffering from feline leukemia or FIV - things he would have been vaccinated against if I'd been the right kind of pet mom.
Worse than all of that, though, was that Jack wasn't the first loss. A couple of years ago, I lost my beloved, beautiful Dorrie in much the same way. Only he never made it to a vet. Dorrie died in the yard, alone and ignored, and wasn't even found until we thought something wild had gotten trapped under the back shed and expired. We think he had probably been snake-bit.
He didn't particularly do well as an outside cat, but I had never been focused and confident enough to insist that we just deal with his idiosyncrasies - Dorrie peed on laundry piles (and other fabric things) when he thought he wasn't getting enough attention, an issue I had always just dealt with by adding white vinegar to pretty much every load of laundry - and keep him in the house where he was safe.
Jack would have presented more of a challenge - he liked to chew through cords. He also really liked being outside. But that didn't mean he was any safer than Dorrie was. So now, I've lost two much-loved kitties, whose lives combined added up to what each of their lives might have been if I had just done what was right by keeping them in the house - at least most of the time - and keeping up with their vaccinations.
Lesson for everyone else - "Outside Cat" can be directly translated to "Death Sentence".
Lesson for me: Just as I have reached the point where I'm both financially and mentally able to make sure things like annual vet visits are taken care of, my family has informed me that there will be no more pets. They don't want to have to go through this again.
I've been begging for a house cat for at least a year now. I finally felt like I could find a successor to Dorrie. Anytime I mentioned it, though, I was reminded that we did still have a cat and he would be happy for all the attention I wanted to give him.
My protests that having to be outside by myself in whatever weather in order to pet the cat when what I really wanted was one that would sit with me while we watched evening TV or read or whatever were not considered good enough.
I've never not had a cat for any real extended period of time when I had a permanent place to live. I have always said I was a cat person. Don't get me wrong, I love my dogs, but there's just something about the warmth and softness of a cat. Dogs love you by nature. Cats love you by choice.
And now, I will never be allowed to fill the cat-shaped hole in my heart again. And it's my fault. Being a grown-up means that there aren't any excuses. You can't plead ADD. All you can do when you finally start to get yourself straightened out is face all the consequences of the bad habits and terrible decision making or decision neglecting you did while you were still living in the Brain tornado that is the ADD mental state.
Today, I add another 10 pounds to the world of failure I carry. It's hard, though, to understand why I have to learn this lesson and so many others through the kind of painful and permanent loss that feels less like natural consequences and more like punishment.
And people still wonder why ADD adults are often so depressed along with their ADD . . .
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If you haven't lost your chance to have a Feline friend and you'd like to, please consider adopting from your local shelter.
Most areas have listings on Petfinder.com
*I often think that, in the case of ADD, a better word would be "Chaos"
