A reader writes:
I have severe ADD as well. Last winter, at the urging of my 20 year old daughter, I smoked weed for the second time in 30 years. And I had the same reaction as I did last time: I curled up and waited for it to pass. Long ago when I was a regular pot smoker I was utterly incapable of even the simplest tasks. So I stopped smoking and life lurched forward. One man's poison is another man's elixir.
When I started taking Adderall about 10 years ago, I literally wept over my new-found ability to manage my life and work. I am old enough that ADD was not on the radar screen for most of my life. Deemed intelligent by most, I was commonly told that I could do better if I just bore down and concentrated. This is as punishing as telling a one-legged man to just run faster.
What I am really pushing back on is the tacit implication that Adderall is a phony treatment. Worse, I am weary of the judgmentalism that seems to cloud ADD.
ADD is something that is extraordinarily difficult to describe and similarly difficult to understand as a non-sufferer. This has brought me an awful lot of unsolicited commentary. I get things like, "You just have to modify your diet," or "Richard Branson doesn't treat his ADD," or even "it's all in your head." (Duh!) Parking tickets and burnt muffins is a way of life for us ADD folk. It is expensive and a pain in the ass. With Adderall, I get half the tickets and burn fewer muffins. Leaving people with the impression that a couple of bong hits will solve my headaches really just compounds them.
I am happy that a reader found relief with pot. If it works, it works. But anecdotal blurbs such as this have a way of depreciating the realities of ADD and are too often seized by the ignorant to support their own beliefs.