CADDAC Conference 2009
I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend the CADDAC conference in Toronto. To my knowledge, it was the first-ever 2-day ADHD event of its type in Canada, and it was excellent. It’s a tricky thing to find a balance of speakers and workshops that can engage and enlighten everyone from experienced clinicians and coaches to newly-diagnosed young adults, but the organizers did a really admirable job. Over the course of my next few posts, I’ll be writing about what I found to be most exciting and informative aspects of the conference.
While I was unable to attend the comedy show with Canadian stars Rick Green and Patrick McKenna on Saturday night, I was truly excited to see what a central a role it played in the promotion of the conference. And while ADHD is unquestionably a very serious mental health issue — with profound implications for public health — it can also be very, very funny. Putting first-rate Canadian comedians (both of whom have ADHD themselves) in such a prominent place at the conference was a great reminder of how much better it feels to have ADHD when we can laugh at it.
Highlights of the conference that I was able to take in included:
- Two powerful lectures by American psychiatry professor Dr. Russell Barkley. The first, which began with an overview of the neurophysiology of ADHD, explored the central role that poor Executive Function plays in creating the symptoms of Adult ADHD. The second was an overview of the latest research on the major life activities that are impaired by having ADHD. Barkley argues that ADHD needs to be acknowledged as a major public health issue, with substantial implications for the economy and society.
- An inspiring presentation by Olympic rower and 2-time medalist Jake Wetzel. Wetzel talked movingly about the frustrations of having ADHD as a teenager, and the importance of making the best of your strengths, minimizing your weaknesses, and following your passions.
- Steve Ilott’s workshop on “Decluttering Your Mind and Space,” which included many valuable, ADHD-friendly tips on getting clutter under control - and keeping it that way.
I’ll be blogging more on the conference soon.
Battling the Raccoons
I want very much to be posting more on this blog, but I’m not a very good raccoon.
Some of the biggest and meanest raccoons in the world live in my garage. To be more accurate, they don’t actually live in the garage. They live in the walls of it. In a baffling fit of throwing good money after bad, the previous owners of my house decided to cover the wooden walls of the detached garage with vinyl siding. The raccoons, not to be put off by the depressing gray shade of the siding, found that they could burrow between the siding and the wooden walls, creating a nice, cozy abode for themselves. So far as I can tell, they only emerge from their comfortable subsidized housing to prowl the neighbourhood for tasty food waste.
Since Toronto has a municipal food waste collection program, almost every house in my neighbourhood has a green bin somewhere outside the house, expressly designed for food and organic waste –which includes diapers, by the way, in my house and many of those around me. And the raccoons love nothing better than to make sport of trying to pry them open. The latches on the green bins were not in any way designed to defeat raccoons, and those who fail to attach an aftermarket strap or lock run the risk of seeing a week’s worth of rotten veggies and meat scraps on the driveway in the morning. Like most people, I learned this the hard way.
So you’ll appreciate that I am no fan of raccoons. But the biggest raccoon of all lives right in my house, and he is me.
Do You Like Bicycles?
16. Do you like bicycles, even if you don’t ride them any more?
-from Edward Hallowell’s ADD Self-Assessment quiz, in Delivered From Distraction
I love bicycles. Ever since pretending to be Evel Knievel jumping Snake River Canyon, (riding a bike wholly unsuited for the job, with an ending that was, while less spectacular, just as final for the bike), I’ve had a passion for them. I’ve commuted all over Toronto by bicycle since I was a teenager, I’ve raced road and mountain bikes, I’ve done some bike camping. Weather permitting, I travel everywhere by bike, and now, I take my kids with me. In my garage, ten bicycles vie for maintenance and attention (4 are my wife’s - I married well - and two are my sons’, but still). That doesn’t include the well-used Burley trailer, the tandem Trail-A-Bike, two very small kids’ bikes, a couple of frames, and a unicycle I got for my 40th birthday. Lots of wheels and boxes of parts. Then there’s the tools. It’s all a bit much.
I realized that bikes and cycling were part of my ‘otherness’ when I first saw Breaking Away, the 1979 coming-of-age movie about a teenager who doesn’t fit into midwestern America. Dave longs to escape from the confines of his drab Indiana life. He wants to be an Italian bike racer. Breaking Away struck a chord with me not because it’s a great movie (it won an Oscar, and was nominated for several), but because I immediately understood the film’s use of the bike as a symbol of freedom, challenge, and escape. And though my life was hardly at all like that of the main character, I shared his experience of being unusual, not exactly a perfect fit with my surroundings. Like Dave, getting strong and fast on a bike was a way for me to embrace myself as a misfit (as far as North American sports of the 80s went). Cycling informed my identity. And on the road, with traffic to contend with and the world whizzing past my ears, my mind was calm and my thinking was clear. I remember the moment clearly: as I watched the scene where Dave drafts a truck at 50 m.p.h. to the strains of Mendolsohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony, a passion was born.
Driven to Distraction: Still the Gold Standard for ADHD Books
2009 will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of Driven to Distraction, and with it the birth of contemporary ADHD literature . We have learned an enormous amount about ADHD in the years since it appeared, and thankfully it’s now got plenty of excellent company on bookstore and library shelves. Personal stories, self-coaching guides, and explorations of ADHD brain science, as well as the highly readable followup to Driven, Delivered From Distaction, now offer a wide range of perspctives on this maddeningly, brilliantly paradoxical kind of brain wiring. But as with so many things, the first is often the best.
Part of what gives Driven to Distraction its power is the extensive use of real-life stories –the daily experiences of people with ADHD, and the challenges we face. And the book gives such a varied and detailed look in to the minds and lives of ADHDers, that at some point every person with ADHD reading it will inevitably at some point look up from the page and say to himself, “I’ve felt exactly like that!”
Another wonderful thing about Ratey and Hallowell’s book is how forcefully they shattered the myth that ADHD is nothing more than the result of parents failing to discipline their rambunctious redheads. They revealed to the world that it is a complex, paradoxical, and very real neurological condition. And they made it clear that ADHD is not a childhood disorder — it often persists through adolescence and right through adulthood. Driven to Distraction lifted the veil on the tortured lives of struggling parents with ADHD kids, and again and again showed us the puzzlement — and relief — of adults who finally learn about their own ADHD until relatively late in life.
Despite all that’s been written about ADHD in the last 15 years, the fundamental prescription for treatment remains exactly the same:
- Get an accurate diagnosis by a trained psychiatrist or psychotherapist with expertise in ADHD;
- Educate yourself about ADHD. The more you know about the condition, the more you will understand about how it affects your life. Greater understanding will make it easier to explain your condition to others, as well.
- Get structured. Systems and organizational habits do not come as naturally to ADHDers as they do to others. The chaos that results can be very destructive. Structure and ritual provides stability and a sense of control.
- Seek coaching and/or psychotherapy. Coaches are a powerful ally, helping you to maximize your strengths, minimise your weaknesses, and keep you focused on the goals and challenges that you define. Therapists can play an important role if other conditions co-exist with ADHD.
- Consider Medication. There is a wide and growing range of safe, effective medications that can help people with ADHD to reduce their impulsiveness, remain focused, and reduce pressure and anxiety. For some people, medication can make a tremendous difference.
As an ADHD coach, I like to keep up with as much literature about the subject as I can. But when I’m struggling for a simple explanation, or hunting for the perfect description of a classic ADHD behaviour, I find myself returning again and again to Driven to Distraction. IF ever there’s an ADHD Hall of Fame, Drs. Ratey and Hallowell should be the first inductees.
