4:11am

On more than one occasion this year my mind has wandered as it has tonight. It seems more often than not that the roads it travels lead back to a dream I had some time ago. (http://igetdistracted.blogspot.com/2009/01/dream.html) Much of the intense feeling of the experience has since faded but the memory has not. I can not recall another dream of its likeness despite my efforts. So many seemingly random things seem to point towards something that the rational part of me simply does not want to acknowledge let alone accept. Sometimes it seems too frequent to be mere coincidence, and other times I am forced to remind myself that sometimes we see things that aren't there simply because some part of us wishes them to be.

Feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and alone.

I'm a Maniac Maniac!

Decent song. In all seriousness though, as far as I can tell based on my experience I believe I am in the middle of a manic episode. Nothing has changed that I know of but for whatever reason this particular instance seems just outside of medicinal control. I realized on the way to work today just how long its been since I've really been gripped by this particular feeling.

Mania is an interesting and complicated problem in my opinion. Feelings associated with problems like depression are generally negative. The person feels down, sad, or perhaps just tired. Depression doesn't "feel" good. Mania on the other hand is like a drug. You generally feel good, full of energy. You feel as though you can take on the world, and your mind feels as though its expanded and capable of tackling the mysteries of life. How do you turn away from that? Why would want to?

The downside? It's hard to see at first. The easiest negative to identify is "coming down". Mania like depression an extreme. When you are manic, especially for long periods of time it can make mania seem like a norm. This means when you finally run out of energy (and you will eventually) you return to equilibrium. The problem is equilibrium is still a step down from what you are used to so instead of associating the feeling with a norm it becomes negative. Many times this down step in turn leads to another down step that becomes depression. When you are "coming down" you are no longer manic so it very easy to rationalize that mania is not the problem since you don't feel bad during the actual episode.

With time and experience you begin to realize other negative impacts. Although your mind "feels as though its expanded" nothing you think about ever really seems to come to conclusion. Your thoughts resemble the clique ramblings of hippie pot smokers from tv sitcoms. Your thoughts are significant they just SEEM that way at the time. More energy, sounds great until try to quantify the results of your efforts. How many tasks did you bring to fruition during your episode? Sure I can tackle one hundred tasks for countless hours, but its rare that do very many of them justice.

As I write this I did not sleep last night at all and although I know that I am tired I can not feel it. It's taken me a long time just to recognize whats happening to me as its actually happening. Recognition is half the battle, now what the hell do I do? So far I don't believe that its out of hand, but isn't that what all addicts say? Am I an addict? I felt that rush of energy this morning and I remembered that feeling and how long it seems to have been. I suppose I just have to keep in mind that the higher you climb the farther you fall.

Oh something shiny!

Here's a good example of what its like for me. From what I have read it might be a good example of a lot of people with ADHD. Your average person reads or speaks a sentence in a pretty straight forward manner. For example the sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps right over the lazy dog". Normally you read or speak that sentence without too much thought. Here's and idea of how this sentence plays out for me.

"The quick" quick... its odd that's adverb and a noun, like the quick of your fingernail. People always say it cuts to the quick, I wonder where that comes from. I wonder if its spelled the same way. Do your toes have a quick on them too? Makes me think of that rabbit for Nestle Quick. They should change it from fox to rabbit. "brown fox" dunno but to me foxes should be red like on that movie the Fox and the Hound. I'm a hound dog! "jumps right" as though they could jump left? "over the lazy dog". You know, I know over is a preposition but I thought prepositional phrases were usually three words. I wonder if the adjective lazy changes it at all so its no longer a prepositional phrase. If it doesn't I wonder how many different adjectives you can add before it would change it? Is there a limit?

That probably seems like an exaggeration, but I can say from experience that sometimes the previous paragraph is pretty accurate. Realize that although you are reading it in a linear fashion many of thoughts in between the words of the sentence can happen at once. Often times it almost seems as though the act of reading or speaking is running on a completely different process than thinking allowing them to run in tandem. The problem is that you can quite literally speak without realizing exactly what your saying.

Another odd little quirk that I have and wonder if it might be typical of other people with ADHD. I have a problem with repetition of patterns. The best example I can think of at the moment would be something like guitar hero. Some songs have a very simple repeated pattern throughout the entire song. While I can master the pattern fairly quickly I can not continue it very long before completely messing it up. However I seem to have far less problems with the more complicated pieces of the songs. It occurred to me what the problem is. If I am doing something in repetition that does not require thought then my mind tends to wander. When that happens my hands get out of sync. I realize guitar hero is just a game and please understand I am using it only as an example. There are many other areas of my life that are affected by this problem.

I keep wondering if my problem is unique to me or indicative of other people with ADHD?