The Symptoms of ADHD: Do You Really Know Them?

 I’ve seen many parents not wanting to medicate their children. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your own child, that isn’t my place. But, I wanted to explain to you what being unmedicated with ADHD does to you. And then you can make up your own mind. 

I was taking methylphenidate for most of my teen years. And it helped my behaviour, but I was plagued with mental health difficulties. Almost a year ago I took a six-month break from ADHD meds. I’ve since started taking lisdexamfetamine and the changes are profound. 

I feel like for the first time in my life, I can choose what I want to do. I’m not acting on impulse, I’m not reacting based on how my mood is. I feel like for the first time I understand how anyone else functions. Now, you may ask why that is, and the truth is, it’s complicated. Do you know the symptoms of ADHD? I’m going to guess you know *some* of them. Bad behaviour, struggle to sleep, low attention, high energy… Sound about right? 

Well, they are the external symptoms of ADHD, and are great to know about, but they don’t paint the whole picture. A lot of the external symptoms are caused by the internal ones. Being unmedicated with like hearing voices, but all the voices are you. You can be hearing music, thinking about something that happened, while deciding what to have for dinner and still get other flashes of random thoughts and images. This is why people with ADHD are impulsive. It’s because we literally have multiple ideas at the same time. We jump from one train of thought being the focus to another with little control. 

It’s also incredibly overwhelming and for most ADHD peeps we experience massive anxiety from this. Have you ever noticed how your ADHD kids have upset stomachs frequently? Yeah, that’s anxiety. Want to know how I know that? Well, it’s because once I started taking medication for anxiety my stomach had no issues. 

But that isn’t even the worst part of ADHD. The worst part is that our brains are deficient in dopamine. Which doesn’t sound too bad? But it really is, first of all, when you complete a task, say your housework, or a school project your body slows down how quickly dopamine is reabsorbed. This means you get a rise in dopamine levels and it causes you to feel good. You know the feeling, I’m happy I completed X task. Yeah, unmedicated, we don’t feel that. We don’t produce enough dopamine for the levels to get high enough. 

That means, we just end up unmotivated, if we don’t feel good from completing something. And concentrating makes us stressed and anxious, we just stop doing things. I used to love playing games, it was so bad that I couldn’t even play a game because I just got no satisfaction or enjoyment. So what happens to a person, who gains nothing from participating in society, be that school, work, friends family? We just, do nothing. Or worse, we misbehave because adrenaline is the closest thing we have to dopamine that we know how to get. This is also why ADHD kids do so many dangerous and stupid things. We also do it into adulthood too. 

But more importantly, have you ever worked a dead-end, mind-numbing job? Something like working on a production packing boxes. Or working as a call centre handler. Yeah, that is what every single day is like without an effective medication. And, much like those jobs do to “normal” people, our lives make us sad. And depressed, it’s often that we have thoughts of harming ourselves or taking our own lives. Think about it, you eat your favourite food, watch your favourite movie, and get a perfect score on a test. And you get absolutely nothing from it. Wouldn’t you feel depressed? 

As we grow older we start finding our own ways to feel something, anything other than overwhelming anxiety and depression. So maybe we self-harm, maybe we go online and talk to people much older than us. Maybe we start smoking, drinking a shed load of caffeine or doing drugs. 

People with unmedicated, or undermedicated ADHD are MASSIVELY likely to have at least one addiction. I have multiple, I started smoking at the age of 13. I still do. I’m an alcoholic, 892 days sober. I spent most of my life from around the age of 12 to the age of 28 cutting myself. Not even because I was depressed, but just to feel that rush. Just to get the adrenaline flowing and get that buzz. I also put myself in multiple dangerous situations in my later teen years with older people. I went on to have issues with maintaining relationships. I still have no friends, I spend 99% of my time in my bed or sat at my PC. 

But now I’m on lisdex, I’m a different person, I get up, and make my bed. I chat with people online, I’m hoping to try to make friends in the real world at some point. I’m no longer self-harming. I obviously have given up drinking, but since being on the new meds it doesn’t feel like a constant battle anymore. The sad thing is, all that lacking dopamine and serotonin in my childhood and teen years has had a permanent and profound impact on me. 

Symptoms of dopamine deficiency (low dopamine levels) may include:

You lack motivation, “the drive.”

You’re tired.

You can’t concentrate.

You’re moody or anxious.

You don’t feel pleasure from previously enjoyable experiences.

You’re depressed; you feel hopeless.

You have a low sex drive.

You have trouble sleeping or have disturbed sleep.

Other symptoms of low dopamine levels include:

Hand tremors or other tremors at rest, loss of balance or coordination, increased muscle/limb stiffness, muscle cramps (symptoms of Parkinson’s disease).

Restless legs syndrome.

Problems with short-term memory, managing daily tasks and solving simple thinking problems (symptoms of cognitive changes).

Problems with anger, low self-esteem, anxiety, forgetfulness, impulsiveness and lack of organizational skill (symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Social withdrawal, reduced emotions, don’t feel pleasure (negative symptoms of schizophrenia).

Gastrointestinal symptoms, including chronic constipation.

Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22588-dopamine-deficiency

Your brain also develops slower, it takes longer to form new connections. This is why we often have issues with memory and learning. Because our brains simply cannot create enough new connections to store that information. You have until the age of 25 to get all the brain development you will ever have. So if someone with ADHD only gets medicated at 13, they have already suffered reduced brain development for more than 50% of the total time. 

Having ADHD is so freaking difficult when there is no medication or at least caffeine to boost those dopamine levels. I wish, that when I was younger I had the emotional intelligence and vocabulary needed to explain what I was going through. But I hope, that after reading this, maybe you will think about a cup of tea, coffee, or medication. 

I hope you enjoyed this post, I am slowly getting used to the idea that I can be productive and looking forward to getting back to writing. If you have any questions, thoughts, comments or concerns, please drop a comment and I shall try my best to get back to you!