So, during my anxiety-ridden winter of stress, while fighting off a major depression and popping Ativan like it was my job, I realized something: My son’s behavior is greatly effected by my mood. When I’m on edge and nit picking everything, he is very sensitive to it. Ultimately, it puts him under pressure and his behavior is worse.  Not that his behavior is the end all be all. I’m more concerned about his well being. And, to realize that I’m bringing stress to him unnecessarily really crushed me. He’s a great kid, but has his own anxiety issues. I only make them worse by being on him all the time. After all he’s only 6. He is wonderful, compassionate, sensitive, smart, capable, and brave. Sure, he’s got stuff to work on, but I need to work on what to let go.  I so desperately want to be “consistent” and not let him “get away with” anything, that I sometimes don’t parent situationally. In a way, this brief depressive episode was a good thing because it taught me that letting some things go is as important as being consistent about other things. And, when I let up, we both win because I have the energy to wrestle in the back yard and have the fun with him that does us both good.

I pride myself on being a consistently inconsistent blogger. I am serious about not being the ADHD guy who starts a blog and doesn’t keep it up. But, knowing myself, my life, my schedule, etc., I know that I’m not the kind of guy who will religiously post every Thursday or something like that. I tend to post in bursts on my off weeks from coaching or other times that I have “free.”  But, it has been almost exactly a month since I posted. Here’s why: I recently recently got back together with my ex… depression. This isn’t the easiest thing to post on my website, especially since I use my website as a marketing tool. For the most part I like to portray me as the organized, efficient, together guy that I am most of the time. But if I’m totally honest with myself and the world, I think it is appropriate to point out that I don’t have it all figured out all the time. I hope that admitting my struggles and my vulnerabilities shows something as important as my strengths and accomplishments. So here goes… I am genetically predisposed to depression/anxiety from both sides of my family. I had my first major depressive episode in college at age 19. The psychiatrist that I was seeing at the time, who was an idiot, totally missed it. Long story short: he put me on a tricyclic antidepressant, but took me off my ritalin. So, it unintentionally moderated the depression… kinda’. But only kinda moderated the ADHD symptoms. That was a very difficult time in my life. I think it could have been much less shitty and shorter if I had been getting better care. (Ultimately, I went back to my pediatric psychopharmacologist and he got me back on track. I still see him at 36 yrs old.)…

I am far from anti-drugs. I made a personal choice when I was a teenager that drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol were not for me. I began using alcohol around age 20 and still have never smoked a cigarette, smoked weed, or done anything else. Having said that, most of my friends have smoked weed at one time or another in their lives. I actually think drugs should be legalized. I point this things out to give context to what this post is really about, to illustrate that I’m not a prude nor that I’m pro drugs. The objective scientific fact that is clearly emerging from current research is that weed is really bad for the brain. It is even worse for the young brain. And, there is some evidence that it is particular bad for the ADHD and anxiety prone brain.  Many of my younger clients “self medicate” with marijuana for anxiety, sleep issues, and to moderate “jitters.” In the short term that works. Weed mellows you out, makes you less anxious, and makes you sleepy. The problem is that in the long term it makes all of those things worse. It messes up your sleep cycle. It ultimately makes your mood worse as it is a depresant. And, the next day, you’re going to have to pump a lot of caffeine in to your system to get going. Hence the jitters.  Now there is evidence that moderate to heavy use of marijuana actually reshapes the brain negatively in teens and young adults. So, these detrimental effects may not be so short term. I really worry about my younger clients who can’t/won’t stop smoking. It doesn’t bode well for their future. Fact: Today’s weed is about 3.5x more potent than only 20 years ago. (I’m sorry I don’t have the source for this. My dad…

I know I’ve mentioned the documentary Race to Nowhere before. Well it had been difficult to see. It is now available on iTunes. SEE IT! 

Exercise is the best natural way to produce both dopamine and serotonin. Translation: vigorous exercise directly improves attention and mood. Developing and maintaining an exercise routine is a topic that comes up with my coaching clients very often. Recently it has come up even more often. Perhaps it is our reaction to the horrendous winter we had here in Boston? Maybe it is just a general spring thing. But, everyone wants to get back to exercising.  I am a person who doesn’t not do well without exercise. Even though my hyperactivity is not as prominent as it was when I was younger, I still need to move. I have a hard time articulating the substantial benefits I get from working out 5-6 times a week. It can be difficult to quantify them. But, I will say this: If I can work out before I take the kids food shopping on Saturday mornings, the whole day goes better. The kids actually behave better. Why? Probably because I’m more focused, more patient, more flexible, more fun, and more centered. All from 30 min on the spin bike. So, here are a few quick tips on how to establish a work out routine and maintain it. (Unedited and in no particular order…) 1. Don’t focus on the length of the work out at first. Just focus on doing it as often as you can. Once you take 2 days off… day 3 is really easy to skip. Even if it’s only 10 minutes a day, try to establish a routine of at least 5 days a week. 2. Recognize your progress. This might seem like I’m say the opposite as no. 1, but… If you aren’t working out now, even 2 days a week is a victory.  3. Really connect with why you are woking in. We tend not to do…

So, I’m a bit behind in my blog entries. I have a list on my phone of things that I want to post about. It’s about 30 items long. This particular one dates back to Mother’s Day of last year.  Better late than never. Actually the story starts on Christmas about 7 years ago. It was the first year I cooked Christmas dinner for the family. Bare in mind that I was a professional chef at the time. It was only five of us at that point. Then we were four. I think my mom was sick. I was making pollo al mattone. Chicken under a brick. It’s an Italian classic that I’d made, literally, thousands of times, but never at home and not in a few years. I screwed it up and boned out the chicken wrong. As a result it wasn’t cooking correctly or evenly. And it took me forever to realize why. I freaked out.  I will spare you the details of the freak out, but it was ugly. It was the freak out that ruined the day for me, not the cooking mistake… I know this now, as I look back. And, it probably ruined it for everyone else too.  Fast forward to Mother’s Day last year, our first with two children. I was cooking a special clams dish for my wife (and brother-in-law) who love shellfish. For the rest of us, I was cooking with a special kind of black risotto rice my parents brought back from Italy. I had only read about this kind of rice. And, I went against my own advice and cooked something I wasn’t familiar with for the first time on a special occasion. It was an absolute disaster. I’m not sure if the rice was old, or a joke…

I finally had the delivery system of Concerta fully explained to me. It is amazing! Hooray technology! Here’s how it works: What looks like a normal capsule isn’t. There is a layer on the outside that is essentially a powdered coating of immediate release Methylphenidate. That is absorbed immediately by the body and brings our blood level up to a therapeutic level. What remains is a membrane that allows gastric juices (a.k.a.) liquid to seep in to the pill at a specific rate. Inside the pill, a sophisticated polymer expands at a controlled rate when it is exposed to the controlled amount of liquid. It, in turn, pushes the active ingredient (more powdered Methylphenidate) out through a laser drilled hole at the end of the capsule. For many of us this provides an extremely gentle, long lasting effect.  It also makes it much harder to abuse. I was told that if you smashed it, it would just goo-up because of the polymer. I didn’t want to waste one, but accidentally dropped one in a puddle yesterday. So, I figured I’d hit is with a meat mallet and see what happened. Didn’t goo-up, but pretty cool picture. You can pretty much see all the parts. One other interesting thing is that not all the med has time to be pushed out before it goes through you. That is why Concerta is dosed in weird multiples of 9. Some of it goes right through you… along with the barrel shaped capsule. Here’s a link if you want more info: FDA Concerta Info

If you’re a client or have heard me speak you that I’ve never paid a bill and filed it right away in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever used a recipe and then put it back in the appropriate recipe folder right away. I don’t put packing slips, my kids cards, medical paperwork, or take out menus away in the folders where they belong. But that doesn’t mean my office/desk is a mess. On the contrary. It is always clean. How?  I have what I call “transitional areas.” I have an “in box” that is my “to be filed” place. I usually go through it every month or two, or when it threatens to fall over. So, I eliminate the tedious, every day, grind of following through with the boring task of filing stuff away “in the moment.” Instead it is a 20 minutes project that seems more efficient and can be undertaken at the time of my choosing when I feel like handling it.  I guess I should have done a post just on that strategy. But, I’m posting today to both extoll the virtues of this strategy and talk about how it can be a trap is not followed up on. The attached picture is what my “in box” looked like until last Thursday. Turns out it had been about 5 months since I went through it. Yikes! It has been a brutal winter with all the snow, my wife working a lot, all of us getting sick multiple times, a now six-year-old, a just-turned-one-year-old, and major renovation project where the contractor really let me down. In other words… LIFE happened. The best thing I can say about this transitional space system is that we want all of our systems to continue to work even when the worst case scenario…

So… every two years I go to an ADHD conference through MGH. I’m currently waiting for the evening session to begin. “Assessment and Management of ADHD in College Students.” I can’t wait to share everything I’m learning. I’m sure there will be a series of entries on a variety of topics. Since I only have 5 minutes right now, I will share my strategies for surviving the conference itself as an ADHD adult.  If I’m not interested in a particular presentation, I don’t guilt myself into staying for it.  I spend all day sitting against the back wall, pacing, moving around, leaning against the wall etc. Today I was actually in the back with two moms, one of a 3 month old and one 10 month old. I guess it’s me and the infants who can’t be contained by a chair. But I’m okay with that. I always find a gym near by and scam a trial membership. I got an amazing shoulder/core workout in before dinner tonight. Bottom line: these are the things I need to do to survive 12 hours of sitting still… even for a subject that interests me.

After just one meeting with Dad, one meeting with the whole family, and one meeting with a new high school sophomore I got this email from Dad: “Thank you very much. I have this very strong feeling that you are going to make a difference for [name] when no else has been able to.” That is why I do this.  Usually it takes a little longer to get such a positive response in writing. (See the “success stories” page.) But the truth is that for many kids (and adults) I can make a difference. I LOVE that! 

My children had, at one point, had 7 out of 12 days off from school due to snow. And… next week is February vacation. Hoooray! Funny how your perspective changes when you are a parent. Anyway, I’ll give you one short post for now, but hopefully March will settle down and I’ll get back to posting regularly.

I finally started the other blog that I’ve been planning for almost a year. If you are interested in gardening and/or cooking, check it out.