This week’s He Said / She Said: Examining the ADHD Life gives a nod to the classic Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles. If anyone could wreak havoc, it was ‘ol Oedipus. Sometimes, being ADHD is no different. Read on, brave souls! And be wary of oncoming ruin!

Edifice: an edifice is, literally, a structure that has a roof and walls and stands permanently in one place. Metaphorically, it is an abstract structure or a complex entity of many parts. We use it here to mean the many complex components that go into keeping one’s life on track (organization, purpose, intent, structure, schedules, planning, etc., etc.)

Wreck: to reduce to a ruinous state

ADHDers wreack havoc like Oedipus Rex!

Edifice Wrecks – Part I

9:17am  Zoë   Jeff, you’ve mentioned this thing you call “edifice wrecks.”  What the heck is that?

9:18am  Jeff   It’s when your life is going smoothly for days or weeks and then, suddenly, your entire world collapses and for a few days you wonder…what happened? You can’t get anything done. You are in a daze. You went from productive to couch potato.

9:19am  Zoë   I just experienced about five days of that. I was in a total fog. It was horrible. I almost felt like I was right back to when I was diagnosed, four years ago. And I didn’t even see it coming.

9:20am Jeff   That’s probably the worst part – when you don’t see it coming. It just hits. Like taking an unexpected punch in the head.

I had much the same experience last week. All was great and then, I think, there were too many spinning plates and they all fell to the floor.

9:22am  Zoë   Yes, yes. I asked a lot of friends, and several of them said they were experiencing the same thing and they didn’t have ADHD. Sometimes I try to make myself feel better by justifying it as a general malaise…the weather / season / alignment of stars except, par for the course, as an ADHDer, I can see this pattern disrupting my adult life, over and over, in a profound way. In a debilitating way. Whereas my friends keep going, tickety-boo. I get fired from jobs (etc.) because of this repetitive fogginess (at least I used to…it’s better now).

9:24am Jeff   That’s the major difference…we see patterns. But don’t completely discount the role of seasons.

I am GREATLY affected by seasonal affective disorder (SAD). When the days get shorter, my mind and body turn off. Wellbuturin has helped a lot with this, but, it’s as if I’ve only lived half of a life, since, for half a year, I would be in hibernation.

9:27am  Zoë   Yes, that’s the problem.

While I’m in that daze, my memory is affected, my mood is affected, I’m confused, it’s hard to feel joy, my creativity seems to have run away from home…and so my work, my friendships, everything, just drop to a very low and unenjoyable level.

It’s like being on salvia [a psychoactive plant which can induce dissociative effects], the world is liquid and I can’t grasp hold of anything…I guess that makes me the perfect, non-grasping Zen Buddhist Master! (ha ha, I always like to look at the bright side, you know me!)

9:30am Jeff   For me, it feels like my brains turned into scrambled eggs. My thoughts/actions were nicely delineated by the eggshell and then suddenly…the eggs are all broken.

I can’t tell what’s worse: knowing when you go into this state of edifice wrecks; or, not knowing you went into it and, when you pop out of it, you feel like, “Where the hell was I the past few days?” It’s as if you had an out of body (out of mind?) experience.

9:32am  Zoë   You nailed it. Exactly.

The feeling of sliding into it, I find, is almost terrifying, because then I know I’m going to lose time, lose track, lose even the knowing of why I’m here. This feeling seems to be becoming more profound as I get older. It’s like I’m losing more when I enter these states. Do you experience that too? I mean, it goes beyond forgetting what you’re supposed to be doing, you forget who you are and your purpose in life. Something like that.

9:35am  Jeff    Oh boy…yeah. I describe it as going through a sort of internal metamorphosis. When I come out of it, back to the world, I never know if I’ll be exactly the same person I was when I went into it. That feeling has dissipated over time and it doesn’t happen as often.

As we get older, we understand time more and more, and we understand that the time we have left is running low, so every minute is precious and the loss of every minute is even more anguishing.

9:37am  Zoë   Yes, yes that’s it! I concur that I don’t lose who I am, exactly. It comes back solidly when I’m out of that fog. But the feeling of emergence is quite painful. Yes, it’s an anxiety that I have less and less time to waste.

My friend Kelly described it as,

“Sometimes when we’re coming up from a low spell it’s like we take off a blindfold and so many things are right in front of our eyes.”

And then we have to figure out what those objects are, how to re-assemble them, and get on with it (whatever “it” is).

I realize through our discussion that this is something I want / need to work on. I’m wondering if there’s any way to tell when you’ll be slipping into this event and to prevent it, or at least, to decrease its effects?

STAY TUNED FOR EDIFICE WRECKS, Part II, THURSDAY, OCT. 7. Jeff will give some excellent advice about how to tell you’re sliding into The Fog Zone – and how to prevent it. See you then!
Disclaimer: Although the He Said / She Said series is a collaborative effort between Zoë Kessler and Jeff Siegel, each author speaks for her or himself and the opinions expressed are solely those of the respective authors.

If you missed our Introduction to He Said / She Said, check it out HERE.

Comments

This post currently has 22 comments/trackbacks. You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts on our new comments page.

Trackbacks

No trackbacks yet to this post.

    Last reviewed: 7 Oct 2010