The True story behind
add
erall
ADD
- iSN’T REAL - GIVES STUDENTS AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE - AFFECTS BOYS ONLY - RESULTS FROM BAD PARENTING - LEADS TO DRUG ABUSE
_____ADDERS ARE STUPID AND LAZY______ 45
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e sat in front of his computer, staring at the screen, silently. From the Skype window, she asked what he was thinking. She screamed and cried. He remained unresponsive. “I’m totally blank,” he said, recalling times spent with his girlfriend. “I’m not processing her feelings; I’m not processing my feelings. I’m just like a blank wall of emotion—like emotionless, and that’s what people have said: ‘Jordan, you don’t show any emotion.’ “But inside I am this very deep, emotional well, I just don’t have the ability to communicate or tell people how I’m feeling. That’s really where it sucks.” Jordan Gamble is a fifth-year manufacturing engineering major at Cal Poly. He has been in a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend for two years—She’s currently in Bellingham, Washington. He’s diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and she with anxiety disorder.
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s a kid, Gamble was homeschooled. His mother believed drugs were bad and “ADD isn’t a real thing,” thus, Gamble had never learned of his disorder until last year, he said. Since then, he’s been taking Adderall and seen an improvement of grades, he said. “It’s not just school; ADD affects your whole life: relationships—that’s been hard—communication with friends, staying connected with friends,” he said. He doesn’t have any friends with whom he started; all of his friends now are people with some sort of disorder as well, he said. As a kid, Gamble was homeschooled. His mother believed drugs were bad and “ADD isn’t a real thing,” thus, Gamble had never learned of his disorder until last year, he said. Since then, he’s been taking Adderall and seen an improvement of grades, he said. “It’s not just school; ADD
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affects your whole life: relations h i p s — t h a t ’s been hard— communication with friends, staying connected with friends,” he said. He doesn’t have any friends with whom he started; all of his friends now are people with some sort of disorder as well, he said. Unexpectedly, the person who advised Gamble to take the ADD test a year ago was his mother. She did so after reading the book “Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?” by Gina Pera. “She has been extremely patient and supportive and encourages me to seek out the help I need for treatment,” he said. “My mother also has been critical in my success as she knows me best and was able to
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see similar behavior traits as ADD.” To determine if he had ADD, Gamble came to a psychiatrist who gave him an IQ test and a le ar ning dis-
E D D abilities test. When they recognized a discrepancy between the tests’ scores, Gamble was then tested for ADD. He was diagnosed with type four, temporal lobe ADD,
Photo by Tram Nguyen and his little brother type two, inattentive ADD, he said. Their father also suffers from ADD although he’s never diagnosed, he added. “Ever since I started real-
house and told his friends he had ADD. “The first thing that came out of their mouths was ‘I don’t think that’s a real thing;’ I think that’s the American society creating this ADD problem,’” Gamble said. His brain just shut down after that response, he said. Another time in a sociology class, Gamble and his classmates were exposed to a video called “Changing the Education Paradigms,” which stirred up frustration in him. It is an animate adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA‘s (Royal Society for the e n c ou r a g e m e nt of Arts) Benjamin Franklin award. The video is about how to make change happen in education and how to make it last. In part of the video (from 3:40 to 6:35), Robinson addresses the issue of using drugs to treat ADD/ADHD. Even though he claims in the video not to know if ADD really exists, he suggests that giving Adderall to people with ADD/ADHD is not good, because “we are getting our children through education by anaesthetising them.”
L ERAL izing that ADD is a real thing, I talked to people, and the reactions I get—they are so discriminatory,” he said. Gamble recalled a time when he came over to a friend’s
Jordan Gamble is a fifth-year manufacturing engineering major at Cal Poly. He has attention deficit disorder. 47
Photo by Tram Nguyen Father no Mother
o re u ct
f children
D/A Mother and father
Brett Nayudu, Jordan Gamble’s mentor.
DHD.
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AD
Mother no father
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Family S tru
Neither Mother nor Father
by Tram Nguyen
“It makes me feel so shameful,” Gamble said. “After that video, I would never have stood up and said ‘hey I have ADD,’ because I have felt like everybody in that room was judging people with ADD and thinking that they’re just making that up and they’re just on drugs.”
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Gamble recognized the educational value of the video but disagreed with Robinson that people with ADD/ADHD are abusing drugs, he said.
“Yes, there are people who do abuse this drug and people who do use it wrongly,” he said, “but there’s a large portion of people who do have a disorder and medication does help, you know. Stop making us feel like we’re bad people for being impulsive.”
The love
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aving ADD makes his relationship a roller coaster, Gamble said, because he tends to be extreme. “One moment I’ll treat my girlfriend like she’s perfect,” he said, “and the next I’ll tell her I don’t love her.” Marriage consultant Melissa Orlov, author of the book “The ADHD Effect on Marriage,” said the divorce rate of people with ADHD is nearly twice as high as that of average people—according to health.USNews.com. Gamble is aware of such statistic and attributes it to the need for stimulations of people with ADD/ADHD. Ever since Gamble is aware of his disorder, he said he no longer stares at a screen emotionlessly and worries his girlfriend. He stays engaged in a conversation with her by having medication, doing intense exercise or fidgeting with an object.
“Like last night, I was late,” he said. “I prioritized something else over her and she was feeling hurt, but I was able to stay engaged in the conversation and talk and reassure that she wasn’t not-a-priority, I just was distracted.” They often spend two to three hours talking on Skype each time, he added. 49