Inside an ADD Head

“If you would like a glimpse of what it is like to have ADD, just imagine someone walking into your room in the middle of the night, waking you from a sound sleep, and asking you to balance your checkbook.  It is not that you do not have the intellect to do the task; you have the wrong level of arousal.  Imagine the different emotional and behavioral reactions one might get from you in that situation.  You are likely to be irritable, inattentive, disinterested, and stubborn.  You could even be hostile and aggressive.  This is how an ADD child feels when tasked with something requiring a higher state of brain arousal.     Most of us have experienced driving long distances at night while fighting off sleep.  Look at what we do.  We become hyper-active.  We turn the radio up loud, sing, tap out the rhythm on the dashboard, talk to ourselves, bounce around, open the window, yell.  That is exactly what the hyperactive individual is doing:  fighting low arousal, trying to stay in the world, trying to wake up.  There is nothing that wakes up the brain like risk-taking.  This is a good hypothesis for explaining some criminal behavior   Committing a crime or being physically aggressive arouses the low level of functioning.  The excitement wakes the person up, lets them know they are alive.  The same is true of violent programs on TV and in movies or video games with high action and violent combat.” p.11. Getting Rid of Ritalin by Robert W. Hill, Ph.D. and Eduardo Castro, M.D.     The best cure for an ADD mind is neurofeedback.