ADHD in Adults. Yes, it’s real. Yes, you can do something about it. | Rick Green and Dr. Ahmed

[Music] so re welcome Rick re thank [Applause] you I'm going to set my timer to go 15 minutes because otherwise it'll be 11:30 and I'll still be telling my wonderful story um I uh I know but they the janitors want to close the place up at some we could talk forever I know uh so hang on set this so let's start it we have 15 minutes uh so first of all I want to acknowledge every one of you for coming out here because this is the last place anyone wants to be a mental health facility

they unless you've been around one for a while they're scary at first uh and then the more you're around them they're actually amazing places so I've had the opportunity to be around kamh I've had a couple of people I care very much go through there with different things and uh it's um I know mental health issues can look scary but uh so does a broken wrist when it's hanging there uh so anyway so I I acknowledge you for coming out here uh I know also that there are probably some people probably men who are here

under duress if you're not coming there won't be any Nookie for 2 years and so you're here um if you're under duress and don't want to be here you have my permission to leave but I'll tell you what this is going to be fun and it's going to be interesting and that's a thing that I that I keep coming back to and why I've stuck with this is that it's interesting um the Oracle of Deli it said know thyself and this is interesting and with ADHD it's not completely and fully understood not even close they've

identified a bunch of the genes they learning all kinds of things but we're miles away from really understanding this and there's already three subtypes there's the ADHD attention deficit there is the predominantly hyperactive subtype we have three subtypes and that's the bouncing off the walls and as a child Restless interrupting teachers go nuts what nobody tells you is that they also interrupt all the other kids they poke they prod they tease they pinch they hit because they're impulsive and they have no friends early on when we were doing add and loving it we interviewed a

doctor who said one mother gave her child the medication on the way home she couldn't wait and she said we actually had a conversation and he hugged me for the first time in his life he could hold on to me and not be squirming kid was eight imagine having an 8-year-old you've never been able to hug cuz they're so busy so that's the hyperactive then there is the predominantly inattentive subtype the Daydreamer The Stereotype is the girl not necessarily but lost in thought geography is kind of interesting but writing the next Harry Potter book way

more interesting so they're off in Dreamland and the teacher says get out your pens and papers to draw and they are lost and then they hear the noise of everybody getting out their pens and papers and they are we allowed to use crayons and the teacher goes boy not very bright right they're actually diagnosed as kind of nice but Spacey flaky could pay more could do better if they paid attention more see this paralympic athlete could do better if got up and ran seems to have some kind of crutch called a wheelchair anyway then there

is the combined subtype yeah that's that's those of us who are both hyperactive by adulthood they don't call it hyperactive because we're not running around although you'll notice I'm pacing uh if you're ADHD and you Pace on the phone because you just do then that's that's there's a lot of things we do we drive too fast we're actually better drivers when we're going fast or we think we are I don't know in the show tomorrow night as part of the thing I talk about the fact that when we go to the go-kart track hyperfocus kicks

in we are we get a rush of adrenaline and so it makes up for the dopamine that we're missing missing and the norrine or whatever else is missing and that's still up for debate but whatever it is adrenaline's a great substitute and so when my son and I got out there we went to one place where it's the guy from Red Green go as long as you want so we went around for an hour everybody else left finally the owner came out in his go-kart which was way faster and knocked us off the track into

the and we had fun with that for 5 minutes until we ran out of gas but to get to that go-kart track my wife should D us cuz it's kind of a plain boring drive and we'll just drift off and be whoa sorry so under certain conditions I'm fine I'm calmer here than if I have to sit and listen to my accountant or follow my accountant as he goes over a paper work we can be Adrenaline Junkies we can self-medicate with sex with shopping with uh work with alcohol well I don't believe in taking a

stimul I would never give my child a stimul medic oh give him another can of Coca-Cola now we don't want to have any stimulant so caffeine cigarettes alcohol marijuana ADHD kids have three times the rate of heavy marijuana use the problem is the marijuana they're getting is from somebody it's not organic and it's laced with stuff so they tell the doctor yeah the do they're fairly open yeah I do some Cocoa Puffs that means there's cocaine in it and the doctor does the blood screen and it's Crystal math I don't do that doctor yeah you

do it you think the drug dealer is going to put cocaine you know how expensive that is how many pesticides there are and whatever anyway don't get me started so by adulthood we are all on medication especially the people who don't know it it's self-medicating we find something that works for us that makes us feel good for me it was writing skate comedy and Performing 700 episodes of it and that was easy for me cashing the checks I got negotiating the contract I'll just write more material so when we play to our strengths and we

figure out what they are we're awesome when you hand off the stuff you don't do like to an agent well I don't really trust myself can I trust an agent when you find people you can trust an accountant I used to pay more in fines than I paid my accountant in fact I think quarterly it was sometimes it was $200 every three months in fines from my GST being late I think my accountant is now my wife would know it's like $4500 to do everything but I resisted resisted resisted anyway so I went through life

I kind of knew I was weird and different but it wasn't until my son was diagnosed and I saw the list and went if this is ADHD then I've got ADHD and within a very short time I was sitting in my doctor's office a psychologist who was an ADHD specialist and like many ADHD Specialists has ADHD himself and we went over the checklist and it was oh my God and it's a little weird because you're going oh god I've got this mental illness it's not an illness which is too bad because illnesses can be cured

we come wired this way it runs in families it's heavily genetic your height is 80% herited ADHD the best study I've read is 79% heritable you should have met my dad oh you're just like your dad just like your dad my grandfather was on the English Music Hall stage for a while so getting the diagnosis for me was an explanation for some people I shouldn't say just a flat explanation I was really relieved in some ways I was also and we'll all go through this oh my God if I'd known sooner if I'd known sooner

I'd have more money in the bank maybe my first marriage would have worked I could have follow through on that I should have delivered but eventually you know that gets after about nine years of that no after a year or two of just the regret was like you know what now I know and everything's shifting when you get a diagnosis of I won't say but whatever you get a diagnosis mental health or physical health you do so they put a cast on you don't really need to know what the plaster is made of or what's

happening in the bones when you get an ADHD diagnosis and I think it's the I don't know if there's any other diagnosis that is like this the more you know about ADHD the better it is and then you get to go figure out your flavor because it is complicated there's 18 symptoms the DSM 4 now they have the dsm5 and there's 18 symptoms in adults let's put up the ones or 18 symptoms in children and now they're working on them for adults uh they're adding things for adults but the symptoms in children uh often makes

mistakes doesn't pay close attention the list goes on and on you only have to have six out of nine of these to have the inattentive part of it and the weird thing is or the frustrating thing is there's nothing on here like toes frequently turn green for no reason Reon right everybody well people go well everybody has this yeah how often that's the issue when it gets to the point that it's at with us the top say four it's 4.4 is the number to use let's say the top 4% one in 25 who are at

the extreme end it's not a lovely little quirky trait it is ruining and undermining Our Lives you are in a wrestling match with an invisible sabot and you don't know you're in a wrestling match and then they say you're fighting ADHD what and there's I mean oh my this explains why life is like this is so frustrating and then why sometimes I've got life pinned to the mat and I'm doing great and then it's comes back at me and I thought i' got this handled up and down up and down and then you have to

start figuring out your flavor but you are dealing with all of these different symptoms and then by adulthood you figured out some ways to manage them like I'll write comedy for a livit but I won't write a screenplay that takes six months are you kidding me no way and then it looks different in adults because mentioning anger issues and life when you've been dealing with this for a long time there's a whole long list here we don't need to go over it all it's on the website you can find it it's everywhere but here's the

thing about this if you don't know you will fear the diagnosis um and I'm really big on and the reason I'm doing all this is because life got way better once I knew what was going on because before that what am I going to tell myself I got an entire film crew waiting for me at location camera makeup hair props costumes production manager the cast and I'm at home trying to find my car keys and you know what it costs a minute to shoot a TV series and I can't find my car keys I'm an

idiot I am an idiot and they're going to give us half a million dollars to make a season's worth of this and I can't find Keys how am I going to handle a what am I thinking as I'm driving there idiot idiot I found them they were downstairs on the dryer oh yeah I went down there for a second and finally then when you find doubt you're not an idiot you're not stupid you're not lazy you don't have weak willpower you're not an underachiever o do you think you're underachieving o that's a big one with

us a lot of us have that one because we know we can are capable more because at moments I'm writing SK 700 episodes and yet there's the check and now I got to tell them I forgot to cash it from last year and they're going to have to issue a new one I've got to make a phone call and it's just you know what it's 300 bucks screw it I'll just go write something else so it's this bell curve you remember the bell curve in school like the if it was height the bell curve would

look like this number of people who are 4T High 4 n Lots at 5 five 6 7 8 9 6 feet 64 65 65 and up 7t 6'9 now you and I can can argue over whether 6t is tall anybody here thinks 6'9 is not tall okay so there's a cut off point even on a spectrum where we all go yeah that's ADHD okay let's take that top four% let's take 6'9 imagine being 6'9 but you don't know it it's invisible like ADHD so you're in grade three you go out in with the kids in

the schoolyard to play and you let's play Leap Frog kids are this high you're this high they don't know no one can see and every kid gets hurt imagine what this boy heard all our well aggression issues probably check the home situation put him into some kind of Anger Management program and the anger management program doesn't help because it's not an anger issue it's 6' n and no one can see it and in grade seven you pick Sports and you look at the gymnastics it's all the girls and you go over there you ever seen

a 6'9 gymnast right and it goes badly and the girls all laugh and the guys laugh and they said why don't you try basketball and you go um yeah do I want to be laughed at Again by no I'm more of a chess club kind of person it's yeah sports are for shallow jocks and you never try and then you go to visit Grandma and every time you go to visit Grandma you hit your you Spang her Shand that's that's the one Grandpa brought back from Italy which he looted during the war and you always

have to you almost broke it one time and grandma says just don't bring them anymore please and of course doorways you're hitting your head all the way through hitting a door you have to wear a helmet and yeah just it's a thing I do it's religious or something I don't know I just I wear a helmet cuz you're and then you're 47 and you're at a party and someone says you know what we need the chip and Di bowl and you go okay here you go wow how did you do that what he didn't even

use the stool what here's the dip bowl oh my God you just got the he hey everybody he did how did you do that without a step stool or a chair you know what it is you know I've heard about this it's called tallness it's you have tall disorder they have a test you can take it's called a tape measure so you go and take this test at Home Depot and they and you measure you take the test and you score 6' n oh my god well no that can't be right can I'll take the

questionnaire there's a special tallness questionnaire you found online do you fre are you able to see the top of refrigerators yeah and everyone do people often compliment you on your nostrils yeah do you frequently Bang Your Head 47 give me a basketball oh damn I got to tell Grandma but grandma died you weren't even allowed to see her in the hospital and they have high ceilings in the hospital she didn't want you to come cuz she knew you hated her you didn't hate her you were 6' in high so all this stuff comes up it's

a lovely stew and you can get stuck there and people do the older you are the more likely and easier it is to get stuck because you have more to look back on and regret and I still have days where I go if only I'd known sooner now I know now I find out and then I have other days where I go mostly now I know now I found out and even now I'm constantly figuring new things out one of them is physical sensitivities we have a video on the emotional and physical sensitivity and I

knew about the emotional stuff which is why we so often have anxiety and things like that but the physical sensitivity tag tags on shirts sorry and for me it was um neck ties like this just uh drives me why don't I like beaches sand everywhere sand gets everywhere it drives me nuts it's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me certain things certain smells for some people sights sounds and so on that one I figured out about a month and a half ago because we're off to Cuba next in a few weeks for our first vacation

in four years um so as I said it's interesting you keep discovering things about yourself and now I can either just yeah I'm not going to go to the beach or what I'm going to do is go I go to the beach and when it starts bothering me I'll know what's actually wrong not that I don't like beaches so that's the potential is to figure out what's going on and then you go on this journey that danger is the stuff comes up and it's really hard to deal with that all on your own and nobody

nobody I know can I don't think you should try um our website has we're kind of like the Facebook for ADHD that you can create a profile you can connect there's thousands of streams on every topic you can name menopause ADHD there'll be n or 10 streams on that topic you name it there's something there about it and you what humbles me is the stories you read on there of people the suffering that people have gone through and the relief it's amazing there are certain things if you've got something you take lithium and that's what

you do with ADHD whether you go with medication or not there's so much you could do just to start with with your lifestyle but just knowing makes an absolutely huge difference so that's why I acknowledge you for being here uh because you've come to find out the truth or the facts and I'll say the facts there is facts as we know it all right my phone is dinging so that's it oh I went 25 minutes good for me no 20 minutes instead of 15 all right let's get Dr Ahmed up and we'll a round of

applause thank you [Applause] and if you're restless and need to get up and Pace there's an aisle at the back of the room uh how we going to see are we going to sit or we're going to be hyperactive uh I don't know sitting can you see us from here we're good okay we'll sit you sure yeah I'm good you sure ready yeah I'm fine want to see no I'm fine because I saw the in attention the phone was ringing no I'm fine now I'm F see I'm calm now if my mom calls yeah uhhuh

yeah yeah yeah I'll load the dishwasher that'll distract me all right so first question that's up here uh first of all anything that you would correct on what I've said because you just is there anything I said that you'd say it's not quite right I think uh thank you very much what you've done I think you've G you've given a very good uh expose of what ADHD is and the different types of ADHD with all the action I think is some and you're absolutely correct majority of Physicians or clinicians that treat ADHD psychologist that's why

more psychologist treat ADHD because they have more of ADHD they do have it and that's that's something that that is very common I think you've given a very good summary of the presentation of ADHD okay good thank you all right so the first question then is can you comment on ADHD and substance abuse and trouble with the law it's a big one it is very interesting I mean as a forensic psychiatrist this was actually what got me into ADHD I run a special Clinic here where I look at individuals who are a problem and when

we started the clinic about 12 years ago you couldn't get into the clinic unless you've come in trouble with the law that was a standard because those are the people that I really associate with until Family Physicians began to ask the question what don't you understand about prevention what's wrong with you guys in forensic do people have to get in conflict with the law before you start seeing them and that was a story about now seen individuals all over the place who have not gotten in trouble with the law but who had anger problem but

you'll be so surprised that if you go to correction over 70% of our patient do have substance related problem and of these a significant proportion do have ADHD but you know what because ADHD is a stimulant forensic psychiatrist and Correctional psychiatric are the most paranoid set of Subs specialist they won't prescribe the medication because they're afid why they're afraid they're afraid of abuse right they're afraid of abuse so substance abuse is very common among individuals who have ADHD Rick you mentioned you were talking about Coke you were talking about how many cups of coffee a

lot of people drink some people end up drinking about 12 cups of coffee a day and what did what how did I diagnose them before they have caffeinism because that's what they have Cafe misuse disorder but this individual are actually taking care of their tall height because they don't want to bang their head just you were saying so substance abuse is something that is very common among these individuals what about the law the commit offenses there was a study they finished study they look at about 3,000 more than 3,000 individuals who have committed offenses they

were treated with ADHD medication this guys were releasing into the community they stopped taking the medication what happened recidivism increased they started committing more crime so there's no doubt about it there's a higher prevalence if you treat this you reduce residivis anger aggression irritability these are very common so the guy who batters his wife or the woman who batters her husband when they get into to the clinic and the judge said Dr am can you give opinion if you listen carefully and you look for what you look the right thing it may well be the

treating this individual so this tend to coexist quite commonly I heard of a doctor in Washington or Oregon who had two boys with ADHD and um kept seeing these kids his kids were getting getting into trouble and the kids who came before him in court were getting into the same kind of trouble and not master criminals cuz that requires planning and executive function skills that I want that well give it to me and um he said to these kids I won't sentence you if you'll go get test he started saying the kids I will suspend

sentence if you'll go get tested for ADHD and kids sure and it was shock he was shocked at the percentage that were ADHD you know there's one of the things is impulsive whenever you have someone ask what were you thinking I going to do a big thing about this tomorrow night but what were you thinking when I see a Hollywood Starlet or Star what were they thinking yeah whatever it was they were thinking they won't they won't remember 20 seconds later because the mind has gone to another whole place all right let's jump to the

next one what about ADHD anger and aggression impulsivity is one of the characteristics because because individuals who have ADHD may not have that time to actually think before the act and therefore they engage in impulsive action and we don't when you don't understand them and they make this demand to understand them what happens when there's that conflict the emotion that you present with is anger you're right you then send them for anger management but you've not treated the ca no wonder ra of reism child stop Bing his wife sorry child stop Ving his wife when

he was in Anger Management Group 6 months later he back in front of the judge yeah why because Charles wasn't treated for for the primary problem so we need to get to that to start looking at the basic cause of this presentation so anger is very common it's one of the symptom that's an aggression is something that is very common they all the kind of aggression is impulsive aggression not the kind of aggression that you well plan like you said they're hopeless sorry they're not very good criminals yeah well and it's they don't plan it

well part of that is just the structure of the brain that you've heard of the reptile brain the fight ORF flight it's right at the bottom so everything that goes through goes through that first so when you meet a new person you don't know it but part of you goes okay they there's always a little that's why a little mouse whatever we we jump right it's unexpected and the fight ORF flight just gets us ready so then we have all these other there's like four or five different really layers of the brain that top layer

the stuff back in here your prefrontal is designed to go it's okay that's Mom or he seem he's a nice person or yes that's all right he's a doctor you can trust them or whatever it is there's so when that isn't there when you're so fast you don't have time and that's one of the phrases that we hear again and again with doctors is we're trying to get people to be able to put in the pause to take a moment so that you have choice because if you're jumping and it's a knee-jerk reaction then you're

automatic reaction you don't have choice I remember a lot of people say well I'm worried about medication because it'll make me less of who I am and what I said was how can you be who you are when there are seven radios going on in your head at the same time how can your child be who they are and figure out what they want if there's all of this noise and they can't finish not just a project a sentence so many people who I know who've tried medication and it's worked for them and doesn't work

for everybody have told me well one fellow said I looked at my wife and I burst into tears because I could see her for the first time who she was so when medication what's that phrase pills don't build skills with ADHD it levels the playing field though so it levels a playing field which is great because you've been fighting all the time on an Hill playing field and didn't know it you still have to go out on the playing field and play the game and play to win but that can make a difference exercise can

make a difference there are many different things that can make a difference but all right let's jump to the next uh did I tell you this was going to be interesting isn't it interesting it's just interesting is there a cure for ADHD yes it's they saw part of the head off or no how does it it's controversial is there a cure for ADHD unfortunately there's no cure and in I mean it's not a statement of hopelessness how many things have we cure in medicine in the last 200 years probably antibiotics was the only thing we

cure otherwise we Tred to regulate things there's enough treatment both pharmac I mean medication and non-medication treatment that can help individuals but the question of cure is not what we're talking about and in Psychiatry we're heading to was there as you know in DSM 4 because the way we've I mean the way we've done our diagnosis by symptom when we start understanding the brain more then when we understand what we're really heading towards we provide better treatment just that's a line for our Mr MRI pet MRI the more we understand it the more we know

how to treat this but there's no care for ADHD no and and I remember at University at sick kids in Toronto Dr Russell shra showed me two brain scans and the kids were playing a game and they had to push left red if they saw a number whatever it was they had to do but they if they heard a ding they had to stop and the brain was lit up here here and here and this little thing here was to get ready to stop and over on the ADHD kid it was here here and here

yeah it wasn't it this is not morality it's neurology right it just there was no and and what was the result the non ADHD kids the normal everyone wants to be normal no one wants to be typical or average right but anyway none of us are average we just aren't anyway these kids stop very quickly like a quarter of a second or a third of a second and these kids were going for a while before well my phone went and I didn't even hear it for five full minutes thank goodness Jennifer at the back waved

and caught my attention all right yeah we called the second video we did add and mastering it that's that's what you want to aim for what accommodations can be made for ADHD oh we could be here till Thursday yes and summary I mean there are a lot of accommodation that can be made for ADHD like you talk about building a having a a taller door so that a person can get him without hitting their head right and a lot of people can make accommodation the fears that do doctors have is that people come to you

to get either for medication or because they want accommodation the guy is lazy that's why he he wants to get a letter from meia he would take to Alan college or to take to University of otwa so that the professors can give him more time yes in individuals where you've defined you you've really gone through the process of establishing the diagnosis accommodation can be made in time of time so that the person will have more time to do their job they can do it in this in a special place where they less distracted yeah if

it's a work I know uh one of my clients who talking about accommodation well this is a successful teacher in adult education did great job he knows how to be creative but what did the the adult education system do right they force him to say he has to do it the way they've always done it and this man is so creative so we had to write special letter and say you know what you're not going to do this to this guy he has a right whether it took the letter or not but we beg for

the accommodation you can make accommodation in terms of the kind job that you allocate the person to in fact you can write about what you place the person on so there's so many type of accommodation you can make and there's a thousand little things like I just we did a webinar a few weeks ago with uh Dr Russell bramsey and University of Pennsylvania where positive psychology started and they have a book out with full of we have a number of things and there's many books full of strategies but one of most interesting is he said

if you have a clock do not have a digital clock have a hand so you can see that's how much time I have 11:43 to 12 is not that's visible there's these are these little things that you can do that are astounding um one tip I give everybody is if something is just too much can you do your taxes oh God for an hour oh an hour could you do them for half hour 15 minutes well could you do three minutes what can you do three minutes of your taxes just maybe just go looking for

the at least eliminate some places where the receipts might be and you get up and you start you get up you're moving you've got a game it's a game now right make it a game it's another piece of advice I do with everything I do is to time myself or make it somehow interesting and time and again I have to prepare a thing for Ottawa a show it's got to be 2 hours oh I I'm going to need a full week free to do that yeah like a who has a full week free ever anywhere

could I start could I just create the word document with a title well and a couple of the ideas I do want to do that I want to do this oh I want do three hours later I have to be I got to go Bam from half asleep into hyperfocus and it's okay I always get there in time all right next one what if I what if I don't want want medication are there other remedies certainly there there's so many there other remedies that people can engage in without medication uh basically being able to establish

I mean there cognitive behavior therapy that you can engage in and mindfulness that you can engage in and the mindfulness is not the yoga type of mindfulness although that is useful as well but it's the question of being aware of thinking about your thinking yes before you open your mouth start thinking about your thinking before the next sentence that's very helpful in individuals yeah the top researcher in that is Dr Lydia zowa who's now on maternity leave and she wrote a book and we've done a video with her and and so on on the site

and that what's neat about mindfulness is you can do it while you're scraping the carrots you can do it while you're driving you just you're noticing you're not trying to get to Absolute Stillness like that's ever going to happen but you're just going boy I worry about this a lot or I'm and it's it is very powerful and there's you know the MRIs are starting to show what happens over a length of time the brain changes more gray matter or white matter what like it's it's it's changing it changes the brain the moment you start

doing this kind of non-pharmacological intervention mindfulness itself helps you to be a tune with the kind of things that you need to do so instead of making impulsive decisions you able to sett yourself down and engage in the action that are appropriate other form of accommodation I mean sorry other form of non uh nonpharmacological nonpharmacological intervention exercise something that is very useful one of my clients used to come and talk about rmo dance and how much he enjoys it he goes for rber and all the rest of them and he comes and say you know

what he still relaxing I'm able to organize myself other things include planning setting routine for yourself making sure that you have the routine you have the Rhythm routine you have the rituals those kind of things are the characteristic that helps you to move on with non pharmacological treatment yeah and and you've got to figure out there's certain strategies in books that'll be more be more productive and they're they're really designed for the 96% or 95.6% of the population who are not us and so they'll say take frequent breaks yeah if I take a frequent bait

I ain't coming back I'll take a break just to go upstairs and get some raisin toast uh cuz my office is in the basement so that there's no distraction and I'll end up at Canadian Tire looking at snow shovels cuz right so on some level this is the fun of this is you figure out your own stuff and then you try stuff that other people have done and you yeah I tried that didn't work at all I bought an agenda every year for 20 years and literally one in N Pages would and there'd be a

spurt where I'd be really good and then I'd get bored and month of nothing month and a half and then I find it and start again and now I make a list I used to make long lists I'll just list everything I could do today and then I'd add times up well that's 14 hours well this is today and tomorrow oh well if I'm doing two days I could add and now I've got 44 hours and I plan out eventually I would plan out the whole month it would be 2 in the afternoon do you

know how tired I am now I'll start tomorrow next morning I come down okay I should make a to-do list I had days that went by making now I do three things if I get those done because what happened in the other list was I do 123 Small Things oh yeah emptied the dishwasher did this did that did that did that did you start on the script for the Royal yeah but look at all the other things I did so tricky anyway all right the questions arrive on time yeah that's all I have to do

arrive on time I'll think of something all right what is the future like for a kid with ADHD individuals with ADHD if they receive I mean the don't let my future scare you the key here is an early diagnosis it bugs me when people come in into the anger disorders clinic and they say I was diagnosed at the age of 10 I took medication for 2 months and Mom said I couldn't take any medication again why because I may become addicted by the time they start seeing me the complication has set in they're now addicted

they've been to jail many times it's too late so what the future is like for the for the kid with ADHD we know that 70% of the individuals who are diagnosed with ADHD respond to the first trial of medication 70% if they do not respond by the time you do the second trial of another medication 90% or more respond to it if you cou that with this nonpharmacological and you have the individual to capitalize on their strength the future can be very bright however if you do have a kid that has other complication the kid

has OD opposition of Define disorder has conduct disorder is not becoming with a ganish of substance abuse the future can be very Blake and what tends to happen the individuals that have this Blake future are individuals who have never been treated so what am I saying if you recognize on time and you treat this individual and you capitalize on it the future can be good so you can have a rick sitting down here and giving all the lectures while I just watch we interviewed a guy named Alan Brown he's sit's called add Crusher and he

has some great uh videos and he was a heavy cocaine user for a long time his story is amazing um he now takes 88 he now medicates with motorcycle road racing and with ADHD medication and when we we interviewed him we were talking about the medication and I said do you miss the cocaine and he went you know what the ADHD medications way better here's the thing though that because I was worried about getting addicted because I I I don't I've never drunk had anything to drink in my life until I was probably 35 I

had a beer at age I never smoked anything I never took anything cuz part of me sensed you start you're not going to stop right and so so so here's the this is great quote Dr Lori dupar nurse said if ADHD medication is addictive how come it takes my patients six weeks to remember to take it have you ever have you ever gotten it's like 3 in the afternoon and you go geez I don't know if I've had my cigarettes today I don't you know you usually have six cups of coffee and I don't think

I had have I had any coffee today no no it's don't talk to me until I get my coffee even now I can have a day and it's I'm a little frazzled at 3 and AA will say did you forget your medication and I'll go I'll go up and look cuz I don't you know I'll go no I took it apparently but you know what it's a this a busy day that's all but yeah it's the addiction um that another quote was the medication safer than aspirin when used properly the problem of course is when

used because masarin kills people this stuff's been around since 1937 Dr Bradley in Rhode Island gave it to these kids who had recovering from an outbreak of intis and had headaches and he tried this and headaches didn't get better but 50% of the kids their academics went the kids called them the math pills and it took a long time for someone to figure out what was going on and then in the 60s Along Came Ridin and now there's many different things available so yeah interesting but like I said the medication you don't take it it's

gone it's like insulin you know it's it levels the playing field and then you do all the other stuff to get the structure in place so you may still take the medication or you may just not need it at some point so is ADHD a real medical condition is it not true that there are many lookalikes that can really you can never really be certain about the diagnosis kind of covered this I think but yeah you you covered it I mean ADHD I I you and I would differ in terms of uh whether or not

ADHD is a is a disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder yeah there's no doubt is a neurobiological disorder there's a biological basis for it we know that there are neurochemical changes the dopamine the nor epinephrine and we know that colonic system and the seric system them are also affected we know that the I mean is irritable you find about 79% heritability of this disorders so there's no doubt that it's a disorder yeah absolutely and recognizing it that way and treating it it's very important one doctor said I I look at it more as a syndrome a

collection of symptoms and not everybody has the same ones and for me it's that it causes disorder it Causes Chaos it ruins marriage and relationships and steals childhood away from these kids and for undiagnosed untreated it's murderous the biggest name is the mo most well-known name is Dr Ned hell who is a huge fan and we just did a webinar with him last week and he in the documentary we did he said undiagnosed and ADHD undiagnosed and untreated ahd will ruin your life it'll destroy you but if you understand what's going on and get it

treated and he's dyslexic and there's now evidence that people with dyslexia score higher for creativity there's been a number of studies that have said we score higher for ADHD score higher for all kinds of creativity is a study at the University of Memphis 11 kinds of creativity and whether the 15 students who are ADHD on medication and 15 who weren't didn't make a difference so interesting all right um we have some mic uh yeah we do have time for questions uh so we have time for some questions let's first of all let's get a big

hand great presentation thank you very much Rick and AG [Applause]