I've got a friend, he has ADD/ADHD and I'm ready to kill him.

There is no point in talking to him, always nothing but excuses. He has no concept of how to act. He was fucking the lady next door while her husband was at basic training. Then got in a fight with them, and I heard him say TO THE HUSBAND "some friend you turned out to be".

Just as a "fer instance"

He is just a colossal pain in the ass. I've always (for 18 years) just kind of chalked it up to "oh, he's just being him" but it's getting to the point I don't know if I care enough for any more.

My question is does it ever get better?

I think that there is something other than ADD/ADHD going on there. Where did that diagnosis come from?

That's not behavior caused by ADD or ADHD. That's a classic case of DOUCHE.

Sounds like there are other issues going on. Sometimes a person can have a cluster of issues, with ADD/AHAD just a part of the it. The person my need Cognitive Behavioral therapy or Dialectical Behavioral therapy for many, many years. The path to real change begins within, with desire. If he lacks desire to heal, etc. looks like misery will be his companion.

I have two adult children that were diagnosed with ADD. Neither one of them would dream of being in that situation or saying those words. I think there are other things going on. Things that are way bigger than you could ever manage. Only he can decide when he will get help for this situation.

After the 18 years of this kind of behavior (that you know of), I wouldn't wonder if it will get better, I would worry that it will get worse.

He blamed the affair on ADD. He says that things make sense at the time and he acts impulsively.

Like when he used a can of scotch guard in the store, put it back on the shelf then was seen on video and got fired. (Employee)

I think it's sociopathy. He put a dent in my car but won't admit it. Tried to swap out my golf clubs (big berthas vs random) because I had sold them and was taking them to the buyer. I didn't notice until I was handing them to the buyer and the sock came off. So the buyer got ALL of them. His and mine.

I made dinner for him and his friend, didn't clean the grill and got a most vile diatribe I've ever had. He called me a "FUCKING ASSHOLE" complete with caps. I bought the food, cooked the food, cleaned up the kitchen, but forgot the grill.

If I put a thumbprint on the shift knob in his car, he will literally huff and all but throw a tantrum "shift using the stick part - not the top part". But my car can get a dent and a shrug.

Maybe he is just a prick?

Levi ... what keeps you hanging around a person like this?

Can you find some new friends?

Definitely not just ADHD. He seems to have some antisocial personality disorder traits (inflated ego, lack of remorse/guilt, no real empathy for others, impulsive, temper tantrums), but it would be impossible to get someone like that into a professional to get diagnosed. The bad news is that if he has that disorder, he is impervious to change and you have to focus on protecting yourself by breaking ties rather than trying to fix him. It sounds like you're getting closer to that point. I would recommend "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout. It's a fascinating and insightful read with pratical tips. The author does have a cultural bias, but try to ignore that section.

or just plain poor character?

ADHD can manifest in a wide variety of ways, some of them quite dysfunctional (i.e. angry outbursts, hitting, aggression,) but it just depends on the person. Adults generally learn to compensate for it to one degree or another.

Here's an article from WebMD that (while not being comprehensive) give you a bit of an idea about how ADHD might manifest in adults:

http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/guide/10-symptoms-adult-adhd

Sounds like Oppositional Defiant Disorder (odd) and ADHD mixed up together. Look at his past. Where was his father growing up. I'm guessing no where in the picture. So no male influence to lay down the law, only sissies who had no direction in parenting.

The only thing that knocks some sense into him will probably be the hard knocks of life (going to Jail, going homeless, or going bankrupt), he'll grow up in time, just give him a few more years. lol!

Get new friends.

+1

I have ADHD and my impulsive behavior has improved. It does take some time though. I was thirty before everything started to click.

It gets better when you stop hanging out with him.

I have some ADD kids. And they can be distracted, messy, and sometimes they can be fairly emotional at times, but they aren't assholes.

They are very loving people.

Yes, some ADD people get into conflicts easily. But that's THEIR problem to work out. If he's not doing anything to control the behavior, then it's on him. Having ADD isn't an excuse to be a jerk.

Doesn't sound like just ADD/ADHD to me either. Not Asperger's either. Nor is it ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) alone. To me, it sounds a lot like a big mixture of all of those things with a possible Narcissistic personality (the world is all about him complex).

If you are a friend, and are comfortable walking away, I would RUN as fast as you can. Don't let him see you are mourning the loss of a 'friend' because that'll give him more fuel for later.

Honestly, with friends like him, you don't need any enemies.


And, to answer your question, does it get better? Only if you can learn to and do implement proper boundaries.

But, don't take my word for it, I may be projecting my troubles onto your situation.

I have add. I have trouble paying attention.
I.E. I started working on a project. Didn't finish. And now I'm here typing this message. This happens from time to time.

I take medication but take a few weeks off here and there.

That's what add is essentially. You just loose focus. Get distracted.

Your friend sounds like he's probably a sociopath or a narcissist. Which means if you keep hanging around him you might be co-dependent.
I know this because I had a narcissist/co-depedent relationship for years. I was the co-dependent. Drawn to the narcissist. I didn't realize how much it fed my ego and how unhealthy it is.

Things are going to get worse for your friend. If he is still in his younger twenties things will get much, much worse. If you live in a place with good, socialized healthcare maybe he can get help. Most likely he's going to end up dead or in jail. I had a friend just like him. Was very impulsive like this. Hurt people without thinking of it then would cast himself as the victim. He died 5 years ago this month actually. Wow.

Now i'm going to get back to my project and then get distracted and look up exactly when it was my narcissist best friend died.

This isn't ADD. This is a guy being a total douche bag and making up excuses to justify his shitty actions. Period.

ADD doesn't make you want want to sleep with everyone's spouses, it makes it hard for someone to concentrate on something for extended amounts of time, finish tasks, or organize/prioritize. This is coming from someone who has ADD and is being medicated for it.

This guy is a douche. He may happen to have ADD but those actions were in no way caused by it.

He says his meds get him all wired, so he doesn't take any. My thinking is if you NEED them, they will work, if you don't (ie aren't actually add/ADHD) they would just get you all wired up. Am I wrong? Always been curious.

I have it and what you describe has been my experience.

My husband has ADD and I've read extensively about it. People with ADD often have problems reading "cues" from other people and do have certain inappropriate behaviors because of it. Their attention just isn't sufficient to pick up the social "vibes" the rest of us do that teach us how to behave in public. Some people with ADD/ADHD go the extra mile and learn proper behaviors though. Either they had good parents, good examples or the personal motivation. So misbehaving is in NO way a given with ADD. I know plenty of people who have the same diagnosis who are charming, empathetic, kind and simply wonderful to have as friends. It sounds like your acquaintance is using ADD as an excuse to behave however they like and not make an effort to become a better person. Because everyone has challenges, everyone has things that they struggle to deal with and you can either deal with the cards you were given or use them as an excuse to not have to play.

It's been my (many) experiences with narcissists and sociopaths that they will perform their own diagnosis to gain sympathy and understanding, and also as a way to excuse their behaviour. They play this card to get you off their back, then just continue their bad behaviour with the excuse, "Oh, I'm insert mental/physical problem here! It's not my fault! I can't help it!"

Just something to consider. I would run far away from your friend before he pulls something if I were in your position.

I am married to someone like this. He would have outbursts about every six months or so. When this happened he couldn't seem to act rationally. Lately he has been going off a lot more than usual. It's been really tough lately and I am hoping that I can somehow get him to see a professional. He needs to. I need to talk to a therapist or someone. I'm having a very hard time dealing with it. I feel like I am on pins and needles all the time. I don't know why the frequency of it has increased so rapidly. Anyway, don't want to high jack the thread. Just wanted to say that this stuff is real.

It has happened to me too. It isn't that I mean to act irrationally I just don't think about what I'm saying or doing sometimes. Sleeping with a married person is off limits for me though.

I have ADD. Improvement is certainly possible. What I found worked best for me is a combo of meds and CBT.

I have to say it felt like going through a long second adolescence as my brain changed from the medications and I am sure I was annoying to a crazymaking degree to my close relationships at the time. It took a LONG time, many years, before I really developed a level of consistent behavior equal to normal adults.

Factor in that I joined and left the morg during that time and you can imagine how interesting life was!

Impulse control IS wicked hard when you are unmedicated but I think your friend's issues are a little beyond the diagnosis. I would think maybe a conduct or personality disorder might be comorbid as many others here have said. Also, there are symptoms of bipolar disorder that look a lot like ADD, so I think if there's one thing to focus on if you want to help your friend, it is making sure he gets treated by a qualified psychiatrist and counselor, gets an accurate clear diagnosis and stays compliant on the right medication(s). THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE ANYONE CAN PROVIDE HIM FOR THIS. EVER.

It's vitally important also to distinguish between psychiatric conditions such as ADD and personality disorders. The two can overlap quite often and PDs require an added layer of care to make everything better.

It is always tempting for me personally to blame my ADD when others are angry at me. It's a way to manipulate them and myself into letting me off the hook; my rotten childhood caused some serious anxiety about making mistakes and I experience guilt to a horribly unpleasant degree so it is a strong urge to use the ADD as a buffer to escape taking responsibility for things. It is quite a handy escape valve to use and I think your friend has caught on to this. I have made a commitment to stop blaming the ADD when I know it was not really the cause of my negative actions. And even when the disorder is honestly to blame (burning dinner because I forgot to set the timer, for example) I do not permit anyone to rescue me from the consequences. If I burn dinner because I didn't set the timer, then the pizza I order to replace dinner comes from my personal luxury budget and perhaps I can't buy Starbucks for a time. This kind of accountability is something your friend will have to be willing to embrace. It is part of living with this frustrating and humiliating disorder. I still feel like a little kid sometimes and I hate that my brain has this condition, but I refuse to be immature enough to keep using my condition to excuse behavior that has a negative impact on those I care for, not to mention myself.

I have made a great deal of improvement since beginning treatment. I never would have embraced the above-mentioned accountability without counseling. I hope you're able to help your friend. ADD is lifelong and quite sucky to be honest, but my quality of life is excellent and my relationships are solid--really the best I could've hoped for.

Big props to you 'passing through' for taking responsibility for your actions. Your example of burning the dinner and then buying the pizza on your dime shows that. My husband hasn't figured that out. Twice in the last month he has taken his frustrations out on stuff in the house that cost a great deal of money to repair or replace. Not once has he really owned up to it or said he'd cut down on something to help make up for it. If they had been things I could do without I wouldn't have done anything to fix or replace them. His answer to everything seems to be "...buy a new one". This applies to stuff he loses, etc. He loses stuff almost daily and starts having a hissy fit until he finds what he lost.

He does take one med the family doctor gave him, but the doctor cut the dose in half about 9 months ago. I think that is part of the reason he has been so bad lately. We had a big fight and he actually called the doctor and told him that his wife doesn't like the way he is acting on the lowered dose, so they are putting it back to where it was, but I haven't seen any improvement yet. I know it takes a while. He really needs more than just that, though.

I have some ADD, maybe more than I realize. When I was TBM I was bored at church, especially during sacrament meeting. It was the same thing over and over. If I had had a cell phone back then, I'd have been playing with it. I zone out during conversations, start things and don't finish them, etc.

(This should have gone under catnips post.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2015 01:31PM by formermollymormon.

I procrastinate like crazy, especially on stuff I don't want to do. However, fortunately, once I dig my heels in and force myself to do it, I do some of my best work under pressure. This was especially true in school. (I was dynamite in Journalism, but had to burn the midnight oil to complete some of my best articles.)

At work, it was torture. My job demanded organized, linear thinking - not something I do even under the best of circumstances - but with constant interruptions (phone calls, new people to interview, etc.) it was awful. When I had a moment to breathe and drag a case file out yet AGAIN, it took me a few minutes to re-organize my thoughts on the case, and where it needed to go from there. And then there would be another interruption. . .

I don't do well with boring people, either. My thoughts tend to leapfrog way ahead of where they are going with what they are saying. I used to get in trouble in college by saying something like, "So where you're going with this is that. . ." (which pissed the professors off to no end, but was a relief to other students who were as bored as I was.)

I didn't know about ADD until my sons were diagnosed with it. My best friend, an elementary school teacher, had been telling me for years that my oldest son had it, but his father refused to listen and permit evaluation. He insisted that punishment would cure the distracted behavior. It didn't.(To this day, and my oldest son is 39, if something truly interests him, he can laser-focus on it for hours. If he isn't interested, it will go in one ear and out the other.)

When I realized that ADD was genetic, and that my husband didn't have it, it gradually dawned on me that I had it - and then I could begin to understand why my job and I were so terribly mis-matched. But by then, I had too many years invested in it to quit.

To this day, it takes every ounce of self-discipline I have not to fidget in a boring circumstance. That's one reason why I love the church we go to now. Our young minister is VERY bright, and his sermons always have elements of history, semantic theory, and other interesting stuff besides religion. He is NEVER boring. Once we had been attending this church well enough to freely express opinions, I told the minister, "Seth, your sermons are NEVER boring! You always bring in other elements and points of view, and give us material to chew on, long afterwards. I bet you got straight A's in seminary in Sermons I, II and III." He got quite a laugh out of that, but I said it sincerely enough that he knew it was a complement.

Poor impulse control is a hallmark characteristic of ADD/ADHD, and when you are bored, your first impulse is to get the hell out of there. If you can't, then the next best thing is to tune out. That can have consequences, too, unfortunately. This can lead to fiddling, drawing in the margins of your notes, toe-tapping, etc. Managers pick up on stuff like this in a heartbeat. It can get VERY bad if you are so tuned out that you don't realize they are talking to you. . .

"Managers pick up on stuff like this in a heartbeat."

He has been fired from EVERY SINGLE job he has ever had. His mom paid for his house, his car, the electric bill. IMO, she is to blame to a point because she has enabled him to live like this. I think he needs a good swift kick to the head.

That sounds like the way my grandma enabled her favorite child, my youngest uncle. He didn't have ADD as whatever mental illness he had was far more severe and unstable. The thing is that he was fired from every job he had, and she paid his rent for most of his adult life until after my grandpa died, and she had him move in with her. The thing about the mental illness that uncle had is that he was never a danger to himself or others, so there was no way to force him to get treated. It's so bad that my dad and uncles finally realized that the best thing they could do is to cut him off completely. The rest of the family had done that years ago, and it was a reason my grandma's funeral had so few people attending.

My brother has a ... Squirrel!!! ...dd since he was a kid.