Daniel Amen
So yesterday I got “Healing ADD” and “Change Your Brain Change Your Life” both by Daniel Amen.
In the ADD book, I spent a good deal of time going through treatment options he put down, of which there are seemingly dozens. The dietary and behavioral changes he talks about are all pretty straightforward.
This morning I woke up, though didn’t exactly bound out of bed, and instead of hitting the markets I hit the drug store for multis and an omega 3 thingie. Then I had some bacon & eggs… Mmmmm bacon.
No caffeine (ouch!) and lots of water later and I’ve got a few things to report:
1) I’m not exactly setting the world on fire here. But I am ABSOLUTELY more awake than usual. So much so that I really see the contrast more than anything else. I’ve been zombifying through the last month with a remarkable lack of purpose and will. I recognize it in my writing (most notably the lack thereof) and the lack of trading. I’ve made some reasonable trades in the last week, but today I’ve made more than the previous week combined.
2) It’s not the caffeine I miss, but the diet soda in general. Of course, trying to ease up (and ostensibly eliminate) caffeine removes the last reason to succumb to the impulse to drink a metric shitload of diet dew or coke zero, so that I’m going to have to let go of.
3) Cutting back on the carbs is gonna fucking kill me.
Now that I’ve got a bit of a jumpstart on what I can do, I’m going back and reading the book properly.
He’ll never win a pulitzer for his writing, but the content is all there and clear. It’s an impressive work with a breadth of understanding of the phenomenon that I’d never previously encountered. My favorite thing so far is that it’s not a commercial for a treatment. It’s not some damn treatise for or against Ritalin or Adderal.
Tags: ADD