Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

320 Pages·2011·1.54 MB·English

by  Edward M. Hallowell & John J. Ratey

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., is in private practice in adult
and child psychiatry and has offices in both the Boston
area and New York City. He lives with his wife, Sue, and
children, Lucy, Jack, and Tucker.
www.drhallowell.com
John J. Ratey, M.D., is a Clinical Associate Professor of
Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is in private
practice. He lives in the Boston area.
www.johnratey.com
ALSO BY
EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, M.D.,
AND JOHN J. RATEY, M.D.
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Delivered from Distraction
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CrazyBusy:
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Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life
Connect:
12 Vital Ties That Open Your Heart,
Lengthen Your Life, and Deepen Your Soul
Dare to Forgive:
The Power of Letting Go and Moving On
Finding the Heart of the Child:
Essays on Children, Families, and Schools
(with Michael Thompson) Human Moments:
How to Find Meaning and Love in Your Everyday Life
Married to Distraction:
Restoring Intimacy and Strengthening Your Marriage
in an Age of Interruption
(with Sue George Hallowell, LICSW,
and Melissa Orlev) Positively ADD:
Real Success Stories to Inspire Your Dreams
(with Catherine Corman) Shine:
Using Brain Science to Get the Best from People
Superparenting for ADD:
An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child
(with Peter S. Jensen) A Walk in the Rain with a Brain
What Are You Worth?
(with William J. Grace, Jr.)
When You Worry About the Child You Love:
A Reassuring Guide to Solving Your Child’s
Emotional and Learning Problems
Worry:
Hope and Help for a Common Condition
ALSO BY
JOHN J. RATEY, M.D.
The Neuropsychiatry of Personality Disorders
Shadow Syndromes
(with Catherine Johnson)
Spark:
The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
(with Eric Hagerman) A User’s Guide to the Brain:
Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2011
Copyright © 1994, 2011 by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.,
and John J. Ratey, M.D.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form
by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, in 1994, and subsequently published in paperback by
Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.,
in New York, in 1995.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Frank Wolkenberg
and The New York Times for permission to reprint excerpts from
“Out of the Darkness,” October 1987. Copyright © 1987 by
Frank Wolkenberg. Reprinted by permission.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file at the
Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-30774316-9
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
DEDICATION
W
e gratefully dedicate this book to seven teachers of ours, seven
psychiatrists who shared with each other a liveliness of mind, an
independence of thought, a love of the work, and an appreciation of
play.
They taught us to listen and to see.
Doris Mezer Benaron, Jules Bemporad, William Beuscher, Thomas
Gutheil, Leston Havens, Allan Hobson, and Irvin Taube all gave of
themselves much more than this small dedication can acknowledge.
During their years of teaching at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center
in Boston, they taught us to be humble in our work. They taught us to go
where the patient is and to sit down and listen. They taught us to
connect with the patient, person-to-person. They taught us to look for
the heart of the patient, to look for the sorrow and for the joy. We thank
them from our own hearts.
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Authors
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
INTRODUCTION TO THE ANCHOR EDITION
by Edward M. Hallowell
1. What Is Attention Deficit Disorder?
2. “I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea”

THE CHILD WITH ADD
3. “Sequence Ravelled Out of Sound”

ADULT ADD
4. Living and Loving with ADD

ADD IN COUPLES
5. The Big Struggle

ADD AND THE FAMILY
6. Parts of the Elephant

SUBTYPES OF ADD
7. How Do I Know if I Have It?

THE STEPS TOWARD DIAGNOSIS
8. What Can You Do About It?

THE TREATMENT OF ADD
9. A Local Habitation and a Name

THE BIOLOGY OF ADD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX
Where to Find Help
INTRODUCTION
TO THE ANCHOR EDITION
L
eading up to the publication of the first edition of Driven to Distraction
in 1994, I remember a conversation I had with Jonathan Galassi, now
the man in charge of the New York publishing house Farrar, Straus and
Giroux. Friends since high school and college, Jon and I confide in each
other on just about everything. As an editor, Jon had concerns about this
new book I was about to send out into the world. “No one’s heard of
attention deficit disorder, and from the title I’m worried people will
think it’s a book about cars.” Nearly two million in sales later, Jon and I
still chuckle on the fallibility of even the most perspicacious of editors.
Back in 1994, few people had even heard of ADD, as it was then called
(now it’s ADHD, soon to change again, no doubt!). Those few who had
heard of it didn’t really know what it meant. It conjured up stereotypical
images of hyperactive little boys disrupting classrooms and turning life
at home into chaos. It was considered to be a condition found
exclusively in children, almost all of whom were male. It was thought
that children “grew out of” ADD, so that it disappeared by adulthood.
Only a rare few doctors knew that ADD could continue on in adults and
that females could have it as easily as males.
I learned about ADD in 1981, the first year of my fellowship in child
psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. Before
then, if you’d told me a person had attention deficit disorder, I would
have thought it was some psychoanalytic concept that referred to
children who didn’t get enough attention. But then one of my teachers,
Dr. Elsie Freeman, gave us a lecture on ADD.
That lecture changed my life forever. As I listened to Elsie speak, my
jaw dropped. I had the greatest “Aha!” experience of my life. Elsie was