Edward M. Hallowell - Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

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.

Answers to Distraction

Delivered from Distraction

ALSO BY
EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, M.D.

The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness:
Five Steps to Help Kids Sustain and Create Lifelong Joy

CrazyBusy:
Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!
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 Childs
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 Users 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: 978-0-307-74316-9

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

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANCHOR EDITION
by Edward M. Hallowell

. I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea
THE CHILD WITH ADD

. Sequence Ravelled Out of Sound
ADULT ADD

. Living and Loving with ADD
ADD IN COUPLES

. The Big Struggle
ADD AND THE FAMILY

. Parts of the Elephant
SUBTYPES OF ADD

How Do I Know if I Have It?
THE STEPS TOWARD DIAGNOSIS

What Can You Do About It?
THE TREATMENT OF ADD

. A Local Habitation and a Name
THE BIOLOGY OF ADD

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 ones heard of attention deficit disorder, and from the title Im worried people will think its 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 its ADHD, soon to change again, no doubt!). Those few who had heard of it didnt 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.