He said, “I’m going to start you on some medication trials, personally I would advise you to take a martial art and I would look at getting a personal coach.”

When I inquired further about coaching he gave me a name and phone number and I called the person and set up a first meeting.  The cost at the time, I believe was around $500 a month, which took me aback a bit but within a month or two my earnings were up to the point where it wasn’t too much of a burden.  After about three months though, I started to have second thoughts and in spite of the coach’s suggestion that if I followed the process more closely more earnings would improve, I decided to take a break.  I never went back although I did try to find another coach a few years later.  At that time there were only a few in Toronto that specialized in helping clients who had ADHD.  One took weeks to return a phone call and then suggested, by email, that I call at a specific time and when I did there was no answer.  I decided that he probably also had ADHD and could benefit from his own coach.  I then discussed the matter with a friend and mutual sufferer and in the course of our conversation we came to the conclusion that we both had enough coaching experience to try coaching each other and set up a process to do that and invited others to join us in the experiment in weekly meetings.  We call it peer coaching.  That was some years ago and although we now meet bi-weekly we are still going strong and last meeting added two new people to the group.

So what do we do?  There is actually a fairly rigorous process that we set up.  The meeting begins with someone volunteering to chair the meeting and there is a printed agenda. The meeting begins with each attendant invited by the chair to share on a personal update since the last meeting, new information which any of us might have come across concerning ADHD or anything else in neuroscience that might seem helpful and then what has become one of the most important aspects of the meeting although it wasn’t planned to be that.  We share what we call ADHD moments and victories. This could be any of the things that make our lives miserable from losing the keys to our front door, or the car, to getting the time wrong for an appointment.  What tends to happen is that these little tragedies  have a brighter side in that we get to delight out companions with the stories at out next meeting.  Victories could mean something such as finding a device that attaches to your keychain that beeps when you clap your hands or getting the time wrong for an medical appointment and calling the office to apologize and asking if they might be able to accommodate you later in the day.

I will describe the other elements of peer coaching in my next post and in a subsequent post try to explain why the psychiatrist that diagnosed me suggested I take a martial art.

Now, I know that there are a lot of treatments out there they looked like quackery even a few decades ago that utilize neuroplasticity to effect cures, or at least relief, for ailments that were thought to be permanent.  Why am I writing about this in this post on this blog?  The Mozart effect did not really go anywhere and I’m sure that almost no one now remembers Alfred Tomatis.  The Listening Centre in Toronto fell on hard times, could not pay their rent and closed.  One of the practitioners took up another career while the other followed some interest in the method to Mexico where there was a supportive clientele.  But these days I read daily about miracles involving neuroplasticity. There are people blinded by strokes who can see again, Alzheimer’s patients that have no neurological symptoms, schizophrenics who improve their working memory and become symptom free.  We are on the frontier of many great discoveries but to get there we might have to put away our skepticism and allow ourselves to experience awe and wonder without the dash of skepticism so many of us have developed as adults to prevent disappointment in chasing down blind channels or after miraculous cures.  I say us and I mean me and if I write it hear perhaps I will be a little more likely to follow the advice of Herbert Spencer who wrote:  “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance–that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

Just last week, I was telling a friend about this research and he mentioned that he had been told by a natural health practitioner to take a magnesium supplement for Restless Leg Syndrome, (RLS) a condition in which, legs at rest, usually when you are just lying down to go to sleep, feel as if they are twitching. I have RLS and thought that perhaps a magnesium supplement would improve my cognitive functioning as well as my sleep if it could stop that dreadful sensation of leg twitches. I would love to report at the end of this post that I immediately went out to the health food store and got some but…I forgot.

There were two patterns emerging:

1. Children who later developed schizophrenia had early deficits in verbal and visual learning, reasoning and conceptualization and these remained as they grew older

2. They also developed more slowly than their peers in processing speed, attention, visual-spatial problem solving and working memory

How all this ends up as schizophrenia is still unknown but another co-author in the study, Avshalom Caspi, who is the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychiatry at Duke, speculates that a child who struggles to make sense of the world becomes more socially isolated or more delusional.

Keefe said that eventually he hoped that they might be able to intervene, perhaps with anti-psychotic medication, in childhood and head off the adult psychosis. The study suggests that adult psychosis doesn’t just emerge fully formed but has early roots in the developmental process.

I have thought for a long time that schizophrenia is one of the saddest disorders as it seems as if one’s mind turns against oneself but there is another disorder that it is even sadder where one’s mind does something quite similar. That disorder is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). One of the required symptoms for a diagnosis of OCD is that the person must be conscious of their obsessive or compulsive behavior but be helpless to do anything about it. I know at least one person who has OCD and my heart goes out to her. Many times when she is exhibiting symptoms, she is in tears. I have, for a brief time in the past, had OCD symptoms and so have some understanding of how this plays out. In my case the behavior was checking and it was like I had forgotten whether I had locked a door again and again and again. I had, as a child, seen my father do this (so maybe it’s a family trait) and at the time a part of me marveled at the fact that I was repeating this simple action so many times. In my case it passed and has not returned. It happened at a time of great stress so I do have a worry that it could, at some point, return but the person that I was describing earlier has it most of the time and spends much of that time locked in her apartment because it is so painful for her to go outside. Her behavior is also checking but it involves looking at every scrap of paper she comes across to see if one of her friends or family has left her a personal message. A mutual friend who was trying to help her by walking with her one time asked her, “Do you really think that a friend would leave a note for you on the street in the gutter.” The friend with OCD just looked down and cried.

I am so glad that my own symptoms were so short lived but I also hope that this new study will lead to the possibility of earlier intervention and perhaps head of the disorder–at least for schizophrenia.

The exercises consisted of visual dots moving within a circle on a computer screen and although the patients could not initially “see” anything, they were instructed to stare at the screen anyway and guess which way the dots moved. If their choice, or guess, was correct they heard a chime.

All of the participants had improved vision and were able to see in ways they couldn’t before and two of them were actually able to resume driving. Huxlin commented that the exercises were grueling but who of us would not persevere in similar circumstances to regain our vision…

When I presented this argument to Bob Redford, an independent consultant in labor/management relations in Canada, his only comment was, “Well, when you look at the math its pretty much a no-brainer…”