I’m 31 and have ADHD (diagnosed in my teens) and I’m pretty sure NOBODY with ADHD is going to have the wherewithal to read this entire article! Unless it happens to magically coincide with their hyper-focus topic of the moment!
In all seriousness, I skimmed parts of the article and kept scrolling and it just kept going and going and going... like the Energizer bunny. I guess the author found a doctor to prescribe stimulants; they do make it easy to write long rants.
I can identify with some of his analogies, not all. The forgetfulness, standing at desk with power supply / getting “stuck”, lots of that sounds familiar. Some of the stuff he talks about is behavioral though and if it can be called lazy, it probably is at least partially lazy. I could never file TPS reports everyday, but I can do it occasionally. My brain’s capable of it. I just don’t like doing boring things. And yeah, I probably wouldn’t last if I had to do boring things everyday for a job. But the article makes it sound like he’s actually not capable of doing a boring thing.
The more interesting parts of ADHD are the stuff that is lesser-known and often overlooked, like mood swings and anger/irritability issues. Ironically stimulants pretty much cured lifelong mood issues for me. I used to blow up on people all the time; now I’m easygoing.
I was somewhat recently diagnosed with ADD and the diagnosis has truly changed my life. I, for the first time, in roughly 12 years of writing software professionally, am able finish a project enough to open source it-- and I am days away from being able to do so. It feels insanely good. Like something I've only dreamed of as silly as that is, and I don't even care if folks use it (it's not that good), but it's the fact I have even been able to do so...
For years when I would sit down to work I would go into an endless loop consisting of roughly three-four websites, almost back to back, where it was driven by muscle memory anytime something distracted me. I would almost like "wake up" finding myself in this endless loop.
On good days, I would look like an insanely talented and driven engineer, on bad days, I would look like the laziest piece of shit folks could know. It wasn't by choice, it wasn't because I was trying to "cowboy" or "rockstar" a single fucking thing, it's because that's how my attention span worked (or didn't rather).
"Smart and lazy" is almost an insult to me now, because its a moniker put on folks who are probably having trouble with something and "lazy" is rarely positive (even when its supposed to be). It kept me from believing I might have ADD for years despite tons of signs.
The downsides are of course that people don't believe you, or judge you for it (I switched pharmacies because they were treating my like shit when I would go to pickup my ADD meds)... but the upside, as the author said, is you have a life back you didn't know you were missing. You can choose to read a book, watch a movie, program, etc. you're not longer just forced into a vapid reflexivity of the world around you.
About getting treatment: it's extremely irritating that some people judge using Ritalin is somehow morally wrong. Yes, I get that "lifestyle changes" could help, but I don't want to change my lifestyle.
Imagine if there was a pill to reduce risk of cardiac arrest, with some increased risk of something relatively minor. Can you imagine the uproar if cardiologists denied prescribing the pill, instead forcing people to spend 30m a day running? Sure, it's "better" in some metrics to just run, but that's their choice to make. Doctors should be doctors, not moral guides.
I was diagnosed in 2019 after a long series of conversations with a therapist following a work disaster that nearly cost me my job. Getting diagnosed was like finding the missing piece of the puzzle regarding my life. My schooling history suddenly made sense, the poor financial decisions, etc. everything became clear.
The biggest thing I realized is how tightening feedback loops is the key to my productivity, I gravitated towards python because it's interpreted nature meant I could get feedback on my code in 20 seconds max as opposed to 3-5 minutes waiting for my code to build.
Adderall is a help but is not a cure all, it took me months to learn how to use it right, at first Adderall just fueled my ADHD and made everything worse. It's a constant struggle and maladaptive perfectionism is still the one thing I struggle with the most. I can't count the times of I've completed reverted my git sandbox to start from scratch after reaching a certain frustration level with code.
How do you use it right? I was on stimulants as a kid and they worked but made me feel emotionally empty and suppressed my appetite and energy. I’m 28 now and I’ve started taking it again to help with work. The appetite suppression is gone but the emotional apathy remains. If you have suggestions or experiments to make the best use of these meds I’d love to hear them. I started with the lowest possible dose.
28 here, diagnosed in 2019 as well. In 2016 I actually lost a job because of the 5 - 10 minutes it took to rebuild Tomcat after I fixed a JS typo. Finally the server starts up and I get called into a retro, or a planning meeting, or town hall. Then I fall behind and feel the need to catch up on work at 10pm. 4am I get to sleep to be late for the 10am standup. Meanwhile the guy adjacent to me is typing on a mechanical keyboard amd screaming through a bluetooth mic on a sales call.
For anyone diagnosed with ADHD, taking stimulants is associated with 8+x increase of being diagnosed with a basal ganglia and cerebellum disease later in life.
I believe this is NOT causative, but is instead a correlation between other diseases associated with Dopamine production and ADHD. I take and have continued to take stimulants for ADHD.
In my family's case, we likely have something called Dopa Responsive Dystonia (DRD), and what the author is describing sounds to me like what I experienced prior to being diagnosed with ADHD, and later with DRD.
Having said that, I'm not a doctor, so please go see an experienced movement disorder specialist if you are reading this and have any concerns.
DRD is very hard to diagnose, but easy to treat. Because the stimulants (Adderall and Ritalin) made the DRD symptoms worse, my mother happened to get early onset Parkinson's, and my grandmother also responded to carbodopa/levodopa (carbo/levo), it was fairly obvious in retrospect, but if we didn't have a family member with early onset Parkinson's I doubt it would have been picked up.
My sense is that anyone with ADHD who uses stimulants should see an experienced movement disorder neurologist or few about basal ganglia and cerebellum diseases and try out medications based on their assessment. From personal experience, it became extremely clear I had DRD after taking carbo/levo, but there's no way I would have really known without trying it. It also helps with some of the stimulant side effects, which I still continue to take because they are very effective.
My family has seen maybe six neurologists total, and only one really knew about DRD. The Dystonia Foundation has a decent doctor locator.
Segawa's is completely irrelevant in this case and not supported by any symptoms the author reports in the original article. I have diagnosed Segawa's. It is quite irresponsible to wave people off of successful treatments of ADHD, as you're doing here, because of your family's (unfortunate) history with a genetic disease. I apologize that we know little about Segawa's and you've had a journey to understand it, but there is approximately zero overlap between common ADHD symptoms and the presentation of Segawa's, which is primarily motor-related.
Please, don't read comments like these and distance yourself from treatment. There is always more to a study.
I didn't know this, but I take my medication as rarely as possible because I hate the comedown, appetite suppression, and tolerance building that occurs. It sucks, but I had a feeling there was some long-term downside like this. Hopefully lessening frequency to occasional use also lessens the likelihood of what you describe.
This has always been quite concerning to me as I've had a worsening essential tremor that was slight in my early twenties but is quite observable now that I'm in my thirties. The confounding effect that really hurts me here is that my father has had a benign essential tremor for his whole life - so there's a constant see-saw internally and with medical practitioners about whether my tremor is something to be concerned about or not.
Thanks for the info on ADHD / basal ganglia and cerebellum. I was not aware of this.
It should be noted though that the study authors were pretty clear that the correlation is unclear given that untreated ADHD sufferers had a 2.5-fold increase in the same diseases.
> Researchers postulated that the association between psychostimulant use and BG&C diseases may be a result of a more severe ADHD phenotype, rather than a direct pharmacological effect.
Thank you for citing this article. It is also known that using methamphetamine increases cardiovascular risk. Prescription amphetamines might do the same.
>"hyper mobile joints are an uncommon finding in those who do not have attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
>Differences in the structural integrity of temporal and parietal cortices may underlie wider behavioural phenotypical expression of hypermobility: abnormalities in superior temporal cortex are also seen in autism.11 Inferior parietal cortex can affect proprioceptive awareness and hypermobility is itself linked to dyspraxia.1 Our findings suggest that processes compromising function in neuro-developmental conditions may occur in individuals with hypermobility, putatively enhancing vulnerability to stress and anxiety.
Autism, Joint Hypermobility-Related Disorders and Pain
ASD and HRDs, specially hEDS, are conditions with a strong genetic component, a polymorphic clinical presentation, appearing both in infancy, and sharing several phenotypical features (35). Although existing data does not allow to ascertain increase prevalence of ASD in HRDs, as well as shared underlying patho-mechanisms between both conditions, there is increasing evidence suggesting that these co-occur more often than expected by chance. This requires be confirmed by further investigation which should consider the recent nosological changes both in EDS and the hypermobility spectrum disorders [see (17, 38)], and in ASD (72).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292952
Joint hypermobility and the heritable disorders of connective tissue: clinical and empirical evidence of links with psychiatry
- In 1988, Hofman et al.[58], in a sample of 30 children with MFS,observed that 17% had attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity. A decade later, Harris[59] stated, based on his clinical experience with 200 patients with ADHD, that "hyper mobile joints are an uncommon finding in those who do not have attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
In Sweden,Hollertz[60,61] also pointed out the frequent co-occurrence of ADHD and JH in adults patients. He observed that an orientation to orthopedic and rehabilitation care was common in these patients due to joint problems. Thus, this author speculates about a possible genetic marker com-mon to ADHD and EDS.
Recently, Koldas Dogan et al.[62]explored JH using the Beighton score in 54 children with ADHD compared to 36healthy controls. In this study, JH was significantly more frequentamong patients than among controls (31.5% vs. 13.9%). In accor-dance with these results,
Shiari et al.[63]also found a higher prev-alence of JH, assessed with the same method of the previous study,among Iranian children with ADHD compared to controls (74.4%vs. 12.8%), confirming an association between ADHD and abnormal collagen conditions.
JOINT HYPERMOBILITY AND AUTONOMIC HYPERACTIVITY: RELEVANCE TO NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS
> It is likely that the importance of hypermobility and autonomic dysfunction to the generation and maintenance of psychopathology in neurodevelopmental disorders is poorly appreciated. Work underway(autonomic testing, fMRI) will test the hypothesis that autonomic reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity predispose to the expression of psychiatric symptoms, particularly anxiety
- We demonstrate for the first time that rates of hypermobility and symptoms of autonomic dysfunction are particularly high in adults with neurodevelopmental diagnoses. It is likely that the importance of hypermobility and autonomic dysfunction to the generation and maintenance of psychopathology in neurodevelopmental disorders is poorly appreciated. Work underway(autonomic testing, fMRI) will test the hypothesis that autonomic reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity predispose to the expression of psychiatric symptoms, particularly anxiety. It is further hypothesized that inefficient neural co-ordination of efferent autonomic drive with imprecise interoceptive representations may be amplified in hypermobile individuals. In hypermobility, this mechanism might explain increased vulnerability to stress sensitive and developmental neuropsychiatric conditions.
- https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/85/8/e3.40?utm_source=trendmd&u...
[Searching for a biological marker common for both ADHD and EDS].
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22468413
- speculated about a common biological base shared by ADHD and EDS after observing the frequent cooccurrence of both pathologies in a clinical setting.
Connective tissue problems and attention deficit and hyperactivity
- To the Editor, The heritable disorders of the connective tissue are a group of genetic disorders affecting connective tissue matrix proteins that classically include Marfan syndrome (MFS), Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome (EDS), benign joint hypermobility syndrome and osteogenesis imperfecta (Grahame 2000). As connective tissue is found throughout the body, the clinical manifestations of these disorders are varied, including disturbances in different systems (skeletal, ocular, cardiovascular, etc.). A common feature of the heritable disorders of the connective tissue is joint hypermobility (JH), which is a highly heritable condition characterized by an increased range of motion of the joints as a consequence of connective tissue involvement.We encountered a 7-year-old boy addressed by teachers due to school problems. His mother suffer from MFS such as his maternal grandmother who died by cardiac complications. Considering familial antecedents, his morphotype (long bone overgrowth), JH and ocular ...
A connective tissue disorder may underlie ESSENCE problems in childhood
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, joint hypermobility-related disorders and pain: expanding body-mind connections to the developmental age.
>Recent research seems to indicate a degree of co-occurrence of JHS/hEDS and some neuro-developmental disorders including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and developmental coordination disorder (DCD). In the area of ADHD, researchers found that adults with ADHD had higher rates of JH and problems with automatic control of body functions (dysautonomia) compared to healthy controls. Other researchers observed high co-occurrence of JH or EDS with ADHD. Concerning DCD, children with DCD have more symptoms associated with JHS/hEDS compared to typically developing children. The relationship between JH and DCD may be due to poor positional sensing in affected children.
A Cohort Study Comparing Women with Autism Spectrum Disorder with and without Generalized Joint Hypermobility
- This research supports a growing body of literature indicating that immune-mediated disorders are a common comorbid feature in hEDS and GJH. In addition, we have also shown that this dysfunction may be paired with endocrine dysregulation, leading to complex immune and hormonal exophenotypes, such as autoimmune disorders, allergic rhinitis, asthma, endometriosis, and dysmenorrhea. While we have not addressed autism and GJH comorbidity rates in this study, their co-occurrence in the adult ASD female population suggests links between the dysfunction of connective tissue and the immune and endocrine systems in this subpopulation.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867488/
>ADHD might thus be a (non) allergic hypersensitivity disorder caused by an environmental trigger, based on a non-IgE dependent histamine release from mast cells and basophilic granulocytes, since the histamine H3 receptor is involved in hyperactivity and promotes dopamine release in the frontal cortex. Moreover, polymorphisms in the histamine N-methyl transferase (HNMT) gene, impairing histamine clearance, were found to affect the behavioral responses to food additives, which increase histamine levels #ADHD
Thousands of words and no mention of diet. I was diagnosed ADHD in 5th grade, tried just about every medication out there, and never landed on a workable long-term solution until I modified my diet. Medication always had mixed results. Many allowed me to focus and better control impulses, but the emotional crash at the end of the day was too much. Others caused insomnia or palpitations. Cutting sugar and limiting carbs, however has been transformational. I won't say it's right for everyone, but everyone with ADHD should at least try cleaning up their diet. It's a no lose option.
Meditation helped me to deal with ADHD immensely. My ability to focus and concentrate is now on par if not better than most of my peers, though it requires me to spend about an hour every day in the morning to meditate.
I find that it’s very much worth the time investment, and would recommend anyone struggling with focus/anxiety to try it themselves.
I was told by my doctor that since I have a successful career as a software engineer I do not have ADHD. I'm still fighting to get a prescription. What he doesn't understand how my coping mechanisms are probably more unhealthy then the drug. I have allocate recreation time to work, use a lot of caffeine, and sleep deprivation to overcome my ADHD. Sleep deprivation is probably the strongest tool to combat ADHD but as I get older it takes a greater toll on my body.
This is interesting, because I definitely have been a non-believer. This article makes it real.
It does seem to me that ADHD is over-diagnosed for kids, especially since the condition as described in the article really looks like what a small child seem to experience (the inability to focus, the constant distraction, etc.). And because it is much less rare to see someone in their 20s saying they have ADHD than to see some parent saying their kid has it. It is convenient for a parent to think that their kid has ADHD to explain why the kid is "late".
Here the problem really is about "lateness". Children grow up at different paces, and if a 6-year-old boy behaves like an "average" 4-year-old, people will think he has ADHD, while his brain might just need more time to develop.
There are kids who finish high school before hitting 10. Do we diagnose them with anything? Like Attention Surplus Disorder? No, because it doesn't seem to induce any trouble.
The ADHD as described in the article sounds like a nightmare to be honest, and I really wish scientists find some way to help these people.
The thing with ADHD is that some type of kids are overdiagnosed, while other types are underdiagnosed. Basically if your kid suffers from:
- Poor academic performance
- Hyperactivity
- Poor social skills (gets in trouble, fighting, etc.)
Then they're most likely gonna get recommended to ADHD evaluation. But as you might guess, a lot of kids suffer from those things without necessarily having ADHD.
Some kids, like myself, mellowed out, and lost pretty much all the traits other than those of ADD. But I did just well enough in school - despite putting zero effort into it - that I flew under the radar.
Teachers figured I was just too busy fooling around / lazy / uninterested in some topics, while my parents argued that I was too hung up in sports / gaming / playing instruments.
And unfortunately, by the time you're a teenager, you only have one idea of what ADHD looks like: It's the troubled kids in class that got diagnosed early on, and can't cope in school; The "academic losers", as they are unfortunately branded.
In fact, that's the reason I didn't get diagnosed until my late 20's. My ex-gf hinted to me that I scored very high on ADHD / ADD checklist, but no way I thought, the only people I know with ADHD are those that never graduated from HS, and now are either criminals or minimum-wage workers.
Well, got myself evaluated, and sure enough, ADD. It was a thorough process, and took a LONG time.
ADHD is not a disease. It’s a collection of symptoms that have been arbitrarily grouped together. My son’s psychiatrist who was diagnosing my son for ADHD said that it’s psychiatry’s dirty little secret.
Back in the 60s or 70s ( I can’t remember what he said) people were starting to notice that kids were having behavioral problems, trouble focusing etc.
So what they did was collect a group of symptoms, and then arbitrarily said “if the child has 6 out of 11 of these symptoms then they have ADHD.”
The reason why they chose 6 was because if they chose 5 then too little number of children would get diagnosed, and if they chose 7, then too many children would get diagnosed. Having 6 would mean that 7-10% of kids would get diagnosed which “looked right” so they chose 7.
It’s not a real disease like other diseases, it’s a collection of symptoms. Which is why kids get misdiagnosed all the time. Anxiety can produce ADHD-like symptoms. Other things like giftedness and boredom can also fry diagnosed as ADHD.
There really are children with focus issues where medication like adderall will absolutely help. It will make kids with anxiety worse though so a misdiagnosis will ruin lives. But the origins of where ADHD came from explains why there is so many issues with ADHD disgnoses.
> It’s not a real disease like other diseases, it’s a collection of symptoms.
Any disease with "syndrome" in its name is just a collection of symptoms. That's literally what syndrome means.
Your information about ADHD is offensively wrong, and its underdiagnosis and undertreatment due to misinformation ruins far more lives than than there are people with anxiety being mistakenly prescribed stimulants.
Quibbling with the classification is missing the forest for the trees here, I think. It's a chronic condition that requires some kind of treatment to be dealt with. People have the same kind of quarrels with defining alcoholism or drug addiction as a disease, but we have limited time on this planet and we can argue about labels or we can spend that time instead trying to address the actual concerns.
Medicine, as a science, is expected to fix the human body while it's running without taking it apart. Unlike other fields, modern psychiatry is still mostly clinical. Of course, it is deeply flawed, but it is our best shot nevertheless. And, unlike the one doctor that told you otherwise, there's widespread consensus in the medical community that ADHD is very much a thing. I'd rather believe in them.
This is wrong, studies have shown that ADHD brains are fundamentally different from non-ADHD brains in the sense that they have reduced frontal lobe (read: executive functioning, ie. cognitive inhibition, working memory, decision making) matter.
You diagnose a disease by the symptoms, this goes for any disease or disorder. Problem is that there are not actual diseases here but rather groupings of symptoms (as you say, its not just for ADHD though) and that its a checklist which is filled out often based solely on verbal questions answered by a child.
Another interesting thing to consider is that a lot of psychological disorders are culture bound (and therefor in my humble opinion irrelevant as groupings even for psychiatric purposes).
> Back in the 60s or 70s ( I can’t remember what he said) people were starting to notice that kids were having behavioral problems, trouble focusing etc.
Unscientific personal observation, but I wonder if TV has a role in this. Didn't kids start watching a lot of TV around that time?
Also, I feel kids in poor countries with no TV (not that there's much of that left now) have little to no ADHD.
I was diagnosed in my 30s in part by the T.O.V.A. test, which gave me surprising insights.
The hardest part of the test for me was to stop pushing the button when it told me to. It's hard to describe how difficult that was for me. By the end I distinctly recall the familiar sense I had in school of feeling dumb, inadequate, and frustrated.
In the T.O.V.A. results I was normal range for Inattention and Reaction Time. My Inconsistency was 75/100 but the shocker was my Impulsivity. My commission errors put me at 52/100, what the psychologist said was more or less a mentally retarded range.
On 10mg of Adderall, I retook T.O.V.A. and scored normal ranges across the board.
That helped me better understand why I was a class clown underachiever who barely graduated.
I cried the first time I studied a tech manual on Adderall. It was as if my brain were a radio that tuned into a clear channel for the first time. I wondered if that was how "normal" people are able to concentrate.
Soon, however, the stimulant honeymoon wore off as my tolerance increased and side effects ensued. Today I take nothing. I've noticed the symptoms being less disturbing since my mid-40s.
A weird part about being on Adderall is it slowed down my brain and reduced my quirky left-field personality to such a degree that I didn't feel like myself anymore, though I felt much more confident. One of my children also has the diagnosis and says the exact same thing. He only takes Adderall as needed for school challenges that require extra concentration. An early diagnosis for him helped him dodge the co-morbid problems that plagued me for years.
I don't tell friends or co-workers about the diagnosis. Even my spouse has expressed doubt about it.
For anyone with ADHD who finds this long article difficult to read, I'd suggest reading it with the BeeLine Reader browser extension (I'm the founder, and anyone who wants a free 1-month pass can email me via my profile). It makes walls of text and long articles in general easier to stick with, and is fairly popular in the ADHD community.
This article works best in Clean Mode, which also reformats the text into a column.
Sorry if this is too off-topic/self-promotion-y, but hopefully it helps some folks.
Be careful with the stimulants -- I say this not as a value judgment but because they can have cognitive side effects that impair your ability to understand you're having those side effects.
Even when they work well there will be some collateral damage with stimulants. I was a great employee on them, but I was a shitty, narcissistic friend. The focus many people get from stimulants is an inward focus, which makes it easy to get things done but hard to empathize with other people. As a result I didn't have many friends, and once I started wanting more out of life I realized the stimulants were holding me back from personal growth. The inward focus clouded my ability to understand why people didn't like me -- I couldn't make enough space for another person to even see why people didn't want to be around me.
I'm not saying that stimulants don't help (they totally do) but you should understand what you want out of your life and how that aligns what you get out of the drugs.
I relate a lot. I'm 28 and I have an ADHD diagnosis. There has been a lot of public debate on this topic in Sweden of late. I got my diagnosis at age 23 and had already finished a bachelor degree. My first psychologist said "I'm sure you dont have ADHD if you finished a bachelor" lol although at the time my life was a rollercoaster. Today im doing great and love the challenging nature of software development. However i eat medicine and realise that exercise and routines are extremely important to mitigate symptoms.
With all of these types of conversations and threads I am more curious to hear from the disciplined, focused people who seem to be the goal for what Adderiddlinvanse fixes.
I have wondered if I have ADD many times in the past. Mostly, because I was in school and being forced to do a task that I didn't enjoy, nor wanted to enjoy. When I have found things that I do genuinely enjoy, I can focus for hours and hours on end.
I am not opposed to any diagnosis or treatment, but I really have never met anyone who can truly focus on anything, at any moment for a super long amount of time. From my own experience and the conversations I have had with friends that take Adderall/etc. it seems like we have believed that there exists a significant portion of the population that has an uncanny ability to focus on tasks, both fun and boring. I certainly think there are a few people out there like this, but anecdataly, most people I know are more towards to the distractable/ADD/ADHD spectrum than the focused types.
I bring this up, because if our perception of how many people around us have this god-like ability to focus is wrong, I suspect many people will take medicine under a misconception.
Like I said, don't want to ignore the extreme cases, but genuinely would like to hear from a few people that read this and can confidently say they can do most/all tasks without breaking focus.
This is a good point. People have an incentive to act as if they have 100% focus all the time, especially at the workplace, and especially in American-style culture. So, many people also feel as if they are broken because they get distracted. There is probably a significant portion of the population that truly has a disorder, but for the rest of the population, should we really be calling distraction behavior a "disorder" if it's a massive portion of the population?
I think much of the modern issue with focus can be attributed to the Digital Age. How can anyone focus with all these alerts and dings and emails and sounds everywhere all the time? And multitasking is worshipped like it's the modern man's solution to all problems. We're still drinking the 60s Kool-Aid, as if the modern, fancy, carefree Jetsons' lifestyle is right around the corner. It isn't. We're still the same human beings with the same old problems, except now we have additional problems due to the onset of technology.
(Not that technology doesn't solve certain issues, of course.)
From years of amateur neurochemistry - As best as I can tell - ADD & ADHD are two sides of the same coin resulting from a dopaminergic deviation that serves the tribe but not the individual.
Most people think of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical," but in reality it is the "anticipation chemical." Dopamine says: "You got this. Almost there!" And it is up-regulated when an uncertain profit presents itself, implying that all you need is a little bit more focus and practice.
Too little dopamine and you get OCD and hoarding: the inability to decide. You can think of a hoarder's room full of stuff as decisions left unmade. When you can't decide, you open & close your car door 45 times until it sounds "just right".
And when you have too much dopamine, you do stuff with zero anxiety, but you don't stop to consider the best course of action because you pick the first, best path. Useful when running from a predator, but not when solving complex problems. Just look at people on cocaine to see how this pans out.
The best personal advice I have to handle the ups & downs of ADD/ADHD condition is to build supportive todo & reminder systems around the bipolar highs and lows. Exploit the manic highs and outsource as much rote work as you can. Find ways to help you remember and reward life-sustaining tasks during the lows.
I've been working on some software that helps me get the most out of life in this manner, which would also potentially help older, mentally-compromised patients. If this is something you are interested in, please do reach out.
I’m definitely interested in the software you mentioned.
> Exploit the manic highs and outsource as much rote work as you can.
This. 1000x this. If I’ve found a flow I tell my partner that I’m canceling plans so I can exploit the focus as long as it lasts. Those bursts of work every few weeks will pay dividends for years
Do you have sources for any of these claims about dopamine? No offense intended, and I agree that the common interpretation of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical" is wrong and oversimplifying, but much of what you're saying sounds a bit "just so" to me.
I am surprised nobody has mentioned Gabor Mate's book Scattered Minds (Scattered in the US) which talks about his theory that AD(H)D is just a cope mechanism derived from childhood attachment issues or trauma with their primary caretakers.
After being diagnosed with ADD, and having rejected drugs, this is the first text that has allowed me to first get all the puzzle pieces in front of me and then let me build a proper picture of everything that has been happening to me for the last 20+ years.
I know I am getting late to the conversation and probably this comment will be buried, but I would strongly recommend anybody suffering from this to take a look at this book. It has been eye opening and healing as no other text has.
I also have ADHD (Or what was called ADD before - i.e, not the hyperactive part), and got diagnosed as an adult. As a child, I was extremely hyperactive - by some mystery, my parents didn't get me examined. And since I mellowed down in my teens, them nor school bothered to do anything.
But, yes, it's awful. For me, the worst parts are:
- Uncontrollable "hyperfocus" on things you really don't have control over. It would be awesome if you could control your interest, but it's usually the other way around. Something finds you, and you can't stop focusing on it. Everything around you becomes irrelevant, it's like a drug.
- Poor time management. For some reason, things just fly by you. Because you have a hard time focusing on different things, they get neglected really fast, and you suddenly find yourself hours / days / weeks later, remembering that you should have done some thing. Taking out the trash, paying your bills, handing in homework, getting your car looked at, etc.
- Having a hard time reading long pieces of text. During college I absolutely loathed classes with a lot of reading, as I'd read the same part 4 times over, zoning out each time.
- Zero sympathy from other people. You easily get branded lazy. My teachers said year after year that I was bright, but lazy - so I figured there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just lazy.
- Depression and anxiety etc. that comes and goes. I especially remember back in college when I studied Engineering, and most of my classmates would study 12 hours a day, deep into the books. It was impossible for me to do the same, so I pretty much lived from one all-nighter to another, feeling like a total fraud because I couldn't dedicate 1/10th of the time to school, as my buddies did. My anxiety was over the top.
"If I don't want to wash a fence, I can't think about how to wash the fence. I go into complete lockup. I ask the question, "how do I wash the fence?" and the answer will not come to me.
I can't get to "first I need a bucket and water." "
This is so true! I'm ADHD, diagnosed and tried medications for a while, they helped, but had other issues so I stopped. What really helped was the realization that there are tasks where I can't even begin. I then gradually trained myself to think about the first thing and just focus on that. Don't feel like getting up from bed? Thing about moving my hand, then make it move the covers off, then move my legs and so on. Soon the momentum develops and I find it easier to do whatever I didn't feel like doing. Now my default is to just think about the very first thing and take it from there. It took me a while but has worked wonders for me.
Thanks for mentioning that not everybody responds well to Ritalin. I was medicated with it while in grade school, and it was not pleasant; the school nurse would check my mouth to make sure I took the pills each morning, because I would spit them out otherwise. To this day, I am not interested in taking medication for my mental health.
[+] [-] vonseel|6 years ago|reply
In all seriousness, I skimmed parts of the article and kept scrolling and it just kept going and going and going... like the Energizer bunny. I guess the author found a doctor to prescribe stimulants; they do make it easy to write long rants.
I can identify with some of his analogies, not all. The forgetfulness, standing at desk with power supply / getting “stuck”, lots of that sounds familiar. Some of the stuff he talks about is behavioral though and if it can be called lazy, it probably is at least partially lazy. I could never file TPS reports everyday, but I can do it occasionally. My brain’s capable of it. I just don’t like doing boring things. And yeah, I probably wouldn’t last if I had to do boring things everyday for a job. But the article makes it sound like he’s actually not capable of doing a boring thing.
The more interesting parts of ADHD are the stuff that is lesser-known and often overlooked, like mood swings and anger/irritability issues. Ironically stimulants pretty much cured lifelong mood issues for me. I used to blow up on people all the time; now I’m easygoing.
[+] [-] rubyn00bie|6 years ago|reply
For years when I would sit down to work I would go into an endless loop consisting of roughly three-four websites, almost back to back, where it was driven by muscle memory anytime something distracted me. I would almost like "wake up" finding myself in this endless loop.
On good days, I would look like an insanely talented and driven engineer, on bad days, I would look like the laziest piece of shit folks could know. It wasn't by choice, it wasn't because I was trying to "cowboy" or "rockstar" a single fucking thing, it's because that's how my attention span worked (or didn't rather).
"Smart and lazy" is almost an insult to me now, because its a moniker put on folks who are probably having trouble with something and "lazy" is rarely positive (even when its supposed to be). It kept me from believing I might have ADD for years despite tons of signs.
The downsides are of course that people don't believe you, or judge you for it (I switched pharmacies because they were treating my like shit when I would go to pickup my ADD meds)... but the upside, as the author said, is you have a life back you didn't know you were missing. You can choose to read a book, watch a movie, program, etc. you're not longer just forced into a vapid reflexivity of the world around you.
[+] [-] vslira|6 years ago|reply
Imagine if there was a pill to reduce risk of cardiac arrest, with some increased risk of something relatively minor. Can you imagine the uproar if cardiologists denied prescribing the pill, instead forcing people to spend 30m a day running? Sure, it's "better" in some metrics to just run, but that's their choice to make. Doctors should be doctors, not moral guides.
Source: been there
[+] [-] 40acres|6 years ago|reply
The biggest thing I realized is how tightening feedback loops is the key to my productivity, I gravitated towards python because it's interpreted nature meant I could get feedback on my code in 20 seconds max as opposed to 3-5 minutes waiting for my code to build.
Adderall is a help but is not a cure all, it took me months to learn how to use it right, at first Adderall just fueled my ADHD and made everything worse. It's a constant struggle and maladaptive perfectionism is still the one thing I struggle with the most. I can't count the times of I've completed reverted my git sandbox to start from scratch after reaching a certain frustration level with code.
[+] [-] ranman|6 years ago|reply
Also, your comment on python ... very very true
[+] [-] brailsafe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omgwtfbyobbq|6 years ago|reply
I believe this is NOT causative, but is instead a correlation between other diseases associated with Dopamine production and ADHD. I take and have continued to take stimulants for ADHD.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0207-5
In my family's case, we likely have something called Dopa Responsive Dystonia (DRD), and what the author is describing sounds to me like what I experienced prior to being diagnosed with ADHD, and later with DRD.
Having said that, I'm not a doctor, so please go see an experienced movement disorder specialist if you are reading this and have any concerns.
DRD is very hard to diagnose, but easy to treat. Because the stimulants (Adderall and Ritalin) made the DRD symptoms worse, my mother happened to get early onset Parkinson's, and my grandmother also responded to carbodopa/levodopa (carbo/levo), it was fairly obvious in retrospect, but if we didn't have a family member with early onset Parkinson's I doubt it would have been picked up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine-responsive_dystonia
My sense is that anyone with ADHD who uses stimulants should see an experienced movement disorder neurologist or few about basal ganglia and cerebellum diseases and try out medications based on their assessment. From personal experience, it became extremely clear I had DRD after taking carbo/levo, but there's no way I would have really known without trying it. It also helps with some of the stimulant side effects, which I still continue to take because they are very effective.
My family has seen maybe six neurologists total, and only one really knew about DRD. The Dystonia Foundation has a decent doctor locator.
https://dystonia-foundation.org/living-dystonia/find-a-docto...
[+] [-] mdthrowaway|6 years ago|reply
Please, don't read comments like these and distance yourself from treatment. There is always more to a study.
Source: Board-certified neurologist.
[+] [-] RankingMember|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] munk-a|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandvm|6 years ago|reply
It should be noted though that the study authors were pretty clear that the correlation is unclear given that untreated ADHD sufferers had a 2.5-fold increase in the same diseases.
> Researchers postulated that the association between psychostimulant use and BG&C diseases may be a result of a more severe ADHD phenotype, rather than a direct pharmacological effect.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vonseel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_viper|6 years ago|reply
https://scientonline.org/open-access/dystonia-and-its-treatm...
Neurodevelopmental Disorders (Autism, ADHD, Delayed Speech/language, dyspraxia)
>"hyper mobile joints are an uncommon finding in those who do not have attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
>Differences in the structural integrity of temporal and parietal cortices may underlie wider behavioural phenotypical expression of hypermobility: abnormalities in superior temporal cortex are also seen in autism.11 Inferior parietal cortex can affect proprioceptive awareness and hypermobility is itself linked to dyspraxia.1 Our findings suggest that processes compromising function in neuro-developmental conditions may occur in individuals with hypermobility, putatively enhancing vulnerability to stress and anxiety.
Autism, Joint Hypermobility-Related Disorders and Pain
ASD and HRDs, specially hEDS, are conditions with a strong genetic component, a polymorphic clinical presentation, appearing both in infancy, and sharing several phenotypical features (35). Although existing data does not allow to ascertain increase prevalence of ASD in HRDs, as well as shared underlying patho-mechanisms between both conditions, there is increasing evidence suggesting that these co-occur more often than expected by chance. This requires be confirmed by further investigation which should consider the recent nosological changes both in EDS and the hypermobility spectrum disorders [see (17, 38)], and in ASD (72). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292952
Joint hypermobility and the heritable disorders of connective tissue: clinical and empirical evidence of links with psychiatry
- In 1988, Hofman et al.[58], in a sample of 30 children with MFS,observed that 17% had attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity. A decade later, Harris[59] stated, based on his clinical experience with 200 patients with ADHD, that "hyper mobile joints are an uncommon finding in those who do not have attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
In Sweden,Hollertz[60,61] also pointed out the frequent co-occurrence of ADHD and JH in adults patients. He observed that an orientation to orthopedic and rehabilitation care was common in these patients due to joint problems. Thus, this author speculates about a possible genetic marker com-mon to ADHD and EDS.
Recently, Koldas Dogan et al.[62]explored JH using the Beighton score in 54 children with ADHD compared to 36healthy controls. In this study, JH was significantly more frequentamong patients than among controls (31.5% vs. 13.9%). In accor-dance with these results,
Shiari et al.[63]also found a higher prev-alence of JH, assessed with the same method of the previous study,among Iranian children with ADHD compared to controls (74.4%vs. 12.8%), confirming an association between ADHD and abnormal collagen conditions.
JOINT HYPERMOBILITY AND AUTONOMIC HYPERACTIVITY: RELEVANCE TO NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS
> It is likely that the importance of hypermobility and autonomic dysfunction to the generation and maintenance of psychopathology in neurodevelopmental disorders is poorly appreciated. Work underway(autonomic testing, fMRI) will test the hypothesis that autonomic reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity predispose to the expression of psychiatric symptoms, particularly anxiety
- We demonstrate for the first time that rates of hypermobility and symptoms of autonomic dysfunction are particularly high in adults with neurodevelopmental diagnoses. It is likely that the importance of hypermobility and autonomic dysfunction to the generation and maintenance of psychopathology in neurodevelopmental disorders is poorly appreciated. Work underway(autonomic testing, fMRI) will test the hypothesis that autonomic reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity predispose to the expression of psychiatric symptoms, particularly anxiety. It is further hypothesized that inefficient neural co-ordination of efferent autonomic drive with imprecise interoceptive representations may be amplified in hypermobile individuals. In hypermobility, this mechanism might explain increased vulnerability to stress sensitive and developmental neuropsychiatric conditions. - https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/85/8/e3.40?utm_source=trendmd&u...
[Searching for a biological marker common for both ADHD and EDS].
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22468413 - speculated about a common biological base shared by ADHD and EDS after observing the frequent cooccurrence of both pathologies in a clinical setting.
Connective tissue problems and attention deficit and hyperactivity
Attachments - [ADHDBaeza-Velascoetal.2015.pdf](https://checkvist-prod-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/u/OKFCuEQ7Zl...)
- To the Editor, The heritable disorders of the connective tissue are a group of genetic disorders affecting connective tissue matrix proteins that classically include Marfan syndrome (MFS), Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome (EDS), benign joint hypermobility syndrome and osteogenesis imperfecta (Grahame 2000). As connective tissue is found throughout the body, the clinical manifestations of these disorders are varied, including disturbances in different systems (skeletal, ocular, cardiovascular, etc.). A common feature of the heritable disorders of the connective tissue is joint hypermobility (JH), which is a highly heritable condition characterized by an increased range of motion of the joints as a consequence of connective tissue involvement.We encountered a 7-year-old boy addressed by teachers due to school problems. His mother suffer from MFS such as his maternal grandmother who died by cardiac complications. Considering familial antecedents, his morphotype (long bone overgrowth), JH and ocular ...
A connective tissue disorder may underlie ESSENCE problems in childhood
Attachments - [1-s2.0-S0891422216302402-main.pdf](https://checkvist-prod-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/u/aghis3LMNv...)
- 
Attachments - [Screenshot_2019-06-27_at_16.53.23.png](https://checkvist-prod-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/u/dm7JuPP8Gq...)
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, joint hypermobility-related disorders and pain: expanding body-mind connections to the developmental age.
>Recent research seems to indicate a degree of co-occurrence of JHS/hEDS and some neuro-developmental disorders including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and developmental coordination disorder (DCD). In the area of ADHD, researchers found that adults with ADHD had higher rates of JH and problems with automatic control of body functions (dysautonomia) compared to healthy controls. Other researchers observed high co-occurrence of JH or EDS with ADHD. Concerning DCD, children with DCD have more symptoms associated with JHS/hEDS compared to typically developing children. The relationship between JH and DCD may be due to poor positional sensing in affected children.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29446032
A Cohort Study Comparing Women with Autism Spectrum Disorder with and without Generalized Joint Hypermobility
- This research supports a growing body of literature indicating that immune-mediated disorders are a common comorbid feature in hEDS and GJH. In addition, we have also shown that this dysfunction may be paired with endocrine dysregulation, leading to complex immune and hormonal exophenotypes, such as autoimmune disorders, allergic rhinitis, asthma, endometriosis, and dysmenorrhea. While we have not addressed autism and GJH comorbidity rates in this study, their co-occurrence in the adult ASD female population suggests links between the dysfunction of connective tissue and the immune and endocrine systems in this subpopulation. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867488/
Rationale for Dietary Antioxidant Treatment of ADHD [[MDPI - 2018](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946190/)]
>ADHD might thus be a (non) allergic hypersensitivity disorder caused by an environmental trigger, based on a non-IgE dependent histamine release from mast cells and basophilic granulocytes, since the histamine H3 receptor is involved in hyperactivity and promotes dopamine release in the frontal cortex. Moreover, polymorphisms in the histamine N-methyl transferase (HNMT) gene, impairing histamine clearance, were found to affect the behavioral responses to food additives, which increase histamine levels #ADHD
[+] [-] rustybelt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawrenceyan|6 years ago|reply
I find that it’s very much worth the time investment, and would recommend anyone struggling with focus/anxiety to try it themselves.
[+] [-] easton_s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d--b|6 years ago|reply
It does seem to me that ADHD is over-diagnosed for kids, especially since the condition as described in the article really looks like what a small child seem to experience (the inability to focus, the constant distraction, etc.). And because it is much less rare to see someone in their 20s saying they have ADHD than to see some parent saying their kid has it. It is convenient for a parent to think that their kid has ADHD to explain why the kid is "late".
Here the problem really is about "lateness". Children grow up at different paces, and if a 6-year-old boy behaves like an "average" 4-year-old, people will think he has ADHD, while his brain might just need more time to develop.
There are kids who finish high school before hitting 10. Do we diagnose them with anything? Like Attention Surplus Disorder? No, because it doesn't seem to induce any trouble.
The ADHD as described in the article sounds like a nightmare to be honest, and I really wish scientists find some way to help these people.
[+] [-] TrackerFF|6 years ago|reply
- Poor academic performance
- Hyperactivity
- Poor social skills (gets in trouble, fighting, etc.)
Then they're most likely gonna get recommended to ADHD evaluation. But as you might guess, a lot of kids suffer from those things without necessarily having ADHD.
Some kids, like myself, mellowed out, and lost pretty much all the traits other than those of ADD. But I did just well enough in school - despite putting zero effort into it - that I flew under the radar.
Teachers figured I was just too busy fooling around / lazy / uninterested in some topics, while my parents argued that I was too hung up in sports / gaming / playing instruments.
And unfortunately, by the time you're a teenager, you only have one idea of what ADHD looks like: It's the troubled kids in class that got diagnosed early on, and can't cope in school; The "academic losers", as they are unfortunately branded.
In fact, that's the reason I didn't get diagnosed until my late 20's. My ex-gf hinted to me that I scored very high on ADHD / ADD checklist, but no way I thought, the only people I know with ADHD are those that never graduated from HS, and now are either criminals or minimum-wage workers.
Well, got myself evaluated, and sure enough, ADD. It was a thorough process, and took a LONG time.
[+] [-] remote_phone|6 years ago|reply
Back in the 60s or 70s ( I can’t remember what he said) people were starting to notice that kids were having behavioral problems, trouble focusing etc.
So what they did was collect a group of symptoms, and then arbitrarily said “if the child has 6 out of 11 of these symptoms then they have ADHD.”
The reason why they chose 6 was because if they chose 5 then too little number of children would get diagnosed, and if they chose 7, then too many children would get diagnosed. Having 6 would mean that 7-10% of kids would get diagnosed which “looked right” so they chose 7.
It’s not a real disease like other diseases, it’s a collection of symptoms. Which is why kids get misdiagnosed all the time. Anxiety can produce ADHD-like symptoms. Other things like giftedness and boredom can also fry diagnosed as ADHD.
There really are children with focus issues where medication like adderall will absolutely help. It will make kids with anxiety worse though so a misdiagnosis will ruin lives. But the origins of where ADHD came from explains why there is so many issues with ADHD disgnoses.
[+] [-] monadgonad|6 years ago|reply
Any disease with "syndrome" in its name is just a collection of symptoms. That's literally what syndrome means. Your information about ADHD is offensively wrong, and its underdiagnosis and undertreatment due to misinformation ruins far more lives than than there are people with anxiety being mistakenly prescribed stimulants.
[+] [-] RankingMember|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhayward|6 years ago|reply
Stop it.
[+] [-] bananamerica|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maxion|6 years ago|reply
In the US there is a larger percentage of the population who are diagnosed than in other countries, but even there, adult ADHD is under diagnosed.
[+] [-] 40acres|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hopia|6 years ago|reply
But not diagnosing anything would also not resolve the problem for the patient, if there really are specific symptoms.
[+] [-] ashildr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalium-xyz|6 years ago|reply
Another interesting thing to consider is that a lot of psychological disorders are culture bound (and therefor in my humble opinion irrelevant as groupings even for psychiatric purposes).
[+] [-] dba7dba|6 years ago|reply
Unscientific personal observation, but I wonder if TV has a role in this. Didn't kids start watching a lot of TV around that time?
Also, I feel kids in poor countries with no TV (not that there's much of that left now) have little to no ADHD.
[+] [-] firethief|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sys32768|6 years ago|reply
The hardest part of the test for me was to stop pushing the button when it told me to. It's hard to describe how difficult that was for me. By the end I distinctly recall the familiar sense I had in school of feeling dumb, inadequate, and frustrated.
In the T.O.V.A. results I was normal range for Inattention and Reaction Time. My Inconsistency was 75/100 but the shocker was my Impulsivity. My commission errors put me at 52/100, what the psychologist said was more or less a mentally retarded range.
On 10mg of Adderall, I retook T.O.V.A. and scored normal ranges across the board.
That helped me better understand why I was a class clown underachiever who barely graduated.
I cried the first time I studied a tech manual on Adderall. It was as if my brain were a radio that tuned into a clear channel for the first time. I wondered if that was how "normal" people are able to concentrate.
Soon, however, the stimulant honeymoon wore off as my tolerance increased and side effects ensued. Today I take nothing. I've noticed the symptoms being less disturbing since my mid-40s.
A weird part about being on Adderall is it slowed down my brain and reduced my quirky left-field personality to such a degree that I didn't feel like myself anymore, though I felt much more confident. One of my children also has the diagnosis and says the exact same thing. He only takes Adderall as needed for school challenges that require extra concentration. An early diagnosis for him helped him dodge the co-morbid problems that plagued me for years.
I don't tell friends or co-workers about the diagnosis. Even my spouse has expressed doubt about it.
[+] [-] gnicholas|6 years ago|reply
This article works best in Clean Mode, which also reformats the text into a column.
Sorry if this is too off-topic/self-promotion-y, but hopefully it helps some folks.
1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...
[+] [-] whalesalad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayoutthere|6 years ago|reply
Even when they work well there will be some collateral damage with stimulants. I was a great employee on them, but I was a shitty, narcissistic friend. The focus many people get from stimulants is an inward focus, which makes it easy to get things done but hard to empathize with other people. As a result I didn't have many friends, and once I started wanting more out of life I realized the stimulants were holding me back from personal growth. The inward focus clouded my ability to understand why people didn't like me -- I couldn't make enough space for another person to even see why people didn't want to be around me.
I'm not saying that stimulants don't help (they totally do) but you should understand what you want out of your life and how that aligns what you get out of the drugs.
[+] [-] sooenkill|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elamje|6 years ago|reply
I have wondered if I have ADD many times in the past. Mostly, because I was in school and being forced to do a task that I didn't enjoy, nor wanted to enjoy. When I have found things that I do genuinely enjoy, I can focus for hours and hours on end.
I am not opposed to any diagnosis or treatment, but I really have never met anyone who can truly focus on anything, at any moment for a super long amount of time. From my own experience and the conversations I have had with friends that take Adderall/etc. it seems like we have believed that there exists a significant portion of the population that has an uncanny ability to focus on tasks, both fun and boring. I certainly think there are a few people out there like this, but anecdataly, most people I know are more towards to the distractable/ADD/ADHD spectrum than the focused types.
I bring this up, because if our perception of how many people around us have this god-like ability to focus is wrong, I suspect many people will take medicine under a misconception.
Like I said, don't want to ignore the extreme cases, but genuinely would like to hear from a few people that read this and can confidently say they can do most/all tasks without breaking focus.
[+] [-] techopoly|6 years ago|reply
I think much of the modern issue with focus can be attributed to the Digital Age. How can anyone focus with all these alerts and dings and emails and sounds everywhere all the time? And multitasking is worshipped like it's the modern man's solution to all problems. We're still drinking the 60s Kool-Aid, as if the modern, fancy, carefree Jetsons' lifestyle is right around the corner. It isn't. We're still the same human beings with the same old problems, except now we have additional problems due to the onset of technology.
(Not that technology doesn't solve certain issues, of course.)
[+] [-] username90|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eq_sd_|6 years ago|reply
One of the hallmarks of ADHD is not being able to get started and stay focused on things you do enjoy, not just things anyone would find unenjoyable.
[+] [-] pgt|6 years ago|reply
Most people think of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical," but in reality it is the "anticipation chemical." Dopamine says: "You got this. Almost there!" And it is up-regulated when an uncertain profit presents itself, implying that all you need is a little bit more focus and practice.
Too little dopamine and you get OCD and hoarding: the inability to decide. You can think of a hoarder's room full of stuff as decisions left unmade. When you can't decide, you open & close your car door 45 times until it sounds "just right".
And when you have too much dopamine, you do stuff with zero anxiety, but you don't stop to consider the best course of action because you pick the first, best path. Useful when running from a predator, but not when solving complex problems. Just look at people on cocaine to see how this pans out.
The best personal advice I have to handle the ups & downs of ADD/ADHD condition is to build supportive todo & reminder systems around the bipolar highs and lows. Exploit the manic highs and outsource as much rote work as you can. Find ways to help you remember and reward life-sustaining tasks during the lows.
I've been working on some software that helps me get the most out of life in this manner, which would also potentially help older, mentally-compromised patients. If this is something you are interested in, please do reach out.
[+] [-] ranman|6 years ago|reply
> Exploit the manic highs and outsource as much rote work as you can.
This. 1000x this. If I’ve found a flow I tell my partner that I’m canceling plans so I can exploit the focus as long as it lasts. Those bursts of work every few weeks will pay dividends for years
[+] [-] NickM|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ews|6 years ago|reply
After being diagnosed with ADD, and having rejected drugs, this is the first text that has allowed me to first get all the puzzle pieces in front of me and then let me build a proper picture of everything that has been happening to me for the last 20+ years.
I know I am getting late to the conversation and probably this comment will be buried, but I would strongly recommend anybody suffering from this to take a look at this book. It has been eye opening and healing as no other text has.
[+] [-] TrackerFF|6 years ago|reply
But, yes, it's awful. For me, the worst parts are:
- Uncontrollable "hyperfocus" on things you really don't have control over. It would be awesome if you could control your interest, but it's usually the other way around. Something finds you, and you can't stop focusing on it. Everything around you becomes irrelevant, it's like a drug.
- Poor time management. For some reason, things just fly by you. Because you have a hard time focusing on different things, they get neglected really fast, and you suddenly find yourself hours / days / weeks later, remembering that you should have done some thing. Taking out the trash, paying your bills, handing in homework, getting your car looked at, etc.
- Having a hard time reading long pieces of text. During college I absolutely loathed classes with a lot of reading, as I'd read the same part 4 times over, zoning out each time.
- Zero sympathy from other people. You easily get branded lazy. My teachers said year after year that I was bright, but lazy - so I figured there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just lazy.
- Depression and anxiety etc. that comes and goes. I especially remember back in college when I studied Engineering, and most of my classmates would study 12 hours a day, deep into the books. It was impossible for me to do the same, so I pretty much lived from one all-nighter to another, feeling like a total fraud because I couldn't dedicate 1/10th of the time to school, as my buddies did. My anxiety was over the top.
[+] [-] 19f191ty|6 years ago|reply
I can't get to "first I need a bucket and water." "
This is so true! I'm ADHD, diagnosed and tried medications for a while, they helped, but had other issues so I stopped. What really helped was the realization that there are tasks where I can't even begin. I then gradually trained myself to think about the first thing and just focus on that. Don't feel like getting up from bed? Thing about moving my hand, then make it move the covers off, then move my legs and so on. Soon the momentum develops and I find it easier to do whatever I didn't feel like doing. Now my default is to just think about the very first thing and take it from there. It took me a while but has worked wonders for me.
[+] [-] FisDugthop|6 years ago|reply