1. There is absolutely no sympathy:
The problem with ADHD is that it is a disorder of degree not kind. If I had epilepsy or cancer or had some of my limbs missing then people around me would be supportive and understanding. But not ADHD. Everybody's mind wanders. Everyone would like to only do interesting things. Everyone forgets things from time to time. But, the problem is the degree to which these afflict people with ADHD.
We don't expect someone without legs to walk normally or properly. Yet, when it comes to the mind we have little patience. Somehow, we expect people to get their act together. We label them lazy, unmotivated and indisciplined. A product of poor parenting. We get frustrated that they are not reaching their full potential. In a way, having ADHD in 2014 is like being Gay or having an interracial marriage in the 60s or 70s. Ignorant cynical judgmental people assume that you can will your way out of ADHD through discipline and will power.
2. ADHD does give you super powers:
Insane creativity. The ability to think outside the box. The ability to make off the wall zany connections. Always looking for small advantages and using creativity to your advantage. I use mnemonics to remember things. I hired people overseas who follow up on everything I do. I built products that are on track to doing well. When I do succeed, people write it off as being lucky.
I wish I could write more. But I am actually supposed to be doing something else right now.
Recently diagnosed myself, I spent years and years trying to control it via willpower. The real turning point when I realized I needed to see someone was a few months ago. I found that hobbies I loved (gaming, programming, etc) would no longer hold my attention and I was compulsively getting up and wandering to the kitchen/bathroom just because my brain felt like it was frying. This is extremely hard to explain, because I'm not slacking to get off of work and do something fun like everyone else, I was compulsively slacking because very little would grab me.
In the example you list, it'd be like telling the first person, "Everyone feels bloated after eating a big meal - that doesn't mean you need to stay in bed all day when you think you have 'food poisoning'".
I agree that it's frustrating to read articles like this that trivialize mental disorders and downplay the struggles that they can actually cause for people.
It's sad that the article didn't even mention exercise as a potential treatment for ADHD. The OP implies that kids will simply "grow out" of ADHD, drugs, or changing the environment may be enough.
While these are valid solutions, exercise may be equally or even more effective.
John J. Ratey, one of the pioneers of ADHD [1], recently wrote the excellent Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain[2]. In it, he explains in colorful details what happens in the brain, and why exercise may be the best treatment for a bunch of neurochemical imbalances - including ADHD.
IMO the terminology of neurochemical imbalance should be avoided. It's the sort of framing that is much preferred by the pharmacological industry, because it suggests that the nature of the problem is well understood and can be directly addressed with their products. In reality there is only a very vague idea of mental illness and related neurotransmitters. To make a computer analogy, it's like calling a problem an "electron imbalance", without even knowing whether hardware or software is to blame.
Exercise is the miracle cure for everything, it would seem.
Though it'd be a moderate help if we could agree on what "counts as exercise" - a 15 minute walk? Resistance training (how many sets/reps)? HIIT? The fads can be tough on the average person who just wants health.
Thanks for linking to this book. I'm realizing how much better I can think after I've gotten exercise (I have ADD) and I'm interested to read 30% of this book ;)
as someone who was diagnosed adhd but am probably not any longer, i think basketball is a perfect solution. the game requires constant improvisation, which is a like crack to most novelty seekers. and then you get the second benefit (the intense physical work out) as a bonus, which maybe helps you grow out of adhd.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 12. Classic, "textbook" example of one. I felt like it was a curse until I was about 20. I was put on Focalin, Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse over those years.. they all made me calm and focused. Without my meds, I used to live in my head all day, theorizing how the universe and neurons work.. playing with ideas, twisting shapes in my mind. I was also prone to depression, anxiety, and I hated dealing with emotions.
Then one day, when I was about 23, I did LSD and cannabis together. My whole world came crashing down, and I realized that ADHD was a label that limited my true potential, and made me judgmental of "neurotypicals". After my trip, I realized that I lost about 75% of my visual-spatial ability (I felt out of it for a year or so as I missed having that ability), but I also felt more at peace, open-minded, and in the present moment. I also became a "doer", rather than a "thinker". I do not use any meds at all now; I meditate in the morning for at least 20 minutes, and try to run at least once a week.
With that said, I still like variety, and am a jack of all trades. Last time I did freelance, I loved doing marketing research, design, coding, programming and social media.
It's weird and frustrating that people label many abnormalities as "diseases".
When I read a list of ADHD symptoms I keep asking myself - how is that a bad thing? Being bored doing unenjoyable tasks, hating homework, "Not seem to listen when spoken to",Struggle to follow instructions,Dash around, touching or playing with anything and everything in sight, Have trouble sitting still during school and homework, Be constantly in motion, Have difficulty doing quiet tasks or activities....
I knew a kid that had ADHD. Unfortunately it was just a label - way for a kid to get everything. The kid didn't had ADHD imo, he was just spoiled and his parents were failing to do any parenting. The kid would eat whole mountain of sweets, drink cola all day, play games and scream and cry whenever he was prohibited something. In school he wasnt interested in learning and he basically would do nothing or play portable games all day. He would also not care for others and his needs would be always #1 before anything else.
Parents were really protective of him so they would fight with teachers whenever they would try to do something about it. The kid seemed to be pretty smart and he got all this figured out and used it a lot. But whenever he would be with people he didnt knew in a room, or with no-bullshit people, he would be actually quiet and behaving very good.
SOME ADHD cases sounds like just putting label on failed parenting to shut parents and avoid being sued by them for not doing any proper parenting.
You cherry-picked "kiddy" symptoms thereby creating a strawman. I am not a medical doctor, so I'm not going to tell you what it is or isn't -- but one of the symptoms you omitted, depression -- is NO FUCKING JOKE.
Some of the symptoms you name sound like they're picked up from a list of symptoms for diagnosing children with ADHD:
Dash around, touching or playing with anything and everything in sight, Have trouble sitting still during school and homework.
As a 20-something, relatively successful (founded and sold a company, work as an engineering consult for various companies, back in school getting my prereqs for medicine) male, I certainly am not playing with anything and everything in sight, nor do I dash around.
However, I do have a tendency to carry around something for my hands to play with -- a pen, squishy ball, my own fingers -- because they get restless. I also sometimes feel like I have a huge amount of excited energy balled up inside of me which I need to get out. I normally remedy this by exercising or running up and down a set of stairs a few times. One might say that my symptoms are adult versions of the childhood symptoms you point out.
As other people have mentioned, depression something that is often comorbid with ADHD. I personally have been severely depressed -- so much so that it caused "distress" (real-life problems) for an extended period of time. I became so tense, bored, disheartened, stressed-out by doing something I really loved. Depression followed. I won't say much else; if you'd like to understand this a bit more, let me know, and I'll spend some more time with a reply.
So how do you do this in software? Consulting? Startup? I'm a couple years into my first software development job out of school and barely get through the moderate amount of work that's assigned to me right now. I'm afraid of switching to another development job where more would be expected of me (consulting! startups!). Without having these problems under control I may not be reliable despite my talent.
Over the last month or so I've been reading up on product management and it sounds like a good fit. Interact with people, track markets, discover problems, craft creative solutions, have other people figure out the exact implementation... Lately I've been trying to discover broad problems and their solutions in my current position, and it seems to be helping (helps me feel like I'm actually contributing, at least). I don't know any product managers to talk to about their day-to-day stuff though. Has anyone with ADHD found that to be a good career path?
Hah. Sounds very familiar. Get yourself in a customer facing role ASAP. This was the advice given to me by a director of product management, who went on to be the GM of our division, and now CEO of a well regarded UK startup.
I switched to delivery consulting after almost 4 years of product dev, and wished I'd done it sooner. There are so many more things to concern yourself with than straight dev work, that your AD(H)D can be a massive advantage.
On the other hand, you will need to teach yourself how to "cut corners" that is antithetical to a software engineering/product maintaining programmer. It's not actually cutting corners, but making calls about when the deliverable should be in the customer's hands with some known design flaws, vs. stuck in beta whilst you wrestle with the extendability.
Now, after a number of years in customer facing roles, technically leading $1M+ programs, I'm thinking about the move to product management. Looking back, I'd have been a crappy junior PM if I'd jumped straight across.
I've seen people with ADD thrive in the "technical marketing", "demo developer", "internal system's engineer" roles, as they are constantly solving different problems, often with little to no requirement to get it right, document it, or look after their hacks. It does require strong (technical) communication skills, though.
I tried consulting. I couldn't self-motivate to self-imposed deadlines. Barely averted disaster. Never again.
Tried a startup. Same problem. Worse result.
Now I startup surf as a developer, but only to interesting projects. If I work on a boring project, I'm going to wind up behind schedule. One I learned that about myself, I adjusted my job searches to fit (as much as possible).
Project management? I suppose if I weren't the one actually doing it that would work. But if you switch early on, you're stuck with it. I'd get a few more years of software on your resume before bailing. That gives you experience with various kinds of scheduling and PMs and a better idea of the PM you'll want to be.
This article's premise is built on an incorrect understanding of "treating" or "fixing" or "losing" (symptoms).
If: baseline x is underwhelming to the point of painful boredom
Else: baseline y is higher and therefore satisfyingly stimulating
Then the fundamental problem of a lacking reward system for "normal" (x) baseline activity remains unresolved.
I have ADHD and decided to try medication for the first time only a few years ago (in my 20's). Sure, keeping things "interesting" and "new" can trick one's mind into paying additional attention towards the daily grind, but not for one second does that mean that ADHD would be resolved.
To make a more clear point, let's apply this thinking to another context: Murderers would be cured if there weren't anyone to murder, right? No. You're supposed to solve problems, not symptoms.
That's the thing, I think. Treatment (both cognitive behavioral therapy and chemical) has enabled me to get on with my life in so many ways.
It's not about getting rid of the symptoms - they're still there. It's about knowing when your symptoms are getting the better of you -- and taking agency over them. If my brain is a wall of TV's all tuned to different channels with the volume turned to 11, adderal finally gave me a clicker to be able to turn all but one off. Or, at least, mute.
And in many ways, I'm glad I'm not asymptomatic on medication: many of the downsides of ADHD can actually be huge, huge upsides. I thought it would kill my creative problem solving, going on meds: if anything, it's put it into overdrive. Instead of stashing something in my subconscious and hoping a solution percolates up a few minutes, hours, days, or weeks later ... I can pick up the puzzle, look at it, really concentrate and think about it. It's a life changing thing to realize what it's like to actually ruminate on a problem. On the other hand, I still make the zany off the wall connections between two problems that let me come up with a solution to both of them.
Instead of hoping for the luck of the draw, though, I can stack the deck.
I'd say one of the causes for over-medication is the lack of willingness of both parents and children to work on ways to succeed without use of medication.
I have (fairly bad) ADHD and my doctor did give me medicine, but only half the light dosage of Strattera, which isn't a stimulant.
Long story short, I ended up hating feeling comatose from the medicine so much I began to work through my ADHD by structuring my life and finding things I was actually interested in.
But it would've been so easy to give me some Adderall and let me just do my thing, which I believe a lot of parents and doctors do. It's the quick and easy route, but arguably worse in the long run when the children grow up to be adults dependent on managing their ADHD with a crutch instead of on their own.
For the past few years I've taken both Adderall and Vyvanse, with the past 2 years being Vyvanse. I thought I would be taking these drugs for the rest of my life if I wanted to be successful, because when I didn't take them, I could not focus on work tasks at all. However, the "cost" of these drugs for me was that I couldn't turn off. I was driven from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. My social life definitely suffered.
So, as I started a new job this year in January, I decided to make a clean break. I quit Vyvanse cold turkey and started a new job. I've been doing exceptionally. I never thought this could happen. Thinking back on the issue just yesterday I was telling a colleague that I thought this was likely because I must have been bored with the tasks at my previous job, and I've found all the new tasks to be interesting enough to bring out what I consider great performance from myself, though not the insane amount of performance I was doing on Vyvanse.
Anecdotal at best, but I independently came to the same conclusions as this article, for whatever it's worth.
"In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don’t match the expectations of our contemporary culture."
On a positive note, there are A.D.(H.)D. symptoms that do have upsides and can be worked around very cleverly.
Still, there are some that squarely fall into the problematic kind, for example the problem to go back to a task when disturbed (instead of Task A -> disturbed with Task B -> Task A, you go Task A -> Task B -> Task C) or the tendency to avoid mentally taxing task.
> Nor am I saying we that should not use stimulant medications like Adderall and Ritalin, which are safe and effective and very helpful to many kids with A.D.H.D.
are they really safe and effective? I've taken these after being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and although I believe they are quite effective, I am really surprised they give these drugs to young children. I would not.
I'm an adult woman with adhd and it's definitely been an advantage as an entrepreneur. When I hyper focus on our company, brilliant things happen because I can think out of the box and my passion and obsession for our product has my undivided attention. Needing to constantly shift work environments, go for walks, and multitask has worked well for me in my startup life. However, in my former corporate life, it was at times crippling and embarrassing. I really appreciated this article because it elevates the need for those with adhd to choose the work environment best fit for their behavioral needs and hopefully sheds light to a wider audience that adhd is in fact 'a real thing'. In a previous corporate role, when i spoke to HR about my daily struggle working in an office environment with tv's on and lots of cubes with loud people talking, they didn't take me seriously and just thought it was a 'millennial' problem. I had to work saturday nights and sundays just to complete my work because during the work week it was so difficult to focus with all the surrounding noise. I lied to my manager about all my weekend work because she down played the very realness my adhd had on my ability to focus like I was making it up. I hope this article brings to light that many people do suffer from adhd and to take their work environment requests seriously. I hope it also encourages those with adhd to be more vocal about it.
I worked at an office park in the SF peninsula for a year and see now why I was the guy always going out exploring. I'd ride my bike around, found out we could get on the roof, checked out all the wetlands surroundings, and asked a whole lot of questions on Quora. Haha, I was the wacky energetic guy. Some of the stuff I had to do just about bored me to tears.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at a very young age, and have been doing battle with my attention span for most of my life. I had only read a half dozen books all the way through when I graduated from High School, despite reading at a college reading level before I was out of elementary school and having started hundreds of them. The few books that I had read included Les Miserables and War and Peace, both of which I binge-read over a period of a few days, barely allowing myself to eat and rarely allowing myself to shower while I read them. The other ones were Frindle, Tangerine, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and Catcher in the Rye. They were completely consuming. My addiction to video games was so intense and so severe that they were outright banned at my house. I was terrible at school, skipping more than half of my classes, but tested in the 99th percentile for standardized testing, learning a lot of what I should have learned in school by deduction as I was taking the test. That allowed me to get into college, which I later dropped out of, electing instead to buy a one-way ticket to China unsure if I would ever come back. Basically I was either 0% engaged in something or 110%, and if I wasn't engaged it felt like no matter how hard I fought I couldn't force myself to care.
The turning point came when I was living in eastern Ukraine serving a Mormon mission. As per the mission rules, the only books we read were scriptural, we only used a computer for 30 minutes a week to email home, and in my particular mission I spent 90% of my time, every minute from 11 AM to 9 PM (except for a one-hour dinner) walking around, talking to people in the streets.
I don't know if it was age or that I was finally rid of the many stimulants I used to have, but my mind just slowed down. I concentrated on everything, and, perhaps especially because I was speaking Russian, I could literally recall every word of every conversation I had. I sat down in the mornings and studied the intricacies of the Russian language for an hour straight without blinking an eye. I read the Old Testament cover to cover; something that would have made me literally pull my hair out just a year earlier.
Then I went home. I got an iPhone, I got on the Internet, and it all came back. I try to limit the stimulants, (I've become very minimalistic), and I usually spend a lot of the morning with a calmer mind, but... I work online. I love the Internet. And I haven't yet been able to calm my mind like it was for those two years.
It may be a matter of self-control - it probably is, but learning to program is incredibly painful. 10 minutes at a time sometimes with an incredible number of stops and starts.
I don't know what the answer is, nor do I pretend that I can project my experience onto some greater understanding of what ADHD is, how to defeat it, or if it needs defeating, but the experience of feeling like I could finally do all the things I wanted to do because I didn't have anything else to stimulate me was fascinating, and it may be valuable to someone else.
Similar story here: early age, 0 or 100, high tests and little completion. The difference is I've been programming for most of my life (I'm not exaggerating; I started at 7y). It's likely because I started so young that I find that's my hyper focus outlet, though I still find that every time I try to learn Java it feels so painful I break something and run away (though I know C, C++, Obj-C, Swift, Python, PHP, Perl, shell, and even some Forth). Don't get me wrong, I know exactly two people that like Java and everyone else says it's painful, but they can do it anyway. I simply cannot. My mind shuts off and boycotts the information until the topic changes. It's infuriating.
Having anything at all near me that supplies instant gratification (electronics, mainly) puts me in what I call "hunted mode". That is, I'm itching for something to switch my attention to and very easily distracted. When I remove such things and engage with the world (and turn off or DND my devices -- important) then I seem to enter "hunter mode" where I can put my focus where it needs to be and hold it.
So, of course I become a professional software developer, right?
Adderall lets me work. Turning shit off when I get home lets me live. Paper books let me read (ebooks for reference, though; I'm not a Luddite).
Which is to say: I'm with ya, and you're right about environmental sensory stimulants. But you're kind of wrong about it being a matter of self control. It is, but the problem is that you (we) lack the control of self-control. That's the nasty thing the article doesn't go into. This is an Executive Function disorder, a "cousin" disorder to things on the Autism scale (ever read a list of those symptoms and check off an uncomfortable few?). That's why we wind up medicated. We do need that dopamine to hang around to push through the daily administrivia.
Yet, the article was right that outside of city life this would be great. But I'm a city guy, so ... yeah.
That's somewhat of a heartbreaking story. I wonder if your mind was calmed during those two years because you had found your calling and were happy with your situation, for the first and only time in your life?
I'm not suggesting you change your life now, btw. Maybe you are, for whatever reason, unable to engage in things which you are not fully committed to.
Interesting that the article goes down the route of providing more stimulus to help treat ADHD.. wonder if there's also a case for reducing our need for more stimuli (e.g. with mindfulness or meditation) or whether that's just too against the grain of how we are moving as a society (in to a more digital, multi-tasked world)
> wonder if there's also a case for reducing our need for more stimuli (e.g. with mindfulness or meditation)
A study was done in Australia ten years ago on a type of meditation that encourages you to be more mindful to see what effect it can have on ADHD. Children were able to reduce or even cut out their medication completely after completing the meditation program.
That's a whole different topic, even though to an outsider they may seem related by the stimuli concept. ADHD is an impulse control disorder. Increasing the stimulus levels of positive things around such a person induces a natural focus to those things. Reducing stimuli would alternately induce sleep or painful boredom that will express itself in highly random and chaotic ways after a short time.
Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to turn everything off and read a book. When I wake up after trying that I realize how many times I've tried it before and it's at least a few days before I get the idea again...
I have only experienced ADHD second hand, my partner has been diagnosed with it years ago, and a good friend of mine as well. I recognise the "coping mechanisms" with alcohol, and the frustration of getting mundane things done.
The article suggests that the intense concentration or "hyperfocus" they have when they find something interesting can be used to their advantage. Both my partner and friend have gotten into occupations where they can do this. But there will always be mundane things that have to get done as well. Everyone has to pay taxes, and has to watch their spending. Few people like to do this, but almost everyone has to. Having a thrilling job does not alleviate you from these things.
So yes, it can probably help somewhat, but it can't "fix" ADHD completely.
This unscientific narrative is dangerous. ADHD can go away over the years, without medication. But you can't predict it, and there is no evidence for particular causes of "remission".
More stimulation is hardly the answer to the social problems arising from ADHD, to drug addictions or a myriad of other problems patients have. It certainly doesn't work against depression, and good luck curing 5-10% of children just by "stimulating" them more.
Coping with ADHD means improving Attention and Focus. The single most effective way is medication. Additionally mindfulness/awareness meditation has been shown to work. Other activities like martial arts or dancing may have similar effects, but less reliably so.
Another patient of mine, a 28-year-old man, was having a lot of trouble at his desk job in an advertising firm. Having to sit at a desk for long hours and focus his attention on one task was nearly impossible. He would multitask, listening to music and texting, while “working” to prevent activities from becoming routine.
Eventually he quit his job and threw himself into a start-up company, which has him on the road in constantly changing environments. He is much happier and — little surprise — has lost his symptoms of A.D.H.D.
I'm glad the article spoke to specific regional recruitment issues in the brain and evolutionary advantages. As someone who was diagnosed at a young age and retain the condition through adulthood, it wasn't until I understood the evolutionary advantages to not being able to quiet regions of the brain not involved in the specific activity - that I learned how to self-learn.
Long story short, it's not just the testing conditions in which it's beneficial to not be in a class-room setting, but the learning phase too. Essentially, I'm completely worthless trying to absorb new information in a room full of people. It's nearly impossible to not be conscious of those around me. However, at home - where I can control environmental factors - everything changes. I am not forced to be reactive and can happily concentrate - even with other portions of the brain remaining active (listening, wondering, whatever).
I've never been diagnosed but I'm bored all of the time. I'm almost 30. I've been fairly successful in jobs where I'm learning new stuff all the time. Is it possible I'm ADD?
Do you find routines to be near impossible to establish / follow (eating breakfast, waking up within the same two hour period, taking a shower, etc.)? Are you unable to remember anything without a constantly visible list / alerting system? Do certain irrelavant noises cause you to instantly lose all concentration? Do you have a tendency to forget to pay bills for months while racking up several hundred or thousand dollars in fees? Do your relationships suffer as you often go months without remembering to talk to close friends? Are you usually 5 - 10 minutes late for all meetings and social functions due to an inability to accurately predict durations and intervals of time?
[+] [-] adhd_anon|11 years ago|reply
1. There is absolutely no sympathy: The problem with ADHD is that it is a disorder of degree not kind. If I had epilepsy or cancer or had some of my limbs missing then people around me would be supportive and understanding. But not ADHD. Everybody's mind wanders. Everyone would like to only do interesting things. Everyone forgets things from time to time. But, the problem is the degree to which these afflict people with ADHD.
We don't expect someone without legs to walk normally or properly. Yet, when it comes to the mind we have little patience. Somehow, we expect people to get their act together. We label them lazy, unmotivated and indisciplined. A product of poor parenting. We get frustrated that they are not reaching their full potential. In a way, having ADHD in 2014 is like being Gay or having an interracial marriage in the 60s or 70s. Ignorant cynical judgmental people assume that you can will your way out of ADHD through discipline and will power.
2. ADHD does give you super powers: Insane creativity. The ability to think outside the box. The ability to make off the wall zany connections. Always looking for small advantages and using creativity to your advantage. I use mnemonics to remember things. I hired people overseas who follow up on everything I do. I built products that are on track to doing well. When I do succeed, people write it off as being lucky.
I wish I could write more. But I am actually supposed to be doing something else right now.
[+] [-] eclipsor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|11 years ago|reply
In the example you list, it'd be like telling the first person, "Everyone feels bloated after eating a big meal - that doesn't mean you need to stay in bed all day when you think you have 'food poisoning'".
I agree that it's frustrating to read articles like this that trivialize mental disorders and downplay the struggles that they can actually cause for people.
EDIT: Changed comic link to original source
[+] [-] mfisher87|11 years ago|reply
Can you expand on this one?
[+] [-] guiambros|11 years ago|reply
While these are valid solutions, exercise may be equally or even more effective.
John J. Ratey, one of the pioneers of ADHD [1], recently wrote the excellent Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain[2]. In it, he explains in colorful details what happens in the brain, and why exercise may be the best treatment for a bunch of neurochemical imbalances - including ADHD.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driven_to_Distraction_(ADHD)
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Spark-exercise-improve-performance-bra...
[+] [-] andreasvc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] JimboOmega|11 years ago|reply
Though it'd be a moderate help if we could agree on what "counts as exercise" - a 15 minute walk? Resistance training (how many sets/reps)? HIIT? The fads can be tough on the average person who just wants health.
[+] [-] kpennell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_cat_kittles|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kurage|11 years ago|reply
Then one day, when I was about 23, I did LSD and cannabis together. My whole world came crashing down, and I realized that ADHD was a label that limited my true potential, and made me judgmental of "neurotypicals". After my trip, I realized that I lost about 75% of my visual-spatial ability (I felt out of it for a year or so as I missed having that ability), but I also felt more at peace, open-minded, and in the present moment. I also became a "doer", rather than a "thinker". I do not use any meds at all now; I meditate in the morning for at least 20 minutes, and try to run at least once a week.
With that said, I still like variety, and am a jack of all trades. Last time I did freelance, I loved doing marketing research, design, coding, programming and social media.
[+] [-] ahknight|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashleyp|11 years ago|reply
May I ask, do you still play with ideas/how the universe works etc? Do you miss that at all?
Also, have you read "The power of now"?
[+] [-] rayalez|11 years ago|reply
When I read a list of ADHD symptoms I keep asking myself - how is that a bad thing? Being bored doing unenjoyable tasks, hating homework, "Not seem to listen when spoken to",Struggle to follow instructions,Dash around, touching or playing with anything and everything in sight, Have trouble sitting still during school and homework, Be constantly in motion, Have difficulty doing quiet tasks or activities....
These sound like symptoms of being a kid...
[+] [-] funkyy|11 years ago|reply
Parents were really protective of him so they would fight with teachers whenever they would try to do something about it. The kid seemed to be pretty smart and he got all this figured out and used it a lot. But whenever he would be with people he didnt knew in a room, or with no-bullshit people, he would be actually quiet and behaving very good.
SOME ADHD cases sounds like just putting label on failed parenting to shut parents and avoid being sued by them for not doing any proper parenting.
[+] [-] godDLL|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathannecro|11 years ago|reply
Some of the symptoms you name sound like they're picked up from a list of symptoms for diagnosing children with ADHD:
Dash around, touching or playing with anything and everything in sight, Have trouble sitting still during school and homework.
As a 20-something, relatively successful (founded and sold a company, work as an engineering consult for various companies, back in school getting my prereqs for medicine) male, I certainly am not playing with anything and everything in sight, nor do I dash around.
However, I do have a tendency to carry around something for my hands to play with -- a pen, squishy ball, my own fingers -- because they get restless. I also sometimes feel like I have a huge amount of excited energy balled up inside of me which I need to get out. I normally remedy this by exercising or running up and down a set of stairs a few times. One might say that my symptoms are adult versions of the childhood symptoms you point out.
As other people have mentioned, depression something that is often comorbid with ADHD. I personally have been severely depressed -- so much so that it caused "distress" (real-life problems) for an extended period of time. I became so tense, bored, disheartened, stressed-out by doing something I really loved. Depression followed. I won't say much else; if you'd like to understand this a bit more, let me know, and I'll spend some more time with a reply.
[+] [-] eclipsor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heurist|11 years ago|reply
Over the last month or so I've been reading up on product management and it sounds like a good fit. Interact with people, track markets, discover problems, craft creative solutions, have other people figure out the exact implementation... Lately I've been trying to discover broad problems and their solutions in my current position, and it seems to be helping (helps me feel like I'm actually contributing, at least). I don't know any product managers to talk to about their day-to-day stuff though. Has anyone with ADHD found that to be a good career path?
[+] [-] Swannie|11 years ago|reply
I switched to delivery consulting after almost 4 years of product dev, and wished I'd done it sooner. There are so many more things to concern yourself with than straight dev work, that your AD(H)D can be a massive advantage.
On the other hand, you will need to teach yourself how to "cut corners" that is antithetical to a software engineering/product maintaining programmer. It's not actually cutting corners, but making calls about when the deliverable should be in the customer's hands with some known design flaws, vs. stuck in beta whilst you wrestle with the extendability.
Now, after a number of years in customer facing roles, technically leading $1M+ programs, I'm thinking about the move to product management. Looking back, I'd have been a crappy junior PM if I'd jumped straight across.
I've seen people with ADD thrive in the "technical marketing", "demo developer", "internal system's engineer" roles, as they are constantly solving different problems, often with little to no requirement to get it right, document it, or look after their hacks. It does require strong (technical) communication skills, though.
[+] [-] ahknight|11 years ago|reply
Tried a startup. Same problem. Worse result.
Now I startup surf as a developer, but only to interesting projects. If I work on a boring project, I'm going to wind up behind schedule. One I learned that about myself, I adjusted my job searches to fit (as much as possible).
Project management? I suppose if I weren't the one actually doing it that would work. But if you switch early on, you're stuck with it. I'd get a few more years of software on your resume before bailing. That gives you experience with various kinds of scheduling and PMs and a better idea of the PM you'll want to be.
[+] [-] oddtarball|11 years ago|reply
If: baseline x is underwhelming to the point of painful boredom Else: baseline y is higher and therefore satisfyingly stimulating
Then the fundamental problem of a lacking reward system for "normal" (x) baseline activity remains unresolved.
I have ADHD and decided to try medication for the first time only a few years ago (in my 20's). Sure, keeping things "interesting" and "new" can trick one's mind into paying additional attention towards the daily grind, but not for one second does that mean that ADHD would be resolved.
To make a more clear point, let's apply this thinking to another context: Murderers would be cured if there weren't anyone to murder, right? No. You're supposed to solve problems, not symptoms.
[+] [-] warfangle|11 years ago|reply
It's not about getting rid of the symptoms - they're still there. It's about knowing when your symptoms are getting the better of you -- and taking agency over them. If my brain is a wall of TV's all tuned to different channels with the volume turned to 11, adderal finally gave me a clicker to be able to turn all but one off. Or, at least, mute.
And in many ways, I'm glad I'm not asymptomatic on medication: many of the downsides of ADHD can actually be huge, huge upsides. I thought it would kill my creative problem solving, going on meds: if anything, it's put it into overdrive. Instead of stashing something in my subconscious and hoping a solution percolates up a few minutes, hours, days, or weeks later ... I can pick up the puzzle, look at it, really concentrate and think about it. It's a life changing thing to realize what it's like to actually ruminate on a problem. On the other hand, I still make the zany off the wall connections between two problems that let me come up with a solution to both of them.
Instead of hoping for the luck of the draw, though, I can stack the deck.
[+] [-] barsonme|11 years ago|reply
I have (fairly bad) ADHD and my doctor did give me medicine, but only half the light dosage of Strattera, which isn't a stimulant.
Long story short, I ended up hating feeling comatose from the medicine so much I began to work through my ADHD by structuring my life and finding things I was actually interested in.
But it would've been so easy to give me some Adderall and let me just do my thing, which I believe a lot of parents and doctors do. It's the quick and easy route, but arguably worse in the long run when the children grow up to be adults dependent on managing their ADHD with a crutch instead of on their own.
[+] [-] darrenkopp|11 years ago|reply
So, as I started a new job this year in January, I decided to make a clean break. I quit Vyvanse cold turkey and started a new job. I've been doing exceptionally. I never thought this could happen. Thinking back on the issue just yesterday I was telling a colleague that I thought this was likely because I must have been bored with the tasks at my previous job, and I've found all the new tasks to be interesting enough to bring out what I consider great performance from myself, though not the insane amount of performance I was doing on Vyvanse.
Anecdotal at best, but I independently came to the same conclusions as this article, for whatever it's worth.
[+] [-] mvlad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Argorak|11 years ago|reply
Still, there are some that squarely fall into the problematic kind, for example the problem to go back to a task when disturbed (instead of Task A -> disturbed with Task B -> Task A, you go Task A -> Task B -> Task C) or the tendency to avoid mentally taxing task.
[+] [-] whiddershins|11 years ago|reply
are they really safe and effective? I've taken these after being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and although I believe they are quite effective, I am really surprised they give these drugs to young children. I would not.
[+] [-] emcarey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kpennell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|11 years ago|reply
The turning point came when I was living in eastern Ukraine serving a Mormon mission. As per the mission rules, the only books we read were scriptural, we only used a computer for 30 minutes a week to email home, and in my particular mission I spent 90% of my time, every minute from 11 AM to 9 PM (except for a one-hour dinner) walking around, talking to people in the streets.
I don't know if it was age or that I was finally rid of the many stimulants I used to have, but my mind just slowed down. I concentrated on everything, and, perhaps especially because I was speaking Russian, I could literally recall every word of every conversation I had. I sat down in the mornings and studied the intricacies of the Russian language for an hour straight without blinking an eye. I read the Old Testament cover to cover; something that would have made me literally pull my hair out just a year earlier.
Then I went home. I got an iPhone, I got on the Internet, and it all came back. I try to limit the stimulants, (I've become very minimalistic), and I usually spend a lot of the morning with a calmer mind, but... I work online. I love the Internet. And I haven't yet been able to calm my mind like it was for those two years.
It may be a matter of self-control - it probably is, but learning to program is incredibly painful. 10 minutes at a time sometimes with an incredible number of stops and starts.
I don't know what the answer is, nor do I pretend that I can project my experience onto some greater understanding of what ADHD is, how to defeat it, or if it needs defeating, but the experience of feeling like I could finally do all the things I wanted to do because I didn't have anything else to stimulate me was fascinating, and it may be valuable to someone else.
[+] [-] ahknight|11 years ago|reply
Having anything at all near me that supplies instant gratification (electronics, mainly) puts me in what I call "hunted mode". That is, I'm itching for something to switch my attention to and very easily distracted. When I remove such things and engage with the world (and turn off or DND my devices -- important) then I seem to enter "hunter mode" where I can put my focus where it needs to be and hold it.
So, of course I become a professional software developer, right?
Adderall lets me work. Turning shit off when I get home lets me live. Paper books let me read (ebooks for reference, though; I'm not a Luddite).
Which is to say: I'm with ya, and you're right about environmental sensory stimulants. But you're kind of wrong about it being a matter of self control. It is, but the problem is that you (we) lack the control of self-control. That's the nasty thing the article doesn't go into. This is an Executive Function disorder, a "cousin" disorder to things on the Autism scale (ever read a list of those symptoms and check off an uncomfortable few?). That's why we wind up medicated. We do need that dopamine to hang around to push through the daily administrivia.
Yet, the article was right that outside of city life this would be great. But I'm a city guy, so ... yeah.
[+] [-] e40|11 years ago|reply
I'm not suggesting you change your life now, btw. Maybe you are, for whatever reason, unable to engage in things which you are not fully committed to.
[+] [-] ajcarpy2005|11 years ago|reply
1. maligning of dietary fats
2. high cost of fish relative to other foods
3. time and effort required to cook eggs in morning and the tremendous marketing investments in easier but ultimately unsustainable 'foods'
It's a shame that so much knowledge about human health goes to waste because of either ignorance or misplaced priorities.
[+] [-] 54mf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pulkitpulkit|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toodles1234|11 years ago|reply
A study was done in Australia ten years ago on a type of meditation that encourages you to be more mindful to see what effect it can have on ADHD. Children were able to reduce or even cut out their medication completely after completing the meditation program.
http://ccp.sagepub.com/content/9/4/479.abstract
http://www.m.sahajayogaportal.org/papers/manocha.pdf (non-paywall link)
[+] [-] ahknight|11 years ago|reply
Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to turn everything off and read a book. When I wake up after trying that I realize how many times I've tried it before and it's at least a few days before I get the idea again...
[+] [-] jvdh|11 years ago|reply
The article suggests that the intense concentration or "hyperfocus" they have when they find something interesting can be used to their advantage. Both my partner and friend have gotten into occupations where they can do this. But there will always be mundane things that have to get done as well. Everyone has to pay taxes, and has to watch their spending. Few people like to do this, but almost everyone has to. Having a thrilling job does not alleviate you from these things.
So yes, it can probably help somewhat, but it can't "fix" ADHD completely.
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|11 years ago|reply
More stimulation is hardly the answer to the social problems arising from ADHD, to drug addictions or a myriad of other problems patients have. It certainly doesn't work against depression, and good luck curing 5-10% of children just by "stimulating" them more.
Coping with ADHD means improving Attention and Focus. The single most effective way is medication. Additionally mindfulness/awareness meditation has been shown to work. Other activities like martial arts or dancing may have similar effects, but less reliably so.
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|11 years ago|reply
6th startup now? They hit about 100 people and I move on. Wonder why?
Job wise in the startup I am the "fixer". The get it done guy. I wonder why?
[+] [-] elijahparker|11 years ago|reply
Another patient of mine, a 28-year-old man, was having a lot of trouble at his desk job in an advertising firm. Having to sit at a desk for long hours and focus his attention on one task was nearly impossible. He would multitask, listening to music and texting, while “working” to prevent activities from becoming routine.
Eventually he quit his job and threw himself into a start-up company, which has him on the road in constantly changing environments. He is much happier and — little surprise — has lost his symptoms of A.D.H.D.
[+] [-] mercurialshark|11 years ago|reply
Long story short, it's not just the testing conditions in which it's beneficial to not be in a class-room setting, but the learning phase too. Essentially, I'm completely worthless trying to absorb new information in a room full of people. It's nearly impossible to not be conscious of those around me. However, at home - where I can control environmental factors - everything changes. I am not forced to be reactive and can happily concentrate - even with other portions of the brain remaining active (listening, wondering, whatever).
[+] [-] ohyes|11 years ago|reply
Edit: I got bored halfway through the article.
[+] [-] adhdthrowawy|11 years ago|reply
Maybe then!