Is ADHD a real disorder?

just do it more and it will even out as your tolerance grows at the expense or your memory and productivity

without it I just drink which has similar incapacitating effects but is way less fun and waking up feeling like nicely toasted bagel is far preferable to waking up feeling like a gross thirsty lizard zombie

I haven't seen soapbar stuff since I was 15 and it was probably mostly turpentine, the hash is much nicer these days

without it I just drink which has similar incapacitating effects but is way less fun and waking up feeling like nicely toasted bagel is far preferable to waking up feeling like a gross thirsty lizard zombie

This lol. But for me it really really quiets my internal monologue and quells my anxiety and the foggy feeling in the morning, if present, goes away quickly for me. I'm a morning person though so that might be part of it.

the weed is too strong now, none of that dodgy soapbar hash we smoked in the 90s, just one toke and I'm done for.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

for real, my GF smoked on Monday and she was high for SIX FUCKING HOURS

this would be fine of any of us could go six hours without a major emotional crisis

though she actually says being high as fuck helped

Seattle speedballs (weed + coffee) while seemingly counterintuitive, works well helping me fight that morning shit, or just pushing it back enough so I can move and get the lights on (so to speak).

lol I didn't know there was a name for that

So I ran out of meds and they were supposed to come yesterday and didn't and nobody is there to receive them today so I have no idea when I'm going to get them and man, is the difference ever noticeable. I couldn't concentrate at all yesterday and I was fidgeting like nuts on the train this morning. :/

I'm really sorry! I hope you can get hold of some as soon as possible. whatever I feel about my meds I know how hard it is to go without them (I don't know that MH professionals necessarily always do with these drugs?) going through withdrawal is never fun but it's particularly frustrating when it's unplanned

it seems to be happening a lot more to me lately due to supply and/or distribution issues (in the UK this is being blamed on brexit which may be a big part of it) but also "automation" gutting services even more than before (the email requests I need to make which used to be read by humans are now clearly done by some AI thing which keeps fucking up by picking out the wrong key words it's infuriating)

(by AI I mean some algorithms being followed either by a program or by people paid poverty wages it's hard to tell)

Yeah luckily I won't get withdrawals I'll just be a little spacey and unfocused until they arrive. I've heard about that too (for example they wanted to add Wellbutrin to my drugs but you can't get it right now here) but this was because DPD rang the wrong damn doorbell. :/

I've never been medicated for ADHD, and going on meds would be tricky because I have some heart stuff that means I can't take stimulants. But I'm currently on a low dose of prednisone for migraine reasons, and it effectively functions as ADHD medication. It's so cool to have something like a normal person's sharpness and ability to do tasks when they're supposed to be done. I only have about a week left, and I'm trying to make the most of it and maybe get some curriculum planning done for next year before I have to go off it.

Hope you get your meds soon ENBB.

I know prednisone can mess with sleep and make you wired so maybe there's something in it that functions similarly to a stimulant? That's interesting!

Still no meds. Now prob Tues at earliest. First delivery where the guy rang the wrong doorbell was a week ago for fuck's sake.

How many doorbells do you have ?!

One but it's an apartment in an attached house so two doors next to one another with 4 bells so kind of confusing but not so much that a delivery person shouldn't be able to figure out which is which. They're labeled.

It's fine - I have tomorrow off but it's frustrating. I realize now how much they help me. One of the biggest changes I noticed is that it basically completely quiets a lot of my constant racing negative thoughts. Those have been back in full force. Also - I can't fucking sit still.

FWIW, I got an apple watch in a prime day deal and I've found it really helpful in managing my distraction so far - I try to just keep the watch (which has cellular) and not the phone handy whenever possible, and it removes that ability to impulsively "check" seven different apps and scroll.

I stopped taking meds for ADHD a long time ago so now my life is an intricate series of alarms and timers, which mostly works? Also, working from home where I can have multiple distractions (TV, dog and cats walking around, kids if theyre home) definitely helps my work concentration. External chaos is apparently my calm place.

Oh man, alarms and timers save my life, even with the meds and the exercise and everything I do to try to mitigate it. I often set multiple for a single work call or kid pickup or whatever - ten minute warning, five minute warning, one minute warning, etc. I should probably also write on my hand "MAKING COFFEE TAKES MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES, DON'T START MAKING COFFEE AFTER THE FIVE MINUTE ALARM, DO IT AFTER THE TEN MINUTE ALARM"

on my cell phone (which is pretty old) you can name your alarms, so why not just make the ten-minute one "coffee"?

how do you remember to set your alarms and timers? i keep forgetting

My local library recently had a seminar about procrastination. I forgot to register for it.

I set alarms but then I just ignore them when they go off.

Meds arrived last week or the week before and the difference is remarkable.

I often set multiple for a single work call or kid pickup or whatever - ten minute warning, five minute warning, one minute warning, etc.

how do you remember to set your alarms and timers? i keep forgetting

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 27 July 2023 14:58 (four days ago) link

Sheer terror after doing stuff like forgetting to pick up my daughter at dance class on time, missing work calls, etc. I always set them right away.

this ^^^

Yeah, at the very second an appointment or plan is made — without fail — you must set the alarm / reminder. Or it will be Lost To The Ages.

I have a sort of hottake theory that fear someone will get mad at you is actually a good ADHD management tool, albeit not the most pleasant one. It's sort of one of the things in my marriage that makes it work but that I don't normally talk about that my wife is not one to let things slide, lol. I think I actually respond really well to people who are willing to hold me accountable.

Really informative piece on the history of ADHD, with much on where we're at.

"Opening the amphetamine floodgates by dropping the neurobiological and moralistic justifications around ADHD would help a lot of people, but so too would changing the social imperatives and circumstances (cutthroat competition at work and in schools, a fraying social safety net, intensive smartphone and social media use, etc.) that spur amphetamine use."

https://thepointmag.com/politics/who-deserves-amphetamines/

I’m not an expert but I’m not sure it’s true that “no one knows what causes ADHD.” And the insinuation that our perception of its existence is due to our competitive society and strict schooling seems… well unverifiable at best. A lot of “hmm, just wondering” in this article when actually ADHD is probably the most studied condition on earth

"We could also just change the entire structure and nature of society" cool thinkpiece, one amphetamines please

Tracer I think it's actually cancer (and specifically breast cancer), if you go by NIH research funding.

https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NIH-pie-chart-2.jpg

The big teal slice is cancer

(That's not a great chart, but pretty much any "NIH funding by institute" data will show the same thing. There's cancer and everything else.

The National Cancer Institute gets four or five times the budget of neurological disorders or mental health.

YMP you could be right. I have heard there are "more studies" about ADHD published every year than anything else. Not sure of the relationship to money spent.

It's crunch time on some reports so I took an extra Adderall this afternoon. My bathroom hasn't been this clean all year.

I have a sort of hottake theory that fear someone will get mad at you is actually a good ADHD management tool, albeit not the most pleasant one. It's sort of one of the things in my marriage that makes it work but that I don't normally talk about that my wife is not one to let things slide, lol. I think I actually respond really well to people who are willing to hold me accountable.

I am starting to think I eventually alienate almost everyone by not noticing ways in which they are trying to hold me accountable because their methods of communication don't get through to me. My housemate has been trying to communicate to me apparently for years that I let fruit go bad in the fruit bowl and that this upsets her greatly because she routinely has to clean up moldy fruit. Her way of communicating is to say "ew, gross" whenever she finds moldy fruit. (She says she's done this many times, and I believe her, but I only remember it happening once or twice.) But to me, one conversation where she said "Hey, can we talk? You have a pattern of doing this, and it's affecting me, and I need you to make it stop," and it would have stopped. I can't tell if I'm being unreasonable by wanting people to talk to me that directly. I present pretty neurotypical as far as I can tell, so I think I've been blundering through life pissing people off and never noticing, and letting them think that I notice and don't care.

There's more to the housemate drama, which I talked about in the teacher thread. But basically ADHD + full-time teaching + migraines are not a great combo for making me sensitive to the feelings and needs of others, and I don't know what to do about that.

you may have adhd but your housemate seems to have 'passive-aggressive non-communication is actually the only form of communication that is possible syndrome' which is much worse imho. my motto is that for anyone who can't directly communicate their issue to me, that is 100% their problem and not mine.

Thank you map, that makes me feel a little better, though I suspect I'm not a reliable narrator here because I can't know what I didn't hear.

But a certain point I do start to feel like the guy in Memento whose wife keeps letting him inject her with insulin because she's like, "surely at some point he HAS to remember that he keeps doing this," and it's like, no, that is literally not how his brain works any percent of the time, you are multiplying numbers by zero and expecting to get something other than zero.

Habit-forming can be really hard for ppl with adhd, as well as managing little tasks that seem obvious to neurotypical ppl (like throwing away rotten fruit). I used to get so fucking mad at my husband over these little things that it *seemed* he wouldn’t do - all little things but I would snap at him and be like “why can’t you just [put the peanut butter in the same place you always get it from so I don’t have to hunt for it every time; put your pills back in the cupboard bc this tiny vanity is always cluttered with yr shit; stop leaving your shoes in a goddamn spot where I trip on them; put the damn empty toilet roll in the garbage that is right fucking there, closer than the vanity where you always leave it]”.

I took it so personally that he couldn’t do these simple things when I made it clear how annoying they all were. It took years for me to realize he genuinely struggled to remember or to see things that were obvious to me. I know this guy, I know he’s not dismissive or lazy, I know he’s thoughtful and respectful. And I could see how terrible he felt every time I screeched at him over these things. He hated it but he couldn’t avoid it. Then I realized what was going on, and that if these small things were his biggest faults, I needed to fucking chill. So now I just don’t really care. And I’ve easily developed habits on his behalf (he would never ever put in wallet/keys etc in the same place, so when we get home from somewhere I now just automatically say “keys wallet” and he puts them in there spot; if we’re visiting ppl he puts his shit down and never remembers to collect it all so now it’s a reflex to say, as we’re leaving “got your keys? Wallet? Sunnies? Phone?”

Except for the goddamn shoes. That still annoys me tbh.

I agree with map, but for your own comfort, lily, I think I’d just explain to yr roommate (if you haven’t already) that if something is a problem she needs to just say it bluntly. ADHD is a disability and you’re more than allowed to ask for accommodations.

for me i'm into accountability for sure, but fear and shame, they don't work super good for me. when i feel that way, i avoid whatever is making me feel ashamed. like, one of the things my ex would say to me is "you keep leaving the cupboard doors open". it's true. i did, i kept leaving the cupboard doors open. i denied it, though, i always denied it... i hear someone telling me something i'm doing wrong, but i don't know how to do it _right_. so i kept leaving the cupboard doors open and they kept getting frustrated with me. every time that happened, she had negative feelings about me, i had negative feelings about me, and nothing happened to change the situation.

well, we broke up eventually. to my mind, it _wasn't_ because we didn't communicate effectively. our inability to communicate effectively sure as hell made that breakup difficult, though.

Yeah, it's interesting that this thread is talking about ADHD and relationships, because that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. My wife and I are both non-neurotypical. I am ADHD. She would probably have several diagnoses, but has only spent limited time with mental health professionals many decades ago so I don't really know the total extent. ADHD is definitely among them though. We have a lot of conflict in our relationship. It's very emotionally unhealthy and we would probably be better off not being together, but the process of divorce is so daunting. I have an extreme aversion to big life events like that, and just "go along to get along" because the process of change feels like my brain would get ripped out of my skull.

Anyway, lately, as I've been pondering my own ADHD, it's become more apparent to me that many of her actions that I have interpreted as irresponsibility or callousness could also be attributable to disability. It's difficult, because disability or not, I still feel disrespected.

At the same time, I've been having difficulty with a work colleague recently because she has occasionally taken personal offense at behaviors of mine (forgetfulness, disorganization, misunderstandings) that are linked to ADHD. I suspect that this colleague is non-neurotypical as well.

As David Berman asked, "Why can't monsters get along with other monsters?"

see to me this is where i start looking at things from a "neurodivergent" framework. i do have challenges that neurotypical people don't, but really, the example i gave... why should that example be specific to neurodivergent people? i'm not sure my having ADHD is even relevant to what happened in that situation. it's just about appreciating that people are different, that what may be easy for one person is hard for another, that blaming and shaming someone for having difficulty doing something that might be easy for another person doesn't _help_, doesn't lead to good outcomes.

it's easy for me to look at that situation from another perspective. like, i expect things to be in a certain place, and if i have a partner who puts things in a _different_ place, i get upset. i could say "that's not where that belongs!" or, maybe they don't have a rigid and precise sense of where things _belong_ like i do. maybe they can't remember. i mean, it's ok for them to not be able to remember something like that, right? people can only do what they can do. it's not _really_ a question of "you did it wrong, stop doing it wrong" but finding a way to take this unhealthy pattern and make it healthy. and that's not going to be done entirely through negative feedback!

it blows my mind that being praised is literally a _fetish_ for so many people. it's, like, seen as _demimonde_ somehow to have a deep hunger for praise and validation. that's fucking _wild_. my girlfriend and i, who are both highly neurodivergent, we praise each other _all the time_, sincerely. when one of us does something that's hard, that's praiseworthy. you did the dishes! good job! you set a boundary! good job! even things that people might not normally be praiseworthy. my girlfriend comes to me in crisis, she's in a bad way, she hasn't taken care of herself, she feels so much guilt and shame about doing these things and not telling me, the first thing i tell her is what a good job she's done, that she's taking care of herself, that i'm proud of her. that's just not the life experience i grew up with!

as to david berman's question... i thought of myself as a monster for a long time. it was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy... if i saw myself as a monster, i felt i had to act like one. i'm not a monster. i don't have to act like one. that's a big part of the answer, for me. when i care about myself, when i believe i'm worth caring about, i behave in ways that don't just benefit me, but often benefit the people around me. that's what i've found.

My ADHD son just finished his 10th grade year and here's the pattern we get: Grades that started out the year strong slowly drooped over the winter and spring due to his inability to remember to finish assignments and turn them in, so we basically got a bunch of C averages heading into the home stretch that then got bounced up to B's because he got A's on all his final exams. He's super smart and has always tested off the charts, but he just can't keep himself focused on all the stuff between the tests. Partly, once he knows he understands the material, he doesn't feel like he should have to keep messing around and keeping track of piddly assignments proving it over and over.

Vyvanse has helped, but obviously can only do so much. I hope he can somehow parlay all of that into a career. He wants to go into engineering or physics (astronomy in particular, but he's open), but I keep telling him those things are very detail-oriented. I don't know, maybe if/once he's working on things he's genuinely interested in it'll be better. Drives me a little nuts because he could be an A student if he just kept better track and did the grunt work, but he just can't get himself focused on it.

I do wonder about the "detail oriented" thing, I have done some very detailed work before and otoh have completely forgotten to do vital tasks. there just always has to be something or someone providing reminders but not treating you like a stupid child for needing constant reminders.

tipsy, your son's experience pretty much parallels my K-12 years (and first year of college). High highs, low lows, placement in advanced classes, flunking or getting booted out of other classes for goofin' around. The ability was there but the interest was highly variable. The fact that you've recognized and are addressing the symptoms is a huge step in the right direction. I wasn't diagnosed until well into adulthood, and I still struggle, but the work I do now is detail-oriented to an extent that's very nearly insane (tracking the degree progress and other academic minutia of 1000+ undergraduate students via complex systems I mostly had to create for myself from the ground up). And I know that some of the students I support struggle similarly but are still able to function at a very high level. Embracing challenge is key to success when your brain works like this, I find.

FWIW, watching my 7th grader right now, just keeping track of assignments and turning them in is insane given all the online coursework and learning content post-COVID.

In some ways, everything being online is a positive, but the assignments for some classes (especially math) span multiple online platforms, and just figuring out how to sign in correctly can cause problems. In one case, my kid's work wasn't even counted because they used the wrong account on some vendor's website. We had to figure this out after noticing many missing assignments.

And then the online assignment tracking is also confusing. For our school, most of the work is done with a popular web classroom product, but the official gradebook and some of the work happen on another product entirely. To add to it, my kid's school email is packed to the gills with notifications whose priority is difficult to distinguish.

It seems to me you need whatever the opposite of ADHD is to even sort through this mess.

there just always has to be something or someone providing reminders but not treating you like a stupid child for needing constant reminders.

lol yes we struggle with this a lot. Plus also obv we want him to get to a point where he is better at it himself. Part of me thinks he'll be fine, he can figure stuff out once he realizes he really needs to. But it makes for a lot of ups and downs along the way.

with ADHD there's a disconnect between what the symptoms look like from the outside and what they feel like from the inside, so while it looks like I've figured a lot of things out, in reality I am working in overdrive to juggle all of my responsibilities and have this intricate network of systems in place, and always at risk of dropping one thing and having everything spiral out of control. I have so many things on, all the time, I don't want to even list them as thinking about it is already giving me the fear. And though I would really value people taking some of the weight of this off my shoulders, I will never ask for it because I've had 45 years of conditioning into thinking that I will be judged as being feeble-minded, and the general vibe I get from most people is that this is basically correct.