Is ADHD a real disorder?

Real = Crabs

xpost: Chronic fatigue is sooo not fake.

OTM, I have an uncle who's like this. It led to his divorce.

Also: yes ADD is real, it has to do with certain neural pathways not being connected or something. I know that Ritalin does have a calming effect on me so that I concentrate more, although I don't have the "hyperactive" variant thank God. And I don't eat much sugar/junk food.

also makes me want to make posts saying "see i'm not just lazy and undisciplined, it's SCIENCE". (i was serious about that stuff though. repeatable studies scientific consensus yadda yadda.)

x-post

I used to run 5 miles a day. I biked a 100k once. I was working two jobs, keeping the second mostly because it was fun. And because it was at a brewery, so I got free beer. I was very active. I was about to get a big promotion at my computer job. ...And then I got a virus, and it (or its hormonal/neurological/immunological aftermath) pretty much derailed my life.

So I'd just like to second Trayce's "fuck you", and heartily.

There's lots of health conditions that aren't well understood. Lots of people tend to be judgemental assholes about them. Before the docs had medical evidence for Multiple Sclerosis, they called it "hysterical paralysis". Because naturally if they can't understand an illness, it's all in your head or you're just lazy. That was probably 50 years ago or more, but people's tendency to be closed minded bastards is still going strong.

that's why i never used the term, "therapist", as i considered it too loaded.

instead, i used "talky pshrink" and "drug-pushing pshrink."

also, using street drug-terms to refer to your meds makes them easier to handle.

That's science for you.

I was once fairly energetic, as per the poster above, but I got glandular fever many years ago, since which time, I am a lot less energetic, and tend to tire quickly and easily.

guilty as charged
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/kenjuggle/vogue.jpg

Tell me more about *adult* ADHD.

I just did a checklist thingy and the checklist says I might have it, but I always doubt the results of these things (if you unconsciously want to prove to yourself that you do have a disorder, you'll tick the numbers up a bit higher and vice versa).

I am a habitually messy, disorganized person, and I am easily distracted. I have trouble finishing projects, I procrastinate heavily, make tasks take way longer than they need to, and often feel "overwhelmed by the basic tasks of daily life" and all that.

uh oh... that also sounds like me. but can't these things be attributed just to one's basic personality type, rather than a 'disorder'?

A 'disorder' is not an illness - it's not a construct that can either 'exist' or not. So while I'm sure no-one's doubting the myriad symptoms of what is known as ADD/ADHD are real, the contention is whether it's beneficial, to anyone, to treat it as a mental illness (DSM-IV).

ADD/ADHD cannot exist clinically without empirical biological / neurological evidence to support its existence (see: schizophrenia etc), which is why the DSM is quick to present it as a disorder (see: passive agressive syndrome (DSM-III), female sexual dysfunction etc.)

Problem-focussed checklists (DSM, internet) are never, ever a good way to help somebody.

Frankly, the dark hand of big pharma has always hovered over diagnosis of this kind. And at the end of day, is actually it useful? Label kids, drug'em up etc. God I sound like Tom Cruise.

I sort of agree, but hardly a kid at 27.

yeah, it worries me that so many parents seem so quick to drug their kids up, rather than dealing with their behaviour from a psychological angle. i'm certainly not opposed to chemical intervention, i just think that huey's right about the financial motivations behind some of the over-prescribing that seems to be going on. drugs should be a last resort, not a quick fix.

hurting, are you considering seeing a doctor/psychologist about this stuff?

Drug me drug me drug me drug me
Drug me with natural vitamin c
Drug me with pharmaceutical speed
Drug me with your sleeping pills
Drug me with your crossword puzzles
Drug me with your magazines
Drug me with your fuck machines
With a fountain of fads
More rock and roll ads
Drug me drug me drug me me me

ADHD, which is characterized by hyperactivity, disorganization, impulsivity, emotionality, unstable personality, fidgetiness, and inability to relax (2,3), has been reported to be present in 17 percent to 40 percent of various cocaine-dependent populations (1,2,4,5). Less well known is the fact that cocaine modifies these symptoms, thus making it more difficult to correctly diagnose such patients. We have reported that one reliable indicator of the presence of ADHD among adult cocaine-dependent subjects is the history of a "paradoxical" reaction to cocaine use (1). A carefully obtained clinical history confirms that despite eventual deterioration as cocaine dependence develops, patients with ADHD initially derive symptomatic improvement from the use of cocaine and may resort to this readily available stimulant for self-medication (1,6).

Instead of the excitation (4) and exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms (7) observed in cocaine-using populations without ADHD, cocaine induces a constellation of beneficial effects in the ADHD population; they include relaxation, anxiolysis, mood stabilization, improved focus and ability to think, and increased capacity to engage in productive activity, all in the relative absence of a euphoric response (1,4). Whether some individuals with ADHD could continue to use cocaine for symptomatic relief without actually abusing it has not been investigated, although it appears unlikely.

^^^^

V V TRUE

ahhhh... i always thought it was weird that ritalin had a calming effect on ADHD/ADD ppl, but a complete speed effect on me and my friends when we tried it years ago (damn, that was an awesome night).

XPOST: Big kids = bigger market </cynicism>

I am a habitually messy, disorganized person, and I am easily distracted. I have trouble finishing projects, I procrastinate heavily, make tasks take way longer than they need to, and often feel "overwhelmed by the basic tasks of daily life" and all that.

This is precisely what I mean - we're taught to focus on 'negative' aspects of our personality as though they're somehow bad. We've been sold the idea that there's a 'norm' we must all subscribe to - that's the very essence of psychiatry, for example.

Why is procrastination bad? Or being mildly disorganised? If you're overwhelmed, why isn't that a problem with your situation / environment, rather than a problem with you? What about looking for solution-focussed (i.e. positive) elements to those areas that you're struggling with?

Others may disagree, but please don't go down the psychiatric route. You'll only end up making that diagnosis / label part of your personality, as it were - and therefore another negative aspect. It's also a very vicious cycle to get out of (see: people disagnosed with depression, borderline personality disorder etc).

A decent psychologist (i.e. non-medical model, no conflicts of interest etc) should be able to help you gain some perspective on those aspects you're feeling uncomfortable with.

xpost...so what you're saying is that hurting 2 should do some coke so he can self-diagnose? ;)

This is precisely what I mean - we're taught to focus on 'negative' aspects of our personality as though they're somehow bad. We've been sold the idea that there's a 'norm' we must all subscribe to - that's the very essence of psychiatry, for example. Why is procrastination bad? Or being mildly disorganised? If you're overwhelmed, why isn't that a problem with your situation / environment, rather than a problem with you? What about looking for solution-focussed (i.e. positive) elements to those areas that you're struggling with?

Sorry, but this is bullshit. First of all, I am seeing a very good psychoanalyst who generally disfavors medication. He is helping me with a lot of things, but not with these particular problems. These problems have held me back in every area of my life, including wreaking havoc on my college transcript. And in fact I've seen therapists for much of the last 10 years, and in spite of great progress in my self-confidence and romantic life, I've made only marginal progress in this.

Procrastination and disorganization are real problems. They can lead to career and marriage failure, depression, feelings of wasted potential and missed opportunities. Fuck, if I wanted to of course I could "change my environment" instead - I could go live on some commune or something. But that isn't what I want.

I have the Adult ADD. It sucks.

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.