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Me and ADHD

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Re: Me and ADHD

#401

Post by TheTrotters »

01100011 wrote: post #106
throwaway713 wrote: post #2

> Minimizing menial tasks. Menial tasks really suck. I know everyone must hate doing these, but to put it into perspective, I would rather do 20 hours of really really hard work on a tough project than do 5 hours of menial tasks Interesting. I have ADHD (inattentive subtype) and am quite the opposite. My apartment is never cleaner than when I have an extremely important, open-ended project with multiple stakeholders…

Yeah I feel like I hide in those tasks to achieve a sense of accomplishment while also avoiding the uncomfortable task I should be working on. Then again, those tasks help me pass the time until the deadline for the important task is close enough to generate the fear/anxiety necessary for me to work on it.

And it's so satisfying to something that gives you physical feedback (doing dishes, vacuuming). Most of my day is spend doing math or programming so all my works takes place on a computer, a piece of paper, or in my head.

Re: Me and ADHD

#402

Post by HPsquared »

sizzle wrote: post #252
logicslave wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in the long run amphetamines will do significant damage to your health.

Have any sources on neurodegenerative links between ADHD and longterm stimulant use? I think I saw a studying linking increased risk to parkinsons? This terrifies me.

If there is such an association, how would a study differentiate between the underlying condition causing the increased risk, and the medication itself?

Edit: smokers have reduced rates of Parkinson's disease, and nicotine is a stimulant.

Re: Me and ADHD

#403

Post by HPsquared »

Igelau wrote: post #278
logicslave wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in the long run amphetamines will do significant damage to your health.

I can see how on the outside that might be a concern. How many awful years would you be willing to trade for good years? 2:1? 5:1? 10:1? Consider Lifetime Remaining x Quality of Life If QoL is negative but can be switched to positive at some cost of LR it's not a hard deal to make. Especially in a world with car accidents and deadly diseases.

And that's not even accounting for the beneficial effects on friends/family/society.

Re: Me and ADHD

#404

Post by brailsafe »

For others new to this subject on HN, go to Algolia and search for ADHD.

Here's a question I posed a while back, with some helpful responses. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716306

Also, it's worth diving into the literature on a number of conditions if you're unsure or curious. For me, I only started to think something was really different when I compared my interests and how obsessively I'd learn about them, with the friends I'd be talking with over coffee. There was something seemingly absurd about how much I'd think about an idea or subject, compared to the most I was able to get someone talking about anything they were compelled by. Usually this had to do with systems or cities or the like, and so at first I was leaning more towards high level autism. It's hard to analyze yourself from the outside, so a practitioner who can ask hopefully specific questions about your family and history is very helpful.

Otherwise, if you've found something that works for you, then it probably doesn't matter what your label is, just roll with it.

Lastly, I do appreciate the sharing of personal experience. I'm a SE who has been out of work for 7 months and doesn't have a damn clue how to succeed or how to keep pushing. Have lost 6 jobs over 8 years for varying reasons, and it's a tough life for someone with ADHD symptoms. It's extremely easy to burnout, because to be motivated means to be very motivated to a fault, among other reasons. Then when you do burnout, you realize that nobody actually gives a shit about the work you do, and you sink to the bottom when you get fired.

Re: Me and ADHD

#405

Post by bootstrapping »

beaugunderson wrote: post #381
LeonB wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. Then why do you think stimulant medications were ever approved for adhd treatment? Of course they were work differently for people with and without adhd. For people without adhd the stimulant medications do not treat the adhd. If you try to sort of isolate out that part of it... what are you expecting to find?

This is like saying “for people without hypertension blood thinners don’t treat the hypertension”. Stimulants will help anyone focus, ADHD diagnosis or not. To refocus the conversation, the specific trope I see again and again is “stimulants will make a person with ADHD calm and a person without ADHD hyper”, which I do not believe is true. If there’s a paper that provides evidence for that I’d still love to see it.

This is a furphy. None of the comments here containing the word "calm" have, on review, made that claim. They are all personal anecdotal observations. Indeed there are also dissimilar observations. This is consistent with my experience of discussion within ADHD-specific forums, at least in part because people aren't generally so stupid as to generalise their personal experience to a universal ambit claim.

Neither is such a statement made on the product labels.

I have seen such absolute statements along such lines made in the popular press and their online equivalent, but I'd rather leave toilet paper out of the discussion.

So by all means, do not believe the statement is true, but understand that there is, in fact, no broad acceptance or community belief of such an absolute statement being true, and furthermore, rather crucially, that what you may believe has no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of individual experiences.

Consequently, even the anecdotal reports have continuing clinical relevance, because:

* Medicine is the field of treating a patient, and if the result is a better adjusted, rested, and socially engaged individual, then any such observed effect for the individual patient calls for psychiatric consideration. What such effects are not, is diagnostic, or the basis for a product claim; and,

* Science is the field of explaining phenomena, and the reports are not adequately explained by the research, in large part because the wide gamut of behaviours, symptoms, mechanisms, measures, and outcomes collectively labelled "ADHD" are themselves a very poorly explained and haphazardly classified selection of neurological variations from the population majority. This being, of course, a very common circumstance in the young field of psychiatry.

All of which means there is no such paper, and besides, no-one is even writing one.

Re: Me and ADHD

#406

Post by afarviral »

LeonB wrote: post #358
beaugunderson wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this repeated often and I've never been able to find a source for it. I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. > Stimulant drugs do improve the ability (even without ADHD) to focus and pay attention. One function, which is reliably improved by stimulant medications, is sustained attention, or vigilance. Stimulants improve sustained, focused attention, but “sel…

> I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. Then why do you think stimulant medications were ever approved for adhd treatment? Of course they were work differently for people with and without adhd. For people without adhd the stimulant medications do not treat the adhd. If you try to sort of isolate out that part of it... what are you expecting to find?

Stimulants dont treat ADHD they merely help to manage the symptoms/deficiencies. I get frustrated with the anecdata about stims affecting people with ADHD differently, this was not the case for me, I was just as susceptable to the typical stimulant effects of my meds as much as I felt they provided a much needed boost in areas I feel Ive always been deficient in which relate to my ADHD diagnosis. I think my annoyance stems from thinking its people justifying their stimulant use, desperste to legitimise it. I have an inattentive variety, which might explain why those with the more compulsive type find the meds appear to induce almost depressive/calming response. This is still one of the normal range of effects of stimulants, ADHD or not. The calming effects and drowsiness are not unique to ADHD sufferers, but they are paradoxical resonses. Most drugs have these.

Re: Me and ADHD

#407

Post by peteretep »

groo1 wrote: post #398
peteretep wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me out with your superior Googling skills then please, as I've also tried to find evidence that for non-ADHD adults, taking ADHD medication in doses that it would have been prescribed, does something significantly different than it does to adults with ADHD. Happy to be shown I'm wrong, but my Googling skills had me coming up hands empty here.

Neurotransmitter reuptake behaves differently in ADHD and non-ADHD individuals. Medication affects the reuptake allowing the ADHD individual to function more normally. Transitioning from being a badly functioning individual to a normally functioning individual is not significant to you?

This doesn't seem at all like the

> evidence that for non-ADHD adults, taking ADHD medication in doses that it would have been prescribed, does something significantly different than it does to adults with ADHD

I was asking after.

Re: Me and ADHD

#408

Post by afarviral »

aneemzic wrote: post #304
beaugunderson wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this repeated often and I've never been able to find a source for it. I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. > Stimulant drugs do improve the ability (even without ADHD) to focus and pay attention. One function, which is reliably improved by stimulant medications, is sustained attention, or vigilance. Stimulants improve sustained, focused attention, but “sel…

>I see this repeated often and I've never been able to find a source for it. I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. I'm sorry but you clearly haven't even tried to research the subject, so I'm not surprised you don't believe it. People with ADHD have been scientifically proven to have deficiencies in specific neurotransmitters, namely norepinephrine and dopamine.…

Pretty poor effort response on my part, but whenever I see a claim about a drug doing anything along the lines of "balancing neurotransmitters" I think immediately that its bs. There are probably studies that confirm some people with ADHD symtoms have less dopamine or whatever, but how each of the stims result in increases of these things is simply not specific and targetted enough to make such a claim as 'balancing'.

Re: Me and ADHD

#409

Post by simsla »

nicolas_t wrote: post #383
bootstrapping wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll echo this; I'm a serial founder who was diagnosed with ADHD in his mid-forties. The stimulant medications do not make me "high", do not provide any kind of buzz. Rather, they have a moderating effect. Explaining this requires correcting the misunderstandings in the public realm of how adult ADHD presents, but in nutshell: * The (largely mental) hyperactivity is controllable, that is, I retain my creative ideas g…

I've learned never to take concerta when I'm tired, it will make me extremely sleepy and I'm liable to sleep the entire day (which is not necessarily what I want on days I have something very important to do). I'm an extremely light sleeper and always had a very hard time falling asleep, so my guess is that concerta quiets down my brain enough that the chronic lack of sleep catches up on me.

Interesting. When I take Concerta (54mg) it makes me unable to sleep for the next 12 hours.

It doesn't make me any more awake/less tired than I normally would be, and I can lie down and kind of zone out, but I never completely drift off. Pseudo-meditation is the closest I can get to sleeping when I'm on Concerta.

Re: Me and ADHD

#410

Post by afarviral »

groo1 wrote: post #398
peteretep wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me out with your superior Googling skills then please, as I've also tried to find evidence that for non-ADHD adults, taking ADHD medication in doses that it would have been prescribed, does something significantly different than it does to adults with ADHD. Happy to be shown I'm wrong, but my Googling skills had me coming up hands empty here.

Neurotransmitter reuptake behaves differently in ADHD and non-ADHD individuals. Medication affects the reuptake allowing the ADHD individual to function more normally. Transitioning from being a badly functioning individual to a normally functioning individual is not significant to you?

This describes some of the mechanics of certain medications, most obviously methylphenidate. Its a bit much to say it restores normal function. Theres not evidence of that. The other stimulants are also much more general and result in a cascade of effects accross multiple systems in the brain. If there is a normalizing effect it is coincidental and has not been adequetely proven. This doesnt stop drugs from being approved for use from what Ive observed. Its statistics based and less about neuroscience.
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