Ask HN: How did an adult ADHD diagnosis help you?

My ability to focus since getting medication is night and day. This is true even when I’m off medication because I’ve been able to do the work to gain mental clarity I’d not been able to do before.

Right, I’m extremely add and get euphoria. I also feel a lot of the people who treat this as “my medication” types (they’re common) should realize the worst thing about adderall is that it makes you happy doing stupid menial stuff

One of the DSM criteria is literally "There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, school, or work functioning." So if there isn't something being affected, you don't meet the diagnosis criteria.

As others have mentioned, exploring a diagnosis is about more than just medication. Getting diagnosed and understanding how ADHD impacts me helped me understand myself better and stop beating myself up for the things I couldn't control. It changed the way I think about myself. Even though I had all the hallmarks of a good life on paper (did well in school, got a good job, stable relationship, etc.), I also felt imposter syndrome and ashamed for how chaotic and unstable I felt on the inside. Learning about ADHD helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses and how to work with them.

My diagnosis also helped my family, after I got diagnosed my dad and younger brother were diagnosed too. It saved my parent's relationship because my mom finally understood that parts of my dad's personality and his behavior were caused by the ADHD, not because he didn't care enough or because he was a bad husband/father.

I’ve been taking vyvanse for the last few years. I was skeptical whether medication would “work” or even about what “work” would mean. I’ve seen other commenters relate adhd meds to glasses. I think that’s reasonable. I wear glasses and they really smooth things out. Going through life without glasses would be so much more annoying. I think I’ll get lasik or something in the near future because, you know, good eyesight is pretty cool.

Without glasses I’d have to position myself in odd ways to get a good enough perspective of reality to interact with it in ways I want. Could I do it without glasses? Sure. Do I wish I didn’t need them? Yeah.

Vyvanse is tool. My life has been different since I started using this tool. However, I was trying to change—to be more consistent, less impulsive, and to reduce my anxiety. I can consistently practice other techniques and develop better habits long enough that they stick. Three years passed between my initial diagnosis and when I agreed to try out medication.

Since I’ve been on medication, I’ve gained a lot of the consistency I sought. I take a capsule in the morning around 6am and I go to bed at 10pm (almost every night, whereas I wasn’t on a schedule before). I have a little morning routine of reading or working on things before work (long term goals stuff). I start winding down with the fam at around 6-7pm. The daily consistent effort has helped my anxiety a lot (prior, I’d procrastinate a lot more). I can actually relax when it’s time to relax. I also need to exercise 1-3 times a week (medication isn’t a silver bullet). I don’t “take breaks.” I take it daily, as prescribed. I take the lowest dose that “works.” A 10mg higher dose delays my bed time and shortens my sleep window (fwiw I don’t use an alarm). I keep a little daily journal and I still have “off days,” I just have far fewer. There’s still things that I can’t stand doing, but I can at least articulate that to someone else (or keep it to myself) and make a procrastination plan.

I’ve been “successful” with and without medication, but my life is a little healthier now which was unexpected given my initial thoughts on amphetamines. Prior, I would pack my days so tightly I didn’t have the option of deviating. When things would slow down, it was apparent I needed to explore better alternatives. Over the past four years I’ve periodically thought “hey, I’m doing pretty good, I probably don’t need this stuff. However, one side effect of stimulants is that they can increase your confidence (just something to be mindful of).

It can take time to find a dosage that works for you. I started low and ramped up. For me, it took about 3 months of consistent use to determine if a dose was better or worse (except for a dosage that was too high). I think some people like to “feel it working,” but I would advise against using an immediate metric like that.

Unfortunately there’s not a common language that we can all speak in about these things. I think everyone struggles with some amount of the common symptoms for adhd, but it can be hard to quantify personal experiences (asking 20/20 vision people the right questions might lead down a path of “yeah, sometimes I do have some trouble seeing certain things”). There’s some things you’ve got to experience for yourself.

If things are going really well right now and this is a one-off lingering family issue, it may not be worth your time to run all the tests. I’m actually pretty impressed that your providers want to run tests (maybe that’s something you should listen to). However, it’s possible that taking medication can make things worse before it can make them better.

To actually answer your question, an adult adhd diagnosis helped group together some observed effects under one name. After this thing had a name I went about making improvements that helped my situation (both with and without medication). To be honest, I have to read between the lines of your description which is “my life is going great, but I have a lingering family issue and my doc thinks I have adhd because of it.” I can imagine a scenario where this adds up, but I’d keep working with your doc and I’d get a second opinion before subjecting yourself to (possibly invasive) time-consuming testing.