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My ADHD founder toolbox

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Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#101

Post by devde »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #75
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one month in is way too early to know if the change is long-term positive. This is especially true with stimulant medications. Agree. It's important to remind people that the effects of the first few weeks aren't like the effects for the next 10-50 years. It's especially concerning when people say the meds give them "more energy to do things" because that's more of a side effect that goes away after a while. The fo…

I’ve never experienced more energy to do things nor euphoria from my stimulant meds. They make me less anxious and allow me to muster executive function that I struggle with otherwise. Not because I’m more focused or productive or whatever else people ascribe to the drug, because I’m less overwhelmed by the world that’s loud and fast and bright and complicated and dangerous. My brain and the world around me are quiet…

Same here. If anything I actually feel a bit tired when they kick in throughout the day.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#102

Post by TeMPOraL »

danem wrote: post #76
resonious wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not GP but I also stopped taking meds (actually recently for me, and I'm 27). I'm sure GP's reason is different. My reason was that I had realized that a lot of my old ADHD symptoms were actually still happening. I was still procrastinating, still getting stressed when forced to focus on stuff I don't care about, still forgetting stuff. As an experiment, I decided to keep lowering my dose to see what happens. I k…

I'm curious... Are these not things virtually everyone struggles with to some degree? There are no end to time management books and people who wish they would spend less time on their phones/playing video games/etc.

Virtually everyone struggles with it to some degree, some of the time. ADHD people struggle with this to a high degree, all of the time, to the point it interferes with their ability to function, and causes no end of anguish.

It's like accidentally giving yourself a small burn when pulling things out of an oven, vs. having a 2nd degree burns on half of your body. Technically the same thing, but scale matters.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#103

Post by solveit »

brian_cunnie wrote: post #93
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is especially true with stimulant medications. Hard to see how this is " especially true" with stimulants, given they're the rare case of psychiatric meds you can get on and off safely at any time, and the bulk of the effects appear in hours to days after starting the treatment (and disappear just as fast after cessation). Contrast with e.g. depression treatment, where it takes a month or more before it's clea…

> psychiatric meds you can get on and off safely at any time Maybe you can get off them safely, but not always easily. My alcohol/drug recovery group is filled with people who couldn't easily get off them, like my friend N., who rather than swallowing his medication (Ritalin?), he crushed it & snorted it like cocaine.

> rather than swallowing his medication (Ritalin?), he crushed it & snorted it like cocaine.

I'm having a hard time pinning this on the meds honestly...

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#104

Post by ttcbj »

triggercut wrote: post #9
ttcbj wrote: post #2

I saw the guy who founded kinkos speak at Babson business school about 20 years ago. Weirdly, he was there due to some sponsorship related to disabilities because he had ADHD. He got up and in the first 30 seconds said he thought ADHD had helped him, didn’t think of it as a negative, and just came because he wanted to tell his story. Like so many founders (esp of retail businesses, I find), he was super charismatic a…

> Weirdly, he was there due to some sponsorship related to disabilities because he had ADHD. Can I ask why you find that weird? ADHD is, and is also comorbid with other learning disabilities. ADHD has so many dimensions and interrelationships between those dimensions that everybody's lived experience is different. If you know one person with ADHD, then you know one person with ADHD, you don't know everyone with ADHD.…

Fair question. I think I used that word because at the beginning of the talk, the person who had organized the talk gave a five minute ibtro about how admirable it was that he was willing to acknowledge the difficulty of his ADHD, etc.

Then he stood up, was clearly having none of it, said he thought it was an advantage, and then gave a long talk with no reference to it.

I guess it was weird because he didn’t seem into that angle at all.

But he was a great speaker, really inspiring.

Edit: I wasn’t necessarily trying to advocate that his perspective was correct for anyone else, but just reporting that this is what happened as a matter of fact.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#105

Post by hericium »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #51

I diagnosed when I was like... 8 years old. From then to 17 I was on various meds, finally gave them all up. So for about 22 years I've coped with ADHD without meds. I am a Staff Engineer and make a good living, respected in my field. Regardless of anything else, I think the key thing to remember about ADHD is that you do not need to be a high-performing human being, at all, in life. You will forget things and get di…

ADHD can be partially treated during childhood. The problem is when it goes undiagnosed for years.

Your adult life may have looked much differently, would you not have been medicated earlier.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #78
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with you and responders here. I want to add, there's also change in life circumstances aspect to it. Like, it's nice if you can use hyperfocus to do great things, that on the net outweigh the inability to handle "normal life" things like paying bills on time. Then you marry and start a family and at some point wake up realizing this new life is perfectly structured to prevent you from using the positive aspect…

This is exactly it. The person who resents me most for my disability is my wife. I don’t blame her, and I do my best to reign in my disability, but it’s not possible for me to function the way she wishes I could. I put everything I’ve got into a) making sure I don’t get fired because I earn about 4x more than her, b) pour all the energy I can into my kids because I see how fast they’re growing up, and by that point,…

I feel for you, and I wish things to turn around for the better for you and your wife. Myself, I'm worried I'm 75% there. I.e. I'm also doing your a) and b), but we both still think the overall relationship is salvageable.

> I do my best to reign in my disability, but it’s not possible for me to function the way she wishes I could.

Same here, and my wife is also willing to adapt to my needs, but here's a thing: I can't always tell whether some adjustment is an actual need, or just some random guess I came up out of frustration. I also have a life-long habit of molding myself into the person the people need me to be, and couple with being diagnosed well into my 30s... things are improving, but it's kind of a random walk.

> Rule one of ADHD: you probably lack a lot of self awareness and it can be genuinely awful for people you live with.

I'm not the best person to judge this, but I think I actually do have quite a lot of self-awareness, so I hesitantly propose Rule 1A: if you do have a lot of self awareness, it's even worse, because you can see how awful it is for people you live with, and can't do a thing about it.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#107

Post by danenania »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #78
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with you and responders here. I want to add, there's also change in life circumstances aspect to it. Like, it's nice if you can use hyperfocus to do great things, that on the net outweigh the inability to handle "normal life" things like paying bills on time. Then you marry and start a family and at some point wake up realizing this new life is perfectly structured to prevent you from using the positive aspect…

This is exactly it. The person who resents me most for my disability is my wife. I don’t blame her, and I do my best to reign in my disability, but it’s not possible for me to function the way she wishes I could. I put everything I’ve got into a) making sure I don’t get fired because I earn about 4x more than her, b) pour all the energy I can into my kids because I see how fast they’re growing up, and by that point,…

For what it’s worth, I get the impression that you’re being way too hard on yourself. Struggling in a relationship doesn’t mean you’re an awful partner. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes those react in relationships in unfortunate ways. It’s never just one person who is responsible.

It sounds like at the very least, you’re doing two extremely important things well: providing financially and being engaged as a father. Whatever your weaknesses might be, those are two huge strengths. Don’t sell yourself short on those.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#108

Post by rtpg »

adamwk wrote: post #86
rtpg wrote: post #52

Regarding meds, are people willing to share what kind of doses they are on? I take 27mg of Concerta, and I remember talking to someone taking like... 5x that? And being quite shocked, but there's always that curiosity about what dosages makes sense.

I'm also on Concerta, taking 45mg. I started at 27 which was too low for me and went up to 54 which was too high; so we came down to 45 which seems to be a Goldie locks for me (they don't make a 45mg pill so I take an 18 and a 27). I also take 150mg Wellbutrin for depression and balance it all off with a nightly 300mg of Gabapentin to help me sleep (coincidentally my cat is prescribed the same amount of gaba to take…

TBH given that part of my ADHD treatment is about social aspects, break days have never really seemed like a good idea to me. Everyone is different of course but executive function is nice to have off the clock as well IMO.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#109

Post by [deleted] »

terribleperson wrote: post #66
yc-kraln wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was diagnosed when I was six, and, like you, I dropped all meds at 17. Recently (as in, this year) through a combination of therapy and introspection, I realized that while indeed I was able to have a successful life, career, relationships without the medication, and that, yes, my coping mechanisms were satisfactory, I was punching myself in the face for no reason Last month I saw a psychiatrist and got a prescript…

While meds can definitely help, one month in is way too early to know if the change is long-term positive. This is especially true with stimulant medications.

[deleted]

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#110

Post by dboreham »

tonyarkles wrote: post #99
bitexploder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank goodness for auto pay on bills and a NT wife. I don’t know how she puts up with where my brain has ended up some years, but we have done great together as a family :) Also, I totally get that picking up random links thing. I always found I could sort of link together certain kinds of concepts together really quickly. Never super deeply, but like, learning new programming languages, I could just dive in, look at…

> and a NT wife. Partner and I have been together for 13 years now. She’s almost certainly on the ADHD spectrum but less severe than me. Things are great besides the fact that we both neglect a lot of stuff that NT folks don’t really struggle with. But retrospectively, that’s one of the most interesting things for me. I think back to a lot of the previous relationships I had, and the vast majority of them failed due…

Meh. Lathe is small potatoes. Get a pdp-11/70.
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