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Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

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Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#71

Post by boppo1 »

Diagnosed at 15, avoided prescriptions based on my friend's recommendation. Gave in and tried adderall at 19, turned certain parts of my life around. However, after ~6 mo. taking it, it gave me severe erectile dysfunction and muted my arousal. Like, vagina-of-the-most-attractive-woman-I've-ever-known-in-my-face and my arousal is a total flatline, dick totally shiveled & limp. I tried every ED medication, and although those would give me hard-ons, they were pleasureless. The arousal that feels like 'sexual electricity' in my veins was completely absent. This issue did not completely go away until I had been off of adderall for 3 years.

All in all medication was a double edged sword. My life is a real challenge/mess as I fail to complete important things I'm demonstrably capable of in a timely fashion. However, while I was medicated, I was completely dependent on it to even get out of bed, and it made me feel extremely hopeless and pathetic w/r/t women.

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#72

Post by giraffe_lady »

ldom66 wrote: post #54
giraffe_lady wrote: post #6

It's a disability. You don't overcome it you find accommodations and supports that allow you to meet your goals and & obligations. The experience of having adhd for me is mostly that it is primarily an emotional regulation disorder. The focus and attention problems are downstream of that, and are prioritized because that's how a parent or employer experiences adhd.

Completely agree with your second paragraph. I don't think it's helpful to label it as a "disability". Although the medical term is "disorder", at least for me, this kind of thinking got me digging a hole for myself that I had to climb out of. According to recent research, ADHD may be the fruit of evolution, making us focus on what's important and discarding the mundane. This makes us incredibly creative, out-of-the…

For me it is helpful to think of it as a disability in the social model of disability. I wear glasses too and it's interesting to compare these two things.

Having poor vision doesn't negatively affect me much because I can easily access effective accommodations for it. ADHD can be the same, and is not mostly because of my lack of power & rights in respect to choices my employers make.

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#74

Post by onemoresoop »

rideontime wrote: post #9

I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult by an overzealous psychiatrist and was prescribed stimulant medication. It certainly helped me overcome certain issues and become more productive, but it absolutely didn't help with my actual mental health, actually worsening it in several ways (insomnia, irritability, impatience). I later came to realize my focus and productivity issues could be addressed more effectively and he…

> sues could be addressed more effectively and healthily without medication

How? Please do provide your anecdotal experience, it may surely help others as well. Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#75

Post by onemoresoop »

sgarland wrote: post #60
ldom66 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with your second paragraph. I don't think it's helpful to label it as a "disability". Although the medical term is "disorder", at least for me, this kind of thinking got me digging a hole for myself that I had to climb out of. According to recent research, ADHD may be the fruit of evolution, making us focus on what's important and discarding the mundane. This makes us incredibly creative, out-of-the…

Unfortunately, Jira work is sometimes massively important (to your boss), and also tremendously boring. That was the biggest obstacle I had, and the biggest improvement after medication – the ability to easily do work I’d rather not be doing.

But do you agree that not everyone is meant to work on Jira tickets? I think a lot of people's ADHD flies under the radar until they face the unescapable tedium of corporate work and bureaucracy. Perhaps under different circumstances people with ADHD would shine without needing any medication.

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#76

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

kjellsbells wrote: post #67
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it became really obvious to me when I would require a ton of discipline to do assignments around making applications, but doing something like configuring linux from scratch was so personally interesting to me I could stay up nights and days without any external stimulation. >I found that medication (Methylphendiate 20mg) have definitely helped me focus, but the direction of what I'm focusing doesn't always…

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the line between ADHD and interest/geekery in the scenario you outlined above? I imagine most of the HN readership could spend hours on something they love, and struggle to engage as deeply with many or most of the tasks that are required of them at work. But ADHD would not be the diagnosis for most people. Just boredom. What tips the experience over the line?

To be completely fair it might not be exclusively ADHD. Research is discovering that Autism and ADHD are both on the "same" spectrum, and ASD covers both. Meaning they are not necessarily separate things.

My ability to do bullshit work, is practically zero. If it isn't a task that I find challenging/interesting/important then there is negative motivation (or tolerance) to do that thing. I can and will find something else to do, forever putting off the BigBoringTask. Sometimes I can fool myself, and sometimes I work the fix into the project.

Example: I _HATE_ filling out timesheets. If the company wants anything more specific then "clock in/clock out"; too bad. So, one place I worked I wrote up a bunch of script to scrape SSH logs to catch my login/logout, and would then calculate the "time spent on client". I also had it search emails based on that day and would pull the ticket number most likely related to why I was SSHing in. This challenge/solution consumed my entire interest for that day. My dopamine hit was because I wouldn't have to do the BigBoringTask ever again.

I love the fixing/solving, challenge/reward; I can't stand the tedium. And I just don't do it if I can't stand it.

I have had a clinical diagnosis for both ADHD & ASD. So it's no longer a mystery why I act/react the way I do. It also takes away the sting when somebody says "Everybody else has to do this, why is it so hard for you?"

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#78

Post by 331c8c71 »

theshackleford wrote: post #38
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #23

I was diagnosed 15ish years ago when I was 26. I tried medication and absolutely hated it. It changed who I was. Medication is a crutch. If you're completely crippled and you need it, then you should use it temporarily. But be very very careful developing dependence on it and using it instead of doing the work to deal with your behavior. What worked for me instead of medication: - Get on a sleep and wake schedule tha…

> Medication is a crutch. If you're completely crippled and you need it, then you should use it temporarily. But be very very careful developing dependence on it and using it instead of doing the work to deal with your behavior. Your giving piss poor, dangerous advice that goes against established front line treatment. If you actually have ADHD, completely ignore this terrible advice and treat it in line with a quali…

I remind you that bloodletting also was the first line treatment back in the day. And it's fair to say that our understanding of the human brain and how most drugs work are very rudimentary.

I have heard advice resembling some of points above from a qualified medical professional, specifically the "temporary" part. And I didn't appreciate it at the time - mentally I already was on "medication for life" bandwagon.

Few years later, however, the medication gradually became the problem rather than the solution. All the negative effects amplified with the benefits becoming sporadic and unreliable. The dosage adjustment didn't help.

Luke the hooray guy I also feel best on low-carb (or at least low-sugar) diet and when I am lifting consistently. Occasional outdoors is also kind of necessary to break the routine. If I don't do it at all I slip into some kind of degraded hamster-wheel mode eventually.

Just to be clear, I am not discouraging anyone from starting or continuing the meds. But similarly, don't be too afraid to stop them for a while if you feel this might be the right step for you personally.

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#79

Post by sgarland »

onemoresoop wrote: post #75
sgarland wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Jira work is sometimes massively important (to your boss), and also tremendously boring. That was the biggest obstacle I had, and the biggest improvement after medication – the ability to easily do work I’d rather not be doing.

But do you agree that not everyone is meant to work on Jira tickets? I think a lot of people's ADHD flies under the radar until they face the unescapable tedium of corporate work and bureaucracy. Perhaps under different circumstances people with ADHD would shine without needing any medication.

> But do you agree that not everyone is meant to work on Jira tickets?

Most definitely. There is probably some archetype of person who delights in creating tasks, epics, etc. More power to them.

> Perhaps under different circumstances people with ADHD would shine without needing any medication.

When I first got into tech (I did a mid-career shift), I was a shining star that would grind out ticket after ticket, so long as the work was interesting. It helped that we did Kanban, so there was always work to do. The first time I had to do some monotonous administrative work, though, I just kept putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off... then when the deadline loomed, I suddenly had motivation to get it done.

As an aside, this style of work did _not_ do well with Scrum, because of the absurd insistence on sizing tickets based on the average team member's capabilities. I have no idea how long it will take Person Foo to get that done; I already know exactly how to do it, and can knock it out in a few hours. Why don't you let Person Foo figure out how long things will take _them_, instead of making me artificially slow down? Presumably they have some specialties they could also zero in on, and the entire team would then move faster.

Re: Ask HN: Discuss ADHD and your use of medication

#80

Post by mrguyorama »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #6

It's a disability. You don't overcome it you find accommodations and supports that allow you to meet your goals and & obligations. The experience of having adhd for me is mostly that it is primarily an emotional regulation disorder. The focus and attention problems are downstream of that, and are prioritized because that's how a parent or employer experiences adhd.

A huuuuuuuuge note for others: Woman and men (on average) experience and present symptoms very differently for the "four" mental disorders, ie anxiety, autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. For a lot of women this sucks, because most medical professionals have been trained on the "male" symptoms, and basically left in the dark about how to properly assess/diagnose a female patient. My mother and girlfriend and sister have all been misdiagnosed because of this for decades.

If you are a woman and struggle with anxiety, it might actually "be" caused by ADHD or autism and struggles around those, and there is some play going the other direction too. If you are experiencing mental struggles that is "medication resistant", consider seeking a more thorough psych eval.

In my case: I am near physically incapable of doing things that I "need" to do, with the more I "need" to do something, the harder by brain and body will rebel against doing it. For most of my life this has mostly resulted in me being a very unregimented student who struggled with large projects and time management. I was lucky to have one of my main interests being "learning" so I basically independently excelled in school, so nobody even thought to ask for me to be tested. I finally reached my personal mental/autodidactic limits in college, and only made it through with luck and a good support network and privilege.

The hardest part for me is getting treatment. One of the things I "need" to do is find a psychiatrist who can fully diagnose me and prescribe me something. My doctor is, rather unhelpful, or doesn't realize she needs to help me. Either way, that struggle plus the state of undersupply in psychiatric workers, plus the fact that pretty much no pharmacy in the southern half of my state has any supply of any ADHD meds means that even if I could pull myself together to get that help, I couldn't get any medicine anyway.

The disability part is terrifying. I will never be "fixed". Roughly only 2% of the population is ADHD, and the zeitgeist in most of America, no matter how mildly progressive we get on things like gay marriage, continues to be "if you aren't perfectly productive in the system, you are lazy, bad, and deserve suffering". I don't expect anyone to ever legislate employers to just deal with ADHD employees, so I figure I'm going to get fired eventually. If I wasn't into books and then reading things on the internet when I was 10 as a form of escapism from home life, I would not have lucked into a lucrative job as a programmer, and already would likely be homeless. I've only ever been told I'm extremely, and obviously technically excellent, but because I struggle with time management and struggle to gain access to the medicine I need, society's opinion is that people like me aren't worth the trouble.

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