The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
nytimes.com
The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
1–10 of 131 posts
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#2As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#3I don't know. I just don't know.
I earned a perfect score on the SAT and was voted "Class Genius" in the yearbook, but barely graduated from high school. I was dismissed from university.
I went to work for a machine learning company, where we (self included!) did some really neat stuff, including some heroic pre-sales-meeting coding that saved the day in a minor way. But I was fired six months in for low productivity and low engagement.
Was it brain chemistry? ADD? Millenial entitlement? The Bipolar Lisp personality? Depression? SAD? A once-seen-impossible-to-unsee glimpse of the Gervais Principle? (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...)
Who knows.
What I do know is that
- a) I may have something, but at least I am lucid. This is an understandable HN comment. I write many of them, and they seem to get ok ratings.
- b) I have spent, and could spend, a lot of time trying to nail down exactly what's up with me. I have very little to show for it.
So I'm trying to just capitalize on the "lucid" part. I'm building stuff. I realize I'm the proverbial crank working alone, but I'm trying very hard to avoid the common pitfalls---setting hard deadlines, getting customer feedback, getting appropriate exercise and social interaction, etc. And it's working. Things are happening. Milestones are being reached.
It's the best I can do.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#4As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases ." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
One of the oldest examples of this phenomenon I can think of is how halitosis wasn't considered nearly as much of a problem before the promotion of Listerine as a cure for it in the 1920s.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#5As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases ." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
One of the oldest examples of this phenomenon I can think of is how halitosis wasn't considered nearly as much of a problem before the promotion of Listerine as a cure for it in the 1920s.
You can turn your perspective on this the other way as well, though. Do you know how hard it is to sell cryonics, life-extension research, etc? Because, you know, "death isn't that big a deal."
Sometimes, a horrible thing goes unrecognized because we've all just learned to live with how horrible it is, and to stop wasting emotional energy despairing about it. When a cure does then come about... some company has to remind people that the problem is a problem in the first place.
Some "non-problems" are Emperors wearing some very compelling New Clothes.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#6As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases ." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
One of the oldest examples of this phenomenon I can think of is how halitosis wasn't considered nearly as much of a problem before the promotion of Listerine as a cure for it in the 1920s.
I must respectfully disagree, halitosis (bad breadth for those wondering) was already considerer a problem in 1550BC and a valid reason in the Talmud for breaking marriage. Hardly small potatoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halitosis#History.2C_society_a...
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#7Meanwhile, I still have to get my stimulants illegally.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#8As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases ." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
See also: the phenomenon of people who have made peace with the literal voices in their heads. http://www.meltingasphalt.com/accepting-deviant-minds
The disease model is a horribly leaky abstraction for behavioral and personality problems. There is a world of difference between "I have a condition, with both benefits and drawbacks, which I need to manage" and "I have a disease that needs to be treated with medication". High-functioning autism has begun to be understood as belonging more to the first camp than the second; I would hope someday that we view many more things that way as well.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#9I don't know if I really have ADD. There's no real physiological test for it, just self-assessments and the rejection of the null hypothesis upon the introduction of various drugs.
What I do know: until I started treatment for ADD, the entire concept of "willpower" or "motivation" just didn't make sense to me. It was something other people had, maybe; or perhaps they were lying. But with treatment, "motivating myself" into doing things for merely their effects on my long-term goals is a perfectly obvious thing to do. It's very similar to what it felt like to go through puberty and gain a sex drive—but what I've gained is a drive to succeed in life.
Watching my own behaviour, introspectively, is fascinating. I keep expecting to hear a little voice that says "eh, that's too much effort; it makes me tired just to think of doing that." That voice was a persistent companion for most of my life. Now, that voice is just not there.
Re: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder
#10I don't suffer from ADD/ADHD but I grew up during the 90's, when lots of kids in school, around me, were being put on all kinds of prescription medication, but most prevalent were the ADD/ADHD prescriptions.
Of the roughly 20 names I can remember, who I know for a fact were prescribed ADD/ADHD medications, AND who I knew growing up both before the medication and after, there was only one guy that obviously had problems, and he was a jerk in general, and I avoided him as a rule, regardless of whatever medical attention he may have been receiving. I'm convinced that the rest were pretty much plied with drugs in the name of school grades, and there was no medical basis for their "treatment". I'm sure there were many more than the ones I knew.
Years later, now that I am hopelessly dependent on my morning coffee, and can look back on past events equipped with a firm understanding of the nature of stimulants and their affects, from both a therapeutic and recreational perspective, I am all the more convinced that doctors are providing performance enhancing drugs as study aids, where no medical condition exists. Some weak-willed parents are simply swept up in the sales pitch and follow trends like mindless zombies, and other zealously ambitious parents don't even think twice about subjecting their kids to unnecessary medicine if it means success and bragging rights at dinner parties. Still other parents know what the drugs do based on first hand experience, and feel no qualms about providing their kids with something they'd readily consume themselves.
The only thing that gnaws at me, is that in quiet suburban parlance, people will happily refer to prescribing their kids "meds" with jaunty, upbeat names conceived by marketing departments, but never EVER will anybody admit to what's really going on. The first time I found a bottle of generic medication in my friend's bathroom medicine cabinet, the reality of all this dawned on me.
AMPHETAMINE SALTS, 20MG
It was then that was when I realized everyone around me, young and old, all of them were just a huge band of highly-skilled bullshit artists.