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ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

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Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#171

Post by proverbialbunny »

ZitchDog wrote: post #139
lawrenceyan wrote: post #137

Meditation helped me to deal with ADHD immensely. My ability to focus and concentrate is now on par if not better than most of my peers, though it requires me to spend about an hour every day in the morning to meditate. I find that it’s very much worth the time investment, and would recommend anyone struggling with focus/anxiety to try it themselves.

How long did it take you to see results? I've battled (manageable) ADHD all my life and have been meditating for around a year. I've seen many positive impacts on my life, but the ADHD is still very much a thing I still battle.

I'm probably unusual, but I noticed clear benefits within a week. Though, I was meditating while waking up first thing every morning, and the initial benefits was not immediately obvious except that I could lower my ADHD med dosage by a couple of mg and get the same effect.

Instead of trying to magically concentrate perfectly, I focused on identifying when my focus would move to something else. I noticed meditation is a practice of becoming quicker at identifying when I would lose focus, giving me the choice to come back to focus.

After a couple of months of meditating I was able to go off of adhd medication. Then maybe a half a year later I noticed my concentration was above average and had been for a while.

Meditation does work well on ADHD, but you have to be willing to take a break from your day to day worries, giving a mini vacation away from mental work. It's quite enjoyable.

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#172

Post by vonseel »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #153
khalilravanna wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting to hear about ADHD causing mood swings/anger/irritability and the stimulants doing away with them. Is that a common trait of the illness? I only noticed that after I started taking stimulants my temper became a lot more short. It's to the point that I have to be really cognizant of it lest I inadvertently snap at someone due to some biological response (really not good as a leader in an organizatio…

So I'm not a researcher, just a sufferer, but my understanding is that yes, emotional regulation issues are common with ADHD. Attention-deficit is kind of a misnomer; a lot of doctors now think "executive functioning disorder" would be a better name. Executive functioning is sort of the layer that sits on top of our underlying systems - whether they be behavioral or emotional - and allows us some level of conscious a…

Poor executive functioning is why I could never make myself start writing a paper prior to the day or two before it was due, despite the rising sense of panic I would get for weeks. (This is key -- it's not laziness, because good lord did I wish I were able to do the work. To me, lazy ~= apathy, and what I felt was just about the polar opposite of apathy.)

That sounds like a good explanation for why I've been avoiding studying for something for weeks but feeling guilty, even sick, the whole time about it.

I don't know though. It's hard for me to not call that lazy, and I don't think lazy denotes apathy. Isn't it possible to be lazy and still care about a thing?

Poor executive functioning is also why, unmedicated, it was sometimes difficult to not let my initial emotional reactions just come flying out. It was like there was an express lane between my limbic system and my action system, totally bypassing my ability to control it. I would find myself snapping out something and as it was coming out of my mouth, I would be kicking myself and thinking "Why in god's name am I saying this right now?"

I still struggle with emotional impulsivity anytime I take a few days off meds. Drug holidays can be surreal. Or sometimes they might not be special at all. But I've taken time off before and noticed everything - birds, wind in the air, music on the radio, and it felt so surreal that I broke down crying.

Why in god's name am I saying this right now...

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#174

Post by viklove »

insertnickname wrote: post #146
viklove wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a competition. Are you kidding? Life in a capitalistic economy is _absolutely_ a competition.

In a capitalist economy, others doing well generally benefits you. It's not zero-sum.

Sometimes you benefit from others doing well. Sometimes you are hurt by it. It's not as simple as you make it out to be. Globalization, for example, is zero-sum for many people. Since we're now buying from , people who did that here lost their jobs. It's absolutely a competition. In capitalism you have to fight for your right to feed yourself, and if you are in the bottom x% of society, you quite literally have to live on the streets.

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#175

Post by marsrover »

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 19 after being a C student my entire life. I was prescribed Adderall and immediately became an A student overnight. It's actually weird how well it worked. Unfortunately, like others have said, it isn't a cure-all. It felt like a crutch and as my tolerance went up the less effective it was.

Long story short, I ended up discovering marijuana and quit taking my Adderall. Marijuana also made me an A student. After smoking it, I could actually read books instead of just looking at words.

I doubt it would work for everyone but it has certainly worked for me and anytime I need to study, I smoke some weed now. It surprises me how well I understand the subject after I finish. If I try sober, I don't retain anything and I don't understand anything.

In fact, some newer studies show that marijuana is actually an effective treatment for ADHD [1].

[1] https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/495307

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#176

Post by firethief »

remote_phone wrote: post #86

ADHD is not a disease. It’s a collection of symptoms that have been arbitrarily grouped together. My son’s psychiatrist who was diagnosing my son for ADHD said that it’s psychiatry’s dirty little secret. Back in the 60s or 70s ( I can’t remember what he said) people were starting to notice that kids were having behavioral problems, trouble focusing etc. So what they did was collect a group of symptoms, and then arbit…

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/04/symptom-condition-caus...

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#177

Post by kls »

sibeliuss wrote: post #83
verst wrote: post #78

I'm 34 and I am finally meeting a psychiatrist soon for what I suspect has been ADHD all along. I do not suffer from depression or anxiety (to my knowledge). I have a perfectly healthy lifestyle - I run 5 days a week, about 40 miles total, eat healthily and sleep well. During my runs (which physically feel painful) I have few moments of clarity in my head. Other than running though my mind has a thousand thoughts all…

Before going down a road that involves powerful stimulants that have a high likelihood of abuse or misuse -- the danger is that they're fun, and one develops a tolerance, just like other similar illegal drugs -- it might be worthwhile to investigate a mediation practice, or other exercises to improve your attention. If you're already high functioning its likely not as bad as it seems. From experience: First thing to…

I would argue that they are not powerful stimulants at therapeutic doses and have little risk of dependency. I can take my meds as prescribed for months on end, stop taking them cold turkey and have no withdraw symptoms other than the fog and inability to get started comes back as soon as they are out of my system. I personally take prescribed methamphetamine which would be considered to be the strongest in it's class and honestly it's not fun or buzzy or euphoric at therapeutic doses and not as addictive as people make it out to be. Opiates and nicotine have 100x the addition profile when compared to amphetamines.

As a note to abuse my medicine at recreational doses of meth I would consume my months prescription in about 4 to 5 days. Not enough time to get physically addicted and it would suck for the foggy rest of the month. I think the risk is overblown.

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#178

Post by eq_sd_ »

tcj_phx wrote: post #144
ditonal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I admit I'm biased because I started taking ADHD meds and then had a manic/psychotic episode, that involved me getting involuntarily committed to a psych ward and burning all my career bridges, and also got diagnosed with heart failure, and I attribute a huge chunk of the blame to the ADHD meds. Both my psychiatrists and cardiologists insisted I needed even more meds or things would get worse, but instead I jus…

Stimulants have the adverse effect of harming the mitochondria/metabolism. Most conditions improve when the metabolism is normalized. B-vitamins are pro-metabolic. Sometimes doctors do good work. My girlfriend's doctors eventually figured out that she is a poor methylator, and can't convert folic acid into folate (Vitamin B-9). She therefore absolutely requires a dietary source of Folate, instead of the folic acid th…

I can say the opposite. I have the MTHFR mutation and ADHD. Taking vitamins did not alleviate my ADHD symptoms.

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#179

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

viklove wrote: post #97
vslira wrote: post #2

About getting treatment: it's extremely irritating that some people judge using Ritalin is somehow morally wrong. Yes, I get that "lifestyle changes" could help, but I don't want to change my lifestyle. Imagine if there was a pill to reduce risk of cardiac arrest, with some increased risk of something relatively minor. Can you imagine the uproar if cardiologists denied prescribing the pill, instead forcing people to…

A pill that decreases the risk of cardiac arrest is very different than a pill that is psychoactive. Many people just can't relate to taking a drug that quite literally changes your behavior on a day-to-day basis, even if it has positive effects on your life. This is something I myself have struggled with. I suffer from anxiety but I can't bring myself to take medication because I like the person I am and I don't wan…

The big question for us is, do we consider the parts of our behavior caused by whatever we suffer from to be part of our identity or personality?

I do not now. I used to -- I had a fairly major crisis of identity after my diagnosis, because a very large chunk of what I considered to be my personality turned out to be ADHD symptoms. I literally had to refind myself.

But it turned out very well, because now I define myself based upon what my actual qualities are, rather than defining myself based on symptoms of a disorder. I no longer feel like everything about who I am changed after meds; I'm still the same person I was ten years ago, I'm just now more easily able to express that self without ADHD getting in the way.

Also, in almost all cases, the "new qualities" are better than the old ones. Whereas before, "I just can't finish things" was unfortunately something I considered to be part of me, now I am able to finish things mostly the same as neurotypical people. That leaves me free to define myself based on positive qualities -- good humor, optimism, and so on.

The thing is, it became much easier for me to feel okay about taking medicine when I realized that the goal of medicine is simply to bring me back to a "normal" level. I had been operating at a deficiency of certain neurotransmitters; the medication simply brings those levels closer to normal. Once I had adopted a more biochemical perspective on my brain and identity, my initial reluctance disappeared.

A side effect of this is that I kind of no longer believe personality is fixed. I really don't find that the things we tend to call 'personality' are the sort of permanent identifying landmarks to a person we want them to be. Now I've adopted a view that puts a much stronger emphasis on the actions a person chooses to take, which I think is a better way to identify a person's qualities anyways.

---

I would hesitate though with ADHD in particular, because untreated ADHD reduces your lifespan in a statistically significant way, is literal hell to live through, and the treatments are perfectly safe and extremely effective. If someone has a child who is diagnosed with ADHD, I would beg them to not let their personal prejudices against medicine keep them from getting the child the help they need. As someone who lived through it as a kid, it was physically torture. The word "restlessness" sounds benign, but I find it to be quite similar to akathisia on bad days, which is really horrific.

Re: ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)

#180

Post by easton_s »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #45
easton_s wrote: post #17

I was told by my doctor that since I have a successful career as a software engineer I do not have ADHD. I'm still fighting to get a prescription. What he doesn't understand how my coping mechanisms are probably more unhealthy then the drug. I have allocate recreation time to work, use a lot of caffeine, and sleep deprivation to overcome my ADHD. Sleep deprivation is probably the strongest tool to combat ADHD but as…

Other than your experience with your doctor, what you described is near perfect recreation of my experience prior to getting medication. Afterwards those coping mechanisms nigh complete disappeared almost overnight. Keep pushing to at least get a trial run with the medication and seeing if it helps you. Also if your doctor is seriously ignoring your concerns, consider looking for a better doctor. People often place w…

Thanks for the push. I've been working with ADHD my entire life. I never considered medication before until my son started on it and I watched an absolute transformation in the way he works at school. His 4th grade teacher literally cried it was so positive.
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