Yes, but there's another potential compounding effect that I've realised didn't help matters for me: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-s-...
That's an interesting article, and I agree that the 'gifted' label is somewhat pernicious. I came to resent, and reject it, when my impairments became a serious obstacle to me in the later years of schooling. Not sure if you caught this when it front-paged, but here's another theory about why 'gifted' people may fail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901962
Another way I look at it is that my brain's filters underperform, meaning all the excess noise from senses and internal thoughts can overwhelm what's supposed to be what you are attending to. I really struggle to sleep if there's light or noise in the background - especially voices such as TV, where your brain has special circuits just to focus on and process them. Ketamine is an anaesthetic and taking it makes me fe…
Yep, definitely experienced that as well. I usually sleep with ear plugs and eye mask. If you don't mind my asking, how often do you take Ketamine? I have no experience with it or anything like it.
In my 20s several times a week, in my 30s every week or two, nowadays every so often. My 20s were a chaotic mess with a lot of partying, and I'm fairly sure ketamine's effects on depression and anxiety and my ADHD were a part of why I enjoyed it so much. I still do, but post-diagnosis at 31 I've been getting my life back on track and while it's amazing how your brain can adapt to even something as potent as ketamine and manage to function in daily life, doing so was in no way living my best life lol.
It's an incredible experience and a medical tool with a lot of potential, see its recent use for chronic depression and alcohol addiction. Recreational and therapeutic dosages are very different though!
- Life being an eternal struggle due to slipping into drug/alcohol use and doing those very intensely - Being unable to maintain good habits (e.g. gym) because it feels like you're nearly a completely different person at different points because your desires/wants change from day to day to hour to hour to minute to minute - Forgetting literally everything due to getting distracted - Not remembering important stuff so…
I guess I have ADHD. I thought these were all normal things.
Perhaps you should discuss this with your doctor. I've also found some success with low-dose usage of psychedelics, although I do not recommend this course of action without doing plentiful research.
> - Emotions swinging from happy to angry in a flash For me this falls under a general "lack of proprioception" in which I'm bad at recognising both bodily and emotional feelings until they hit a certain threshold, at which point they surprise me at full force. It does have some advantages as an adult - I'm very emotionally steady due to not being influenced by every emotion - but on the other hand it means I miss em…
This really hits home for me. I didn't even recognize this tendency in myself for years, until my now wife pointed it out to me. One thing that's really helped me is to periodically sit down with a piece of paper in a quiet room and answer the question: "what am I ignoring right now?" The stuff I write down _always_ surprises me. Always.
I kept a daily diary on a site called kuro5hin back in the first half of the 00s and my 20s, and it was an amazing stream of consciousness that writing was perhaps even more helpful to me than the community there that read and commented on each other's diaries. I managed to download them all and reading back such intimate and mundane thoughts from an otherwise blurry period of my past is... strange and enlightening. It's amazing how your brain retells the story of your past to paint things in a better light.
Writing your thoughts in that style is up there with exercise for healthy management of ADHD IMO. Glad you've found such a tool, I've something I've struggled to get back since I stopped writing my diary.
I've heard this so often, even from family. "It sounds like things everybody has to deal with". It's infinitely more difficult with ADHD. I use phone apps to remind myself of everyday things and track my shopping lists. This may sound normal but it's a coping strategy and when it's gone I am unable to function as a normal human being. I cannot go shopping without a shopping list because I will grab things I think I n…
Caffeine can make it worse
I will add my anecdote to the mix. I previously consumed caffeine in the form of soda for many, many years. I quit soda cold turkey two months ago after a mild but particularly meaningful magic mushroom experience, and coupled with the regular mushroom experiences my focus control has been better than ever (but still extremely difficult, just enough less so that I can tell the difference).
Seems that lots of people only think ADHD people have a hard time paying attention. If it was that simple I would be so happy. Here are just a few of the things I struggle with. - Will power. People with ADHD struggle sooooo much with will power. It’s a constant struggle with everything in life and really wears you down. - Constantly putting on a fake front pretending you don’t have ADHD. - Rejection sensitivity - Fe…
- Life being an eternal struggle due to slipping into drug/alcohol use and doing those very intensely - Being unable to maintain good habits (e.g. gym) because it feels like you're nearly a completely different person at different points because your desires/wants change from day to day to hour to hour to minute to minute - Forgetting literally everything due to getting distracted - Not remembering important stuff so…
Good stuff!!!
I feel life is an edge for everybody but having impulsive ADHD turns into a very exciting knife ridge on a mountain with one side sunny, happy and not so dangerous and the other, dark, enticing and dangerous.
I suspect that by: >People thinking it’s not a real condition. the person you're responding to meant statements like yours: >Frankly, the symptoms you describe apply to pretty much everybody, and are just the things one deals with in life. According to the NIH, prevalence of severe ADHD in children is around 4% [1]. This differs by degree from "the things one deals with in life" for most people - it's an extreme vers…
You’re right. I didn’t like that bit of my comment, and was in the process of lopping it off when you were composing your reply. Apologies for not getting the edit done in time. Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.
ADHD can be indirectly very life threatening. Untreated, it can affect every single aspect of a person's life. Even just society being a bit more forgiving of ADHD can improve that situation greatly. We really need to have a class of mental handicaps that are every bit as protected as physical handicaps. A sort of "mental ADA". This would obviously not include self-assessment simply because that would be too easy to game. But, for example, I was formally diagnosed with ADD/ADHD at the age of 8. Others in similar situations should absolutely be given affordances that others who don't need them don't get, because those affordances could actually be harmful to those who don't need them (similar to how stimulant medication is like speed to "neurotypical" people, yet it slows down those with ADHD). However, in the drive for "fairness", some insist that means treating everybody identically, in a "one size fits all" mentality, which disadvantages everyone who isn't neurotypical.
You’re right. I didn’t like that bit of my comment, and was in the process of lopping it off when you were composing your reply. Apologies for not getting the edit done in time. Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.
ADHD medication is perfectly safe and not addictive (at prescribed doses). If you don't want to take it, just don't do it. Since the US makes it so hard to get (you have to renew your prescription every month) it's actually very likely you'll stop it.
I also have great hope for the psychedelic research that is starting to happen again. Anecdotally, I have highly improved focus control when under the influence of low doses of LSD or mushrooms (I prefer mushrooms because they feel more "organic", if that makes sense). I am preparing to begin a regular mushroom microdosing regimen, because that focus control does fade in-between experiences when I take 1g weekly. I'm not after the reality-altering properties of psychedelics (except the very rare use of DMT for a "kickstart", as the last big trip I had with that gave me six months of focus control and ADHD mitigation). I plan to take a quarter gram every other day.
you’re insinuating that adhd (or, executive functions disorders) don’t exist. 1. there is lots of evidence showing that “something” is wrong with lots of peoples executive functions and that this observed problem is hereditary. 2. this is pretty insensitive. everybody does have these symptoms to some extent as you executive functions can’t be running 100% all the time. just like everyone has varying degrees of sight.…
That's a pretty uncharitable take of his view. Rather, he seems to be claiming that it's heavily overdiagnosed. Looking at the numbers, I'm leaning towards that too. 9.4 percent of children are diagnosed with ADHD, and that's just the confirmed cases, nothing about estimated prevalence. Either we're screwing up the diagnostic criteria and overlabelling people (or worse, we're diagnosing them out of convenience), or w…
>we've seriously fucked our own society in ways that aggravate this, and medication is at best a stopgap.
My gut feeling is that overcoming this is a big part of the true solution.
I have always struggled to explain what having ADHD is like to others. I finally settled on “imagine going through life with this constant sound in the back of your head like a fuzzy AM radio station that you can never tune in and also can never just ignore killing any ability to focus. Taking the drug to treat it (time released methylphenidate in my case) allows me to tune that station in like it was a perfect CD wi…
I've been seeing a meme lately floating around social media that sums it up perfectly.