Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

It's like realizing that the reason you've been getting stuck in the mud is not that you're a bad driver.

It's just that people who don't are driving 4x4 trucks, and you've had a Nissan Z series sports car.

Turns out, farms and off-road are simply not the right environment for your vehicle, and when that environment has some accomodations, like the paved surface of a highway or a race track, you're literally running circles around people in the most common vehicles.

One profound effect of taking Adderall was feeling the clarity to understand that difference, and seeing the road instead of the endless mud fields in front of me.

It does help to get things done, but around 30% of ADHD'ers aren't responsive to it.

Understanding that you're getting stuck because your brain wasn't meant for that kind of driving, however, is universally useful.

That's why I made that ADHD wiki [1], and keep posting links to it.

It's an compilation of information that has helped me tremendously to understand the above; and I know this resource was helpful to others too in their journeys.

My perspective is that of a late-diagnosed adult who's been completely unaware of what ADHD is, and thought that they can't possibly have an attention deficit because to get anything done, they have to hyperfocus on it.

Again, learning that hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD and understanding how it works)l had a profound impact. And medication helped with that too: it's easier to not get stuck hyperfocused on the wrong thing with Adderall.

Getting Adderall was like spraying WD-40 into rusty steering components. The immediate effect is that I can go where I want to go to, not the random direction my vehicle happens to face.

The long-term effect though was understanding what makes it difficult to steer, and how to maintain it better.

And even if I don't have power steering all the time like everyone else, I'm still better off with that experience.

My point here that it's never about medication VERSUS therapy and knowledge.

Medication is not an alternative, it's a BOOSTER.

When it works, it's just dropping the difficulty from Nightmare to Medium/Hard. It doesn't play the game for you.

The said, I'm very much happy the Nightmare mode days are behind me, and I'm very sad that the only reason I've been living my life that way is stigma and lack of information.

When I took Adderall, I unexpectedly had to grieve the future I'll never get to have after being held back by all the pain I've been needlessly subjected to over the preceding three decades.

That grief, too, is a common experience in ADHD late-diagnosed adults.

Thank you for sharing that link, and contributing to the discussion and awareness [1] https://romankogan.net/adhd

Rejection sensitivity is neurodivergent trait that's not exclusive to ADHD, but the way it manifests with ADHD can be truly life-derailing.

Learning about it helped me a lot to deal with it (in particular, externalizing that emotion as a trait and not what me is).

I wrote about it too in that wiki. Here's my experience with rejection sensitivity in the ADHD context:

https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Rejection%20Sensitivity

What specifically are you talking about here? It appears to me that your comment is an expression of vibe with zero information content.

There's no dichotomy between treating symptoms and cause even when the cause is treatable (which isn't the case with ADHD; it's a neurotype, with differences showing on brain scan levels) — and that's setting aside the discussion of whether it's something we need to "treat" in the first place.

We still have painkillers for people who need them while they are getting treatment.

We still have meds for runny noses, we still have Tylenol for fever, even though these are merely symptoms.

We still have pills for allergies.

And on that note: the symptoms (such as fever and allergic reactions) can and do kill people.

Please reconsider your comment.