Years ago in college I was prescribed Adderall but it didn't make me focus more. It made me compulsively clean my apartment, masturbate, tweak out, and occasionally be extremely paranoid of being attacked while on public transit. I was ready to rip someone's head off. I discourage using this medication.

If you haven't reduced carb intake to a bare minimum I suggest maintaining it first for a month before looking for more help.

Otherwise, I'm the same me. Just functioning and less pissed off or annoyed all the time.

Despite these factors only 20% of ADHD individuals receive treatment which can make a big difference. Medications can be helpful but are not by any means a "cure". Rather specific behavioral therapies are a necessary part of an effective treatment program.

As a physician specializing in behavioral health, I've treated a great number of ADHD adults. It's impressive how much improvement patients could make over a period of months to years as a result of their determined effort. I came to appreciate patients' innate talents that many were eventually able to exploit. It was gratifying to see some become top-tier innovators in their fields including technologies.

Of course people will "identify" unique traits as part of their sense of "self". ADHD individuals may come to regard aspects of their quirky cognitive styles as part of an "identity" but that's not necessarily the same as having ADHD as the biggest component.

Last thing I'll say is that ADHD is considered a developmental disorder. IOW there's no sharp line between having/not having it. The extent it's a problem depends on the context, which is a huge discussion topic in its own right.

However, it's also one of my greatest strengths. When my brain decides to attack a problem, I'm astonishingly productive. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been hyperfocused on implementing a motion control system for a side project. As a result, I've designed a CoreXY platform, designed a control board for it, learned how to use ngspice to tune the power-up circuit, learned how to use Sympy, used it to derive closed-form solutions for jerk-controlled motion, and found a way to implement that solution in which the motion control interrupt takes a grand total of 70 cycles on Cortex M0. And this is just my spare time outside of work, where I had a completely different set of hyperfocii, and similar productivity.

So, I completely agree with the author that if somebody were to offer me a megadollar in exchange for getting rid of my ADD, I'd have to think very hard about that indeed.

I personally believe everybody should be allowed to take these stimulants if they want to, because many people would benefit from it. The propaganda around stimulants working radically differently on those with ADHD vs those without is just that (I can go on about why I think that in much more detail). Ask anybody you’re close with how taking their friend’s adderall to study worked out. Look into people like Paul Erdos.

Anyway, I think you can definitely argue that there is a lot more nuance to psychiatry than you see in clinical settings (probably many disorders should be broken up into multiple others, others are just symptoms rather than a problem itself, others are not even disorders but just a different way of being). But really all that matters is that psychiatrists can match symptoms to treatments that work. Matching poor/misdirected executive function to medication that “boosts” dopamine and norepinephrine works pretty well, so why worry about the name of the condition?

I've noticed that in the ADHD community, there are some very vocal people that will wear the diagnosis with pride. I mean, good for them - but it is not really anything I can relate to. I treat it pretty much like I treat my gout...take my medication, adjust my lifestyle, and go on with my day.

Comparing yourself, when you have mild characteristics in common with a diagnosis and then saying it’s not so bad is perhaps not so helpful to those who do struggle with it.

Over the years I had come up with ways to deal with myself, but they're barely sufficient.

I’m very sure I sit somewhere on the spectrum and have depressive disorder markers as well. But the last thing I want to do is to promote these traits. I am not proud of them nor hiding them. They do make me unique. But that’s my business, not the world’s.

What worries me is how easy it is to get diagnosed. TikTok for example will also show you ads for a simple single click ADHD diagnosis and medication plan. Almost as if it’s being handed out like candy.

I found tranquility by looking inward for answers, not outward. I go on my “mental health” walks/runs. I even have taught myself to be mindful enough to notice when platforms like TikTok are emotionally manipulating you and I’ll be half crying while coming to a realization that this keeps me addicted. As I separate myself more from tech and to more nature in the world, these “character traits” don’t seem to be so defining anymore. It’s just a personal observation I’ve made as screen time declines.

Neurodivergence (view that mental disorders are a form of human variation that should be celebrated), medicalization (view that they are diseases, much like physical diseases), and personal responsibility (view that they are caused by personal choices) are all lenses which need to coexist in order to explain mental illness.

ADHD is probably the cleanest example because all three lenses truly apply. For many people with ADHD, it’s who they are, and there are aspects of it that they wouldn’t want to change. It’s also a condition which often needs medication to be managed properly. Plus, (in my experience with loved ones) it’s impossible for people with ADHD to function unless they are trying to take responsibility for their actions.

For most disorders, you need at least two lenses. You can’t fully understand alcoholism unless you acknowledge that both personal responsibility and a medical condition (“substance use disorder”) play a roll. Ditto anxiety and depression.

I cannot do things in time. Not even things that should be rewarding and fun. I cannot start tasks until it's too late, or in the rare event I start I cannot focus long enough on them to make a difference. I cannot really explain why. I know I should just do them, but there's some mental block that I cannot overcome. It has always been this way. None of the strategies I've tried ever made a difference. I always have a to-do list of a hundred small and big things I should have done two weeks ago that stresses me out. I also always lose things.

It's not unusual that I end up crying alone due to stress over all the things I should have done and feeling stupid for putting myself in the same spot again.

I manage to get good grades simply due to the expected workload being much less than my capability and being a good test-taker. At the final weeks before an exam the urgency of the situation allows me to absorb whole courses in a single week and get an A on the exam. But had I just worked 2 hours a day during the whole semester instead I could have saved myself all the stress and the depression and been a lot happier. And even though I know this, I will invariably do the same thing next semester.

I've tried getting help and a diagnosis, but the doctors will dismiss me after a single look at my grades. All they see is a student with great grades (and therefore not in need of help) looking to scam them out of some study drugs.

I get by, and manage to never get in any huge trouble despite my shortcomings. The big problem, except my mental health, is how it negatively impacts my relationships. I have a heard time prioritizing my girlfriend when I'm always stressed and always have a hundred things I should do, which is a reoccurring problem in our relationship. And making time for my friends is even harder.

I have cut out most nonessential responsibilities from by life just to reduce the stress a little. But I have no idea how I will manage big responsibilities like having children in the future without burning out.

I have given up any hope of getting a diagnosis. But I'm worried about the future, and I don't know what to do.

There's probably no help to get here, of course. I just wanted to get if off my chest.

It's really interesting how attention disorders show and hide themselves. Like the author, I had a consistently inconsistent way of losing or forgetting things. I don't tend to be late or forget appointments, but I have a hard time scheduling them in the first place. I have rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which explains why relationships, family included, have ended poorly and needed a long time from which to recover. I did not complete college and had no idea what I was doing the entire time despite breezing through high school. I have many abandoned and unfinished projects around the house. I have been fortunate to receive accommodations at work such as choosing slightly different hours as needed, but now I understand why that was something I needed.

It hits you like a ton of bricks when you realize "I've had ADHD my whole life" because it explains every negative experience you've ever had. Having authoritarian type parents was the cherry on top.

> (W)hen the world has been willing to let me what I can do in the way that I can do it, the results have been pretty good. When the world has insisted that I do things the way everyone else does them, it hasn't always gone so well.

This is such a succinct description of the main issue with attention disorders. I think the author makes a very good argument that it's the stigma, not the disorder, that is causing more problems than anything. I know stigma against disorders like this is why it never came up.

I intend to obtain an official diagnosis and potentially try medications. The thing is, it's incredibly overwhelming to choose because half of you knows you're doing pretty well right now, why change? The other part is wondering what your true potential looks like, and fighting against how much work and experimentation you think that will take.

As a constant sufferer who's been dealing with a debilitating case for over a year now, I love the way the author framed depression. It perfectly describes my fear that if I ever get "better", it's only a local maxima, and I will never be freed of this curse. It's laughable to even think, given how I can suffer from day to day, but I'm honestly afraid of finding something that improves my condition, because of the unknown of how depression might still be lurking in the shadows. I still try (often not very hard), but that fear is there nonetheless.

I'm suspicious of how often ADHD is diagnosed, and the subjectivity and lack of detailed mechanistic explanations. More study is required. I have little experience with where the current youth/teen culture is at, regarding diagnoses, and mental illness.

Behaviours that I attribute to ADHD have caused me a lot of suffering, and contributed to me being less reliable than I would like w.r.t deadlines, and personal commitments. On the other hand, I'm funny, and very creative. Like painfully creative. Like it's a goddamn joy/pain to be exploding with ideas and interests all the time. Going down rabbit holes, etc.

My current medication is quite helpful, although I experienced very bad side-effects to the first medications I took 20 years ago. This led me to avoid medication for about a decade and a half, to my detriment. Medication has not been a cure-all, and has come with some physical side-effects that I choose to tolerate. With age, I've developed coping strategies, but it's still a daily (weekly?) struggle. This is where accepting yourself -- flaws and all comes in. That tension between personal-improvement, and personal kindness / acceptance.

I'm reliable enough to get by, but I think perhaps I would have been a super-star. Still trying, I guess?

All that said, I don't know if I would get rid of it. The easy creativity, just-do-it default, and humour are part of who I am and want to be. That said, the detriments have absolutely been real and contributed to my own suffering. Although, with age, I feel as though I've been through the crucible and am basically unstoppable. I just don't know exactly where I'm going. I am so much tougher, mentally, than I was. Suffering is not all bad, as long as it's not catastrophic, or inescapable.

So .. uh .. yeah. YMMV.

There's a lot of modern discourse around "identity". My view is that the only healthy conception of your identity is the things you share with no one else. So ADD is not your identity, nor is your skin color, ethnicity, religion and so on. Rather, your identity is the result of experiences unique to your life and how those experiences shaped you.

Another big issue here is locus of control. I'm reminded of this quote: "I was dissatisfied with my own conduct, and laid the blame for my excesses on irresistible inner forces, as well as a combination of inscrutable external factors, invisibly staged to provoke and upset me."

But going undiagnosed, it did force me to cope in creative ways.

I'd zone out in class and forget about tests. Only to inhale all the info in the dopamine-induced panic of the night before.

Long, wordy explanations bored me to tears. Which gave me deep sensitivity when explaining things to others.

And to keep myself sane during endless school days, I'd bend over backwards to try and "real-time edit" topics to be more interesting.

Finally, in my senior year of high-school, I read a blog post summarizing the classic ADHD memoir "Driven to Distraction". For the first time ever, I asked my parents to take me to a doctor. I was diagnosed basically on the spot.

The change was immediate. I went from serial coaster to rampant bookworm. Within a month, I tracked up in all my classes. I finished out high school with a bang (though it didn't matter much to college admissions).

There's always been a slight pang wondering what might have been had I read that blog post sooner. I certainly had the scholastic chops to excel, and could've landed at a much "better" school (and maybe even a "better" career).

But then I remember the blessing in disguise my alma mater, Queens College actually was. Few students cared to take advantage of the (surprisingly) excellent faculty, so I had their undivided attention. Also, the relatively lax workload gave me the space to split my time between class and internships.

And then I think about the weird, rewarding professional path those internships led me down. Where I inhale large amounts of information quickly. Find the shortest, sweetest way to explain it. And "real-time edit" the subject to make it as interesting as possible.

These aren't super-powers. These were talents I was forced to discover and lean on to cope with those that I lacked.

Aurora Holtzman coined "intensity" for this context, it works pretty well.

https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2020/02/13/aurora-h...

Not sure if this is true.

Evolutionary psychologists have explored the improved tunnel vision that accompanies depression as a means for finding one’s way out of harmful situations.

Society-wide it seems many people are living in harmful situations/ways and are able to medicate their way out of the tunnel vision before recognizing the sources of pain.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-t...

While I can believe the condition does exist (schizophrenia may be similarly difficult to accurately diagnose, but it surely exists), it really seems to be overdiagnosed in children, and in adults, I imagine amphetamine addiction plays a big role in continued diagnoses. It's rather odd to read articles about it that make no mention of this factor.

https://www.verywellmind.com/amphetamine-high-21916

> I find it so very irritating that there is no term for my so-called ⸢attention deficit disorder⸣ that does not have the word “disorder” baked into it. I know what a disorder is, and this isn't one.

But the author then argues against a strawman:

> Why does any deviation from the standard have to be a disorder? Why do we medicalize human variation?

It doesn't, and in fact, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life.

What the author really seems to be criticizing is that he learned and began identifying with the medical term for a disorder ("the ADD really is a part of my identity") and now he'd like a different way to describe his experience.

Fair! But get the cause-and-effect the right way around: we don't need to "stop labeling every difference as a disorder," we need to not adopt diagnostic terms and apply them to ourselves inappropriately. That's a part of what DeBoer is criticizing—that people self-diagnose and then "perform their various personalities."

To be clear, I agree with the author that it would help to have terminology for people who don't feel negatively impacted by their brains being different in a way that we can label, not just for those who do. Maybe the author could get started with that by dropping the "disorder" bit and just identifying himself as someone with an attention deficit.

I find keeping a super simple excel sheet with a monthly list of work and personal tasks works well with next actions for litterally everything except daily habits/ routines. The act of physically moving complete items from one location to another seems to keep me using it (I use Desktop version with autosave enabled) its not so mobile friendly but it works better for me. Every task system I've tried which is a huge number of them I've got bored with or forgotten to use or micro managed to much, I dislike daily task systems for a number of reasons. This improved my productivity and focus literally about 1000%. I find leaving stuff off the lists causes more persistent interruptions to focus, I beleive due to the zeigarnik effect.

I've found diet works best when Low GI as glucose spikes and crashes really screw things up, will power correlates with glucose levels massively. I don't use any supplements but have done tons in the past they aren't really needed. Diet ratio 50% veggies, 25% protein, 25% carb per plate is a good ratio. Tea, Coffee can be a negative so its good to experiment times without it.

I think this is true. We're working and learning in institutions that are incredibly restrictive for people who operate a little bit differently, and it's telling how common ADD is as a colloquialism and not just as a diagnosis.

Foucault used to compare schools to prisons, and joke that the former is the only institution in democratic societies where someone still tells you when you can use the toilet. It's not always so easy to tell with ADD like behavior if the person is pathological or the environment, because you can actually make a pretty decent case for the latter, unlike for some other mental illnesses.

Without playing down the need to help people who do suffer from mental illness, not prematurely pathologizing people and framing them as aberrant is important. In particular with the inflation of ADD diagnoses of young children going hand in hand with a change in culture that seems to have largely robbed children of any opportunity to actually live like kids.

If life were different but the ADHD brain wasn't, I think there might be a world where it's not considered a disorder.

I've lived with ADHD-C all my life, and it was something that got me labelled as "lazy" and "unfocused" and even sometimes I was told that I didn't give a shit. People who saw me work 16hr days or work for weeks on end without a day off, these same people called me those things because of how I came across in social situations or in everyday life situations.

I think my tribe of ADHDers sorta see it as part of the formula in how we evaluate our own merit. I'm capable of incredible creativity and ruthless hyperfocus on task when I get spooled up the right way, and so I feel GOOD about myself because I know my true potential. I don't think of myself as some leper weirdo who can't talk right, asks too many questions, turns on a dime. Other people don't really think about that, it's not natural to take that sort of probabilistic view of people, of what they MIGHT be capable of. Stakes are high, and the cost of error correction is high enough usually to motivate a rigid adherence to cautiousness.

I'm not sure how exactly I feel about this article, but I'll say this in conclusion: I've never, ever, ever, even once wanted a different brain than the one I have.

I've wanted to be treated better, and considered more fairly.

I have also suffered a couple periods of major depression, which I agree is horrible in a far less ambiguous way. I can actually identify some very positive outcomes of those episodes. Ways in which struggling my ass off to try to be okay pushed me to achieve. But I'd absolutely throw out the good with the bad, if I could. I wouldn't wish depression on my worst enemy.

It can be simultaneously true that ADHD has no positive consequences for some people, whereas it brings benefits (or is correlated to beneficial traits) in other people.

This is the complete opposite of my experience. A lot of my life has been dominated by a hyper-focus that feels like it isn't under my control. I would stay awake reading until I can't think anymore with relentless pursuit of something that was entirely non-relevant to critical priorities in my life.

I very recently (past couple of months) started taking stimulants, and one of the biggest differences for me was the feeling of desperation to pursue was greatly relaxed. Not gone, but definitely not as intense.

I think a lot of the problem here is the definition of focus is overloaded. For me, there are (at least) two distinct levels of focus on different time scales. I define short-term focus as stability on task level executive function. Can you tolerate a brief interruption and go back to what you were doing? Or plan ahead for the next task? This ability is absolutely compromised relative to the population norm for me. I have essentially 0 local stability. On a longer time scale, I think a similar stability notion applies. I frequently get completely engrossed for periods of a few weeks on a topic - beyond healthy levels of interest. But one day, it's just gone - vapid.

Time for some serious hand waving: my mental model of what stimulants do to me decrease the activation threshold for picking something in an executive space. By lowering this plane, it's easier for me to remain more stable as the surface is a lot more clear.

I'm curious to know if what I'm saying sounds like 100% bullshit though - I haven't really talked through this mental model with anybody.

I experienced them before I was aware of my issues, before had ever tried any medication.

Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD proper. Stimulants can also make you feel hyperfocused. However, the general reported effects of stimulants are a feeling of "normalcy", not hyperfocus as a result of stimulants. Many people taking stimulants are still symptomatic, albeit managed, meditation long term is generally an excruciatingly (if excruciating) adjunct to stimulants.

Second, Adderall often gives the feeling of superfocus and speed to neurotypical individuals but has been statistically shown to give little gain in practice in terms of certain raw metrics. A very strong dopaminergic placebo, as it were. I'd suspect the reason for it being considered effective is that it keeps you glued on tasks for significantly longer than otherwise . It's not propaganda, it's science, you can look at the studies yourself, it's pretty drastic. However there may be another layer on top of that that that could be propagandizing what is otherwise a valid scientific distinction.

Much agreed in the last half, I've seen a lot of subclinical dissociative like disorders fall into ADHD, or DPDR, when really there is probably a core condition and several other families lumped in. Such is always the curse of dimensionality reduction. A more root-cause preserving descriptive language set that doesn't rely on the anchor of billing codes would open up the scientific fields a lot. Language determines nomenclature, which determines assumed avenues of exploration. A dimension reduced model of mental health along symptomatic axes will almost always destroy symptom and condition "root cause" linkage. Additionally like you noted anxiety and depression are more symptoms of traumatic disorders and less actual disorders in and of themselves. My pet theory is that's one reason why "depression" is so hard to cure, imagine trying to generically cure "fever" instead of making vaccines, etc.

Ramble over! I think (especially later on) we think pretty similarly!

It is hard to control, but it can help you do one thing as long as you're willing to abandon all other parts of your life, like eating/sleeping.

ADHD is a curse, and I will never be able to see it as anything but that. Am I grateful to know why I am the way that I am? Certainly. But I will never be able to get onboard with the “ADHD as superpower” line that some fellow ADHD folks have adopted. Glad they can see it that way, but if someone offered me a way to 100% cure it tomorrow, I’d take it and never look back. Getting medicated has made a difference in my life, to be sure, but I can’t imagine ever seeing this condition as a positive aspect of my identity.

You can take medication to adhere to these artificial expectations on how an individual should function within society. Or you can live in a way that matches your natural behavior and capabilities.

Granted, we sometimes cannot avoid having to function in the expected way so medication is helpful. But seeing it as an illness that one needs to constantly surpress just doesn't sound right to me.

It's part of my personality. I'm not proud of it. But I also certainly don't see it as something that needs to be constantly treated.

I think the idea of wearing it as a badge of pride is because that reflex is easier than being more honest and introspective. At the same time it might help soften the pain. If you have a disability, you are a strain on those around you. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, but you shouldn’t be prideful either. You should be proud when you succeed against the odds and you know it took hard work, but that’s not adhd happening.

For a brief time I entertained that I should be more adhd positive. Ultimately I realized that bias is not helpful at all if it clouds my perception of how it impacts my life or those around me. For some people though, perhaps it helps lessen the burden of the common self-loathing that tends to manifest as sufferers age.

The biggest part I don't like is the inability to ever really be 'here in the now' e.g. enjoying the moment. All these important life events just fly by me without even reacting to them it seems, and only in hindsight do I start tearing up thinking about what I missed.

I’m saying this to a level where I personally know bloodlines where men suicide is just a thing that “will happen”. Guess what is the last year’s diagnosis on that?

I live in a society where official stats says that 0.0-0.1% of population is affected and such treatment is not needed. From multiple available treatment options (where single one has around 30% efficiency) there are only 2 available. I recently heard a joke that probably full European country has at most 2 ADHD therapists. Sure maybe you’re lucky enough to get diagnosis but then you might not even be able to treat it meds unless you emigrate. That’s why pride is important - it creates advocates. Advocates creates awareness and awareness provides solutions.

As you mentioned your diagnosis there is a chance you’re sensitive to the critique (it’s often coexisting). Keep in mind that your critique is targeting exact same people like you who struggled with it and came out with pride. Don’t take that away from people.

On a lot of ADHD communities it’s just a constant struggle session about how every problem in people’s life is because of ADHD. It’s exhausting and seems maladaptive.

I blame the medical profession for not better promoting the concept of normal human variability in these traits, too, and educational leadership for not differentiating career oriented education around people's strengths and weaknesses there in secondary school at least.

The only ability to say "no" that you have is to not use the platform, and given how much useful content coalesces into just a few platforms, you're basically saying "no" to getting content in this fashion

And who would benefit from that change in classification or public opinion? Health care providers, because why would e.g. the NHS or health insurance pay for therapy or medication or anything else that would help you for something that is "just" a character trait?

My girlfriend got diagnosed with ADHD in her 30's, but only because there was a very short-lived and quickly shut down (due to cost) program at the NHS for adult ADHD diagnosis. If she hadn't had that, she would never have been able to get a diagnosis or the relevant medication.

Here in the UK, ADHD drugs are controlled substances. They can only be prescribed as by registered psychiatrists as part of ongoing treatment with patient monitoring. There are not enough doctors qualified to do this, and as a result people who need the treatment are facing year-long queues.

Don't get medical advice from TikTok, and don't form an opinion of a mental disorder and its treatment from TikTok either. The "have you tried mental health walk?" thing is as infuriating as cancer patients getting "have you tried essential oils and yoga?"

Until recently, my life has been a slow descent into an abyss of despair. Then I got diagnosed and since I've started medication, for the first time in my life I am actually proud of myself. Proud of all my talents and place in the world. There actually is hope and excitement for the future.

Here's my suggestion: do everything possible to talk with a psychiatrist. Get diagnosed. It might be something else, but if it's ADHD you'll be happy to learn that treatment is _very_ effective and often life changing. This is not hyperbole.

i graduated with a decent grade point, like a B+ or A-, and i got straight As in my masters degree. i got jobs all over the world and am pretty smart to not have huge issues with work or anything like that. i still have issues socially, doing work, doing work i'm good at, and all that. even if i manage to mostly get good grades.

and i went to a psych and explained my issues, and i got meds for it. just because you get good grades doesn't mean you don't have ADHD, you just found ways to cope. life isn't just getting good grades and you're fine and don't have ADHD, if that were so then a lot of people wouldn't have any issue.

keep trying, and find a good psych.

If they don't dismiss you the diagnosis process usually involves things like asking your parents about your childhood and things outside classwork.

since adhd is treated with amphetamine which is essentially a performance enhancing drug that boosts your focus/awareness/intensity. it's probably dangerous to think of your medicated self's potential as being truer than your natural self's. seems like a trap.

> Not sure if this is true.

The remarkable film "Melancholia" (Lars von Trier, 2011) was inspired by the director's depression, and one particular upside: that when things get bad, like really bad, the depressive can function better than normal folks because the outside now matches their inside. Kirsten Dunst plays a young woman with utterly crippling depression, I've never seen anything like it in real life or on film, like unable to move or eat. But when the Earth is about to be destroyed, she's sanguine, unlike everyone else.

Not sure if this is true to life, but it makes some sort of sense.

It’s the classic “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” adage at work. The sad thing is that it does kill many, and for some, never leaves in order to make room for growth.

As for the tunnel vision, that’s an interesting one because it does let you focus in on a problem exceptionally well and that could be useful. The trouble I’ve found in myself is that I haven’t always had the tools or resources to do something with that attention.

You end up intently focused on a problem, and it just becomes a painful echo chamber instead of an opportunity to address something. I suspect this is largely due to a lack of understanding and teaching. Perhaps too, like you mentioned, we expect medication to function as a solution eventually, relieving ourselves of any duty to investigate internal solutions. Had I known how normal depression is though, how it can present, how it can be managed, I suspect my own experiences could have been a lot better. It’s impossible to be certain.

I definitely disagree about the ups and downs in any case. Struggle defines us and helps us grow. Getting better doesn’t have to be a fun or enjoyable experience.

A good analogy would be height: a person who is several standard deviations from the mean will face challenges in life that require various forms of intervention, but we don't generally think of them as having a _disorder_ unless there's an identifiable biological cause that usually has other effects.

Another good point of comparison is vision. We can accurately measure vision and create medical devices to correct unwanted variation. As someone with myopia, I find it to be only slightly medicalized -- going to get an eye exam doesn't feel much like visiting a doctor, and people don't tend to talk about it as one does a medical condition. I imagine that if we were able to make a similar kind of standardized assessment of whatever neurological basis there is for ADHD, we would consider medication for it more akin to a stepladder or a pair of glasses (or even an antihistamine) than a treatment for a mental illness.

To the same degree disorder may be an acceptable label by a clinician, but we need a different word for regular everyday use - because if I come into work and tell everyone I have a disorder, they're going to make assumptions. And then back into the closet that information goes.

I'd say a lot of people don't share information about their neurodiversity for this very reason. The fact the top comment here argues about the linguistics rather than the content or spirit of the article, tells me we're not ready for that yet. Which is surprising given the readership of this website likely caters to more neuro atypicals than average.

Most of the time, ADD works in my favor. But sometimes, (and NOT always due to "societal expectations") I need my brain to work differently than it does, and for those occasions the meds do wonders. But I truly hate the after-effects, thus I rarely take them.

> disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder

That is medicalizing diversity. Creating "disorders" where no one is bothered by them.

This is not uncommon in psychology. In the 1970s, homosexuality was also a "disorder."

> interfering with someone's life

The specific phrase used in the DSM-V is: "symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning".

Schooling started to become compulsory in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century, and really only became universal in the early 20th century.

By the late 20th century we had decided that children whose normal behavior "interfered with or reduced [...] academic [...] functioning" had a disorder.

We created a system that does not accommodate everyone, then turned around and said that those who are not accommodated are definitionally disordered. The logic is clearly backwards.

Similar story with labor.

Or consider a game where different character classes exist e.g., Necromancer (can raise an army with no resource, quickly) and Wizard (requires lots of resources, slow to develop though some units are exceptionally strong). Would it make sense to consider being a Wizard to be a disorder in such a game?

The author frankly does not know what he’s talking about. And, clinically, he does not have ADHD.

I have a mood disorder (NPSLE). I am on permanent disability and I have been hospitalized several times.

Even though I know my disorder comes with a gift, and rather unappreciated gift because I do consider myself neurodivergent, I also know at times I want to die at my own hands. And I also know it makes me unable to work.

I think the threshold for where we think some Neurotype is affecting our life has been lowered dramatically.

I still haven't repaired a few things in my life that still cause me significant stress (happy to go in-depth if you email, see bio), but I really had no idea what the medication would do until I tried it.

For me; it quietened my (extremely vocal) inner critic and therefore lowered my anxiety, and it slowed down the rapid bounce-around of my thoughts, particularly in situations where I wasn't deeply stimulated (eg I outlasted my kid playing ball for the first time ever because I stayed interested and wasn't just counting down the minutes until I could say 'okay that's enough'). And that's it.

But that means I can actually start to do the hard work of building the right habits to put some important bits of my life back on track, particularly when they'd been built wrong and have to be torn down.

My examples tried (unsuccessfully) to show that there can be more than one axis: whether a tool is considered working/broken can depend on specific task you are trying to apply it to. Use the right tool for the job. It is not that the tool by itself is broken, it is the combination tool+job can be inadequate (but it doesn't mean that the tool by itself has a disorder):

    | tool        | job          | good fit |
    |-------------+--------------+----------|
    | hammer      | pound nails  | yes      |
    | hammer      | drive screws | no       |
    | screwdriver | pound nails  | no       |
    | screwdriver | drive screws | yes      |

Obviously, human minds/tasks people do have many many aspects to them and therefore different types of humans can find a good fit to their abilities despite the differences. The symptoms of ADHD can often be considered adaptive to their specific environment (and of course, they can be crippling too):

"How a gene associated with ADHD may have been adaptive: an example

About one-seventh of a Kenyan tribe, the Ariaal, have the long version of the DRD4 gene, which is associated with novelty-seeking. Pastoralists, some Ariaal still lead a nomadic life, moving from place to place, whereas others now have a more settled way of living. A study found that men with the novelty-seeking allele who lived a nomadic life were well nourished and healthy. In contrast, those with this same allele living a settled life were on average less well nourished (Reference Eisenberg, Campbell and GrayEisenberg 2008). It seems that having the ‘ADHD-inducing’ variant might well be a better option when living a less settled kind of life, and that different genetic variations aid survival or success in some environments but not others." https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-advances/art... (most of the paper is psychobabble but the example stands by itself)

Comments like these are hurtful. I ask myself the question the commenter asked me every single day. I just try to approach them with care and the assumption they are coming from a good place. I know that isn't always the case, but it's the best I can do.

Also, it's wild that I already have a strategy and thoughts about dealing with comments like these. It's only been a few weeks, but it's already happened a handful of times.

Musk and Andreessen's recent comments on the matter angered me. And though I don't think Andreessenn's were necessarily out of the same place of hate's as Elon's were, they were still framed in a damaging way.

Because Adderall is (IMHO) suboptimal. Most of the physical effects come from the 25% levoamphetamine, a primarily physical stimulant.

Other ADHD drugs [1] are 100% dextroamphetamine, which exerts most of its effect in the brain, with minimal physical side effects. D-AMP doesn't increase my blood pressure, doesn't increase my RHR, doesn't cause insomnia nor jitters. It feels smoother than a cup of coffee.

1: then there's methylphenidate, which I've never tried and haven't studied as much.