6 ms·

Yeah, meth will do that to you. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and while I definitely felt the “high” from Adderall (and was convinced I was more

Yeah, meth will do that to you. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and while I definitely felt the “high” from Adderall (and was convinced I was more productive) it was hard to say I actually was. I did find it easier to stay up later than I should; but that loan always comes with interest, the drugs just give you a bigger line of credit. Ditto other stimulants. The only stimulant I still use is caffeine, and I would like to use that one less. For non-chemical coping, I find day-before and morning-of planning to help immensely with my ADHD symptoms. I do wish I had gotten non-medication help sooner in life, but even in my late twenties, still better late than never.

emteycz 6y ago
I use stimulants to cope with my ADHD. The problem is that without it my mind - a bright one - goes absolutely blank. It actively refuses to cooperate unless what I want to do is extremely interesting. Without the stimulants I feel like a train cart being taken to a different direction by the rail tracks, pushed or pulled against its will by the train. I was unable to go clean my teeth, eat, or clean my flat; and I didn't do anything fun too (except for porn and weed). I was a mindless drone for most of my life. Stimulants have put myself in the foreground, and made me actually me.
- notduncansmith 6y ago
  Most of your post resonates with me. Can you clarify what you mean by “actually me”?
  - emteycz 6y ago
    A long time ago while high on weed I noticed that my mind is actually two very disparate parts: My "autopilot" and myself. I can control the autopilot, but it can also control me, especially by promoting desires for porn, weed, sugar, videogames etc; this quickly becomes impossible to ignore, and then the autopilot takes over completely. Since then I noticed that this wasn't a creation of the drug, it's there all the time, I just never thought about it, and thought it's always just myself (mostly because I really did hate school, that wasn't just an urge). My whole life was a fight between myself who wanted to make cool software, do my school work and be physically active, and the urges of my autopilot - and the autopilot mostly won, except for a few extremely stimulating cases. Now I can control myself, and the person other people see and interact with is me, not my autopilot; and it's me enabling the autopilot when I need it, not the autopilot enabling intelligence when it needs it.
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      Same. It's not just you. Smoked pot for a while in my twenties and it was crazy how I immediately became aware how much of my daily life was just stuff I was doing on autopilot. When I haven't smoked pot in a while I sort of lose that awareness of it, and the autopilot just blends into the noise of everyday life. It's a little scary when you think about how unaware we normally are of it.
  - bserge 6y ago
    I've come to realize that "I" am just a small part of the brain. A virtual machine running on top of the primitive host. Every single second is a struggle over the who gets control of the hardware, and most of the time the host wins. What "I" want and what the primitive host brain/OS wants are 2 completely different things. Food, shelter, reproduction. That's all it needs. Needless to say, "I" want so much more. Of course, what everyone else sees as "me" is the body/machine. We are one in the eyes of other people, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
    - hkt 6y ago
      "I'm just a passenger in my brain, and the body's job is to ferry me between meetings" Misquoted from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    - 0-_-0 6y ago
      Amazing description! HN paid off for today :)
    - scns 6y ago
      Jonathan Haidt used the metaphor of rider and elephant in The Happiness Hypothesis (worth the read IMHO): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Hypothesis One commenter on HN once wrote, that meditation helps him more than the stimulants. The ten stages of meditation (https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ten-stages-of-meditation-illustration.jpg https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/wp-content/uploads/201...) depicts the mind as an elephant too. It gets distracted by the ape mind (look! shiny!) in the beginning. If you want to start meditation, get the book that has been recommended here before: Mind Illuminated by John Yates
      - datameta 6y ago
        I would like to heartily second the recommendation of Mind Illuminated. John Yates aka "Culadasa" is a neuroscientist turned buddhist monk who was able to distill those cultural teachings into a context backed by modern science. I must confess I had read only the first chapter thus far but it is what enabled me to follow through with a daily meditation practice for 3 weeks, my longest streak as of yet. I saw great benefit from it (however as is discussed in the book - it may be better if the expectation of results is not the primary driver of one's will to meditate) and I intend to get back to the continued aid of this well written book.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    I'm sure that you have had moments of clarity where you are in the flow, present and aware, unhindered by distractions, and knowing that you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. If you're lucky that's a common state of mind. But for people like me who have severe cases of inattentive ADHD, it's a once-in-a-blue-moon state of flow. Off medication my life is a perpetual hot mess, in large part because my self-image of who I am is not reflected in how I act, moment to distracted moment. Adderall (or Vyvanse in my case) gets me a 0.95 batting average. Every moment of every day I'm on-task, energized, and achieving what I want to achieve. It makes the person I am, moment to moment, reflect the person I want to be. Most people get prescribed Adderall because of failings at work or school. People come to think of ADHD as an unable-to-work-hard personality failure. But really it's a my-life-is-a-hot-mess-and-I'm-struggling-to-stay-afloat condition that you just can't escape. Adderall is a magical drug that makes this failing go away, leaving us on top of things and feeling normal.
- bserge 6y ago
  Yeah, at the core we're still just animals. Our consciousness just runs inside the brain and tries its best to control the hardware/wetware. Some are more successful at it than others. Personally, I want a refund heh
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    > Personally, I want a refund heh You find the right line and I'm right behind you, buddy.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    The refund is a hard one for me. I hate what I and my family had to go through, but I like the person I became because of it, I like the knowledge I got because of mindless hyperfocus on things I shouldn't have cared about, and the stimulants make me able to do whatever I want. It helps that I found out about it before my mid 20s.
- psysharp 6y ago
  > and made me actually me. I've been an addict and dude you sound like an addict
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I am an addict, without the stimulants I become a complete mess - I'm absolutely dependent. It's not withdrawal though, I've been absolute mess ever since I can remember, even before school began, and only the stimulants made me less of a mess. I had entire years I spent laying down, decaying - against my will.
bserge 6y ago
How do you deal with the dozen thoughts present in your head every waking second? How do you recover when you get distracted in the middle of work and can't get right back to it? How do you even do the planning itself when that task is just one of the ten or so that your brain thinks should be done right now?
- diegocg 6y ago
  I have never had ADHD, but I used to have a lot of problems to concentrate on class and while studying. My (perhaps naive) idea about my problem these days is that we just train our brain to be distracted. I have tried to fix it by applying deep work techniques (get rid of distractions, plan what I'm going to do, plan the breaks, make sure to eat/drink, etc). Basically I try to train myself (in a very Pavlovnian way) to enjoy concentration and hate mind wandering.
  - bserge 6y ago
    I've tried pretty much everything aside from prescription stimulants (can't get them)... The only things that work is some stuff I can get without prescription (tolerance is a bitch, though) and exercise. Even after exercising, I feel good but I still can barely concentrate on anything, I have to always bring my attention back "manually", for lack of a better word.
- notduncansmith 6y ago
  Sometimes I don’t: I feel overwhelmed, I start to despair and I become very sensitive. Coming back from those times is hard, and sometimes I get into cycles of bad habits that persist for days (or, at the worst of times, weeks). When I do manage, it’s a mix of things going on. It helps to follow genetic advice like exercising, staying hydrated, sleeping enough, and not drinking too much. It’s generic advice because it’s pretty universally applicable. Separating tasks into “must do” vs “want to do” helps keep things from falling through the cracks and makes it easier to prioritize. I try to be mindful of when I am giving myself leisure time vs demanding performance, and reminding myself (preferably aloud) which mode I am in if I find myself distracted. Speaking of speaking aloud, vocalizing my internal monologue (aka “talking to myself”) helps me debug it, sort of like rubber ducking. I like to declare my goals for the day out loud to myself in my room, and it’s easier to get through hard times and make tough decisions when I talk to myself. I also feel like it improves my memory, though I haven’t measured to confirm. It helps to work on my relationships with success and failure, and with meaningness. Some days will be failures. Most successes will be modest. Evaluating your self-worth on a day-to-day basis is like day-trading on the stock market, very risky and not the best growth strategy for most people. Warren Buffet’s investing advice is remarkably applicable to life in general. Being in nature is incredibly healing. I love camping with friends/family, but any outdoor activity is good. I’m incredibly optimistic about the potential of therapy involving psychedelics and I am a monthly donor to MAPS. Some people may benefit from pursuing similar treatment modalities on their own, though there are inherent risks and of course there is no silver bullet for mental health treatment.
tjpnz 6y ago
How did you get off the medication? Did you experience any withdrawal symptoms?

emteycz 6y ago

I use stimulants to cope with my ADHD. The problem is that without it my mind - a bright one - goes absolutely blank. It actively refuses to cooperate unless what I want to do is extremely interesting. Without the stimulants I feel like a train cart being taken to a different direction by the rail tracks, pushed or pulled against its will by the train. I was unable to go clean my teeth, eat, or clean my flat; and I didn't do anything fun too (except for porn and weed). I was a mindless drone for most of my life. Stimulants have put myself in the foreground, and made me actually me.

notduncansmith 6y ago
Most of your post resonates with me. Can you clarify what you mean by “actually me”?
- emteycz 6y ago
  A long time ago while high on weed I noticed that my mind is actually two very disparate parts: My "autopilot" and myself. I can control the autopilot, but it can also control me, especially by promoting desires for porn, weed, sugar, videogames etc; this quickly becomes impossible to ignore, and then the autopilot takes over completely. Since then I noticed that this wasn't a creation of the drug, it's there all the time, I just never thought about it, and thought it's always just myself (mostly because I really did hate school, that wasn't just an urge). My whole life was a fight between myself who wanted to make cool software, do my school work and be physically active, and the urges of my autopilot - and the autopilot mostly won, except for a few extremely stimulating cases. Now I can control myself, and the person other people see and interact with is me, not my autopilot; and it's me enabling the autopilot when I need it, not the autopilot enabling intelligence when it needs it.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Same. It's not just you. Smoked pot for a while in my twenties and it was crazy how I immediately became aware how much of my daily life was just stuff I was doing on autopilot. When I haven't smoked pot in a while I sort of lose that awareness of it, and the autopilot just blends into the noise of everyday life. It's a little scary when you think about how unaware we normally are of it.
- bserge 6y ago
  I've come to realize that "I" am just a small part of the brain. A virtual machine running on top of the primitive host. Every single second is a struggle over the who gets control of the hardware, and most of the time the host wins. What "I" want and what the primitive host brain/OS wants are 2 completely different things. Food, shelter, reproduction. That's all it needs. Needless to say, "I" want so much more. Of course, what everyone else sees as "me" is the body/machine. We are one in the eyes of other people, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
  - hkt 6y ago
    "I'm just a passenger in my brain, and the body's job is to ferry me between meetings" Misquoted from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    Amazing description! HN paid off for today :)
  - scns 6y ago
    Jonathan Haidt used the metaphor of rider and elephant in The Happiness Hypothesis (worth the read IMHO): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Hypothesis One commenter on HN once wrote, that meditation helps him more than the stimulants. The ten stages of meditation (https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ten-stages-of-meditation-illustration.jpg https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/wp-content/uploads/201...) depicts the mind as an elephant too. It gets distracted by the ape mind (look! shiny!) in the beginning. If you want to start meditation, get the book that has been recommended here before: Mind Illuminated by John Yates
    - datameta 6y ago
      I would like to heartily second the recommendation of Mind Illuminated. John Yates aka "Culadasa" is a neuroscientist turned buddhist monk who was able to distill those cultural teachings into a context backed by modern science. I must confess I had read only the first chapter thus far but it is what enabled me to follow through with a daily meditation practice for 3 weeks, my longest streak as of yet. I saw great benefit from it (however as is discussed in the book - it may be better if the expectation of results is not the primary driver of one's will to meditate) and I intend to get back to the continued aid of this well written book.
- garmaine 6y ago
  I'm sure that you have had moments of clarity where you are in the flow, present and aware, unhindered by distractions, and knowing that you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. If you're lucky that's a common state of mind. But for people like me who have severe cases of inattentive ADHD, it's a once-in-a-blue-moon state of flow. Off medication my life is a perpetual hot mess, in large part because my self-image of who I am is not reflected in how I act, moment to distracted moment. Adderall (or Vyvanse in my case) gets me a 0.95 batting average. Every moment of every day I'm on-task, energized, and achieving what I want to achieve. It makes the person I am, moment to moment, reflect the person I want to be. Most people get prescribed Adderall because of failings at work or school. People come to think of ADHD as an unable-to-work-hard personality failure. But really it's a my-life-is-a-hot-mess-and-I'm-struggling-to-stay-afloat condition that you just can't escape. Adderall is a magical drug that makes this failing go away, leaving us on top of things and feeling normal.
bserge 6y ago
Yeah, at the core we're still just animals. Our consciousness just runs inside the brain and tries its best to control the hardware/wetware. Some are more successful at it than others. Personally, I want a refund heh
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > Personally, I want a refund heh You find the right line and I'm right behind you, buddy.
- emteycz 6y ago
  The refund is a hard one for me. I hate what I and my family had to go through, but I like the person I became because of it, I like the knowledge I got because of mindless hyperfocus on things I shouldn't have cared about, and the stimulants make me able to do whatever I want. It helps that I found out about it before my mid 20s.
psysharp 6y ago
> and made me actually me. I've been an addict and dude you sound like an addict
- emteycz 6y ago
  I am an addict, without the stimulants I become a complete mess - I'm absolutely dependent. It's not withdrawal though, I've been absolute mess ever since I can remember, even before school began, and only the stimulants made me less of a mess. I had entire years I spent laying down, decaying - against my will.

bserge 6y ago

How do you deal with the dozen thoughts present in your head every waking second? How do you recover when you get distracted in the middle of work and can't get right back to it? How do you even do the planning itself when that task is just one of the ten or so that your brain thinks should be done right now?

diegocg 6y ago
I have never had ADHD, but I used to have a lot of problems to concentrate on class and while studying. My (perhaps naive) idea about my problem these days is that we just train our brain to be distracted. I have tried to fix it by applying deep work techniques (get rid of distractions, plan what I'm going to do, plan the breaks, make sure to eat/drink, etc). Basically I try to train myself (in a very Pavlovnian way) to enjoy concentration and hate mind wandering.
- bserge 6y ago
  I've tried pretty much everything aside from prescription stimulants (can't get them)... The only things that work is some stuff I can get without prescription (tolerance is a bitch, though) and exercise. Even after exercising, I feel good but I still can barely concentrate on anything, I have to always bring my attention back "manually", for lack of a better word.
notduncansmith 6y ago
Sometimes I don’t: I feel overwhelmed, I start to despair and I become very sensitive. Coming back from those times is hard, and sometimes I get into cycles of bad habits that persist for days (or, at the worst of times, weeks). When I do manage, it’s a mix of things going on. It helps to follow genetic advice like exercising, staying hydrated, sleeping enough, and not drinking too much. It’s generic advice because it’s pretty universally applicable. Separating tasks into “must do” vs “want to do” helps keep things from falling through the cracks and makes it easier to prioritize. I try to be mindful of when I am giving myself leisure time vs demanding performance, and reminding myself (preferably aloud) which mode I am in if I find myself distracted. Speaking of speaking aloud, vocalizing my internal monologue (aka “talking to myself”) helps me debug it, sort of like rubber ducking. I like to declare my goals for the day out loud to myself in my room, and it’s easier to get through hard times and make tough decisions when I talk to myself. I also feel like it improves my memory, though I haven’t measured to confirm. It helps to work on my relationships with success and failure, and with meaningness. Some days will be failures. Most successes will be modest. Evaluating your self-worth on a day-to-day basis is like day-trading on the stock market, very risky and not the best growth strategy for most people. Warren Buffet’s investing advice is remarkably applicable to life in general. Being in nature is incredibly healing. I love camping with friends/family, but any outdoor activity is good. I’m incredibly optimistic about the potential of therapy involving psychedelics and I am a monthly donor to MAPS. Some people may benefit from pursuing similar treatment modalities on their own, though there are inherent risks and of course there is no silver bullet for mental health treatment.

tjpnz 6y ago

How did you get off the medication? Did you experience any withdrawal symptoms?