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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 wh

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.

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.