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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

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 - Feeling inadequate, and unset at yourself for not being able to perform like peers - Emotions swinging from happy to angry in a flash - not being able to maintain friendships - People thinking it’s not a real condition. Unless you have it you can’t even come close to understanding how much of a challenge every day is. - Medication only helps with the attention issue for maybe 8 hours. It doesn’t help with the other 95% of the issues This is by far the best what is it like https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html and here is the corresponding HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129777

runawaybottle 6y ago
None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. I’m an addict, and I’ve just justified with Herculean levels of mental gymnastics to keep abusing drugs/alcohol. There’s nothing you can say to me, I will convince myself it’s fine. Edit: I spent most of my youth playing video games for 5+ hours daily. I had zero work ethic. It caught up to me and I worked hard to fix it, and believe it or not, it took years to fix (because I spent years being a slacker). You are not going to just compete in this world for top grades and jobs if you are that behind in discipline, and I learned this the hard way. But again, there’s a drug for that if you need a intermittent fix.
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  Spoken like somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. It sound stupid but it’s the truth. You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it.
  - Jarwain 6y ago
    It's weird right, because the experience _is_ something everyone goes through but for adhd individuals it is more difficult in a way that's quantifiably describable but difficult to quantitatively convey
    - Jarwain 6y ago
      s/quantitatively convey/qualitatively convey
    - nerdbaggy 6y ago
      Very well put!
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. Again, been there, done that. What is one of the classic bullshit things about it again, you can ‘hyperfocus’ on things you like but can’t on things you don’t like. Gosh. Yeah that’s everyone, and everyone sucks it up and finds a way to deal with it.
      - falcolas 6y ago
        Aah, yes, the “you’re just lazy” argument. Never heard that one before. Never had a belt taken to my ass because my parents thought I was just being lazy. Fuck that noise. Seriously. It’s somehow more ignorant than the “just cheer up if you’re depressed” hot take.
      - nerdbaggy 6y ago
        Go in with and open mind and read this article https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html
      - lfowles 6y ago
        One of the actual bullshit things about ADHD is that I often can't focus even on things I do like. Absolutely nothing convenient about that.
- thonos 6y ago
  > None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. Comments like this make me angry because it shows how much of a disconnect there is with taking ADHD serious. It's like saying to a depressed person to "just don't be sad and focus on something fun". Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committing to, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. Small negative things like someone not replying to your message right away can result in dysphoric episodes without medicine and completely crush your motivation for days. You drop everything to do dumb things like replying to your comment even though I should be working right now, but I can't not do it, my brain just doesn't let go. My brain always works in extremes without a middle-setting. Either I'm 100% into something, or I am so not interested that doing mundane things that don't have an immediate urgency feel like having a tooth pulled out and I'd rather do anything else instead. Try translating that to more boring tasks at work and you can see how this becomes a problem. The list goes on and on and on. Living with ADHD is a nightmare and constant struggle.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    It’s all good. Been there done that, it helps pay the bills and get good grades. If you don’t overdo it who is to tell you anything is wrong. There’s absolutely no difference between the stuff you described and the stuff an average person with zero discipline or work ethic deals with. It‘a the slackers in high school who never studied and passed everything that can’t handle they spent 18 years not developing serious work ethic. That’s all it’s ever been. They get rocked in high level college classes and their ego makes them pursue knowledge jobs which they aren’t cut out for (yet). It’s standard recipe for lying to yourself. But anyways, there’s a drug for that.
    - nerdbaggy 6y ago
      There is also brain differences between adhd vs non adhd people Summary: https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-heres/ https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-... Paper: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(17)30049-4.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366...
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Everyone goes through this. You’re right. That’s why we have fairly common language for the experience. It’s human to feel all of these symptoms to some extent at some times. The differences are that the experience is debilitating for people with ADHD, much more frequent or omnipresent, and actually leads to substance abuse when untreated. We’re not justifying anything. We want to be more well. Proper diagnosis, treatment and recognition helps with that.
- _xeor 6y ago
  ADHDers do work hard, it's just that we need to work around our brains sometimes. I got straight A's in middle school but when I started in high school my grades started slipping. I got diagnosed after 2 years and just by understanding more about my brain and talking to other ADHDers my grades skyrocketed. In college I'm coasting on straight A's again. After 3ish years diagnosed, I still haven't found any medication that works for me without ramping my anxiety through the roof (with anything school related), but I've found it amazingly helpful when I'm not stressed out. You might wonder what I'm using adderall for if not for school, but for me it just helps my mental state and makes interacting with people and just generally living easier since I'm not constantly distracted. I'm lucky enough that my ADHD isn't too severe and I've had good enough teachers to make it through most classes. I'm also lucky that I can pretty intensely hyperfocus on coding except for off weeks where I just wanna skate or play video games or read or whatever else. My github squares tell a story. You admit to doing mental gymnastics to keep your addictions justified and I think this is an example of you trying to convince yourself that your problem is common. Maybe you should get some help
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  Your comment is akin to people who don't have clinical depression who say things like, "Everybody goes through that. After my brother died I was a wreck for weeks, but life goes on and I just had to buck up." Or people who dismiss ME/CFS saying "You have chronic fatigue? Who doesn't? I have to drink three cups of coffee before I can get anything done."
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  maybe you didn’t need to struggle so hard friend. i know you worked hard to get where you are but wouldn’t it be better if there were a way for people after you not to have to struggle like you did? is it not unfair that you had to work so much harder than your peers to achieve something comparable? did you ever think that it wasn’t meant to be that way?
- patentatt 6y ago
  This right here is the very worst thing about ADHD. All those people pointing out that they also have trouble with some of those things some of the time and therefore ADHD isn’t real and you don’t have it. So then you have to explain to those people why they’re wrong, but a tiny little part of your brain holds on to what they said, and the next time you really are having a hard time with tour ADHD that little part says ‘it’s not real and you’re just a terrible human for having these problems.’ Built up over a lifetime, especially during formative years, the secondary, knock-on effects are actually much worse than the actual underlying condition. So thanks runawaybottle, for very subtly making thousands of peoples lives slightly worse today.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    If it helps any, you can see my hypocrisy from 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418525 I’m a total hypocrite about this, but as many have pointed out, I can easily be an edge case. But if you read my comment from 7 years ago, you can see roughly the level of justification I was using and denial I was in. But not everyone is me, and it’s possible in the process of accepting I’m not particularly special, that I’ve begun thinking we are all in fact the same and will go down the same path with this stuff. I’ve talked in length in this thread mainly because it’s been a defining thing in my life. I know how it started, ended and have thought carefully about every juncture where things could have been changed (tapering down, etc).
dmitrygr 6y ago
All of those fit me. In Russia as a kid I was diagnosed with "sit down, shut up, and read books like everyone else in your class, or else..."
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  sorry you had to go through that.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
This is a great start. I’ll add some more: - Other common mental health issues like anxiety and depression. I experience both chronically, treating my ADHD is currently the only management I need, nothing else has ever worked. - Sensory sensitivity including overload, confusion, neurological disorders. Hyperacusis and auditory processing disorder are my main issues. I just learned this past weekend that tinnitus may also be correlated. Other people experience similar sensitivities with some or all other senses. - Hyperfocus. Seems contradictory but it’s not, we can get stuck on things just as easily as we can’t get motivated. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with ASD and OCD. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with gender dysphoria. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. All of these are true for me, and my ADHD diagnosis has helped me better manage, identify, understand or recognize them all. Also note to folks who think it’s all about attention: it’s typically diagnosed in children (who also have a higher overlap than GP of ODD diagnosis). The DSM criteria are written entirely for assessing youth, and addressed to observing parties who are likely parents/guardians, teachers and caregivers. They’re geared for “I’m having trouble managing this kid,” not “I’m having trouble managing my life”.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  How does one treat chronic anxiety? Xanax has a miracle reputation but like all other benzos it is said to only works temporarily as a hotfix, then you build up tolerance and you go back to your baseline Pre Xanax (or worse). What is very frustrating about such explanations is that I can't tell if it exactly put you back to your pre Xanax era or if after tolerance builds up (for a same dose) you are better than before, just slightly better. If so that would make Xanax slightly useful for long term treatment. There are also SSRIs but it feels wrong to take SSRIs for someone that just has ADHD and anxiety, not depression. There are anxyolitics e.g l-theanine pills, ashwaganda, etc Those don't seems to work (on me) and more importantly don't work for a whole day, just a few hours max. What else?
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Well, I can’t speak for anyone but myself on this. I know people who are satisfied with their benzos or their SSRIs for chronic anxiety management. For me, like I said, treating my ADHD has been the best. It’s not perfect. I did have a brief period bringing klonopin back into the mix during a high stress period of my life. But that was more acute/as needed. For me, finding the right stimulant (first ritalin then vyvanse), then the right dosage (currently 60mg per day), then recognizing I need a little more help when the XR wears off (+10mg adderall as needed) has been the best long term management I’ve ever had.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
In what way are all these things related to ADHD? I've previously thought I might have ADHD to some degree (Never been diagnosed though) since pieces like that article felt somewhat familiar to me. I would say I can relate to most of your list, but they don't really seem to be caused by ADHD to me. Or maybe I do have ADHD and that's why I can relate. I have no clue.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  They’re basically all related to having deficient or broken reward reactions, the primary emotional reaction to dopamine. Willpower is hard to achieve if you expect to be disappointed. Pretending is a social necessity to avoid disappointing others, and the rejection that you could expect from that. Failing to muster willpower or follow through manifests that disappointment. Emotions swing when the little burst of reward that might sustain someone else is gone, and then you scrutinize your ability to even appreciate what you do have. Maintaining friendships is hard if you need to tend to yourself, and then again if you feel guilty for neglecting your friends. It compounds if your guilt makes it harder to reach out after some time being a “bad” friend. People questioning your reality makes you question it too. Now it’s your fault, in your mind. But if you’re incapable of fixing it you’re just... at odds with everything. If you are medicated... those other waking hours you’re dealing with all of this not only without the chemical benefits but with the crash that comes after which can amplify everything else.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Apologies for the giant wall of text. I just sat here on my phone swiping back and forth relating how I’ve experienced each item and didn’t pay any attention to formatting or structure.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      On the contrary, walls of text are greatly appreciated
- Jarwain 6y ago
sudosysgen 6y ago
God, rejection sensitivity was such a huge challenge for me, it would have helped a lot if I could have been diagnosed before being an adult.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Heavy meditation practice helps a lot with all other points if you have the time. Progresses are VERY slow but steady (even slower given the lack of will power), but quality of life improves dramatically over years. I even stopped micro-dosing because I didn't need it anymore. The sooner you start, the better, given the time scale. You don't change something that deep in a few weeks, and you may slack off, give up or back track many times. I'll advice Vipassana because I have experience with it, it's light on the religious aspects and you have centers to teach it pretty much every where. Anyway, don't try on your own, it's even harder alone.
jasonkester 6y ago
How do you reconcile this with the observation that seemingly every single child in the United States is diagnosed with this condition and prescribed drugs to treat it? Watching from Europe, where roughly nobody is diagnosed with it nor prescribed drugs to treat it, I’m always baffled, fascinated and horrified watching Americans talk about it.
- bendmorris 6y ago
  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 version that can be debilitating without treatment. [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd.shtml#part_154904 https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit...
  - jasonkester 6y ago
    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.
    - bendmorris 6y ago
      As a parent who has made this decision myself, I certainly wasn't "happy to" do it. But it's very clear to me that without medication, my child lacked control over his thoughts and actions, and it was affecting his life - school, friendships, etc. - to a degree that was very frustrating for him. He's happier and more successful now. And, it's not a "lifetime supply" for sure - many kids do grow out of it and stop requiring medication by the time they reach adulthood. Some don't, and they can decide where to go from there.
astrange 6y ago
> - Rejection sensitivity "Rejection sensitivity" is not medically accepted; this isn't to say it's being suppressed by big psych, it's just something an ADHD blog made up and everyone thought they were authoritative about it for some reason. The symptoms of "rejection sensitivity" are just anxiety, which is often comorbid with ADHD. > - Medication only helps with the attention issue for maybe 8 hours. It doesn’t help with the other 95% of the issues The non-stimulant medications (Tenex, Strattera) have their issues but they are 24 hour effective. Maybe this one too.
mujina93 6y ago
I can relate with most of the things from the blog post, and I am sure the pain the author goes through is real. In no way I want to diminish it. Having said that, a couple of things: - I think on HN it would be more appropriate to link to medical/scientific resources, instead of personal blog pages like this, which despite being relatable, are dangerous to extrapolate an objective and statistical view on the topic from. I personally found some parts to be too driven by animosity (against "nonbelievers"), and some to show contradictory advice. There are several good parts, but overall I did not find it a high quality piece, and I would advice against proposing that as a flagship piece. - When I read pieces like these, the question that pops into my mind is: how can we distinguish a person that has a condition and that needs comprehension from a person that is just lazy, that just wants to do what they want all the time, and that lies to you about them being in pain (or maybe even lie to themselves, having built a view of the world in which they thing they are going through something and they are legitimized to act in a certain way, or they built a habit and can't help to act in that way)? I do not ask this with the intent of provoking anybody. It is a serious question, both philosophical (what is lazyness? Is there a thing such as inability to focus with and without malice? Who has the right to judge morally?) and practical/scientific/medical (how can we distinguish an illness from something that would look indistinguishable, when hearing from people claiming it? What are objective methods that we can use to declare that we are witnessing a legitimate impairment in someone? Does a right moment ever come for nudging, scolding, encouraging? Or is it never the right thing to do, with anybody?) I think, to answer the latter, more statistical surveys would be useful for all of us to share and to read, so that we could avoid the usual anecdote-driven arguments that most of the time plague threads like this one, even on a website like HN, which is full of scientific-minded people. I am the first one that would like to read more academic literature and less anecdotes on the topic, but I am not very informed. So, if anybody has resources to share that could help the discussion, please do! :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
spiralx 6y ago
> - 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 emotional cues that are often better dealt with before they get too serious, makes relationships hard for the same reason and leads to the risk of substance use as a way of compensating for all of this. Honestly, for me the attention-related symptoms are the easiest to understand and learn to manage, it's this disconnect from body and feelings that causes the most challenging problems to even notice, let alone manage.
- bradstewart 6y ago
  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.
  - spiralx 6y ago
    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 feel incredibly connected to my body and emotions, probably because it reduces all of that stuff around the edges.
    - bradstewart 6y ago
      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.
antihero 6y ago
- 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 someone was telling you as your brain went off on a tangent while they were speaking - Absolutely zero ability to act based on deferred gratification for any extended period of time (do I want this banana outfit now or maybe a holiday later if I stop buying banana outfits etc) - Difficulty in monogamous relationships (being distracted by other people very easily because they are stimulating/exciting) - People getting frustated as they don't keep up with how you dance between things - Self discipline is basically on nightmare mode - Ooh yes one more Sunday pint. Oh wait, what's that, I fucked up Monday yet again and now I am fired again?? - Working at 1000% speed but only 10% of the time - Having to constantly remind self to calm down and be more careful with code/changes/deployment
- curryst 6y ago
  > - Difficulty in monogamous relationships (being distracted by other people very easily because they are stimulating/exciting) This is interesting, I always thought that was just me. I've never been unfaithful, but I've always felt that "something different" appeals to me in relationships more than it does for other people. I've tried ethical non-monogamy once, and ended up in the same spot I'm usually in with my projects: trying to do too many at once, and end up half-assing or half-finishing them all. > - Ooh yes one more Sunday pint. Oh wait, what's that, I fucked up Monday yet again and now I am fired again?? I feel that one too. Fortunately, my inability to sit still means I end up distracting myself with a bajillion things until I forget my head hurts. Never been fired for it, but it's a fine line to walk. The lack of impulse control also makes it difficult to avoid the situation (karaoke on a Tuesday night? Of course I'm in). Fwiw, I find that my mind is looking for something to slow it down and let it cool off for a while more than it is for alcohol specifically. Marijuana doesn't really help me with that, but my shrink suggested L-Theanine (OTC, they should have it in the supplements section) and I've found that it ticks the box fairly well without the horrid side effects of booze. > - People getting frustated as they don't keep up with how you dance between things Ah yes, and then pair that with my frustration that I have to keep backtracking to explain how two things are linked in a way that I thought was obvious. I haven't found anything better to do there than forcing myself to ask for acknowledgement that the other person is still with me. I just pepper my conversations with "Does that make sense?" or "Right?" to give them time to interject. I also often find myself speaking quickly, and polite people have a hard time finding a time they can say "hold on, I'm lost".
spiralx 6y ago
- Memory formation being based on attention leading to large gaps in your past and an insecure identity because of that.
whalesalad 6y ago
Honestly the term “ADHD” has as much meaning as “Cancer”. It’s a huge blanket diagnosis.
ekianjo 6y ago
> People thinking it’s not a real condition Well it certainly does not help that ADHD diagnosis is closer to art than Science. There is probably a bunch of disorders that we just call ADHD for the lack of better tools. Disclaimer: I used to work on drug dev for ADHD
- filterfish 6y ago
  Isn't that true of an awful lot of conditions; "differential diagnosis"?
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Yes, true for many conditions, but everything directly related to the nervous system becomes very complicated to diagnose with precision, because the brain still remains mostly a black box in terms of how it works and how it fails to work "normally". We are learning more and more constantly but it's still an area of very active research.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Do you think improved brain imaging could help with this, or is it still not precise enough?
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Probably, but that will require a lot of testing and a lot of prior studies to occur before we can get there.
jimduk 6y ago
Question - I've managed (bottom-up, servant-leadership, small smart teams) a few very very smart people who may or not have had ADHD, or been partially on a spectrum or ... I truly appreciated the awesome work and have been open and honest and dealt with all sorts of emotional issues and variable progress on simple tasks and diving down rat-holes etc and seen some amazing overall results and had some great co-workers. The area I really struggle with is when people get temporarily obsessed with a topic that is so far removed from the project and its goals, that I can't cover them e.g. they want to completely redevelop an established, adjacent area of expertise (new to them) from scratch. Any advice on how to have this dialog up-front e.g. we have a software project and I'll back you a long way on these areas A B C for good exploratory work, but designing a new compiler or doing a full org redesign or building custom hardware is not something I can back you on so can we agree that at the outset and just trust me, or let's agree a protocol for how to deal with these situations?
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  I've found myself, really wanting to reengineer code and have been fired from projects as I mostly freelance... It's sort of a two way street... Knowing the expectations, convincing us that the bear minimum is all that's needed. Just fix the bugs. Keep your head down. Don't rewrite 2k lines of code that's ugly and not broken... Then I think positive two way communication is good... As the op said we suffer from fear of rejection bad also as a given imposter syndrome so if I get good feedback, I know I'm doing what you want, that you're happy... Etc. I think part of wanting to reengineer may be wanting to convince the boss in the scenario or ourselves that we aren't just faking it and adding 20 hours to a budgeted 5 hours ends up having the reverse effect. Tldr: good conversation, praise where due to reinforce good work and constructive criticism when something needs to change. I was a lot worse in this respect as a junior dev... So that may also be a factor, the more ppl I work with the better I am. I have ADHD and could be slightly ASD or just overlapping on symptoms which is common. Wasn't diagnosed till 3 years ago, medicine and exercise changed my life.
filterfish 6y ago
Why does no one focus on the positives? Yeah, there's shit to deal with but there are also lots of good points: * Ability to assimilate and process information * Ability to hyperfocus * Shit loads of empathy (can get a bit out of hand thought!) * Creativity There are lots more things that we're better at than non-ADD people, I just can't think of any at the moment! See Lynn Weiss' book for a more comprehensive list. I think it's important for ADD people to not play the victim; yeah we're different and yeah, society doesn't favour our way of thinking but it's not all bad.
- Leparamour 6y ago
  > Why does no one focus on the positives? Because the negatives massively outweigh any positives? I know that there are some authors who are trying to sell the idea of 'ADHD as a superpower' just like there are other authors who are trying to brand autism or even surviving cancer a 'superpower'. But just because an opinion is contrarian doesn't mean it's right. How else would you sell a book in a saturated market? These 'positives' you mentioned are kind of useless when you can't steer the direction of your attention but tend to hyperfocus on random things that change ever so often. If you can manage to somehow make a career out of it, more power to you. Personally, I have tried to learn coding for over 20 years now. By now I have started over for dozens of times (Pascal, Delphi, VB, C, C++, Python, JS, Rust) and still I have zero to show for it.
jukabo 6y ago
Sounds like life man, i don’t think you need drugs to fix those issues. Go see a therapist.
SulpiciusG 6y ago
Phone phobia, anyone?

runawaybottle 6y ago

None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. I’m an addict, and I’ve just justified with Herculean levels of mental gymnastics to keep abusing drugs/alcohol. There’s nothing you can say to me, I will convince myself it’s fine. Edit: I spent most of my youth playing video games for 5+ hours daily. I had zero work ethic. It caught up to me and I worked hard to fix it, and believe it or not, it took years to fix (because I spent years being a slacker). You are not going to just compete in this world for top grades and jobs if you are that behind in discipline, and I learned this the hard way. But again, there’s a drug for that if you need a intermittent fix.

nerdbaggy 6y ago
Spoken like somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. It sound stupid but it’s the truth. You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it.
- Jarwain 6y ago
  It's weird right, because the experience _is_ something everyone goes through but for adhd individuals it is more difficult in a way that's quantifiably describable but difficult to quantitatively convey
  - Jarwain 6y ago
    s/quantitatively convey/qualitatively convey
  - nerdbaggy 6y ago
    Very well put!
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. Again, been there, done that. What is one of the classic bullshit things about it again, you can ‘hyperfocus’ on things you like but can’t on things you don’t like. Gosh. Yeah that’s everyone, and everyone sucks it up and finds a way to deal with it.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Aah, yes, the “you’re just lazy” argument. Never heard that one before. Never had a belt taken to my ass because my parents thought I was just being lazy. Fuck that noise. Seriously. It’s somehow more ignorant than the “just cheer up if you’re depressed” hot take.
    - nerdbaggy 6y ago
      Go in with and open mind and read this article https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html
    - lfowles 6y ago
      One of the actual bullshit things about ADHD is that I often can't focus even on things I do like. Absolutely nothing convenient about that.
thonos 6y ago
> None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. Comments like this make me angry because it shows how much of a disconnect there is with taking ADHD serious. It's like saying to a depressed person to "just don't be sad and focus on something fun". Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committing to, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. Small negative things like someone not replying to your message right away can result in dysphoric episodes without medicine and completely crush your motivation for days. You drop everything to do dumb things like replying to your comment even though I should be working right now, but I can't not do it, my brain just doesn't let go. My brain always works in extremes without a middle-setting. Either I'm 100% into something, or I am so not interested that doing mundane things that don't have an immediate urgency feel like having a tooth pulled out and I'd rather do anything else instead. Try translating that to more boring tasks at work and you can see how this becomes a problem. The list goes on and on and on. Living with ADHD is a nightmare and constant struggle.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’s all good. Been there done that, it helps pay the bills and get good grades. If you don’t overdo it who is to tell you anything is wrong. There’s absolutely no difference between the stuff you described and the stuff an average person with zero discipline or work ethic deals with. It‘a the slackers in high school who never studied and passed everything that can’t handle they spent 18 years not developing serious work ethic. That’s all it’s ever been. They get rocked in high level college classes and their ego makes them pursue knowledge jobs which they aren’t cut out for (yet). It’s standard recipe for lying to yourself. But anyways, there’s a drug for that.
  - nerdbaggy 6y ago
    There is also brain differences between adhd vs non adhd people Summary: https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-heres/ https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-... Paper: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(17)30049-4.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366...
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Everyone goes through this. You’re right. That’s why we have fairly common language for the experience. It’s human to feel all of these symptoms to some extent at some times. The differences are that the experience is debilitating for people with ADHD, much more frequent or omnipresent, and actually leads to substance abuse when untreated. We’re not justifying anything. We want to be more well. Proper diagnosis, treatment and recognition helps with that.
_xeor 6y ago
ADHDers do work hard, it's just that we need to work around our brains sometimes. I got straight A's in middle school but when I started in high school my grades started slipping. I got diagnosed after 2 years and just by understanding more about my brain and talking to other ADHDers my grades skyrocketed. In college I'm coasting on straight A's again. After 3ish years diagnosed, I still haven't found any medication that works for me without ramping my anxiety through the roof (with anything school related), but I've found it amazingly helpful when I'm not stressed out. You might wonder what I'm using adderall for if not for school, but for me it just helps my mental state and makes interacting with people and just generally living easier since I'm not constantly distracted. I'm lucky enough that my ADHD isn't too severe and I've had good enough teachers to make it through most classes. I'm also lucky that I can pretty intensely hyperfocus on coding except for off weeks where I just wanna skate or play video games or read or whatever else. My github squares tell a story. You admit to doing mental gymnastics to keep your addictions justified and I think this is an example of you trying to convince yourself that your problem is common. Maybe you should get some help
tasty_freeze 6y ago
Your comment is akin to people who don't have clinical depression who say things like, "Everybody goes through that. After my brother died I was a wreck for weeks, but life goes on and I just had to buck up." Or people who dismiss ME/CFS saying "You have chronic fatigue? Who doesn't? I have to drink three cups of coffee before I can get anything done."
iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
maybe you didn’t need to struggle so hard friend. i know you worked hard to get where you are but wouldn’t it be better if there were a way for people after you not to have to struggle like you did? is it not unfair that you had to work so much harder than your peers to achieve something comparable? did you ever think that it wasn’t meant to be that way?
patentatt 6y ago
This right here is the very worst thing about ADHD. All those people pointing out that they also have trouble with some of those things some of the time and therefore ADHD isn’t real and you don’t have it. So then you have to explain to those people why they’re wrong, but a tiny little part of your brain holds on to what they said, and the next time you really are having a hard time with tour ADHD that little part says ‘it’s not real and you’re just a terrible human for having these problems.’ Built up over a lifetime, especially during formative years, the secondary, knock-on effects are actually much worse than the actual underlying condition. So thanks runawaybottle, for very subtly making thousands of peoples lives slightly worse today.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  If it helps any, you can see my hypocrisy from 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418525 I’m a total hypocrite about this, but as many have pointed out, I can easily be an edge case. But if you read my comment from 7 years ago, you can see roughly the level of justification I was using and denial I was in. But not everyone is me, and it’s possible in the process of accepting I’m not particularly special, that I’ve begun thinking we are all in fact the same and will go down the same path with this stuff. I’ve talked in length in this thread mainly because it’s been a defining thing in my life. I know how it started, ended and have thought carefully about every juncture where things could have been changed (tapering down, etc).

dmitrygr 6y ago

All of those fit me. In Russia as a kid I was diagnosed with "sit down, shut up, and read books like everyone else in your class, or else..."

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
sorry you had to go through that.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

This is a great start. I’ll add some more: - Other common mental health issues like anxiety and depression. I experience both chronically, treating my ADHD is currently the only management I need, nothing else has ever worked. - Sensory sensitivity including overload, confusion, neurological disorders. Hyperacusis and auditory processing disorder are my main issues. I just learned this past weekend that tinnitus may also be correlated. Other people experience similar sensitivities with some or all other senses. - Hyperfocus. Seems contradictory but it’s not, we can get stuck on things just as easily as we can’t get motivated. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with ASD and OCD. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with gender dysphoria. - Higher than GP rate of overlap with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. All of these are true for me, and my ADHD diagnosis has helped me better manage, identify, understand or recognize them all. Also note to folks who think it’s all about attention: it’s typically diagnosed in children (who also have a higher overlap than GP of ODD diagnosis). The DSM criteria are written entirely for assessing youth, and addressed to observing parties who are likely parents/guardians, teachers and caregivers. They’re geared for “I’m having trouble managing this kid,” not “I’m having trouble managing my life”.

The_rationalist 6y ago
How does one treat chronic anxiety? Xanax has a miracle reputation but like all other benzos it is said to only works temporarily as a hotfix, then you build up tolerance and you go back to your baseline Pre Xanax (or worse). What is very frustrating about such explanations is that I can't tell if it exactly put you back to your pre Xanax era or if after tolerance builds up (for a same dose) you are better than before, just slightly better. If so that would make Xanax slightly useful for long term treatment. There are also SSRIs but it feels wrong to take SSRIs for someone that just has ADHD and anxiety, not depression. There are anxyolitics e.g l-theanine pills, ashwaganda, etc Those don't seems to work (on me) and more importantly don't work for a whole day, just a few hours max. What else?
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Well, I can’t speak for anyone but myself on this. I know people who are satisfied with their benzos or their SSRIs for chronic anxiety management. For me, like I said, treating my ADHD has been the best. It’s not perfect. I did have a brief period bringing klonopin back into the mix during a high stress period of my life. But that was more acute/as needed. For me, finding the right stimulant (first ritalin then vyvanse), then the right dosage (currently 60mg per day), then recognizing I need a little more help when the XR wears off (+10mg adderall as needed) has been the best long term management I’ve ever had.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

In what way are all these things related to ADHD? I've previously thought I might have ADHD to some degree (Never been diagnosed though) since pieces like that article felt somewhat familiar to me. I would say I can relate to most of your list, but they don't really seem to be caused by ADHD to me. Or maybe I do have ADHD and that's why I can relate. I have no clue.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
They’re basically all related to having deficient or broken reward reactions, the primary emotional reaction to dopamine. Willpower is hard to achieve if you expect to be disappointed. Pretending is a social necessity to avoid disappointing others, and the rejection that you could expect from that. Failing to muster willpower or follow through manifests that disappointment. Emotions swing when the little burst of reward that might sustain someone else is gone, and then you scrutinize your ability to even appreciate what you do have. Maintaining friendships is hard if you need to tend to yourself, and then again if you feel guilty for neglecting your friends. It compounds if your guilt makes it harder to reach out after some time being a “bad” friend. People questioning your reality makes you question it too. Now it’s your fault, in your mind. But if you’re incapable of fixing it you’re just... at odds with everything. If you are medicated... those other waking hours you’re dealing with all of this not only without the chemical benefits but with the crash that comes after which can amplify everything else.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Apologies for the giant wall of text. I just sat here on my phone swiping back and forth relating how I’ve experienced each item and didn’t pay any attention to formatting or structure.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    On the contrary, walls of text are greatly appreciated
Jarwain 6y ago

sudosysgen 6y ago

God, rejection sensitivity was such a huge challenge for me, it would have helped a lot if I could have been diagnosed before being an adult.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Heavy meditation practice helps a lot with all other points if you have the time. Progresses are VERY slow but steady (even slower given the lack of will power), but quality of life improves dramatically over years. I even stopped micro-dosing because I didn't need it anymore. The sooner you start, the better, given the time scale. You don't change something that deep in a few weeks, and you may slack off, give up or back track many times. I'll advice Vipassana because I have experience with it, it's light on the religious aspects and you have centers to teach it pretty much every where. Anyway, don't try on your own, it's even harder alone.

jasonkester 6y ago

How do you reconcile this with the observation that seemingly every single child in the United States is diagnosed with this condition and prescribed drugs to treat it? Watching from Europe, where roughly nobody is diagnosed with it nor prescribed drugs to treat it, I’m always baffled, fascinated and horrified watching Americans talk about it.

bendmorris 6y ago
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 version that can be debilitating without treatment. [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd.shtml#part_154904 https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit...
- jasonkester 6y ago
  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.
  - bendmorris 6y ago
    As a parent who has made this decision myself, I certainly wasn't "happy to" do it. But it's very clear to me that without medication, my child lacked control over his thoughts and actions, and it was affecting his life - school, friendships, etc. - to a degree that was very frustrating for him. He's happier and more successful now. And, it's not a "lifetime supply" for sure - many kids do grow out of it and stop requiring medication by the time they reach adulthood. Some don't, and they can decide where to go from there.

astrange 6y ago

> - Rejection sensitivity "Rejection sensitivity" is not medically accepted; this isn't to say it's being suppressed by big psych, it's just something an ADHD blog made up and everyone thought they were authoritative about it for some reason. The symptoms of "rejection sensitivity" are just anxiety, which is often comorbid with ADHD. > - Medication only helps with the attention issue for maybe 8 hours. It doesn’t help with the other 95% of the issues The non-stimulant medications (Tenex, Strattera) have their issues but they are 24 hour effective. Maybe this one too.

mujina93 6y ago

I can relate with most of the things from the blog post, and I am sure the pain the author goes through is real. In no way I want to diminish it. Having said that, a couple of things: - I think on HN it would be more appropriate to link to medical/scientific resources, instead of personal blog pages like this, which despite being relatable, are dangerous to extrapolate an objective and statistical view on the topic from. I personally found some parts to be too driven by animosity (against "nonbelievers"), and some to show contradictory advice. There are several good parts, but overall I did not find it a high quality piece, and I would advice against proposing that as a flagship piece. - When I read pieces like these, the question that pops into my mind is: how can we distinguish a person that has a condition and that needs comprehension from a person that is just lazy, that just wants to do what they want all the time, and that lies to you about them being in pain (or maybe even lie to themselves, having built a view of the world in which they thing they are going through something and they are legitimized to act in a certain way, or they built a habit and can't help to act in that way)? I do not ask this with the intent of provoking anybody. It is a serious question, both philosophical (what is lazyness? Is there a thing such as inability to focus with and without malice? Who has the right to judge morally?) and practical/scientific/medical (how can we distinguish an illness from something that would look indistinguishable, when hearing from people claiming it? What are objective methods that we can use to declare that we are witnessing a legitimate impairment in someone? Does a right moment ever come for nudging, scolding, encouraging? Or is it never the right thing to do, with anybody?) I think, to answer the latter, more statistical surveys would be useful for all of us to share and to read, so that we could avoid the usual anecdote-driven arguments that most of the time plague threads like this one, even on a website like HN, which is full of scientific-minded people. I am the first one that would like to read more academic literature and less anecdotes on the topic, but I am not very informed. So, if anybody has resources to share that could help the discussion, please do! :)

deleted 6y ago
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spiralx 6y ago

> - 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 emotional cues that are often better dealt with before they get too serious, makes relationships hard for the same reason and leads to the risk of substance use as a way of compensating for all of this. Honestly, for me the attention-related symptoms are the easiest to understand and learn to manage, it's this disconnect from body and feelings that causes the most challenging problems to even notice, let alone manage.

bradstewart 6y ago
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.
- spiralx 6y ago
  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 feel incredibly connected to my body and emotions, probably because it reduces all of that stuff around the edges.
  - bradstewart 6y ago
    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.

antihero 6y ago

- 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 someone was telling you as your brain went off on a tangent while they were speaking - Absolutely zero ability to act based on deferred gratification for any extended period of time (do I want this banana outfit now or maybe a holiday later if I stop buying banana outfits etc) - Difficulty in monogamous relationships (being distracted by other people very easily because they are stimulating/exciting) - People getting frustated as they don't keep up with how you dance between things - Self discipline is basically on nightmare mode - Ooh yes one more Sunday pint. Oh wait, what's that, I fucked up Monday yet again and now I am fired again?? - Working at 1000% speed but only 10% of the time - Having to constantly remind self to calm down and be more careful with code/changes/deployment

curryst 6y ago
> - Difficulty in monogamous relationships (being distracted by other people very easily because they are stimulating/exciting) This is interesting, I always thought that was just me. I've never been unfaithful, but I've always felt that "something different" appeals to me in relationships more than it does for other people. I've tried ethical non-monogamy once, and ended up in the same spot I'm usually in with my projects: trying to do too many at once, and end up half-assing or half-finishing them all. > - Ooh yes one more Sunday pint. Oh wait, what's that, I fucked up Monday yet again and now I am fired again?? I feel that one too. Fortunately, my inability to sit still means I end up distracting myself with a bajillion things until I forget my head hurts. Never been fired for it, but it's a fine line to walk. The lack of impulse control also makes it difficult to avoid the situation (karaoke on a Tuesday night? Of course I'm in). Fwiw, I find that my mind is looking for something to slow it down and let it cool off for a while more than it is for alcohol specifically. Marijuana doesn't really help me with that, but my shrink suggested L-Theanine (OTC, they should have it in the supplements section) and I've found that it ticks the box fairly well without the horrid side effects of booze. > - People getting frustated as they don't keep up with how you dance between things Ah yes, and then pair that with my frustration that I have to keep backtracking to explain how two things are linked in a way that I thought was obvious. I haven't found anything better to do there than forcing myself to ask for acknowledgement that the other person is still with me. I just pepper my conversations with "Does that make sense?" or "Right?" to give them time to interject. I also often find myself speaking quickly, and polite people have a hard time finding a time they can say "hold on, I'm lost".

spiralx 6y ago

- Memory formation being based on attention leading to large gaps in your past and an insecure identity because of that.

whalesalad 6y ago

Honestly the term “ADHD” has as much meaning as “Cancer”. It’s a huge blanket diagnosis.

ekianjo 6y ago

> People thinking it’s not a real condition Well it certainly does not help that ADHD diagnosis is closer to art than Science. There is probably a bunch of disorders that we just call ADHD for the lack of better tools. Disclaimer: I used to work on drug dev for ADHD

filterfish 6y ago
Isn't that true of an awful lot of conditions; "differential diagnosis"?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Yes, true for many conditions, but everything directly related to the nervous system becomes very complicated to diagnose with precision, because the brain still remains mostly a black box in terms of how it works and how it fails to work "normally". We are learning more and more constantly but it's still an area of very active research.
emteycz 6y ago
Do you think improved brain imaging could help with this, or is it still not precise enough?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Probably, but that will require a lot of testing and a lot of prior studies to occur before we can get there.

jimduk 6y ago

Question - I've managed (bottom-up, servant-leadership, small smart teams) a few very very smart people who may or not have had ADHD, or been partially on a spectrum or ... I truly appreciated the awesome work and have been open and honest and dealt with all sorts of emotional issues and variable progress on simple tasks and diving down rat-holes etc and seen some amazing overall results and had some great co-workers. The area I really struggle with is when people get temporarily obsessed with a topic that is so far removed from the project and its goals, that I can't cover them e.g. they want to completely redevelop an established, adjacent area of expertise (new to them) from scratch. Any advice on how to have this dialog up-front e.g. we have a software project and I'll back you a long way on these areas A B C for good exploratory work, but designing a new compiler or doing a full org redesign or building custom hardware is not something I can back you on so can we agree that at the outset and just trust me, or let's agree a protocol for how to deal with these situations?

gremlinsinc 6y ago
I've found myself, really wanting to reengineer code and have been fired from projects as I mostly freelance... It's sort of a two way street... Knowing the expectations, convincing us that the bear minimum is all that's needed. Just fix the bugs. Keep your head down. Don't rewrite 2k lines of code that's ugly and not broken... Then I think positive two way communication is good... As the op said we suffer from fear of rejection bad also as a given imposter syndrome so if I get good feedback, I know I'm doing what you want, that you're happy... Etc. I think part of wanting to reengineer may be wanting to convince the boss in the scenario or ourselves that we aren't just faking it and adding 20 hours to a budgeted 5 hours ends up having the reverse effect. Tldr: good conversation, praise where due to reinforce good work and constructive criticism when something needs to change. I was a lot worse in this respect as a junior dev... So that may also be a factor, the more ppl I work with the better I am. I have ADHD and could be slightly ASD or just overlapping on symptoms which is common. Wasn't diagnosed till 3 years ago, medicine and exercise changed my life.

filterfish 6y ago

Why does no one focus on the positives? Yeah, there's shit to deal with but there are also lots of good points: * Ability to assimilate and process information * Ability to hyperfocus * Shit loads of empathy (can get a bit out of hand thought!) * Creativity There are lots more things that we're better at than non-ADD people, I just can't think of any at the moment! See Lynn Weiss' book for a more comprehensive list. I think it's important for ADD people to not play the victim; yeah we're different and yeah, society doesn't favour our way of thinking but it's not all bad.

Leparamour 6y ago
> Why does no one focus on the positives? Because the negatives massively outweigh any positives? I know that there are some authors who are trying to sell the idea of 'ADHD as a superpower' just like there are other authors who are trying to brand autism or even surviving cancer a 'superpower'. But just because an opinion is contrarian doesn't mean it's right. How else would you sell a book in a saturated market? These 'positives' you mentioned are kind of useless when you can't steer the direction of your attention but tend to hyperfocus on random things that change ever so often. If you can manage to somehow make a career out of it, more power to you. Personally, I have tried to learn coding for over 20 years now. By now I have started over for dozens of times (Pascal, Delphi, VB, C, C++, Python, JS, Rust) and still I have zero to show for it.

jukabo 6y ago

Sounds like life man, i don’t think you need drugs to fix those issues. Go see a therapist.

SulpiciusG 6y ago

Phone phobia, anyone?