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There are definitely people who have ADHD and are simply not diagnosed, as well as people who are "afraid of" medication for reason X. For people who are unsur
by rtpg 4y ago
There are definitely people who have ADHD and are simply not diagnosed, as well as people who are "afraid of" medication for reason X.
For people who are unsure about this, though, ADHD having-ness is not 100% equivalent to "being unable to do your job with focus".
Like parent mentions, ADHD is fundamentally about low executive control. So if you find yourself often saying things and immediately regretting it (often mid-phrase), having trouble with addictive behavior, and otherwise just doing things and regretting them in social spheres (as you "know better" in theory), then it could fall in there. The social issues that come up with ADHD are an under-rated aspect of the disorder, and rules out a lot of the "it's not ADHD it's capitalism" stuff.
If you just can't concentrate at work... might be something else. Handling ADHD with meds can make your life better, but at the end of the day your job might just not work for you.
- acdha 4y agoYeah, I periodically think about the stigma ADHD had when I was a kid in the late-80/90s and wonder how many people have some degree of impact on their life but have resisted a formal diagnosis and treatment. Some people used to talk about medication like it was a lobotomy.
- steveklabnik 4y agoThis was me. Unironically, my first few times actually finally trying medication not helping me very much is what made me get over the stigma. When it simply... didn't help much, rather than making me a pill-addicted raving addict, something clicked.
- acdha 4y agoWe’ve definitely talked about the cruel irony that my dad never got treatment for depression but tried basically every illegal thing he could get his hands on trying to self-medicate. The line in his mind between medicine and party drug was tragic.
- danaris 4y agoADHD also isn't just one thing: it's a constellation of symptoms with similar causes, and two people can "have ADHD" and have very different subsets of those symptoms.
- rtpg 4y agoI think that "it's not one thing" is definitely true in symptoms, especially because coping mechanisms differ, but there's specific behavior in the brain, and ones that, frankly, don't just turn off outside of a work context. Falibility to addictive behavior is one, to me, feels like a big one that is almost universal because it plays so well into the underlying issue in the brain. But of course "normal" humans are faliable to addictive behavior to some degree!
- danarisissubhum 4y ago[dead]