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So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of success here? Grades, which have been shown time and time again to have very weak, if any correlation with s

So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of success here? Grades, which have been shown time and time again to have very weak, if any correlation with success? I've dealt with ADHD my entire life. As a kid people could see I was smart, but "if only he could apply himself!" One of the most pivotal decisions I ever made was to seek counseling, and ultimately medication, when I was flunking out of college. My grades improved enough to get me through undergrad. However they were never stellar because I was finally able to focus on all of the various ideas I had kicking around in my head that I was far, far more passionate about. I could rattle off a list of crazy successes that I would have never been able to achieve had I never sought medication, but honestly it boils down to one thing. When I want to do something that requires mental focus, said mental focus is no longer a barrier. I can actually do it. Because of that, I'm happy. So instead of grades, what about quality of life?

obituary_latte 13y ago
Honest question: could your success be at all attributed to placebo? IOW, is there any question at all as to whether or not you could have made a conscious decision to "buckle down" and have met the same result? I fear for myself that when facing similar hardship that acquiescing to meds could just be "dealing with the situation" and not properly processing what the actual hardship is, why it exists, and how else it could be dealt with. I suppose that in the end, solutions mean progress. And I'm all for working smarter, not harder. Perhaps it's stigma. At any rate, I'd appreciate your perspective. Also, awkward high-five for doing what you're doing.
- benjamincburns 13y ago
  > Honest question: could your success be at all attributed to placebo? IOW, is there any question at all as to whether or not you could have made a conscious decision to "buckle down" and have met the same result? I'm 27 now. I began taking ADHD medication when I was 21. With the exception of methamphetamine (yes, it's actually an old, crude ADHD treatment) I believe I've taken every FDA-approved ADHD drug there is - both stimulant and non-stimulant. Even the patch. It was a hard road to figure out what is effective for me with minimal side effects, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that medication contributes heavily to my success. The sensation is difficult to describe, but when I'm not medicated I'm often completely unaware that my focus has shifted. No amount of mental exertion (aka "buckling down") changes that for me. I'm a very passionate software engineer. I wake up in the morning and before I've put clothes on I'm reading about something to do with software. Chances are the last thing I look at before I fall asleep also has something to do with software. This has been constant since I was 12 years old -- long before I was medicated. In college, before I was medicated, there was absolutely no way I'd be able to make it through a lecture and retain all of the information -- even while taking notes. I'd pause to think about something the professor said, and a few tangents later I'd be drawing unicorn fish or something in the margins. I still have the notebooks. I've gone back and looked -- the difference between before and after I was medicated was stark [1]. Whether or not medication is the right choice is a very individual decision. Hell, even your doctor doesn't really know. If you have the ability to "buckle down" when needed and you don't feel like your life is ready to crumble because you're just barely getting by - you're probably fine. There's a ton these drugs can do to mess up your life [2] and the narcotic effects can be plenty distracting on their own if your doctor is too liberal with your dosage. 1: Something worth noting is that an outside observer might view this as having my creativity squelched. "Oh look at all the drawings, and now just boring mechanical notes? This person's soul has been snuffed out by the evil chemicals!" The truth is just the opposite - I was finally able to direct my creative energy where I wanted, and the feeling was utterly profound. 2: Appetite suppression, insomnia, depression, addiction, heart palpitations, aggressiveness, diminished sexual desire, and horrible irritability are all common side effects. They might not all meet the FDA definition of "common," but they're plenty common enough.
  - hmsimha 13y ago
    I'd love to know what you found has worked the best for you, if you feel comfortable sharing.
  - abecedarius 13y ago
    This makes me wonder if software could help. Clippy says "You seem distracted, shouldn't you get back on point?" (I recognize this comment is unlikely to be helpful, but I'm curious about the state of the art.)
  - mikevm 13y ago
    I'm pretty much the same as you, only that during lectures I don't draw anything, I just space out after a while and it's hard for me to sustain focus for long periods of time. Lectures are largely a waste of time for me. I ended up going to a special ADHD clinic and I got diagnosed. Unfortunately, a week and a half after beginning the titration process of Concerta I started getting side-effects (palpitations). Apparently, I also have anxiety, so the doc told me that I could either start again with a slower titration process, or take antidepressants along with the ADHD meds. I decided to drop it and not take any of the meds because the side effects of the antidepressants scared me (not to mention the negative vibe you get from people when they hear that you're on psychiatric meds). College is really hard for me. I do very well in some classes (mostly in the applied CS courses), and just average to poor in others. The reason is mainly because even though I love programming, many of the Computer Science courses are theoretical and boring to me, so after about a month into the semester I start spiraling down and barely doing the homework assignments, or seriously going over lecture notes to try to gain a deeper understanding of the material. During the finals, I end up wasting days on doing nothing productive (like right now -- I have a final next week and I'm sitting here doing nothing) until I conjure up enough willpower to actually open the books and start studying (usually the fear of failure takes over and then I force myself to study... with lots of anxiety). And even then, I still find it hard to fully concentrate on the material. I find myself trying to read a textbook, and I feel like my mind and body are pulling me away, so I end up just getting up from the chair, and walking back and forth around the house while my mind just entertains some random thoughts. I realize that I've been like this my whole life (my High School years are very similar). When I find something that really interests me, I will do it from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to sleep. For example, I've done programming projects that forced me to learn new technologies where I had to read over 1,200 pages of documentation, and I would just do it obsessively until I'm done with the project. After the project is done though, and it's time to just maintain it (fix bugs, for example), I usually get very bored with it and dump it. I guess because College assignments aren't interesting to me (for some reason, the grade on the final exam isn't enough of a motivator for me to study) I have a hard time applying myself to them the way I apply myself to things I'm really passionate about.
- danneu 13y ago
  Amphetamine isn't exactly a placebo and its effects aren't exactly unknown or disputed. Asserting the possibility of placebo is like wondering if coffee is really just dark inert water but we're all just idiots with no self-awareness that buy into the oral tradition of what coffee is supposed to be. > I fear for myself that when facing similar hardship > that acquiescing to meds could just be "dealing with > the situation" and not properly processing what the > actual hardship is, why it exists, and how else it > could be dealt with. But the hardship is simple. It's the forlorn inability to focus and do. At the end of the day, we have finite lifespans and we have needs, desires, and ambitions right now. We know that flooding the brain with the amphetamine train works right now. By the time I was in my 20s, I was pretty tired of listening to people suggest that I was lazy or that I just didn't want it enough. Then I started taking 50mg of Vyvanse and it makes me want it all. I'll come brainstorm different coping strategies when I find out I'm immortal.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Drinking coffee doesn't make you more alert, caffeine study reveals http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/02/drinking-coffee-alert-caffeine http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/02/drinking-coffe...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jt2190 13y ago
> So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of > success here? Yes, because children who suffer from poor grades are now frequently tested for ADHD, and since we can't very accurately diagnose ADHD, some children who don't need the medication will get it. It's called a "false positive." Those children's grades won't improve. The studies are really telling us that we're not very good at diagnosing this.
- benjamincburns 13y ago
  That's a very valid statement, and I greatly appreciate/respect that truth. If that were the tack this article were taking, I'd have no qualms. This is the perfect kind of study to combat overprescription based on poor academic performance. However there's an unwritten assumption in this article that grades are synonymous with success. See the caption to Dr. Farah's photo. That's a very poor inference. That's what I'm taking offense to.
  - jt2190 13y ago
    I read it as "success in treatment", not "success in life."
    - benjamincburns 13y ago
      Me too.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That's exactly what I'm hearing in my head as I read this article; "But did they control for ADHD over-diagnosis?"
barry-cotter 13y ago
So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of success here? Grades, which have been shown time and time again to have very weak, if any correlation with success? [Citation needed] IIRC conditional upon acceptance to a job at Google grades don't predict performance at all well for anyone except fresh grads. That is the closest thing to grades having only a weak correlation with success I can remember. And that conditional upon is doing a lot of work. Given that an IQ test is the best way of predicting work performance apart from a work sample test in hiring and IQ correlates around 0.7 with grades I find your claim implausible.

obituary_latte 13y ago

Honest question: could your success be at all attributed to placebo? IOW, is there any question at all as to whether or not you could have made a conscious decision to "buckle down" and have met the same result? I fear for myself that when facing similar hardship that acquiescing to meds could just be "dealing with the situation" and not properly processing what the actual hardship is, why it exists, and how else it could be dealt with. I suppose that in the end, solutions mean progress. And I'm all for working smarter, not harder. Perhaps it's stigma. At any rate, I'd appreciate your perspective. Also, awkward high-five for doing what you're doing.

benjamincburns 13y ago
> Honest question: could your success be at all attributed to placebo? IOW, is there any question at all as to whether or not you could have made a conscious decision to "buckle down" and have met the same result? I'm 27 now. I began taking ADHD medication when I was 21. With the exception of methamphetamine (yes, it's actually an old, crude ADHD treatment) I believe I've taken every FDA-approved ADHD drug there is - both stimulant and non-stimulant. Even the patch. It was a hard road to figure out what is effective for me with minimal side effects, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that medication contributes heavily to my success. The sensation is difficult to describe, but when I'm not medicated I'm often completely unaware that my focus has shifted. No amount of mental exertion (aka "buckling down") changes that for me. I'm a very passionate software engineer. I wake up in the morning and before I've put clothes on I'm reading about something to do with software. Chances are the last thing I look at before I fall asleep also has something to do with software. This has been constant since I was 12 years old -- long before I was medicated. In college, before I was medicated, there was absolutely no way I'd be able to make it through a lecture and retain all of the information -- even while taking notes. I'd pause to think about something the professor said, and a few tangents later I'd be drawing unicorn fish or something in the margins. I still have the notebooks. I've gone back and looked -- the difference between before and after I was medicated was stark [1]. Whether or not medication is the right choice is a very individual decision. Hell, even your doctor doesn't really know. If you have the ability to "buckle down" when needed and you don't feel like your life is ready to crumble because you're just barely getting by - you're probably fine. There's a ton these drugs can do to mess up your life [2] and the narcotic effects can be plenty distracting on their own if your doctor is too liberal with your dosage. 1: Something worth noting is that an outside observer might view this as having my creativity squelched. "Oh look at all the drawings, and now just boring mechanical notes? This person's soul has been snuffed out by the evil chemicals!" The truth is just the opposite - I was finally able to direct my creative energy where I wanted, and the feeling was utterly profound. 2: Appetite suppression, insomnia, depression, addiction, heart palpitations, aggressiveness, diminished sexual desire, and horrible irritability are all common side effects. They might not all meet the FDA definition of "common," but they're plenty common enough.
- hmsimha 13y ago
  I'd love to know what you found has worked the best for you, if you feel comfortable sharing.
- abecedarius 13y ago
  This makes me wonder if software could help. Clippy says "You seem distracted, shouldn't you get back on point?" (I recognize this comment is unlikely to be helpful, but I'm curious about the state of the art.)
- mikevm 13y ago
  I'm pretty much the same as you, only that during lectures I don't draw anything, I just space out after a while and it's hard for me to sustain focus for long periods of time. Lectures are largely a waste of time for me. I ended up going to a special ADHD clinic and I got diagnosed. Unfortunately, a week and a half after beginning the titration process of Concerta I started getting side-effects (palpitations). Apparently, I also have anxiety, so the doc told me that I could either start again with a slower titration process, or take antidepressants along with the ADHD meds. I decided to drop it and not take any of the meds because the side effects of the antidepressants scared me (not to mention the negative vibe you get from people when they hear that you're on psychiatric meds). College is really hard for me. I do very well in some classes (mostly in the applied CS courses), and just average to poor in others. The reason is mainly because even though I love programming, many of the Computer Science courses are theoretical and boring to me, so after about a month into the semester I start spiraling down and barely doing the homework assignments, or seriously going over lecture notes to try to gain a deeper understanding of the material. During the finals, I end up wasting days on doing nothing productive (like right now -- I have a final next week and I'm sitting here doing nothing) until I conjure up enough willpower to actually open the books and start studying (usually the fear of failure takes over and then I force myself to study... with lots of anxiety). And even then, I still find it hard to fully concentrate on the material. I find myself trying to read a textbook, and I feel like my mind and body are pulling me away, so I end up just getting up from the chair, and walking back and forth around the house while my mind just entertains some random thoughts. I realize that I've been like this my whole life (my High School years are very similar). When I find something that really interests me, I will do it from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to sleep. For example, I've done programming projects that forced me to learn new technologies where I had to read over 1,200 pages of documentation, and I would just do it obsessively until I'm done with the project. After the project is done though, and it's time to just maintain it (fix bugs, for example), I usually get very bored with it and dump it. I guess because College assignments aren't interesting to me (for some reason, the grade on the final exam isn't enough of a motivator for me to study) I have a hard time applying myself to them the way I apply myself to things I'm really passionate about.
danneu 13y ago
Amphetamine isn't exactly a placebo and its effects aren't exactly unknown or disputed. Asserting the possibility of placebo is like wondering if coffee is really just dark inert water but we're all just idiots with no self-awareness that buy into the oral tradition of what coffee is supposed to be. > I fear for myself that when facing similar hardship > that acquiescing to meds could just be "dealing with > the situation" and not properly processing what the > actual hardship is, why it exists, and how else it > could be dealt with. But the hardship is simple. It's the forlorn inability to focus and do. At the end of the day, we have finite lifespans and we have needs, desires, and ambitions right now. We know that flooding the brain with the amphetamine train works right now. By the time I was in my 20s, I was pretty tired of listening to people suggest that I was lazy or that I just didn't want it enough. Then I started taking 50mg of Vyvanse and it makes me want it all. I'll come brainstorm different coping strategies when I find out I'm immortal.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Drinking coffee doesn't make you more alert, caffeine study reveals http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/02/drinking-coffee-alert-caffeine http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/02/drinking-coffe...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jt2190 13y ago

> So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of > success here? Yes, because children who suffer from poor grades are now frequently tested for ADHD, and since we can't very accurately diagnose ADHD, some children who don't need the medication will get it. It's called a "false positive." Those children's grades won't improve. The studies are really telling us that we're not very good at diagnosing this.

benjamincburns 13y ago
That's a very valid statement, and I greatly appreciate/respect that truth. If that were the tack this article were taking, I'd have no qualms. This is the perfect kind of study to combat overprescription based on poor academic performance. However there's an unwritten assumption in this article that grades are synonymous with success. See the caption to Dr. Farah's photo. That's a very poor inference. That's what I'm taking offense to.
- jt2190 13y ago
  I read it as "success in treatment", not "success in life."
  - benjamincburns 13y ago
    Me too.
sliverstorm 13y ago
That's exactly what I'm hearing in my head as I read this article; "But did they control for ADHD over-diagnosis?"

barry-cotter 13y ago

So we're going to look at grades as an indicator of success here? Grades, which have been shown time and time again to have very weak, if any correlation with success? [Citation needed] IIRC conditional upon acceptance to a job at Google grades don't predict performance at all well for anyone except fresh grads. That is the closest thing to grades having only a weak correlation with success I can remember. And that conditional upon is doing a lot of work. Given that an IQ test is the best way of predicting work performance apart from a work sample test in hiring and IQ correlates around 0.7 with grades I find your claim implausible.