4 ms·
To play devils advocate, I think its possible that ADHD as a title is more harmful. Letting people fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy that may or may not hav
by siphor 13y ago
To play devils advocate, I think its possible that ADHD as a title is more harmful. Letting people fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy that may or may not have occurred otherwise.
You say you were more than talented enough to finish said work in 5-6 hours but couldn't. To me that sounds like you thoroughly did not enjoy it and thus got distracted and 'procrastinated'. Why did you choose to work in an office if it was making you so unhappy?
It sounds like the drugs helped you live your life in an office setting, and is helping you get your life on that specific track.
I personally think there are a lot of societal pressures that makes one feel forced into a situation where they do not thrive.
But everyone around says that `you` have a specific problem. Why can't it be the other way around, everyone else doesn't fit to you?
These drugs seem to work great to make you live like everyone else. But why is that good? More boldly, why are the ADHD symptoms bad? Some of the most successful people probably exhibit these symptoms.
- jasonlotito 13y agoYou're asking a lot of loaded questions. These drugs allow me to do what I want to do. Why isn't that good? People who try to claim that ADHD symptoms are good are probably people who aren't diagnosed with ADHD (and let's not get started with OCD).
- spacedmountain 13y agoI've found the opposite. About 6 months ago, I began to suspect I had ADHD. I went for help, and was diagnosed about a month ago. I haven't used it as an excuse, on the contrary I am now able to understand and catch my symptoms in the framework of the disorder. Maybe an analogy is trying to run while having different length legs. Once you realise this reality, you are able to understand, compensate, and adjust. I do think there is a component of ADHD treatment that is trying to 'fit in' to a society that doesn't think the same way the person with ADHD does. But there are big impacts on people's lives independent of society. And its not easy to always be "different", disruptive, and/or inattentive to people around you.
- JohnBooty 13y agoI feel the same way. And congratulations on your progress!
- JohnBooty 13y agoI don't feel that Adderall even remotely makes me "like everybody else" - I feel it has some benefits toward reducing a specific difficulty I have and that those benefits outweigh the minor downsides. To me that sounds like you thoroughly did not enjoy it and thus got distracted and 'procrastinated'. Why did you choose to work in an office if it was making you so unhappy? I certainly don't blame you for making this assumption, since I didn't flesh out my (not terribly interesting) story. And I also agree that there are a lot of upsides that come with ADHD, though of course it's hard to tell which positive personality traits are /due/ to ADHD and which are coincidental. However, the truth is that I actually tried starting my own business I was passionate about /before/ even considering an ADHD diagnosis! Just like you said, I decided my inability to focus in an office environment was due to a lack of motivation. (And that was partially true, it turned out, but wasn't the whole story) So I started my own business. Now, at the time, I didn't think about ADHD very much at all but my opinion of it was that it was a thing they over-diagnosed in kids so they could sell a bunch of pills and basically make excuses for boring teachers and ineffective parenting. After a couple of years creating the business it was pretty clear I was hitting the limits of my ability to focus even when doing "the fun stuff" like writing code for a thing I was passionate about. And don't forget that running a business also requires a lot of deadly boring stuff too - taxes, regulations, paperwork, etc. It was at that point I started looking at a lot of things and decided maybe exploring the ADHD thing made sense after all.