Just because ADHD is poorly understood and often diagnosed incorrectly does not make it any less debilitating to those who have it and certainly does not imply that they are not in need of medication. Yes the medication can be abused by those who don't need it to get an edge. This is what makes it a controlled substance. Opiates can be abused too and have the same effect on everybody. The difference is that people in server pain need opiates to function at a baseline normal level. People with ADHD need medication to function at a baseline normal level. The fact that some people abuse them to go beyond that is completely irrelevant
> People with ADHD need medication to function at a baseline normal level.
This statement is so out of line I had to chime in. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. I was medicated for a few years, before I stopped taking the pills without telling my parents (they were being pressured by the private school I was in to medicate, I was kicked out shortly after they found out I had stopped.)
Those years are a complete empty window in my memory, and left me with physical ticks that _decades_ later I still have to suppress, alongside no actual tools for dealing with the symptoms.
Medication is not a silver bullet. Not all ADHD cases need to be medicated. Find what works for you, whatever the hell that is, and don't listen to dogma. For me that was coping mechanisms combined with a realization that much of the "attention deficit" was because I _didn't want to pay attention to the shit I was supposed to_ and _that's completely reasonable._ To insinuate that I haven't tractably found success ("baseline normal") with a non-medicative approach in my life is frankly insulting.
In Adults outside a courtroom, mental health treatment focuses on easing distress because the person seeking out treatment is the patient.
Parenting is stressful and imposes a powerful incentive to reduce that stress. Consequently, too often in children, mental health treatment focuses on controlling behaviors because the person seeking treatment is the parent.
The first is a person seeking greater agency for themselves over a problem. The latter is a denial of agency of the child. I’m hearing you express your pain at having your agency suppressed and expressing skepticism at the tools used to suppress your agency.
But those same tools also grant some adults an agency they are desperately drowningly seeking for themselves.
1. I might have when I was initially going through a ream of behaviorists, but I'd be lying if I said I recalled, this was around/after 3rd grade.
2. In large part, reminders. Notes, lists, alarms (calendar/phone alarms for _everything_, watering plants to finishing work shit), behaviorally trained prompts, anything to disrupt the "mental feedback loops" where I can find myself "unconciously" falling into something like tearing at my fingernails, reading HN, playing video games, or really any of the infinite things I'll come up with to not do what I should be doing.
e.g. even right now writing this, I'm being pinged to go back to reading PRs: after years of having automated browser alerts going "hey you shouldn't spend time in this video game/on hn, it's been 20 minutes and you have nothing to show." my brain has picked that up and is able to do it on its own. I found that hard blocking didn't work since I'd just find ways around it, but if I can remind myself this is something I _want_ in any way from pragmatism (mortgage) or emotional (getting wife nice things) whereas the games/Hn are actually _unwanted_ (despite what the dopamine might say) it's easier to force myself to focus on something I don't want, even in bursts. (getting myself to internalize and BELIEVE those facts took years and I still fight with sometimes when willpower is low.)
This was a bit of a ramble, and I'd be remiss to mention that the motivation to use the prompts would be missing without the philosophical context I assign to the things I do. (Disclaimer: I recognize not all people can use this technique, I simply use the fact that I have strong long-term motivations against my bad short-term focus) I mentioned it in passing (mortgage, wife, etc) but really finding things I _WANT_ and using my brain's likelihood to fixate on those, especially in periods of distraction, I can tie those things back to what I SHOULD be doing and create a virtuous cycle. Contrivedly: Distracted looking out a window at garden. Fuck, I can't afford this garden if I don't go back to coding. (Dang, this HN post is getting long. Better get back to work so I don't work late today and can spend time with the wife when she gets home :) )
