Great point. I probably have ADHD. It seems to be common among INTPs.
You too?!
I'm the ADHD poster child!
During my childhood ADHA was not recognized on a widespread basis at all.
If you had it you were considered to exhibit all kinds of traits ranging from being hyperactive, being a troublemaker, being a disciplinary problem yet somehow being artistic and in a good mood for most of the time.
My third grade teacher tried to put me in a remedial scoial studies class because she could not handle me. I was bored to death in her class so I raised Cain.
On the second day of my "remedial social studies" class the teacher called me to his desk and candidly asked
"Why are you here?" I said
"Because Mrs. Lively's calss is boring and I get in trouble because I'm doing other stuff." He said
"You know all the material that your class is working on. I have another class I want you to try out." I thought to myself
"Oh great. Here we go. Super-remedial bad behaviour social studies! Damn it!" He walked me down the hall to the GT (gifted & talented) classroom. He introduced me to the GT teacher, a guy named Mr. Kipp. Mr. Kipp was cool. He talked to me for a minute and agreed with the other teacher to let me stay there a few days. I asked
"Hey Mr. Kipp, what's my assignment so I can pass social studies." I was shocked at his answer. He said
"I want you to draw a bunch of pictures that represent everything you learned about Egypt in Mrs. Lively's class." I said
"Really?" I went nuts and drew about a dozen pictures with scenes representing all we learned that year about the Old Kingdom, the New Kingdom, and the Egyptian mythology that I learned on my own. Mr. Kipp took my pictures down the hall to Mrs. Lively and let her know that I'd be spending two hours each day in his class.
I was so happy. Because I had that outlet, that free time each day, it made Mrs. Lively's class more bearable. I got in trouble alot less for the rest of that year.
I went through the rest of my school years undiagnosed. My parents had resigned themselves to the fact that I was argumentative with my teachers, I was mischievous (I never tired of playing pranks of all kinds, I was terrible, along with my best friend Aaron) and I had impulse control issues. Because my parents always knew what I was studying they made it a point to talk about what they knew of the material. Those conversations saved me from being totally uninterested in my textbooks. I thin they knew I was an auditory learner. My 10th grade English teacher confirmed it, when my head was down on my desk for the whole class because I had a migraine, and she thought I was sleeping, so she asked me to recap her discussion of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." I quipped it back to her word for word. She was really cool, she said
"Oh. You're an auditory learner! OK. I won't think you're sleeping in my class if you have your head down in the future." She was right. I remember my conversations with people word for word, for an unimaginably long time. My brain holds onto the details of everything, it's can be annoying because I have so much stuff to filter through, but overall I'm glad I'm wired this way. I have a solid capacity to recall most everything I've ever learned. It might have taken me 2, 3, or 4 times to learn it initially, but once I do it's mine forever. Also, my brain doesn't
"turn off;" I'm constantly thinking about things, scheming, dreaming, planning, daydreaming even. Going to sleep at night is a real pain in the ass unless I am just physically exhausted, which is one of the reasons why I've loved bodybuilding my whole life.
My first attempt at college was a disaster. I had run out if "IQ points" and actually had to sit still in class and pay attention, and read monstrous amounts of highly technical material in large boring books (I was going for a B.S. in Biology) and be ready for quizzes (Never, I was always behind) and fought tooth and nail to get B's and C's. In high school I had straight A's and a few B's. I was really pissed off. I dropped out after three years because with my grades as shitty as they were I knew I was not going to get into medical school, and I didn't want to collect water samples for the County. So, I got a job as a techie. I'd always loved computers. All those video games paid off, much to my Dad's chagrin. I got my ass kicked the first few years of my career because I had no formal training whatsoever and was working with really experienced people. Eventually I caught up. I had learned how to
"use my brain the way it was wired" instead of constantly being at odds with it.
Many years after I dropped out of college I went back to school and (barely) finished a B.S. in M.I.S. (Management Information Systems).
When I was 31 I got stuck again as my job at the time was boring me to tears. I was taking 3-4 times the amount of time to do the work I was being asked to do because I utterly did not care to do it, and I hated my supervisor. I went to my doctor and told him what was going on. He asked me about my schooling years and I tiold him all the stuff I wrote above, not thinking it mattered. He referred me to a psychologist. I was pissed. I said
"I don't need to go see a psychologist, I'm totally fucking happy with the way I am, I just can't think straight about things at times and I jump from taks to task. This is stupid. I don't want any fucking medication, I'm fine the way I am." My doctor is really cool, he knows me pretty well and calmly asked me to just
"jump through that hoop" to see what the counselor said. So I went, and the guy talked to me for about half an hour, and the guy said my case was classic ADHD. He sent me back to my primary care physician, who wrote me a prescription for Ritalin. I got it filled. I took the first pill before I went to work, and twenty minutes after I took it, for the first time since I could remember, I felt like things settled the fuck down, and I could finally focus. I could SIT STILL, I've never been able to do that without an awful lot of effort. And, I could start some menial task and finish the damn thing in one shot instead doing 5 minutes of it at a time over an 8 hour period. I took Ritalin for a few years, and was then switched to Adderall XR (extender release). If I take it during the day, I am good to go at the office. Once it burns out of my system I can go home and be my usual scatter brained, hyperactive, super productive, nutty self on my weekday afternoons and on the weekends.
Seven years after I finished my bachelor's degree I enrolled in a graduate program and 3 years later, now, I'm almost done with my master's in public administration. I'm fine with school now, I just had to wait thrity years to calm the fuck down enough to be able to sit still and read.
I don't know why I wrote all this. I've recapped it a few times here by now. I think it's because now that I look back on it all, I realize that dealing with ADHD did interfere with me leading a normal, productive life for many years, and in many ways. I come from a military family, so there was no concept of
"mental illness" or
"thought disorders" - everything could be cured with enough push-ups according to my Dad.
I'm at peace with it now. I truly enjoy being wired differently. It makes me who I am. But at the same time I'm glad that there is medication for it that helps me get through the parts of dealing with it that ultimately interfere with my productivity, which in some cases can result in interfering with my general sense of well being. So, if you've got it, or you think you might, don't rule out going to see a doctor or a psychologist or even a psychiatirst to talk about it. Some people can manage it without meds, counseling is a great thing - I learned alot from it. But ultimately I found myself to be much better off if I had access to ADHD meds when I needed them. To me it's not a "disorder" it's the reality that my brain, and the brain's of others like me are simply wired different. But if you've got it, there's no reason that it should interfere with you living a normal, productive life. It doesn't have to be that way.
FWIW, two good friends of mine, an INTP and an ENTP, also have ADHD. We drive other people crazy when we get together, but we have a blast, LOLZ!
It starts with black hole. Then it leads to the concept of singularity. Then I wonder about supernovas. Then neutron stars and white dwarfs.
Then I get tired and start searching for cat races, looking for a good one to buy maybe 8 years from now(!). Starts with maine coon. Then I wanna know every possible color.
Countless subjects, really.
OMG, I almost died reading this. It's classic. I know EXACTLY what you are talking about!
It starts with searching for gluten free recipes. Then I think about celiac disease being an autoimmune disease. Then I start looking at the role of cytokines in inflammatory states. This leads to thinking about low-grade fevers being common in AI disease. Which makes me think of infectious disease. Then I wonder did people die of fevers in times past or was it the infection/secondary infection that did them in. Times past? Bubonic plague...I remember some scientist hypothesizing that it was actually an Ebola-like virus that killed off a third of Europe and not Yersinia at all. Hmm, I go and look that up...
...OMG, look at the time! I was supposed to have started dinner an hour ago!
Like that.
Damn clocks! Always getting in the way and shit! :yim_rolling_on_the_
I search with the exact same methods. I'll start with one thought, and end up 3 hours later, on a completely different subject, but it can be traced back to the first search.
I think I do have ADHD, btw.
OMG, the blue bolded part you wrote is the part my (INFJ) wife does not
"get" at all.
Her and I will be talking about something, and I'll make a comment, or talk about something related, and then she asks
"Where did that come from? What made you think about that? How does that relate to what we're talking about?" And then I have to explain my thinking that resulted in what I'm talking about, and then she looks at me like: