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ADHD is BS...

jcloudz

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it must really suck having a disability or condition that may complicate your life and being met with willful ignorance. Gee, I really can`t observe your problem, so there must not be one and you are faking it. its not like a broken leg, at least i can observe that, but sense i cant really put myself in your shoes or understand the problems you are going through, I think you are just stupied! hey lets make it more difficult for you and cause i dont really care to understand beyound myself, unless you really complicate my life or some authority actually validates that you really have a condition. until then, until someone gets around to telling me anything, though i still dont believe, lets just push you with the rest of the trash ,so you can suffer not just cruelty of my apathy and everyone else but also suffer the lack of food, no clothes or no real dwelling.
 

Iriohm

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it must really suck having a disability or condition that may complicate your life and being met with willful ignorance. Gee, I really can`t observe your problem, so there must not be one and you are faking it. its not like a broken leg, at least i can observe that, but sense i cant really put myself in your shoes or understand the problems you are going through, I think you are just stupied! hey lets make it more difficult for you and cause i dont really care to understand beyound myself, unless you really complicate my life or some authority actually validates that you really have a condition. until then, until someone gets around to telling me anything, though i still dont believe, lets just push you with the rest of the trash ,so you can suffer not just cruelty of my apathy and everyone else but also suffer the lack of food, no clothes or no real dwelling.

Wow...so...where did this come from?
 

Idioteque

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InsaitiableCuriosity said:
I am wondering how your dad coped with that distractability when there was probably not any such common diagnosis as ADHD or fix in his time?

Many creative people (and IxxP) in particular are daydreamers. I am concerned however with the ADHD diagnosis. The H means hyperactivity and generally refers to loud boisterous kids who can't stay still rather than the daydreamers??? ADD I could understand but ADHD seems a bit of a stretch in your case.

He didn't actually. Wich has led to a number of problems. But anyway he says he's too old now to do anything about it.

You should know that hyperactivity is mostly shown in early ages. In time you will go into a "ADD phase", the hyperactivity will often be replaced by a constant feeling of restlessness or worry, wich is my case. When I was really young I had fits of rage almost daily, even beating up kids I didn't even know for no reason at all. Caused a lot of problems for my folks, they made me see a doctor at age of six but three different doctors had three different diagnoses.. ADHD, DAMP and Aspergers. Doctors also said that while I was more intellectually developed than other kids my age I was also emotionally underdeveloped. I still have problems dealing with feelings.
 

InsatiableCuriosity

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Just a quick tune in for now - 2 days until end of semester here and I am on leave.

I have been thinking about this thread a lot so here are some of my thoughts to chew over after discussion with colleagues:

Distractability, which by its nature has an opposite of extreme hyperfocus in many, impulsivity, and willingness to challenge existing thought and processes, seem to be the basis for most truly innovative thought and invention. Granted it takes many a lifetime (and some never) to be able to harness it, but without it we would not have the likes of Steve Jobs, Einstein, Richard Branston.

Along with these traits, unless we keep telling them there is something wrong with them, comes a unique sense of purpose and belief that nothing is impossible. It is not based simply on intellect, or ability to structure a logical argument based only on existing statistics but often provides the hypothesis for thesis and/or innovative development.

Again, without wanting to harp on it, Apple's Think Different campaign encapsulates this. YouTube - Think Different Listen carefully to the words here.

As soon as we begin to define normality in these exceptional individuals and try to steer them towards normal function, they potentially lose this edge AND their self-belief - something that is essential for the exceptional individuals who have challenged existing thought, belief and process.

It is all about that different perception!

Some things are not readily measurable by the criteria currently used to measure and validate data, but if you Google "Lies, damn lies and bloody statistics"the sacred statistic is definitely found wanting. In the research and investigations I have recently conducted it is not the numbers that have been important as much as what the numbers HAVE NOT CAPTURED!

Qualitative research, in my opinion, is often better than quantitative research.

As we all know data manipulation is very easily achieved by asking only selected questions and not taking into account all of the other factors that may impinge on a result. Politicians do it all the time when taking polls. As my maths teacher once told me though - "there is no such thing as .2 of a person - you either have a person or you don't"

It is people we are labelling!

The one thing we can do to assist young people who would otherwise be medicated I believe, is to give them a safe environment in which to grow and learn, help them identify their gifts and be patient with their failures. Many of these kids, like people with ASD, take a longer time than normal to mature in emotional intelligence and social interaction.

Accept this - it is often through others' response to this that they grow and become more reflective. Of those I know with ADD, most by their late 20's have higher EQ and empathy than those who matured earlier. Their treatment by others has necessitated that growth.

Lastly (for a few days until I am on leave at least) - there had been an allusion to problems in society often being caused by people with ADD. Everyone with this potential will develop according to the environment in which they were brought up. If this is a criminal environment or one without values then this is most likely to be echoed in the people with ADD who are born into that portion of society.

There are equally others who are born into these environments who choose to make a difference. Likewise being born into a privileged environment with ADD is not a guarantee that these people will achieve anything fantastic either. There is often a catalyst such as parental sacrifice, a role model, a tragedy, or an event or occurrence that, combined with ADD, will determine someone's future greatness.
 

Queen Kat

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But then why do ADHD patients make such good entertainers? I see a big difference between the older generations of entertainers and the younger ones. In the older generations, there are many people with ADHD, and they're fun! But when you look at the younger generations, you see they're totally plain. Same with fashion: before Ritalin was invented, people started making up new fashion items and styles, but since that drug was invented, people got so uncreative they had to reuse all the things that were made up in the past. I personally have ADD and I don't take any drugs to calm my mind down, and in the mean time I'm the most awesome person I know! Ritalin was invented to stop people from making up new things and to make them behave like everyone else so everyone will be the same and the world will turn boring. So, that's how I think about it.
 

ragashree

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Several issues spring to mind here, particularly in response to InsatiableCuriosity's last post. I may add more as and when it occurs, but for now I'll go with these, which most deeply concern me.

1) The growth of the normalizing tendency in contemporary psychiatry (especially paediatrics) and the capacity to try to enforce it through medical means. It is of questionable relevance whether a child's behaviour is actually dysfunctional, is causing a significant problem to them or others, is something that can be dealt with by means other than pharmaceutical, etc. All that really matters is that an individual human being is categorised through application of a diagnostic formula as not meeting a predetermined set of developmental milestones at a specific stage of development.

These milestones themselves are derived from an average value, probably some kind of median, taken from statistical analysis of a large quantity of observational data; and are thus completely useless at determining anything at all with regard to human exceptionalism, unless we are to deny the phemomenon exists/should exist. All we can say is that a child is not behaving as a statistically average child would. If we want something other than a statistically average child, perhaps we should not put too much faith in such measures, let alone use them as a justification for medicating personality characteristics deemed to be undesirable out of existence before we even look at what those characteristics actually signify in a broader sense...

2) ADHD etc being used on the one hand as an excuse for antisocial behaviour etc, and on the other as an excuse for medicating it on the grounds that it CAUSES antisocial behaviour, is a complete red herring. It seems to me far more significant that this feeds into the contemporary fashion for evading responsibility for one's own actions . It is very easy to blame your condition for your behaviour in the hope that you, the person, will not have to be held responsible; this is also a good way to evade the necessity of challenging yourself to further personal change and growth and is a feature of many people who self-identify with mental health conditions. Equally significant is the implicit belief by the authorites (in Western nations anyway) that crime or behavioural problems are a social or biological disease that can be remedied from the top up through education and treatment, therefore helping to justify their own existence and the extension of their power/interference in people's lives.

Social problems of any kind in fact generally need to be dealt with from the bottom up via improved morals, values, and the taking of individual responsibility. Mentally ill people (unless actually psychotic) are not any more likely to go out and endanger people through their problems than poor people are likely to steal (unless actually starving), which is to say, not much more likely than anyone else. It's far more significant that someone who has poor impulse control or a disregard for the welfare of others caused by low empathy or social functioning has a ready excuse for their behaviour.

3) And we should not underestimate the role of parents in seeking diagnoses for children who may in fact be quite functional in order to put themselves into a "carer's" role. It gives them status and purpose in life, garners them sympathy from others, and helps draw attention (including their own) away from their own inadequacies. Most people who do this do not realise they are, they are acting out at a subconscious level, but this does not make the phenomenon any less real. It can be difficult to tell whether the chicken or the egg has come first when dealing with a parent/parents who are intent on playing the martyr in their role as carers, but the willingness of the medical establishment to collude with them in giving them the diagnoses they seek to validate their belief that the child "has something wrong" does not exactly help matters.


Edit: Aphrodite, you made some good points and seem to be taking a healthy - ie constructive approach to managing your child's behaviour. I wouldn't put your parenting style in category three, just to be clear! :)

Also this:

I really tend to think of these disorders as a problem in our environment more than a problem with individuals. We take individuals and cram them into one homogenous environment, which is the suburban home, daycare, institutionalized education, and expect them all to behave basically the same.

Why can't anyone see that this the biggest disorder of all?

Is a key point. If I was being cynical I would answer your question by saying that there's no profit to be made, publicity to be had or professional status to be gained by challenging received contemporary wisdom and the social norms that are taken for granted. Oh, ok then, I'll risk being seen as cynical... :newwink:
 

eclare

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ragashree - while I appreciate the thoughtful and in depth analysis of your post, I have to take exception to this statement.

It seems to me far more significant that this feeds into the contemporary fashion for evading responsibility for one's own actions . It is very easy to blame your condition for your behaviour in the hope that you, the person, will not have to be held responsible; this is also a good way to evade the necessity of challenging yourself to further personal change and growth and is a feature of many people who self-identify with mental health conditions.

I am generally not a person who takes a defensive posture when faced with dissenting opinions in an online forum, and I do generally try to give commenters the benefit of the doubt that sweeping generalizations made in a single post do not necessarily reflect the full extent of the commenters' understanding or opinion. But truly, I find the statement above misguided at best and offensive at worst.

The truth is that once a person is well and truly an adult - that is, out of school and out of the home, fending financially for themselves - the world generally will not allow you to evade responsibility for your actions. The effects of Adult ADHD lead to very obvious and often dire consequences. Unpaid bills, lost jobs, and serious accidents are all common effects of untreated Adult ADHD. Bosses and credit card companies do not care that you have ADHD, they only care that your responsibilities are taken care of. For people with ADHD, taking responsibility means recognizing that a problem exists and taking the necessary steps to resolve the issue. For most of us, this means medication and counseling, the effects of which can often be extremely unpleasant.

this is also a good way to evade the necessity of challenging yourself to further personal change and growth and is a feature of many people who self-identify with mental health conditions

Contrary to your assertion, it seems likely that individuals who live with ADHD are, by necessity, more in touch with their inner selves and are more likely to be constantly struggling with personal growth. I assume that you are basing your assumptions on the idea that ADHD is easily solved with a daily pill. Let me assure you that nothing could be farther from the truth. Medications often allow individuals to begin the process of reorganizing their lives, but it is a constant battle.

First, ADHD medications are hardly a magic potion. While it's true that Ritalin and Adderall have often been portrayed in the news as the drug of choice for college kids facing final exams, the effect of stimulants on an ADHD brain tend to be less extreme. Were it only a matter of perseverence or will-power, these drugs wouldn't have such a profound effect - after all, the distractions and temptations of the world still exist. If one was simply lazy and unmotivated, no chemical stimulant in the world could convince them to focus on difficult or distasteful tasks. For people with "normal" brain chemistry, stimulants have the effect of keeping them sharp and wakeful, which is why they are popular among chronically sleep-deprived college students. For people with ADHD, stimulants energize the parts of the brain that control executive function, which are typically underdeveloped, leading to issues with organization and focus, even in a naturally wakeful state.

Second, medicating ADHD is, literally, a never ending process. The relative effectiveness of the available medications varies over time and according to the individual taking it. And, as I mentioned before, side effects can be quite unpleasant. For those suffering from ADHD, the choice to medicate is a question of whether the benefits of the drug outweigh the drawbacks. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. A person could be perfectly happy on 10mg of Adderall, and then suddenly find themselves suffering debilitating anxiety, hypertension, or migraines. I feel confident in opining that majority of ADHDers if they would give up their medication in a heartbeat if it could be scientifically shown that behavioral conditioning alone would help them manage their lives.

In truth, despite media hysteria about ADHD being overdiagnosed, most clinicians believe that the disorder is significantly underdiagnosed. This is doubly true in certain demographic sets, particularly girls and adults who were never diagnosed as children. While it is almost certainly true that there are individuals in the world that are misdiagnosed as ADHD, particularly in some key stages of childhood development, it is far more common for people to suffer in ignorance and silence, convinced that their problems are all in their head, or the function of some terrible character flaw.
 

compulsiverambler

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2) ADHD etc being used on the one hand as an excuse for antisocial behaviour etc, and on the other as an excuse for medicating it on the grounds that it CAUSES antisocial behaviour, is a complete red herring. It seems to me far more significant that this feeds into the contemporary fashion for evading responsibility for one's own actions . It is very easy to blame your condition for your behaviour in the hope that you, the person, will not have to be held responsible; this is also a good way to evade the necessity of challenging yourself to further personal change and growth and is a feature of many people who self-identify with mental health conditions. Equally significant is the implicit belief by the authorites (in Western nations anyway) that crime or behavioural problems are a social or biological disease that can be remedied from the top up through education and treatment, therefore helping to justify their own existence and the extension of their power/interference in people's lives.
Blame is not the same as responsibility. If you don't know anything about the condition you have then you have no way of taking responsibility for it effectively. Taking responsibility means doing whatever you can to solve a problem you have, it doesn't mean inviting people to punish you or treat give you crap over it.

Research has shown that the large subset of AD/HD patients who go on to become antisocial are actually the ones with either harsh or inconsistent parents.

The ones who are the most willing to learn about AD/HD and not treat their child as if their impulsive actions are in fact premeditated, are the ones whose children don't go on to display strong oppositional and then criminal tendencies.

The willfully ignorant and self-righteous neurotypicals of the world are the ones who've most evaded taking responsibility for the damage many of them have caused to the those not fortunate enough to have the same kind of brain. They need to start taking responsibility for this too. Not blame, responsibility. Educating themselves is the first step.
 

Katsuni

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As a member of the ADHD community, I can tell yeu it's quite, quite real.

I don't take any medication for it (and never noticed any change from the ritalin anyway), and it's not related to type, though some may be more prone than others I'm sure.

I can be midsentance and completely loose track of whot I was saying, my mind just drifting off on its' own. I TRY to do prayers, but over half the time is spent apologizing, and the rest is spent with a mind wandering so much it changes direction entirely every few seconds to the point I forgot I was even in prayer. I figure if there is a god, they must only put up with me for the sake of being so pathetically amusing.

Having multiple lines of thought going at once is the biggest issue, though, I find. I'll be thinking of a half dozen different things on different layers of thought at once, and as soon as a correlation between a few, or one looks shinier than the other, it's like... it's kind of like a train with several traintracks all next to each other, except where anyone else would have their train of thought on a single track, mine runs on about 6 at once, all next to each other, and it'll randomly switch between tracks without warning XD

If stuck with only one thing to focus on, it's pretty much impossible. It can't be done. More lanes of traffic will open on demand if I'm lacking other things to distract me.

As such, I've learned to deal with such... typing online is *SO* many times better than talking in person or out loud... it's easy to just scroll up on text and see whot I was talking about 5 seconds ago. Tapping my feet, listening to music, having the tv on, having a game of solitare going, AIM up and 4 - 6 people chatting to, browsing teh inturwebz and so on, I have all of these going at once when trying to do homework, otherwise I can't concentrate XD

The easiest way to prevent ones' mind from wandering, I've found, is just flood it with an abnormally large amount of background noise until it's too busy keeping track of so many things at once it doesn't have time to actually try to skip between them.

And as InsatiableCuriosity said, treatment can kill creativity. Creativity is the ability to see patterns that don't exist, and create yeur own new ones, while intelligence is the capacity to see patterns that DO exist. Having many layers of thought, and being able to browse all of them at once, and seeing or making up connections endlessly, can turn to such bizarre yet interesting masterpieces. To kill off this is to loose much of the ability to create intricate patterns out of thin air.

Such is the way of things though; madness is not necessarily a 'bad' thing, so much as it is often a form of the mind hyper-specializing in a task to the exclusion of all others, or looking at things in such a different manner, that 'normal' thought processes no longer apply. This can often lead to insights and developments many will overlook... but will also lend to issues regarding dealing with 'normal' thought.


Overall, the problem is vastly overdiagnosed. Anyone who gets distracted is branded ADD, even if it really isn't. ADHD usually involves adding in hyperactivity, usually of the body. Once again, this can be delt with by physical action; drumming fingers in a complex pattern, toe tapping in sequence between telephone poles as driving, so that yeu need to do a complex pattern between the poles without having yeur toes down when passing one, silly stuff like that. The need to move and 'do' is always present, but it can be channeled into other stuff easily enough if yeu know how to do it.

But yeah, I got off track again XD It is overdiagnosed, and I doubt that many people have such.

I believe, this is just personal opinion, but I do believe that it's often thought that it occurs "most commonly in children" is a myth... rather, adults usually have endured living with such long enough that they have found tricks and methods with which to negate, or at least lessen, the problematic areas, such as I have. Also, children in general are 'hyper' and easily distracted, which leads to even more false positives.

If it's true add/adhd, then chances are yeu'll never 'grow out of it', but will simply learn to cope with it, and mask its' appearance.

Anyways, no, I can't sit 'still', but I've found many ways to avoid doing so without it being obvious. Same with the attention span itself. There's a ridiculous amount of behind the scenes stuff going on in my head and occurring with my body, that most people will never know. It's the only way I've found to focus and lead a 'normal' life, but it works, more or less =3

Unless all distractions are removed... IE in bed in prayer, as mentioned earlier, when all the normal methods for coping mechanisms are lacking, then it becomes apparent just how bad it can be. Being unable to focus on a single thing for more than 15-30 seconds at a time can be crippling if not carefully managed.

Even so, there's always the extra layers of thought... yeu can drown a few out with distractions like music, or whotever method yeu choose to try to negate them, but they're always present. The same with body movement; it's always present, yeu just have the ability to override these layers of thought/movement with more subtle forms which can keep things slightly more managable.

Even so, it's still easy to jump from topic to topic, or become restless; read my posts in general and look for paragraphs and run on sentences where I'll follow a line of thought and it'll wander all over the place seamlessly without any real structure. I can LIMIT the amount of wandering to a great degree, but never truly repress it fully. It's to the point that the term "I digress" is irrelevant, since it's an all encompassing term now which may as well just be slapped down over the entire post or speech or whotever XD

Yeu want the easiest example? Any time I start a paragraph with "anyways" or "regardless", or anything akin to such? It means I intended for that to probably be the last paragraph and I was trying to wrap things up. Yeu'll often see 4-5 of these in a single post. This is where I just realized something else to say and wandered off over there and forgot to stop XD

Soooo yeah. ADHD is good and bad. I'd hate to live without it; I rather cherish my thought process, even if it does have its' drawbacks at times. Do most people KNOW I have such? Not really. I've gotten good at masking the fact, and restricting its' negative aspects, but it does still creep in from time to time. Even so, I rather think it's a large part of whot makes me who I am =3

That being said, it's still thrown about far too often as a term, and people who seriously don't have any issues at all are just called such because they may be distracted slightly. Bah!
 

FDG

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But then why do ADHD patients make such good entertainers? I see a big difference between the older generations of entertainers and the younger ones. In the older generations, there are many people with ADHD, and they're fun! But when you look at the younger generations, you see they're totally plain. Same with fashion: before Ritalin was invented, people started making up new fashion items and styles, but since that drug was invented, people got so uncreative they had to reuse all the things that were made up in the past. I personally have ADD and I don't take any drugs to calm my mind down, and in the mean time I'm the most awesome person I know! Ritalin was invented to stop people from making up new things and to make them behave like everyone else so everyone will be the same and the world will turn boring. So, that's how I think about it.

Yeah but c'mon in Europe nobody takes Ritalin!
 

Katsuni

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Had only read through half the posts or so when writing that message; the other half done now ^^

Thanks for the video, especially since it was SHORT XD

Also I hadn't really kept up to date on information on such; I'm still thinking of how it was described about 20 years ago with add/adhd being separate. Apparently it's not listed that way anymore. Oh well =3

I would say, however, that I'm of the mental hyperactivity far moreso than the physical, though the physical does still show itself from time to time. It wouldn't be rare for me to just randomly get up and wander out of a room and not realize I'd done so... uncommon, but not rare. It does happen, just not frequently. Usually it seems to occur along the lines of thinking of something to do, and just unconsciously going ALRIGHT LETS GO DO THAT! and getting up and headed off in that direction, then reaching it and being... wth why am I here?

Anyways, still say it's real, though I'm not sure if my personal experiences are considered normal for those who have such or not. Maybe I gots misdiagnosed because the end result is the same? I dunno much about it in other people, just know how I've had to deal with things my whole life is all =3
 

SolitaryWalker

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I dont think people with ADHD have a disease. They are just people with a certain personality type. What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, just rationalize them as the ESPs, the schizoids as ITP personality type, the schizotypals as the INJ , the histrionic as EFJ and so forth. That's the wonder of folk typology isn't it, comprehensiveness of explanation is one of the system's true charms.
 
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Misty_Mountain_Rose

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I'm struggling here as I read through this thread. There are some seriously conflicting opinions going on in my head.

Within the last year or so, it has been mentioned by a few people (jokingly) that I have ADHD. Personally (without ever having researched it) my opinion was 'This doesn't sound like a PROBLEM. I do it all the time...' I felt (rather defensively) that people who think like that were actually extremely SMART, and just because they don't adhere to what society thinks they should act like or even THINK like is ridiculous. Who has the right to say that something as personal and individualized as your THOUGHTS are WRONG!?

A theory of mine (and I'm sure I'm not the first) is that as our world has become overly stimulated, some people have responded in kind with this multi-tasking thought process. All in all, I thought the idea was BS.

HOWEVER. As I've read through this thread and other things I've begun reading about on this, I've found myself nodding at the descriptions and statistics and wondering. I've always been this way, but I have worked things into my life to help me remember things when I really need to. Things that, until now, I didn't really realize that others don't have to do. I set alarms on my phone to remember that its time to take out the trash to the street, and to remind me to go home at the end of the day from work. I write things down CONSTANTLY on post-it notes and anywhere that I think I'll find them when I need them most. It takes me HOURS to fall asleep at night. I joke with my friends that I've 'idiot-proofed' my world. Is it the INTJ in me that helped 'organize' myself enough to make this crazy head of mine manageable? I leave bills sit on my desk, I look at them EVERY DAY and think 'crap... I have to send those out' and then immediately forget. I haven't changed the oil in my car in about... a year and a half because I'm always 'remembering' that I have to do it when I'm actually IN the car, and nowhere else where I could actually plan for it.

I've always joked that I'm 'forgetful' and have been called 'the most absent-minded intelligent person' people have ever met. I don't truly FORGET things, they're always there... but I can't recall them when I NEED them, they just come and go at will. I pick up with trains of thought that I had going on HOURS ago seemlessly... and whichever thing I was thinking about when the switch happens comes back to me eventually.

Katsuni, I am like you when you say that there are 'layers' of thoughts going on. There is always, at any given time, seemingly 6 different streams of consciousness going on in my head. I'll be 30 this year, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm one of those 'undiagnosed' people.

This, coming from a person who, up until recently, doubted that it even existed and didn't find anything wrong with the way I do things. Its normal for me, and I've always figured everyone was like this.
 

compulsiverambler

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Yeah but c'mon in Europe nobody takes Ritalin!
In countries like yours they self-medicate with tobacco instead. France is having a similar problem with people smoking from a young age.

In the USA it's been found that the people who start smoking (and/or drinking alcohol, caffeine and using illegal drugs) the youngest are more often the ones with AD/HD, because these drugs have some similar cognitive effects and sometimes even similar chemical structures to Ritalin at certain dosages, so they calm them down and help them focus. Unfortunately because the dosages of these aren't controlled, unlike Ritalin, people then keep increasing their dose and become addicted.

In countries where AD/HD goes untreated the most often, as well as obviously the ones with the easiest availability and least stigma attached to these things, you can expect to see the highest rates of people starting them early, which is indeed what we see in Europe when contrasted with North America and Australia, where AD/HD is much more often treated with medication.

When you follow up the ones given medication consistently throughout childhood, they are no more likely to start smoking, drinking or taking illegal drugs than their peers without AD/HD. A massive difference.

One of the reasons AD/HD usually seems to onlookers to get better with age is that teenagers start to find ways to self-medicate, most commonly with excessive amounts of caffeine, but also in even less healthy ways as mentioned above (for example 80% of adults with AD/HD smoke cigarettes, a much higher rate than in those without AD/HD).
 

FDG

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In countries like yours they self-medicate with tobacco instead. France is having a similar problem with people smoking from a young age.

In the USA it's been found that the people who start smoking (and/or drinking alcohol, caffeine and using illegal drugs) the youngest are more often the ones with AD/HD, because these drugs are similar to Ritalin in some ways so they calm them down and help them focus. In countries where AD/HD goes untreated the most often, as well as obviously the ones with the easiest availability and least stigma attached to these things, you can expect to see the highest rates of people starting them early, which is indeed what we see in Europe when contrasted with North America and Australia.

Fail, tobacco smoking among young people is decreasing steadily since the early 90s. Alcohol is subject to strong age limitations in the US, that's why consumption starts much later. You're totally fixated with ADHD, if it were for you probably 90 percent of the population would be ADDers. Probably you might go as far as saying that most alcoholics, chain-smokers, amphetamine-abusers are simply untreated ADD-people. I suggest to send your curriculum to Novartis, they might hire you as an advertiser.

By the way, I personally wouldn't mind taking some amphetamines to increase my performance during exams and /or work more. Even one of the best mathematicians of our centuri, Erdos, used amphetamines because he wanted to be more productive. Yet I think it should be made clear that it's just a way to increase our natural level of attention - we aren't robots.
 

compulsiverambler

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Distractability, which by its nature has an opposite of extreme hyperfocus in many, impulsivity, and willingness to challenge existing thought and processes, seem to be the basis for most truly innovative thought and invention. Granted it takes many a lifetime (and some never) to be able to harness it, but without it we would not have the likes of Steve Jobs, Einstein, Richard Branston.
Being distractible won't make you think of anything clever. It'll stop you in your tracks. Trust me, I actually have this. Hyperfocus is just being able to concentrate better than you usually can, in specific circumstances (so no advantage there), combined with perseveration (being unable to stop doing something when it's in your best interests to do so).

The quality of the concentration isn't actually any better than other people's during 'hyperfocus'; working memory, reaction times and processing speed are not magically improved when 'hyperfocusing' hence it rarely occurs during any task in which these are especially important, like strategy games, and hence you're typically still slower at the task than people without AD/HD who enjoy it just as much.

I spent a long time on this post, partly because my brain didn't alert me to the possibility that other things might be more important, more creative or even more fun to be doing instead, or gift me with awareness that anything else exists at all, and also because writing out my thoughts in some kind of logical order and with decent paragraphing always takes me a long time, hyperfocusing or not. There is merely some improvement on your usual productivity rate with respect to the activity you're 'stuck on', because your awareness remains broadly on it, though it can still shift too frequently between different details of it.

Impulsivity means that when something is a bad idea, your brain is unable to warn you quickly enough why it's a bad idea. It's not the same as spontaneity, which is doing and thinking unplanned things for pleasure. You can be spontaneous without being impulsive, and most Ps are in this category.

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfkg0VWx3rM"]'Hyperfocus'[/YOUTUBE]
 

cafe

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I consider ADHD a normal neurological variation that is maladaptive to our current way of life, rather than a disease. Like anything else, if the traits are exhibited in the extreme, then it is a disorder.

The variation is especially maladaptive to the way most schools in the US teach elementary aged children.

My sons and I both exhibit the characteristics of ADHD inattentive type (I think that's what they're still calling it). I tried taking Strattera for it and it was horrible. I felt so bad that I hardly noticed being inattentive.

When I took my older son to be tested for it, we thought he had the hyperactive kind because he's kind of loud and talkative, but he's just a loud, talkative person with inattentive ADHD. :laugh: Luckily, they also noticed signs of Pervasive Development Disorder, so I was able to get an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis from the school for both sons. When I say luckily, it is because the schools don't consider ADHD a real disability and often won't make any kind of accommodations for an ADHD child, but rather pressure parents to medicate. They have to and are more willing to accommodate an ASD child, so my sons got the accommodations they needed without my having to put them on speed.

That worked until my younger son had to change schools at the beginning of fourth grade. It was a big change that involved nearly doubling the size of class he was in and it was overwhelming. The speech therapist saw him struggling and really pressured me to medicate him. I took him to the doctor and got the prescription, but I never could bring myself to make him take the stuff. The speech therapist was very unhappy about this and I think she would have threatened me with neglect of some kind if she thought I'd fall for it. That would have gotten ugly.

Fortunately, within a couple of months, he adjusted and began doing pretty well. He's always going to be a bit absent-minded and have to work a little harder at organization that 'normal' kids, but he is smarter than most of them, so it evens out.

I'm really glad I didn't put the poor kid on speed. We are relatively mild cases, so we can just make allowances for our inattentiveness and function nearly-normally. In folks with extreme cases, medication is a life saver and if it helps them to function normally when they ordinarily couldn't, then medication is a very good thing.

For most elementary aged children, I think it's more about them being put into a completely unsuitable environment and being expected to function like adults without a hitch.
 

compulsiverambler

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Fail, tobacco smoking among young people is decreasing steadily since the early 90s. Alcohol is subject to strong age limitations in the US, that's why consumption starts much later.
Within the USA, and the the UK as well, the people who drink alchohol at a young age are much more likely to have AD/HD, and the same is true of other drugs, so clearly you can't explain it away with law differences between countries when there are differences within countries as well.

The fact is, teen tobacco smoking is as general trend, worse in developed countries that don't diagnose or treat AD/HD as frequently as others. Of course the trend goes up and down between different decades within countries, why wouldn't it? I said that other things will affect it as well, of course. However, the fact that studies have followed children who are medicated for AD/HD and children who aren't, and found that the ones who aren't medicated are much more likely to smoke or worse, strongly suggests if not proves, that if you medicated more of the children, fewer of them would smoke and other things, whatever the baseline happens to be at that time and in that place.

Probably you might go as far as saying that most alcoholics, chain-smokers, amphetamine-abusers are simply untreated ADD-people. I suggest to send your curriculum to Novartis, they might hire you as an advertiser.
Statistically, they are disproportionately made up of people with AD/HD, yes. As are the morbidly obese within the USA (50%). Are you going to ignore a fact just because you don't like it? Also people with schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, personality disorders and mood disorders are much more likely to be drug abusers, but many of the people diagnosed with these actually turn out to have had AD/HD all along when studied, which was either misdiagnosed as something else, or lead to something else. Do you reject the evidence that drug abusers have a much higher incidence of most mental disorders before developing their habit, or just that they have a higher incidence AD/HD specifically?
 
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