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Comment by epgui | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve always thought of my ADHD as a superpower, as I have the ability to intensely hyperfocus and get incredible amounts of work done.

This is the literal opposite of what AD(H)D is. You either don’t have ADHD or you have (arguably) ADHD primarily with hyperactivity.

ADHD drugs are stimulants— they don’t treat hyperactivity, they treat the attention issue… and as a side effect they are likely to worsen hyperactivity symptoms.

I can’t see any rationale for medication based on anything you’ve said.

(Disclaimer: everything I’ve said is based on inferences and incomplete information.)

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> ADHD drugs are stimulants

SOME of them are.

> they don’t treat hyperactivity

Yeah, no. That's just really misleading. The first day on stimulants was the calmest I experienced in years. The whole idea of hyperactivity is (extremely simplified) that your brain fills the space of missing external stimulation. That's where self-stimulation comes from.

> SOME of them are.

Yes, it's true that not all of them are. But the first line treatment is pretty much always a stimulant, and non-stimulant pharmacotherapies for ADHD tend to not be as successful.

The main class of drugs considered to be non-stimulant treatments for ADHD, NSRIs, will actually have a somewhat stimulant effect owing to their primary usage being that of an antidepressant.

In rare cases you may even prescribe a depressor, but that's something you very rarely want to do-- every case is different and these drugs may work for some patients, but generally speaking it's a niche treatment approach with a very unfavourable risk-benefit ratio.

This is absolutely not true. I take prescribed stimulants for ADHD that has a significant hyperactive element. The stimulants significantly calm my hyperactivity.

I used to self medicate with large amounts of coffee. After my 11th espresso of the day at 7pm I’d cycle home and sleep soundly.

Wow you have no clue what ADHD is.. cringe

I only have 2 years of med school and 12 years of biochem. So cringe.

It's surely way more cringe to be clueless about something while bragging about one's knowledge than basically any other combination of dispositions toward the thing.

Just because you don't like what I'm saying does not mean that it's not true. ADHD is very misunderstood.

This review is almost a decade old, but it should help correct some common misconceptions: https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/nrdp.2015.20

Thanks! It looks like OP is described on page 9 of this document. So if anyone said that OP's self-reported ability to expend extreme effort to accomplish his work was indicative of him having the opposite of ADHD, I would certainly direct that person to read this document.

> OP's self-reported ability to expend extreme effort to accomplish his work

This is not the same thing OP reports. OP reports having the ability to laser-focus, and page 9 talks about an impairment on this level.

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FTA (page 9):

> a university student with ADHD might need to work twice as hard as peers with the same aptitude to focus attention or to organize school work

This means that the ability to focus is impaired, because achieving the same result requires more effort.

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From OP:

> I’ve always thought of my ADHD as a superpower, as I have the ability to intensely hyperfocus and get incredible amounts of work done

Unless OP meant something different than what they literally wrote, this is the opposite. This means OP believes their ADHD helps them focus intensely somehow. In reality ADHD would have the complete opposite effect.

Here's the OP (the user, replying, not writing the opening post) to clear this up for us.

> It just takes a lot out of me physically, emotionally and mentally. Wondering if I need to be spending that much of myself. I feel like I work twice as hard as everyone else.

Thank you, this is information I did not have when I wrote my comment.

I was responding to the main prompt, and I did write this:

> (Disclaimer: everything I’ve said is based on inferences and incomplete information.)

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