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Comment by peepee1982 | Hacker News Reader

peepee1982

I wish this were more common knowlegdge. Every time I see someone whether ADHD "exists" I think to myself "Dude, we decided that certain traits falling in a certain range on a spectrum warrant their own category because it might facilitate research and treatment. Whether it's real or not isn't even a question."

I just want to know whether my issues are normal and I'm gaslighting myself into thinking I'm broken or a loser, or if my specific issues are actually falling outside the norm. This way I know what treatment modalities might help, and which literature I can peruse instead of wasting my time reading up productivity advice meant for neurotypical people that will try to solve the wrong issue for me and just make me feel worse.

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Slate Star Codex' take on Adderall (and ADHD) is a good read: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...

In short: no-one "has" ADHD. We just decided that people on the lower end of the spectrum in the "ability to concentrate" trait deserve a bit of a boost from otherwise illegal drugs to function in the society. Being in this lower end is called "having ADHD".

I'm a bit wary about arguing with a psychiatrist, especially if it is Scott Alexander, but ADHD is clearly not just "low ability to concentrate". It is hard to explain to normal people without phrases like "executive function paralysis" but it is a severe illness, and not some variation of a norm.

I would also challenge his premise about boring monotonous work is ill suited for humans, hence the ones with ADHD are people who can't do it (as good as others). ADHD people can do boring monotonous work for hours, month after month, and often not even struggle with that. On the other hand some banal easy (and short!) tasks, which won't even register as a task for normal human, will leave ADHD person in shambles, unable to even think about it.

There is lots of bad shit going in on the ADHD brain, it is certainly not just "20% worse concentration" debuff.

There’s no such thing as advice for “neurotypical” people.

There’s advice for people.

Sometimes it will help you, and sometimes it won’t.

Regardless of the number of people it helped and didn’t help, and what labels apply to them.

As someone taking adhd meds, I think you’re missing this person’s bigger point.

You can be stuck for decades, as I was, taking advice that won’t work for you, until you figure out that you can get a medical solution that instantly enables all of those pieces of advice becoming usable.

It is not a coincidence that those pieces of advice weren’t working, they were never going to work unless preceded by medical help.

Many people pre diagnosis suffer the equivalent of taking years of running advice and wondering why the stay behind before noticing they’re missing a leg and it won’t work until they get prosthetics.

If it’s not optimal, it’s useless, isn’t it? You can’t run as fast as the others, so why bother running at all? You just can’t do it. None of the advice about running will ever apply to you unless you can afford a prosthetic that works with your ailment that you can wear all the time.

That’s not true, of course. You are not relegated to a category of defunct by simply existing without a leg. You can learn to get by without it — many do — and you can learn to excel without it.

When you exclude yourself based on blankets of labels, you miss good advice. Much advice about “running” has little to do with having 2 legs: Breathing, clothing, hydration, nutrition, time of day. Pacing advice can even apply when you run with an implement.

For some people this is their entire reality, having to fight against categorizations that split them into complete ability and disability.

For some others, they don’t even know there’s a fight to be had. They give up before knowing they had any chance at all.

It’s troubling for something like ADHD, where a constellation of symptoms are possible and some do not apply to you personally.

You can’t read because you have ADHD? It may be true. It may also be true that you have been forced to read things you’re not interested in, something rendered practically impossible by this disorder, and someone has labeled you as a non-reader due to your differences. It may also be true that you haven’t discovered Terry Pratchett, and you’re actually quite the reader with the right material.

For some even more others, they feel able with their medication and useless without. Luckily for them, their medication lasts all day, medication shortages do not exist, and their psychiatrist will always prescribe their medications forever.

>For some even more others, they feel able with their medication and useless without. Luckily for them, their medication lasts all day, medication shortages do not exist, and their psychiatrist will always prescribe their medications forever.

The sarcasm there is unwarranted. Need for a treatment, when it exists, is orthogonal to its convenience. If you need an organ transplant to live, you need it regardless of whether you have donors and hospitals available or whether the lifelong meds they require can run dry at some point.

As for your larger point, to be clear, I understand the idea you’re trying to convey. Diagnoses can be limiting for some people either internally (limiting self perception) or by external judgement.

I don’t deny that, what I’m saying is that I feel you’re (probably unintentionally) falling into a different extreme that is just as damaging to others, which is to deny the need or convenience of treatment for those for which _there is no successful alternative_.

Shutting down a person through a label is harmful, dismissing their limitations because that would be labelling is harmful as well.

For the point of advice, advice can and will be harmful when it assumes realities that don’t apply to you.

To leave the analogy aside and give actual examples, methods to keep organization and accountability like checkboxes or diaries will not only be failed tries to those who need meds, but also reinforce a feeling of inadequacy as the user now feels lacking in discipline to commit to the method. Lack of self steem and negative self perception (lazy, messy, uncaring, etc) is a way too common comorbility with ADHD for a reason.

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