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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

ADHD is a genetic disorder that does not get better, so again "lasts longer" and "unevolving" indicate that you need to study the disorder better before making claims about how it works. I don't use analogies from the Marvel universe, when I can just study the disorder directly. It's a dopaminergic disorder where your brain has less dopamine receptor sites and there are fundamental consequences of this which cannot be meditated away.

I can personally attest that taking amphetamine does not make me "more robotic" or "less exciting". For people struggling with ADHD, developing behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms can be a non-starter if they are not properly medicated.

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I refuse to believe ADHD is (only) genetic. I am convinced it is induced and I know why. I have come to a nice 6 year period where ADHD was not present in its usual form. It drastically changed. It came back recently about 5 years ago. I know why it came back. And external factors are the reason. Those factors took a break for 12 years before resuming.

i think you mean inheritable. you are right, in a way. ADHD as a disorder is a description of a disease state involving the medial temporal lobe and orbital front cortex of the human brain. you can acquire this disease state from environmental interaction. however, ADHD is known to be a inheritable trait as well.

in some forms, it will get worse as you age. that is especially true if you have environmental pressure, like alcohol use, lack of exercise, amphetamine use, etc.

those with ADHD tend to fuck up everything anyway. the only real cure is a "genetic" one. it is necessary to stop those risk taking behaviors that compound the initial disease state.

however if you cure risk taking, you fuck society and the economic progress of humanity. the disease state known as "ADHD" is a net positive for the whole, even if it isn't always a net positive for the individual. so, it is selected for, in terms of natural selection. though "artificial selection" (i think this term is meaningless, really it describes self-reflection, which is a normal trait.) allows for humans to pass this trait on much more often now, as humans have corrected many life-ending disease states that used to curb things like ADHD from being passed on.

As someone who deals with ADHD and whose immediate family tree all have it, whose parents fell deep into drug addiction and fucked their and my life up, who has watched both his sister and brother destroy their lives from drug addiction and untreated ADHD, it is not a net good. Romanticizing mental illness is not good. This disorder sucks and I would rather not have it at all. It's not a "creative thinking" disorder, it's an executive function disorder that gets in the way of everything.

i am sorry that you have had a rough life, but using ADHD as a root cause for substance use disorder is confusing. ADHD is a behavioral phenotype that can arise from a number of different genotypes. it isn't one thing. also, i am not romanticizing anything. i was halfheartedly theorizing about selection pressures and ADHD.

It's only confusing if you don't understand the direct correlation between ADHD and drug abuse statistics as well as a host of other things that compound to ruin people's lives. No one said it was a root cause, either. It's well established that ADHD, while having genetic foundations, can be part of positive feedback loop which worsens the condition as well as your ability to cope with it. No need to argue about it; these correlations are well-established in literature.

i understand the correlation of SUDs and ADHD. ADHD is also correlated with the population of adults in prison. it doesn't mean if your mother had ADHD you will end up in jail.

Correct. Can you articulate the point you were trying to make, then?

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