Comment by curiousDog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by curiousDog | Hacker News Reader

To me, as an adult, getting a diagnosis on ADHD was a godsend. However, after a couple of years, I see the drug's affects waning. I can also see how damaging this dependency creation can be for children.

Fortunately, when I was a child back in India, ADHD was virtually unknown (probably the case today as well). Most of the time, my parents chalked off my inattention to "lack of discipline" and were happy as long as my grades were good. I found the coursework very easy (despite studying for only 1-1:30 hrs a day) and topped most of my classes.

University here in he U.S wasn't hard either. My problems started once I started working. Couldn't code continuously for more than 15-20 mins at a time. Things got boring very quickly once I got the "aha". I couldn't hold a lot of program state in my head. I was always searching for that "flow" people often talked about.

Adderall really helped me. I use it very sparingly these days (especially on days that I have to code some important pieces) though.

Bottomline, looks like this is purely genetic and fixing the dopamine pathways isn't exactly like curing malaria, you can juice things up but the brain will want more. Parents can choose to give it to their children but they'll suffer some time down the road. I'd rather let the kid enjoy childhood and help him in other ways (exercise, note-taking, engaging activities etc) and put him in a reasonably good path to success. Let them take drugs if necessary once they've wised up as adults.

Again vague appeals to solutions that simply do not work as well as stimulant medications.

http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=ADHD&Template=/Cont... T

1. Thirty two percent of students living with ADHD drop out of high school compared to 15 percent of teens with no mental health diagnosis (UC Davis Health System, 2010)

2.Three times as many adolescents living with ADHD as those living without ADHD have failed a grade, been suspended or been expelled from school. (Barkley, 2000).

You're right though, let them exercise and make them note-take, that will work(while you ignore that this simply is not effective, as studied in the current literature)

"Fixing dopamine pathways isn't exactly like curing malaria", profound.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/115/6/e749.lon... (Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Overview of the Evidence)

Conclusion: "Other evidence documents the long-term nature of ADHD in children and its classification as a chronic condition, meriting the application of general concepts of chronic-condition management, including an individual treatment plan with a focus on ongoing parent and child education, management, and monitoring. The evidence strongly supports the use of stimulant medications for treating the core symptoms of children with ADHD and, to a lesser degree, for improving functioning. Behavior therapy alone has only limited effect on symptoms or functioning of children with ADHD, although combining behavior therapy with medication seems to improve functioning and may decrease the amount of (stimulant) medication needed. Comparison among stimulants (mainly methylphenidate and amphetamines) did not indicate that 1 class outperformed the other."

What is the objective diagnosis for ADHD?

I actually was never diagnosed with ADHD as a child or an adult. I exhibit a similar coding pattern as you did, and still do, since high school. I get bored very, very quickly and kind of live off of the "aha" moments, from one to the next. It's not that it's not genuinely challenging or interesting to me, but I just can't focus much of the time. This is true for just about everything I do these days. Thoughts and ideas come, I act on them, and they leave again just as quickly as they came. It definitely makes it hard to get much of anything done at work or home, despite having quite an agenda at times.

I've only taken Vyvanse offhandedly (without Rx) and it worked miracles for me. I quickly learned to ration it and use it sparingly as you do, partly because of the negative effects on my appetite and general well-being. I'm still debating going to see a doctor but I think they might write me off as an addict since I'm in my 20s but still quite young and a lot of kids come out of college abusing the stuff to get through exams and maybe never really drop the habit.

What does "abuse" mean in your context? "Abusing it to get by", very anti-humanistic mentality here.

"The kids with polio abused vaccines to get by" "The kids with hunger abused food to get by"

What does "abusing to get by" even mean? You mean, USING it to get by, and thus preventing failure of the negative kind? You mean ... the desire-able outcome?

I had originally typed "to get through exams" but for some inane reason I changed it at the last minute and now conveys the wrong thought completely.

This sounds an awful lot like imposter syndrome, but with your own health instead of programming ability.

See a doctor. Be honest. Let them do their job and then trust their diagnosis.

Honestly, I had to look that one up and I do recall reading about that last week via a post linked on HN actually and telling my coworker that that didn't describe me much at all. In both my health (physical fitness) and other accomplishments , I can say I take them very well, and have an ego a large portion of the time because of them.

I should definitely go see a doctor anyway, if not just to make sure that this isn't all in my head.

> I'm still debating going to see a doctor but I think they might write me off as an addict since I'm in my 20s...

> Honestly, I had to look that one up...that didn't describe me much at all

When I was 18 and two years into college, I started to realize that everything non-drug-related I had done with my parents and therapists in the past wasn't working as well as it used to. Not quite a couple years later I was super tired from having bronchitis for six months, and everything imploded around me because I had no energy left to do anything. The new therapist I saw during then thought that I was being ridiculous by thinking of myself as a drug-seeking addict when drugs I had never actually tried before were the one thing I really needed at that point. I was so convinced I was in the wrong that I had been crying for over thirty minutes straight about it to her.

tl;dr impostor syndrome with my own mental health.

I'm in my mid-20s now and nobody that knows me thinks of me as an addict. I don't know what I would do without Adderall at this point - and that's in combination with a decent amount of behavioral strategies/techniques too. Sure, there are lots of people out there that abuse it, but I am just a total mess without and there's no way I'm making excuses up to keep on being a mess because of what other people do. Seek help because maybe you do have a problem, and you may come to realize that dealing with a known problem (or knowing that you don't have one) is like night and day compared to what's going on right now.

Any stimulant will increase your perceived ability to concentrate while it's active. That doesn't mean that it's curing anything or that you have any sort of condition. It doesn't even mean that your perception is correct, though it can be. It just means you're having a normal reaction to the stimulant.

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