What is ADD?

It sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with all of that.

Also, adding insult to injury, your use of the word "mum" suggests that you may have been forced to play the 50hz PAL version of Sonic 2 instead of the 60hz NTSC version.

It seems that Safari iOS's latest "helpful" behavior, sliding the tabs and favorites bar out of sight, is changig the window size and so invoking reflow. Which moved what I was reading off the bottom of the screen. Scrolling down to find it again re-opened the tabs and favorites, changed the window size back, invoked reflow, and moved my reading point out of view above the window. Scrolling back up again - well, I'm sure you get the picture. Part of the magnitude of the issue was moving the page header (big green panel) from the top to the side and back again, also when the header was on the side the text font was larger.

On my ipad the left pane keeps resizing, sometimes narrower sometimes not. I was using my left thumb to scroll. It really does make the site unusable.

I first got glasses at 26, so I think I understand what you mean. It was maddening to realize that my issues with math in high school may have been due to my inability to read the textbook quickly enough to succeed.

I took addrral as a kid and hated it. It changed my personality, it made me never hungry, I would stare into space, even though I'm super focused on a thought, friends would question what I was doing.

I've been taking Vyvanse now and I don't get any jitters or change in personality. The worst side effect is dry mouth...the best side effect...well, having a body high that last for hours, it's a nice bonus I guess? Is it healthy? I have no idea.

Caffeine user for decades, Adderall user (10mg, twice daily) for close to a decade.

Neither gives me jitters, although I only take small doses of Adderall at a time. Adderall doesn't give me a crash when it wears off like caffeine does.

Adderall can make me more high-strung at times. A little more intense, a little more irritable.

It's a trade-off, of course... because failing to get necessary shit done can also make a person quite stressed out, you know? So Adderall, by helping me get stuff done, also indirectly improves my mood. It's not a magic cure, but it has been worth it for me.

Yes. I don't take them frequently, and my dosage is still at the level it was when I was 15 and taking the regularly, and my tolerance is obviously lower than it was then, so the effects are more intense than for people who take it every day.

I can experiece occaisional jitters, and perceived body temperature fluctuations. I can be more a little withdrawn from the world around me. This is the case for any amphetamine drug at least. Ritalin can be a little different, but for the most part it's about the same for me. The most notable difference is that sometimes I feel irritable on ritalin.

Depends on the medication, dose, and your personal physiology. I was on a low dose dextroamphetamine as needed for a while. Then life got stressful and I found myself getting mild anxiety from it. I switched to Vyvanse which dextro packaged for extended release (lasts for 14 hours). Vyvanse did not induce any jitters but would keep me up late if I didn't take it first thing in the morning. I switched to a different extended release dextro that lasts for about half the time as Vyvanse. That's worked out well because I can take it in the afternoon without jeopardizing my sleep.

As a rule of thumb though I don't take stimulants on a regular basis, just as needed. Don't want to become dependent.

They definitely can cause mood alteration, but tend to not cause jitters in the doses prescribed for ADHD.

My experience is that when you're on the right dosage, no. I do hit a low around 10 hours after taking the pill (I have Vyvanse), when its effects start to wear off. Other than that, the only other side effect I have is that I end up biting the inside of my lower lip, I must be sucking all the time or something. Hurts the next day.

Oh, and if you take a pill, then forget and take another, well, it leads to a VERY jittery day.

The stimulants can, especially in the early days, affect your mood. A good MD will work carefully to start very slowly and ramp up, with the idea to give you the lowest possible effective dose.

For example: my MD started me on the lowest dose of ritalin once a day for a week

then twice a day for a week

then once that was ok I was given a longer acting version called Concerta that I took once a day.

it took six months to ramp me up to my current dose. there were times he felt it was time to go up and I wasn't ready. there were times when I felt it was time and he wanted me to wait. I had some side effects that went away if I went down a dose level, and then as I adapted, I'd move back up again. My dr. was very experienced and warned me about what to expect--a period of feeling invincible for a few months that would fade (true), and a feeling in the evenings of "rebound" as medicine faded (true). He was my rock when I started on this and still is It brings tears to my eyes how he helped me change my life. Now I only see him every three months for 30 mins and I'm given an unusual amount of latitude: I'm given various doses and allowed to manage it myself--choosing lower doses when I want to drink real coffee (my full dose does NOT work with caffeine) or when I can't get a full night's sleep. I'm told this is highly unusual given the meds are a controlled substance and a sign of the faith my MD has that I'm not a drug seeker. (he's right. I saw "requiem for a dream" and let's say he'll never have to worry...)

I was lucky. I can afford the best doctors. the right medicine worked, the first time. This is not true of everyone.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that anyone who thinks they have ADHD to go to an MD who specializes in this stuff. Family doctors do NOT count. your basic Ph.D therapist doesn't count.

start with science, go slow and built outwards. FWIW my therapist says he will only work with 4 MD's in SF because his take is that they're all pill pushers. My MD is one of the only MDs in SF allowed to provide telephone prescriptions for Concerta. The pharmacy he sends me to never has shortages. This is also not consistently true, even in SF.

It's no joke. Amphetamines can screw you up. Take this stuff seriously, please and find a good doctor for a proper evaluation.

edit to add: you know I have ADHD: I didn't answer your question. haha!

the short answer is that yes, in the beginning your mood may be "up" and you may feel down on the rebound while you are adjusting. But as you stay with it, things even out and become VERY predictable. If you have ADHD you will recognize the terror I used to have about making sure my brain was ON a the right time--all sorts of weird rituals to wake it up for an important meeting, etc. On the meds, I have confidence my brain will be at its level best so my anxiety and its attendant grouchiness just went away. PS: coaching and therapy (two different things) helped this a lot and if you're late diagnosed as I was, you will need them. I recommend reading "driven to distraction" before you start meds, because that "invincible" feeling the first few months is the best time to start changing habits. you will dip in motivation after that, but never as bad as without and having those systems in place to fall back on will save you.

All I am saying is this might explain many things in my behavior my friends/partners never understood (sometimes even I did not).

I lose interest too quickly in various things like readings books, playing games, following conversations. Even when writing, after a sense or two, I get bored in what I want to say. The only thing (so far) that interests me is my job.

I share your concerns that nowadays doctors tend just to prescribe drugs, that only treat the symptoms. All seek for a medical advice - i.e. get diagnosed. From there on I think the best I can do is be aware of the problem and try to except more control/will over the things that make sense.

    It's important to note that we all miss appointments, we
    all prefer to do activities that interest us, we all
    occasionally stop listening to people mid-way through a
    conversation, and we all struggle to pay attention to
    boring jobs. These aren't signs of a disorder, these are
    just facts of life.

Absolutely. Those are important words, and are very very true. Let me add something very important:

While it is normal to "zone out" and struggle with boring tasks at times, if a person struggles with attention-related tasks on a long-term basis to the point where it negatively impacts their life, that points to some kind of behavioral issue.

A psychologist for meds, and a counselor for behavioral changes has worked the best for me. The meds make a tremendous difference, but they don't obliterate all of the issues, so there has to be more.

Plus, a counselor is cheaper by quite a bit than the psychologist, and can't prescribe meds, so they default to behavioral therapy.

> It isn't quite as selective as the author makes it out to be, in that someone with the traditional medical definition of ADHD would not be able to focus on anything for 16 hours straight as you are able to.

"Hyperfocus" (perseveration, really) is a very real aspect of ADD, however it's not the blessing some make it out to be. In fact, Russell Barkley addresses it directly in one of his seminars [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IEv9CA2vA]. Other things the author said also made me think he had been wrongly diagnosed or has a minor form of ADD, but definitely the "choice of focus" point he makes and how amphetamines affect him.

I didn't say that mindfulness would cure ADD. I just said mindfulness has been shown to decrease the effects. It's a not-very-well-defined condition to begin with, so I wouldn't believe a study claiming that something could cure it.

At the moment, there's no way to measure whether someone is cured. It may even be that "curing" ADD has some unintended/negative consequences -- perhaps some people have good qualities that are linked to their ADD. I really don't know.

There are many illnesses that are considered very treatable or curable, but that doesn't mean every case can be improved. I definitely wasn't implying that people with ADD aren't trying hard enough!

A great example of the above is OCD. People with the illness have to work extremely hard to experience improvement, and not every case improves. But it's still considered to be something that people can recover from nearly completely.

As someone with ADD, self-diagnoses is incredibly frustrating. It drives a really unhealthy perception of the disease.

I like how you say that ADD is over diagnosed but fail to see that you arrive at that conclusion in the same way that other wrongly self diagnose themselves.

I'm not agreeing with your or disagreeing with you, but you don't have any evidence to back up your claims.

What in your background makes you qualified to make this assertion vs decades of peer reviewed science?

It's fine to have opinions, it's not fine to spread mis-information.

No one can tell by looking at or talking to someone whether they are self diagnosed or not. The fact is that ADHD is very challenging to treat as not all cases respond the same way to the medication and therapy. Executive function is quite complex and deeply related to environment as well as genetics. For example, if your parents blame you for being "lazy" vs helping you find coping strategies, that's bound to impact confidence and thus performance.

When lay people such as yourself pass judgement it makes it harder for those of us with the condition to get the accommodations we are legally entitled to.

I will remind you that ADHD is more heritable than height. Many adults over a certain age were actually under diagnosed.

Please also note that ADHD has one of the highest co-morbidity rates of any mental condition, that is, it is most likely to be accompanied by anxiety and depression for the precise reason that others like to judge people for character on things like forgetting small details. If you treat for anxiety and depression and NOT ADHD you can have very serious, long lasting problems.

ADHD is a lack of control of attention, and hyperfocus is an example of that. IT's usually a reason people go undiagnosed. the parents say, "oh johnny can focus when he wants to, he's just lazy."

I encourage anyone who thinks they have this condition to first read "driven to distraction" and then use its advice to seek out a qualified psychiatrist for a proper evaluation. Do NOT rely on family doctors or your average therapist. Get a specialist. It's worth it.

Now while I'm at it, to your point on "modern life." We all get depressed some times, but there's a wide gulf between that and clinical depression, which I'm sure you would agree with me on.

To that end, here's a post by one of the top ADHD writers, Gina Pera, based in silicon valley, on this very topic:

http://adhdrollercoaster.org/myth-busting/myth-4-modern-life...

I quote:

"Does that mean, however, our fast-paced life causes ADHD? No, Quinn says. Too much stress can impair anyone’s brain function, but it doesn’t cause ADHD. She offers this bottom line: “When you remove stressors, people with ADHD still have ADHD. In other words, it’s not purely stress that inhibits their functioning. It’s the lack of skills required to meet challenges.”

Moreover, our fast-paced world can make someone with ADHD function worse than they might have in earlier times. In fact, some experts say, that is another reason ADHD is being more widely diagnosed: because modern life is demanding more of us than ever before."

edited to add this additional quote:

"Moreover, ADHD’s recorded history might span at least 2,500 years. That’s when the Greek physician-scientist Hippocrates apparently observed a condition sounding suspiciously like ADHD. He described patients who had “quickened responses to sensory experience, but also less tenaciousness because the soul moves on quickly to the next impression.” No mention of cell phones and video games as causative factors."

I had a similar situation - I didn't discover that I had ADHD until after an accident and possible brain injury brought it to my attention. Though my Drs were very skeptical that the accident caused ADHD, more that the shock threw it into overdrive.

After being diagnosed and doing some more thorough research I realized that ADHD had been present my entire life and may also run in my family, it just got much much worse after my accident.

What lazy drs, popular self-help and cheap internet content writing really botch when discussing ADHD is having us focus on the distraction portion and not the underlying reason for why - the portion of the brain responsible for executive function is diminished. This is a neurological problem. Part of the ADHD brain is malfunctioning.

Successfully coping with ADHD is more about learning mechanisms for how to react to stimuli without having the fully developed executive function abilities that others have. But people want to believe they don't have a problem, that they're not disabled. And the disorder doesn't manifest itself very visibly, so it's easy to deny, dismiss or ignore. So they write it off as an environmental problem, something that can be corrected with "proper thinking". This is false. It's a disability, and the solution is coping with the problem.

It seems we agree on everything except semantics, but I'll respond anyway.

When I said "physiological fact", I meant to suggest a category including things like Down's Syndrome. I did not mean things like depression or other mental illnesses that may be observable using brain imaging and/or caused by physiological circumstances.

I won't get into the problems with trying to draw generalizations from brain imaging (easy enough to Google it), but I also have a problem with the idea that observable, physiological problems can't be fixed through behavioral means. We definitely agree on that.

> I can assure you that ADD has been a constant thing in my life for 39 years and that depression and anxiety have not been.

I should have been clear that I don't think ADD is only a symptom of depression and anxiety. I was just sharing the theory that ADD is a common symptom of many conditions, rather than a true condition in itself. In my experience, the cause has been depression and anxiety, but that's obviously not an exhaustive or scientific sample.

I personally don't have as much of an issue with the diagnosis of ADD as I do with the definition. I think the weak, unscientific definition drives the misdiagnosis.

I believe that in the future, the medical community will have a better understanding of the many things that can cause ADD, and the diagnosis of "primary ADD" will mostly be replaced by other diagnoses.

I have no idea if most of these will be depression/anxiety diagnoses or not. I was just talking about my own, very limited experience.

> Unfortunately ADD is not just another overmedicalized normal condition.

I actually do think it might be overmedicalized in children. I grew up with many children who would be diagnosed with it today, but weren't at the time. Whether they had it or not, they grew into functioning adults without ADD.

I never suggested ADD is made up. I simply posted an interesting opinion that it's defined in a problematic way. Nothing I said (or linked to) suggests that there are no physiological markers for ADD, or that it doesn't exist.

Ive found things over the years that help. When I was in school the only classes I could do and focus and pass was techical drawing, and physisics and chemistry. Any other class I likely landed in the deans office for various reasons. I spent most of my schooling on a daily report where I had to get teachers to grade my behaviour in class. That helped me more than ritilin.

After I dropped out of school I ended up doing programming which for me is super easy to focus with. I love solving problems.

So my job is easy for me. Except meetings. I fidgit during meetings. End up scratching or biting my nails.

Outside of work I travel and do photography. I like building stuff but that's hard in Singapore. So I miss building stuff with dad back in NZ. And watch movies. Anything else I can't focus long enough to do. For me. I have to be moving or solving a problem. Things like reading and writing are impossible. Even writing emails at work I keep short cos I end up never completing them.

     However, in life and at work, there are many instances
     where I need to do things that I don't find 
     particularly stimulating or interesting.

Yes! There is a school of thought that says ADD is more of a "personality type" than a "disability."

Generally I view it that way as well. But it sure is a disability when you actually have to do boring things - and who doesn't have to do boring things? I mean really... who doesn't spend a significant portion of their lives doing things that aren't particularly interesting?

And I'm generally in not in favor of treating myself as if I'm "disabled" in any way whatsoever - I don't expect less of myself because I have ADD. Hell, I also participate in sports even though I'm asthmatic and blind in one eye and my depth perception sucks.

Sorry to double-reply, but...!

    I strongly suspect that I have ADD/ADHD (and I'm looking
    for a good psychiatrist in my area to discuss this with
    now)

    ...I'd still like to find a solution that doesn't involve 
    medication, just as a matter of personal convenience, but 
    it's been a struggle so far.

The good news and bad news is that medication is only a part of the answer and it is far from a silver bullet.

Generally, the rest of the answer comes in the form of coping (ie, focus-enabling) strategies that literally apply to anybody in the world whether they have ADD or not.

In my experience, proper sleep is the biggest factor, followed closely by sufficient exercise (which of course helps you sleep as well). Proper environment. Proper task management system. Support and understanding from your partner. The exact formula is different for everybody, I'm sure.

    a good psychiatrist

Psychiatrists generally just prescribe medications and help to ensure they're working as designed. I have not heard of them being particularly helpful for ADD therapy and coaching; generally there are therapists who specialize in that sort of thing.

I highly support your idea of seeing a psychiatrist - I just wanted to give a heads up on what a psychiatrist will and won't do. Their worldview is generally limited to the medication itself, which can be incredibly myopic when it comes to ADD success.

Good luck!

What is your treatment, if I might ask?

3 promotions in 3 years. Treatment changed my life.

This author is not serious or reputable, we already have the data over the years about what happens to you in life. Look at "ADHD in adults what the science says" or any lectures by Russell Barkley.

Give me a break, your finances, chances at failing in education, getting fired at work, are much higher with ADHD. Enough of the anti-medication nonsense.

Well luckily I am good enough at math/programming that I get huge amounts of leeway at my job. Meaning I miss tons of meetings, am always late, miss emails, and all that stuff. Basically as long as I keep coding like I do, my boss could care less about everything else. If this career didnt exist I would be in huge trouble. But regardless, I took medication for a long time. It worked for a while, but 5 years in I saw it lose effectiveness. Upping the dosage with little restraints led to addiction/abuse. Never taking too much is absolutely crucial, once your neural path ways have been exposed to high doses, it is very difficult to restrain yourself to small ones. Are you aware of behavioral/personality changes with it? Or have you generally stayed the same? My biggest issue was taking a drug every day that altered my personality in noticeable ways. After years on end its easy to forget who you were before, which I think is absolutely terrible.

Its difficult to find information about it online (thanks drug companies), but if you do real research into medical journals, Moderate doses can lead to long term/structural changes in the brain. Abuse can be neurotoxic. Ritalin is considerably safer than adderall/dex. This makes it hard to separate out what was caused by the drug and what is a symptom of ADD, thus causing a bad feedback cycle.

I recently saw a therapist (for unrelated issues) who said it was a common pattern for bright individuals who were bored with regular schooling to be diagnosed as ADD.

Meditation, exercise, proper sleep, and healthy food all have a huge effect. Biggest thing is being interested in what I am working on at work. I drink huge amounts of caffeine and sugar (soda helps the most), which help a ton. I take frequent breaks, go for walks, and work obscure hours. I end up getting about 4 peoples work done myself, mainly because I can leverage my programming ability to find shortcuts in the work that other people cannot.

It's not the ability to focus on a coding problem, that is a sign of ADHD. It's the inability to focus on anything BUT the coding problem.

It doesn't matter whether it is a coding problem, video game, book, website, or any other task. There are times when there is something much more important to be focusing on, but it requires such an insane amount of effort to focus on that thing, that you simply don't. Or maybe you do focus on the important task, but chances are it doesn't get your full attention or you end up distracted very quickly.

It's important to note that hyperfocus is not a DSM-V criteria for ADHD. In fact, hyperfocus doesn't appear anywhere in any official diagnostic criteria for ADHD that I'm aware of (If I'm wrong, I'd love to know).

The official DSM-V criteria, along with helpful explanations, are available here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html

I'm still not sure how hyperfocus came to be such a popular idea on internet ADD forums and self-diagnosis websites. If someone can point me toward the etymology of the idea, I'd really like to see it.

>but it seems like there are plenty of well-regarded dev houses in Seattle

Can you give any pointers to these or examples?