ADHD is vastly overdiagnosed and many children are just immature, say scientists

>Oh yeah, being interested in one thing one day and completely hating it the next day makes it hard to really plan for any long term goals when you're not sure what you'll even want to do tomorrow, in a few hours, next week, next month.

The older I get the more this taxes me. Not because I have more responsibility, but because the aggregate of my failures grows larger with each passing year. I can only imagine how someone in my position who also suffers from chronic depression must feel.

>It's like your head is disconnected from your body and you're watching a bored teenager live your life for you.

Exactly this. Said better than I ever could.

>I feel worse for the people around me sometimes than I do for myself because I still have a hard time admitting I have ADHD and not that I'm just lazy and don't want to do anything. That's the true nightmare.

Even when you come to terms with it this is the hardest part. Even if you confide in them it doesn't help because rare is the person that believes it's real or can even empathize enough to properly determine if they do or not.

I thought I'd be mad at those I confided in that didn't believe in me but I'm not. If anything I feel worse for them because before they just thought I didn't care enough or was lazy but after they basically have a confirmation that you're so lazy or selfish that you got a doctor to sign off on a free pass. Which is funny because a free pass is the last thing you need. Even when you explain it they rarely seem to understand that you need to be held more accountable than a normal person.

I work with someone with ADHD. It is plain as day when the medication starts to wear off. They can focus and program with diligence in the morning to early afternoon, but then later have a difficult time following longer trains of thought. It's not mere laziness - this person buckles down for even the most tedious of tasks, but rather their attention sorta slides off the topic. If you took the way a person's eyes slide off something shielded by a SEP-field, or the opposite of how your eyes are drawn to police flashers.

It's hard to describe, but it's certainly not just a goofy bandaid. They develop a routine around the process: harder or deeper problems in the morning, and small quick tickets/tasks in the afternoon. Or: as the day wears on, the work gets more granular (and thus more resilient to inturruption).

Mind, this is from my outside viewpoint. What actually goes on in their head can only really be described by them. But quite a few months of routine give me this impression.

The article you linked doesn't back up your comment's conclusions. It says that Adderall is more similar to Meth than previously believed, but that users of meth feel the effects more quickly through smoking. There is a similar relationship between pain killers and street drugs of similar chemical composition, but there no controversy about whether we should prescribe painkillers at all (That is, no one says, 'drug x is too similar to heroin, we should not prescribe it'). As such, using "the same as meth" is a scare tactic, not a scientific criticism of the substance itself.

You have a low opinion of people who take prescription stimulants. But that does not negate their theraputic abilities. This is the same discussion we're having around medical cannabis: legislatures think stoners are lazy so cancer patients shouldn't be able to use it. This is a poor basis for determining the usefulness of a drug.

I would be interested to read more evidence of this cabal of corrupt physicians with "20 supercars" making massive profits solely from stimulants. Mainly because I don't believe it's true. A vast majority of doctors use their experience and patient input to prescribe therapies that they believe will benefit the patient. Doctor shopping is a problem. Prescription drugs should not be able to advertise to people. But none of that is evidence to back up your claims.

The tragic thing about mental disorders like depression or ADHD that your average person thinks that it sounds like what they deal with ("Hey, I hate doing Laundry too but even if I procrastinate a little I do it.") and those that have them and aren't diagnosed or treated think everyone else has it as hard as they do and that they're normal. It's incredibly difficult to empathize or understand something that happens in other people's brains.

I think it's safe to say you could pick any person off the street and you'll find at least one, if not several, attributes from any given mental disorder. Who doesn't know someone with noticeable but mild/manageable obsessive behavior or narcissism? But what characterizes a disorder isn't the attributes themselves, it's whether or not they cause significant harm and impairment.

So sure, I'm describing humanity but that's only because it's the same problems that everyone has except brought to an extreme.

I'm sorry that your experience with ADHD has been shitty but it has nothing to do with the disorder or those that actually suffer from it. Should diagnosis be more rigorous? Of course. Should doctors unsafely prescribing medication for profit be ousted? Yes. But this is a problem for any controlled substance that has legitimate uses. There are real doctors with PHDs doing research, studies and testing that you've never met. Are they evil because the psychiatrist you know is?

> You just described humanity.

As someone who does not have ADHD, brazzledazzle's description: """Given the choice between literally doing nothing while staring at a blank screen and doing something you don't want to do you'll need to fight yourself to the point of exhaustion just to do it. Your conscious self is essentially not in charge. Your most reliable tool to motivate yourself is fear. ADHD isn't some kind of vacation from responsibility, it's a nightmare.""" is not anywhere close to my lived experience.