Comment by notthegov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notthegov | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You just described humanity.

My view of ADHD is biased because my only experience with it is a psychiatrist who earns millions a year prescribing it, several girls who believe they need it for college (two attempted suicide) and then several male friends all of whom abuse it.

There is a side effect of stimulant abuse that makes you confidently delusional.

Does ADHD exist? Can stimulants cure lack of focus or should they? Does the abuse of Adderall increase the risk of suicide?

Is it ok for an obese doctor to have 20 supercars and 3 homes because he tell thousands of emotionally vunerable patients that they must take what is essentially meth everyday for the rest of their life to be "normal"?

I am all for pragmatism if it works, but people have poor self-control and my experience of ADHD only involves sociopaths and suicidal rich girls. So excuse my problem but I don't believe in chemical imbalances being cured by myopic pharmacutical companies and non-thinking doctors who act more like automons and technicians than "learned men" of science.

People love to label themselves and explain the challenges of being human by ascribing various syndromes. We should resist that temptation and find ways to solve our problems without taking a drug that is the same as meth-

http://www.vice.com/read/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-he-fo...

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.

You have just described my routine except I don't take medication. I don't doubt that ADHD is a thing, but I'd like to know exactly where the line is drawn in the sand. Because from what I've heard of what ADHD medication does I could definitely stand to benefit from it.

There aren't lines; every case is so specific to that person's needs I don't think it's fair to pigeon-hole too much. For me, my coworker's change in demeanor was enough. You may find that medication smoothes the swings for you (and for all I know, my coworker would swing even harder without the medicine - I think that was mentioned once). Or not.

See a doctor and try it out in a safe dosage. If you find it helps, great! If not, well, maybe something else will work. Or perhaps you're just quirky.

It's hard to tell sometimes :)

There was a comedian who said something along the lines of: "I got got glasses the other day, and it shocked me. How could instantly improved eye sight not be at the top of everyone's To Do list?!" So when people talk about medication like it's a debate, I get confused. How could instantly improved mood and cognition not be at the top of everyone's list? (I'm a hyprocrite in that respect, but I'm just onery and enjoy the struggle.) If you don't want it, but the medicine helps, work your way off it slowly enough that you train your body to compensate (a number of people have told me that it's geometric: you can cut a third, then another third, then another until finally it's a negligible amount, but linearly tends to give poorer results).

But most importantly: do what improves your life. I wear glasses, and I've never felt shame for it. No reason to feel bad about a biochemical imbalance - that's even more complicated!

If you'd like to learn more about it this is basically the best video you could watch in my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo It's quite long so I'd watch it at 1.5x and/or in chunks.

Even though it's for parents of children with ADHD it makes it clear with good examples what they're dealing with. Also worth keeping in mind that the disorder is different for adults in some ways.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com