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alterom

Indeed.

The following (informally described) symptoms are well-known consequences of ADHD:

- Delayed Sleep Phase [1]

- Staying Up Late [2]

- Revenge Bedtime Procrastination [3]

Newsflash, getting a full night's sleep helps alleviate ADHD symptoms, while being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks us.

But there are reasons why we stay up late. Simply forcing us to sleep doesn't address those reasons.

Which is why I wrote about it so much, and keep spamming these links even though it feels so darn obvious. Not to the authors of the study, it appears.

[1] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Delayed%20Sleep%20Phase

[2] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Staying%20Up%20Late

[3] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Revenge%20Bedtime

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going to bed early feels like i'm a child being punished.

staying up late rocks. its the funnest. why would i give that up? just to pay attention better at work? no thanks.

> staying up late rocks. its the funnest. why would i give that up? just to pay attention better at work? no thanks.

You may eventually find yourself in a situation where the tradeoff is worth it.

E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.

There's only one little problem with that reasoning, my friend...

sigh

ADHD PEOPLE ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY REWARD[1]

We literally can't do the things we want and need to do [2].

We know full well the trade-off is worth it. It's just that we can't have it.

Sincerely,

--an AuDHDer

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3010326/

[2] https://add.org/demand-avoidance/

> ADHD PEOPLE ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY REWARD

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair way to frame that. ADHD people can be highly motivated by reward, but being motivated isn't enough to consistently navigate the path from wanting something to getting something. Reward can make you want something more, and even try harder for it, but ADHD means that sometimes no matter how much you want something and how hard you try it just doesn't happen.

I'd frame it differently: ADHD people are highly motivated by reward, but like, actual reward, not an uncertain promise of unclear reward at indeterminate point in the future, whose causal connection with motivated behavior is tenuous at best - which is, somehow, how most people apparently motivate themselves.

N=1 here, but for me, anything that's more than an hour or two in the future rapidly loses any motivating power; any reward that happens after more than a day may as well happen at infinity.

It's more literal than that. The prospect of reward is very literally not motivating. It does not provide motive force. It does not make us move.

We consciously want the thing, but that isn't enough for executive function to kick in, so "I need to get off the sofa so I can make tasty dinner" results in not having moved two hours later.

>I'm not sure that's an entirely fair way to frame that. ADHD people can be highly motivated by reward, but being motivated isn't enough to consistently navigate the path from wanting something to getting something.

We seem to have a different understanding of the word motivate.

I use it in a very straightforward sense: motivation is the energy to move forward to your goal. It's motive force.

For example, I might understand that I need to file taxes, pay fines, or apply for such-and-such benefit, I might want to do that for the rewards (or lack of bad consequences for filing late), but I just can't motivate myself to do it until it becomes an urgent emergency and everything is on fire.

As in, I can't get myself to move on this task.

>ADHD means that sometimes no matter how much you want something and how hard you try it just doesn't happen.

We fully agree here.

Executive functioning is a better term to use, but people are familiar with motivation more.

> We seem to have a different understanding of the word motivate. I use it in a very straightforward sense: motivation is the energy to move forward to your goal. It's motive force.

Both meanings look like they're valid uses of the term. The "to cause to take action", "to cause someone to behave" and "to incite/actuate/propel" definitions focus on what initiated an action/behavior, while most of the definitions I found focus on just having or providing a reason/incentive/desire/enthusiasm/encouragement for an action which applies even if that action never actually materializes.

    to give (someone) a reason for doing something
    to be a reason for something
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motivate

    To provide with an incentive or a reason for doing something; impel: 
    To cause to be enthusiastic
    to give incentive to
    to provide with a motive or motives; incite; impel. 
    https://www.thefreedictionary.com/motivate

    To provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate. 
    To animate; to propel; to cause to take action. 
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motivate

    to cause someone to behave in a particular way: 
    to make someone want to do something well: 
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/motivate

Ah, hello me.

> E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.

I can do all of these things anyway. Of course, this does present the potential reality that were I able to sleep like people, I could be even more successful, but after a near death experience, then disability, I've learned to be happy with where I am.

> E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.

I am in this situation, forcing me to adapt and get up early like most normies.

My job performance did not improve. And going to sleep early only makes me more miserable, because now I have exactly zero personal, interrupt-risk-free time.

Or just: you have a family, including children who need you to be a responsible adult first thing in the morning (every morning) whether you like it or not

It's hard to interface with society this way. I'm the same as you and have waxed and waned many times. There are periods where I'm all about being social and living a normal life. There are other times where I'm just down to only sleep when I'm dead tired (as opposed to using drugs to keep me in normal rhythm). There are tradeoffs

Consistent inconsistency is the part of the ADHD package.

It's not that there aren't tradeoffs, it's that we don't get to choose these tradeoffs (as in: the cost of choosing is huge and nonzero).

A delayed sleep/wake cycle is only relevant in the context of a society where people are forced on an unnatural sleep schedule. You could get a full 9 hours of high quality sleep every single night and still be considered to have a delayed sleep/wake cycle disorder.

Some people are just night owls. A large percentage of night owls have ADHD. I think they can linked without it meaning that people with ADHD have to learn to get up at 5AM.

Keep staying up late if that's what feels natural for you, but it's probably worth making sure that you're still getting enough sleep and that you don't have other issues (like sleep apnea) keeping you from getting the quality of sleep you need. There's a lot of other health issues associated with sleep disorders and sleep problems will tank people's ability to focus even when they have non-ADHD brains.

This is my feeling too, going to sleep early feels like I’m missing out on so much. My entire family other than my late father has been this way since forever, we almost never go to bed till 2-3 am.

when left to my own devices without external time constraints (e.g., gradschool), i settle into sleeping from 4am-11am.

but there's a strong cultural bias to judge people that wake up at 11am as lazy. and people that stay up to 4am are reckless.

but somebody that slept the same seven hours from 11pm-6am is pragmatic and responsible.

> Newsflash, getting a full night's sleep helps alleviate ADHD symptoms, while being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks us.

being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks everyone. If you've got ADHD getting the sleep you need won't cure it, but it will make it easier to manage. If you don't have ADHD, but a lot of the symptoms fit for you, getting sleep might those all go away.

Lots of the things on this site are normal things that everyone experiences to some degree ...right?

>Lots of the things on this site are normal things that everyone experiences to some degree ...right?

Everyone may experience some of those things some of the time, particularly if they are overwhelmed, overworked, overstressed, etc.

ADHD is experiencing most of these most of the time - as in all the time - for your entire life.

As an analogy: everyone may experience toe pain sometimes if and when they stub their toe on kitchen table leg.

But if it hurts like that all the time, for your entire life - you'd get it checked out, right? There are solid chances something is different about your body.

Now multiply that by 100.

To reword this: say, each relatable entry on that page is a 2% likelihood of ADHD.

If you relate to 100 of them, the chances you're not ADHD drop to 13%.

I've got enough people through an official diagnosis this way that this page, in itself, is a decent enough diagnostic tool.

How much do you think ADHD is a specific mental condition that one either has or doesn't have, versus a set of common symptoms that can have many causes? I wonder which direction a causal relationship between sleep and ADHD might be.

Pretty much anything we don't have a detailed mechanistic understanding of falls into the latter category - an arbitrary bag of sometimes unrelated symptoms, ie a fundamentally statistical categorization - regardless of what anyone might try to claim. This applies to everything across the natural sciences and medicine. If we can't model it in minute detail then we do not truly understand it and anyone attempting to claim otherwise is full of shit regardless of whatever credentials they might have somehow managed to stumble into holding.

Exactly this. Particularly in mental health, where verifying a mechanistic explanation is hard (at least doing so ethically is), many of the well-known problems are defined as clusters of highly correlated symptoms, because that's the best we can do at this point - but this is useful.

Not all highly correlated symptoms will turn out to have a common mechanistically-explainable cause, but all symptoms of a mechanistically-explainable cause obviously are highly correlated.

>How much do you think ADHD is a specific mental condition that one either has or doesn't have, versus a set of common symptoms that can have many causes?

The sign has been pretty specific that it's the first (specific condition), and not the latter.

To get the big thing out of the way: brain scans of people with ADHD show measurable differences in brain structure, activity, and neurotransmitter levels compared with neurotypical brains[1].

Secondly, ADHD is highly hereditary, to the tune of 75%+ chance[2].

But you don't need a brain scan for your answer. There's a reason ADHD is a thing in DSM (if it were merely "a set of common symptoms", it wouldn't be).

Each "symptom" (a manifestation of an ADHD trait) in and of itself may not be rare, and people in general may experience it during certain conditions.

ADHD is experiencing a hella lot of them off the list, for absolute majority of the time, all your life.

Please really, really pay attention to the example I gave. It looks like you glossed over it entirely.

And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony of asking someone to pay more attention in this thread.

> I wonder which direction a causal relationship between sleep and ADHD might be.

The ADHD --> horrible sleep causation is well established.

The horrible sleep --> ADHD symptoms become worse causation is also well established.

Horrible sleep --> ADHD causation is nonexistent. There is nothing indicating that ADHD could be an acquired condition. There's all the evidence to the contrary (you are born this way, as the song goes).

The study establishes that "fixing" circadian rhythm helps with ADHD symptoms, which is a Captain Obvious moment (full night's sleep makes brain work better, and we have difficulty getting it ever).

I'm not sure what other causation you are looking for.

[1] https://www.adhdevidence.org/blog/finding-order-in-the-compl...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6477889/

That makes sense, thanks. I think that matches my prior understanding, but recently people seem to talk a lot about "acquiring" ADHD, often from doomscrolling tiktok or something like that, and I wasn't sure about how much of that is true. Based on what you're saying, it sounds like the ADHD a lot of people claim they have is about as real as the OCD they also claim to have (i.e. minor symptoms that vaguely match), and the real thing is much more life-altering and deserves to not be diluted.

Your links helped me immensely when I first saw them a few years back. So many "quirks" finally clicked. Keep sharing and Thank you!

Thanks for the link to this wiki. There are so many traits I feel related to, I can now procrastinate the whole day there.

"Revenge" is such a dystopian way to describe "making time for oneself"

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