Slashdot Mirror
Working with ADHD?
Famanoran asks: "I've recently been diagnosed ADHD ? and am now taking Ritalin. I've found that it helps me rather significantly, but I'm keen to try other things that may help. My question is to the ADHD'ers on slashdot: How have you coped with ADHD, and how have you found it affect your work performance? Do you object to having ADHD? Have you tried natural alternatives such as DPA/EPA (Omega3), 5-HTP (natural precursor to serotonin), and what were your results? Also - How do you find it working in groups of people, either as the only ADHD'er there, or in a group of ADHD'ers? Do you think that your ADHD contributes to your abilities technically, or is it a hinderance?" Previously, Ask Slashdot dealt with ADHD in children, now what suggestion do you have for the grown-ups, with the additional burden of a career, who find themselves in the same situation?
I have it - diagnosed >10 years ago. STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM RITALIN! Tell the doctor you want Wellbutrin - it works better and has far fewer side effects. As far as working with it - good luck. If you are anything like me, good luck holding a job. I get bored quickly. This is necessarily a bad thing. I have very valuable skills and have no problems finding jobs.
I have found that ADHD makes me more creative than most people but that it also makes me a much poorer student, I had a half ride scholarship to one of the top comp sci schools in the country and was placed on academic probation in under a year despite having a 3.8 in my major, I found I just wasn't able to study for the classes that didn't hold my interest. The great thing is that my job really does hold my interest and so I am able to focus my manic energy towards getting stuff done, but the sepurfelous things like paperwork and stuff tend to fall by the wayside until my boss gets on me to get em done. As for coping with it I mostly have tried a balanced diet rich in dark vegtables and have tried to wein myself off of caffeine (I used to drink a 2 liter of Mt. Dew during an 8 hour shift).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"Driven to Distraction" by Dr. Edward Hallowell, M.D. I went to one of his lectures to learn how to help my son, who has ADHD, and learned that -- surprise! -- I have it, too. This book is a big help! Highly recommended.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
My parents paid $600 CDN to be tested for admittance to an enriched high school program. The stupid guy made me click a stupid mouse for 15 minutes every time an X showed on the screen. He then diagnosed me with acute ADHD. I don't have ADHD. For my whole life I have been good at school, been able to sit still and concentrate on things for long periods of time, etc. Tried explaining to the guy that my arm fell asleep clicking the stupid mouse.
I also got nearly perfect on the Academy test itself.
That said, my parents ignored the diagnosis and I plugged right along with my straight 4.0 GPA. That's my experience with ADHD.
Oh ya, till grade 6 I did have trouble concentrating at school, but that because of the classroom being a riot of Ritalin-laced monsters. Went ot a private school for 7&8 and I got back on track for the rest of my learning career in public education.
I like to read the following from the Jargon File:f -the-Ha cker-Personality.html
http://www.ack.ca/jargon/html/Weaknesses-o
(some stuff removed)
1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other things) a combination of short attention span with an ability to `hyperfocus' imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another syndrome that is said to overlap with many hacker traits entered popular awareness: Asperger's syndrome (AS). This disorder is also sometimes called `high-function autism', though researchers are divided on whether AS is in fact a mild form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to severe deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues and in modeling or empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS patients exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits with high intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently seek out technical fields where problem-solving abilities are at a premium and people skills are relatively unimportant. Both syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities in neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the brain's processing of serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are really `diseases' rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists - thus, any social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such `abnormal' people until they are properly docile and stupid and `well-socialized'.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for ADD and AS. It is probably true that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 10% (AS is rarer and there are not yet good estimates of incidence as of 2000).
Well, it was the first time I'd told a superior about it, but I cared about my job and didn't want something that was unknown to come into play later and get me into trouble. But I found that it was better to just deal with it myself.
There were times that I had too many things to deal with at once (one man tech support at a video streaming company), so some things would get put on the back burner and forgotten about and when I got overwhelmed he'd sit me down and try and be understanding by looking at it from an ADD perspective, so I lucked out I guess. But the sudden intervention was always a WTLW sort of thing, by the time he'd realized I was maybe forgetting things I'd already figured it out myself and take care of things.
I don't know, I have a hard time keeping it a secret because I find it to be such an enormous part of who I am, and I find that telling someone helps them greatly in relating to me. I can be quirky and way out there at times, so telling someone early on that I have ADHD helps people from writing me off as a crazy idiot, and more often than not they don't know anything about it and are interested in learning more.
Oh, and the usual reaction I get from people when I tell them I have ADD is a big "oooh, that's what it is about you I sensed!"
I can only answer some of your questions, and that only based on what I've heard and been told.
1) ADHD is fairly new. But people have always had it. Instead of being diangosed, they were often called lazy, unfocused, or hyper.
3) There are different types. I know of ADHD - Hyperactive, and ADHD Inattentive, and a combination. There appears to be different severities of ADHD, but I don't know how it can be quantified. I have "inattentive".
5) Certain brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine are suggested as being a factor. Wellbutrin, which can be used to treat both depression and ADHD, acts on reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine. I have heard anecdotally that MRI scans of patients with ADHD show significant differences from the "norm".
6) anecdotally, as I said, I've been diagnosed with ADHD. I would say I had a great homelife as a child. My parents loved me, never abused me, fed me well, I played a lot, mom stayed home, etc. I was always well behaved, but had a terrible time focusing.
So, is ADHD real? Well, I don't know.. like I said, some would just say it's laziness or lack of focus. But here are some examples from my life that were the basis of my diagnosis.
In the 1st grade, we shared a room with the 2nd graders. I was always held in at recess because I would pay attention to the 2nd grader teacher, not my teacher. On the other hand, I was always way ahead in our math workbook (she would say do page 20, and I would already be at 40).
Mom was often worried because I would "get obsessed" over something and ignore everything else for long periods. Maybe it was dinosarus, astronomy, dungeons & dragons, a girlfriend, etc.
My whole life has been a big cycle of starting something with incredible passion and energy, and then struggling to finish. I reached "Life Scout" by 14, and just barely finished my Eagle a week before my 18th birtday, for example.
Looking at my college transcrips, you see A's, C's and F's (but few B's and no D's). A's are when I could stay focused. C's are when I didn't do half the work. I got A's on what I DID do, and I was often praised on the quality of it. F's are where the teacher wouldn't accept only half the work, or would not accept work late, or I simply didn't go to class. There are many Incompletes that never got completed.
I had a class from last summer that I managed to get an "I" in. When it finally was "finish it or get kicked out of school", I was able to somewhat focus. I finished 3 papers in 3 days, but my friends kept calling to make sure I was on task. It's like pulling teeth sometimes!
Oh, and why did I get an "I" on that class? I couldn't force myself to finish the work. I was getting to go to Europe and spent my evenings labelling Star Trek recordings I'd made from the TV (about 6 per tape, 30 tapes or so). I had this feeling like I just needed to get that done so my house-sitter wouldn't see how unorganized I was.. I guess! She doesn't even watch star trek!
It's a bear to keep my house clean - there ALWAYS has to be a mess somewhere.. I can never get it totally clean! Even in basic training, I had a drawer that was a total mess (the one we could lock). Later in the army, my roommates all (different bases) all joked that my wall-locker exploded on weekends. I would just shove all my stuff back in there during the week.
For example, right now I'm in finals week at school! I finished two presentations this week - within an hour of presenting them. I have 2 finals tomorrow and the next... but I'm here on slashdot answering your questions.
I've often not done my own homework while helping others with theirs.
It's like I'm in a constant state of "something else is always more interesting", and sure it's just a matter of will to stay focused, but I even get unfocused from the effort of staying focused.
Quite frankly, you're right.
BUT
I think that the real issue you're talking about isn't the overdiagnosis of ADD, but actually the overprescription of Ritalin. I mean really... like half of the kids in my 4th grade class were on Ritalin. Even back then I knew it was ridiculous. For some people, it really is a problem, and it really sucks. I've known many people growing up who supposedly had adhd, and I think that many of them were just morons. However, SOME of them really do have ADD, myself included.
In my case, I wasn't really diagnosed until I was about 20, and at that point I realised how obvious it was all along, and I just hadn't realised what was going on. Anyway, my point is that for the folks who really do have ADD, it can be extremely frustrating to get along as a normal human being - simply because you seem for all the world like a normal human being, except that you can't get a damn thing done when you're supposed to, and at other times you're so productive it's like you are a different person. I've spent 10 years of my life trying to become that "different person" more often, because when I actually start cranking work out, I can work *FAST*. What totally sucks is that I have never figured out how to do it. I've tried ritalin on and off, and it sorta does help, but I can never remember to take the damn thing, and I dislike the side effects - particularly that it affects my creativity. Taking a pill which squashes your creativity _sucks_. I really should try something else I guess, since I've got to make some changes to myself before I go back to school (got kicked out after seven semesters of bouncing between majors and programs looking for something I could do productively).
*sigh* I guess my point is to cut people some slack when they talk about ADD/ADHD being a real thing.
if you are doing so well in school, and you can concentrate well enough to get into MIT, please tell me why you feel you have ADHD? You concentrate better than the average person if you manage to do all the crazy math stuff they do at MIT, I'm going to tell you congrats because I myself cant handle the math stuff.
I agree its a different way of thinking, I'm just saying people shouldnt think of themselves as disabled, or flawed because thats the way its presented. People with ADHD have something wrong with them, or people with ADHD arent normal, when its not true.
People with ADHD are normal in every way, the only difference is, people with ADHD prefer to multitask and get bored focusing on one thing for too long.
This can be used to a persons advantage if they enjoy what they are doing, or it can cause them to never really do something quite right if they hate what they are doing.
You loved school, you did well and ended up in MIT.
Point is ADHD isnt a learning disability as people keep claiming, and I dont really think its some kinda chemical error, its more of a personality trait.
Dont tae the lazy gene thing literally, I'm just proving a point that ADHD is not new, people have been like this for centuries and in the past the label they were given was that they were lazy.
One thing I never hear people consider is that ADHD could be an effect of a higher than average intelligence.
Lets suppose someone has a really high IQ, and their brain is simply going at a pace thats too fast for current methods of teaching to actually compensate, the results could be ADHD.
Consider the fact that "gifted" kids are given that label based on the fact that school is so easy to them that they dont concentrate on it, how is this any different than ADHD.
If something isnt challenging why should a person remain insterested in it for longer than 2 seconds?
I'd like your opinion of what ADHD actually is, the brain disorder crap to me is just that, crap.
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First, I want to complement you on a being somewhat sensitive on the subject. You have legitimate questions, and you phrased them farily well, and unlike a lot of people on slashdot didn't just get flippant about it.
1. Did ADHD exist 100 years ago? Did people care 100 years ago?
Yes, most likely. A lot were called lazy or dreamers. Some managed to do great things, others ended up the town drunk.
2. What percentage of people are diagnosed with ADHD?
I don't know exactly, but more than actually have it. It is very real, but most likely overdiagnosed. It also however correlates highly with various problems such as stressful birth, and chemical abuse by the mother, which may be on the rise. As an aside, even when a woman stops drugs or drinking when she finds out she is pregnant, the damage is often already done, particular with such things as fetal alcohol syndrome.
3. Is there different levels of ADHD? Different advancements? Different Types?
Yes, which leads me to believe that at least some are completely different disorders, with different causes. Remember psychology isn't particularly old. When formal medicine was as old as psychology is now, humors were thought to be important. As a field it is still in it's infancy. In a thousand years, people will look back at what we now believe about psychology and wonder how we could have possibly thought that.
4. Would you say ADHD is over-diagnosed? In other words, I've met a number of people considered ADHD that I would consider perfectly normal.
See question 2, but you also learn coping skills. These skills work for a limited time (such as around friends, but can cause difficulty on people you are around more often. It's pretty easy to keep up a facade for a few hours, even without medication, but all the time is hard. Keep in mind too that they may have been medicated.
5. Is ADHD chemical or psychological? Both? Is there a difference?
6. Don't take this wrong, but I admit I've never met ADHD from what I would consider good parents (i.e., teach their children how to work hard and focus long); so the question, how related is ADHD to broken homes, absent parenting, stifled creativity, abuse, general over-disciplen, or the so called spoiled brat situation?
I'll take these two things together. There are people who have a verifiable chemical imbalence in the brain. This chemical imbalance produces symptoms of ADD. There are also spoiled brats. Some of these spoiled brats have symptoms of ADD. Since psychology studies behaivor and then determines a diagnosis, it can be difficult to tell them apart. It is roughly equivilant to listening to a description of heart pain and making a diagnosis of a particular heart condition. Unfortunatly, that's about the best that can be done right now. As I've said before, psychology is a field of scinece it is only around 100 years old.
7. I have heard before ADHD is related to stress and/or a lack of exercise on the part of the mother during pregnancy. Has either of these been in a study? Confirmed?
There have been a lot of studies done, and ADD correlates with stress on the mother, lack of exercise, too much exercise, drug use, alcohol use, and a whole lot of other things. The data is rather contradictory, and none of the correlations are particularly strong, but they are present.
There are also correlations to the diet of the mother during pregnancy, the child's diet, various diseases at a young age, as well as several other thing I can't remember and don't feel like looking up.
I tend to feel that ADD and most other psychological disorders are actually several diverse problems that merely present similarly. Until technology advances further than it has, it is hard to know. Certian types of severe indigestion feel exactly like a heart attack for example.
I'm not a rabid anti-psycholgist. My psyciatrist saved my life. I'm forever grateful to him and his profession, but I also recognize that it is a young science, and they are flailing around in the dark a lot. Still, I think they help more than they hurt.
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I was diagnosed ADD in 6th grade. (I'm 21 now) After starting to take Cylert, my math and science scores plummeted. Which was a terrible thing for me, since math and science was what I prided myself upon. I also began having outrageous migraines.
I quit cold-turkey. In a glorious moment of defiance, I flushed the entire (very very expensive) bottle of mindsuppressor down the toilet.
My opinion - ADD / ADHD is some scientists made-up excuse for my (our) brain running faster than his. The jellous bastard ought to be so lucky.
I've learned to live with it, I've learned to avoid situations when I need to concentrate. I cope, I handle, and obviously, it's not that much of a problem. I often times think ADD actually helps my code.
I've been drug-free since that moment when I told my parents they should take the *ucking medicine and see how they like it -- then proceeded to dump the entire bottle. Quitting cold turkey didn't give me any side effects -- at least none that were worse than the stuff that damn drug did to me.
The best part was -- I could think again.
P.S. After quitting cylert, my math grade - which had gone from a 99% A the first two nine-weeks to a 68% (near failing) the third nine-weeks - went right back up to a 99%, and suddenly, everything made sense again.
To that jellous asshole of a 'doctor' that put me on that stuff, I salute you with one finger.