
Stopping the False Epidemic of Adult ADHD - how-about-this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/stopping-the-false-epidemic-of-adult-adhd_b_9694100.html
======
CryoLogic
I always find it funny how people overblow the side effects from amphetamines
and other performance enhancing drugs. Somehow these are "bad" because they
are illegal. Just like how marajuana was "bad" but now its suddenly "okay"
because it's legal.

I have ADD - and an adderall prescription helped me get through alot of the
bullshit for my bachelors degree. I can concentrate on things that interest
me, but universities make you take a ton of unrelated courses and I just lost
interest almost instantly on work.

So for one year (my senior year) I had a prescription ranging from 15-30mg XR
(30 was too high so I dropped down).

In retrospect, I was able to quit cold turkey with minimal sides after
graduating - got my heart scanned out of curiosity and its fine, cholesterol
is fine, etc. etc.

I think most drugs are safe if:

1\. Used in the right doses for the right duration .

2\. Only used on otherwise healthy individuals (this is an important one in
the world of "everyone is equal") - I would not take adderall if I was obese
since it is a stimulant and does increase BP / HR.

~~~
mattmanser
Say a drug has a 1% chance to have an adverse affect.

There's 99 out of 100 people like you saying "it's ok!". But there's the
thousands of people who are left screwed up.

What you think is completely irrelevant. It's a numbers game, not a personal
anecdote game.

How would this comment read if you'd got your heart scanned and it _wasn 't_
ok?

~~~
drawnwren
You're right. However, the article's list of adverse affects are pretty
laughable. You also just pulled numbers out of thin air. There are lots of
anecdotes in this thread, and doctors seem pretty ok prescribing an FDA
approved medication - so, aside from "it's being overprescribed" what is the
downside?

------
djyaz1200
First off any medical advice from Huffpost is bullshit. Second the author here
and the doc cited are pompous idiots. ADHD is real in children and adults and
evidence of it can be seen with brain imaging
([https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170216105919.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170216105919.htm)).
Maybe they should conduct their work with some hard science/evidence instead
of a checklist based on opinion? Ooooh.... and cry me a river, some big pharma
company paid for a vacation for you and then took something you said and bent
it to sell some drugs. Wake up! They sell drugs and so do you doc! I have ADHD
and meds are the difference between total personal ruin and successfully
running a company for me... and many other people. Every one of these
clickbait bullshit articles that descend into moral arguments about ADHD do
real harm to actual people with a quantifiable disability. Rule 1 of being
kind that you teach a child is not to pick on people for things they can't
change. I can't change that I have ADHD, other people with it cannot change
that. We live in a world made by people with what the book "Delivered from
Distraction" called "Attention Surplus Disorder." Supposedly the people who
aren't sick are the ones who can sit still at a desk and then a cubicle their
whole life doing what they are told. If that's being well I'm so glad I'm
"sick."

------
bsagdiyev
All of my post is anecdotal, but it sucks that some people abuse the system
just for drugs. With that disclaimer out of the way lets begin:

From what I gather it (Adult ADHD) is also very hard to distinguish from
bipolar disorder. It took 18 months of moving around with anti-psychotics and
other drugs to treat my "bipolar disorder" before my doctor realized that it
was ADHD and we found almost immediate results from the treatment.

It sucks that the diagnosis seems to be so easy to get for some people and
they're doing it for the adderall. In my case it helped me significantly,
moving up in my career and ultimately bringing me out of an almost decade long
depression with myself. I hope that people who actually need help get it, and
to put it simply, screw the others who make it hard for people to be properly
diagnosed. My diagnosis took so long because of the known abuse to get the
drugs, from what I gathered in conversations with my doctor, and she was
reluctant to consider that diagnosis until she was absolutely sure of it.

~~~
Zigurd
I'm sure some people abuse prescription amphetamines to their detriment, but
is damages the credibility of the definition of "abuse" to include all the
people who game the system for the sake of performance enhancement.

~~~
bsagdiyev
Personally I disagree that it would discredit it. These people are, in effect,
taking advantage of a system to use medication for personal gain and not
towards treating an actual mental illness. I would think that is abuse.
They're causing an already broken system to be further legislated and
controlled for people who need it.

I agree that it may be the wrong word to use but since it personally affected
me my opinion will be skewed.

~~~
dismantlethesun
I personally don't see the dangers of even mild recreational use, and
performance enhancement is definitely _not_ recreational as dosage has to be
kept low, and strictly controlled.

In medical terminology, substance abuse has a well known definition covering
addiction, increasing use, and use to the detriment of mental, physical or
social well being.

Someone getting a performance benefit from a drug is _not_ abusing it, whilst
they are using it within the safe parameters defined by their doctor.

------
drawnwren
Another anecdote from someone on HN, which probably biases pretty hard for
people who have had success medicating ADHD. I dropped out of a bottom tier
state school at 19 studying CS with essentially a 0.0. In my mid 20s I was
diagnosed with ADHD by a GP and a psychiatrist and got a second opinion from a
second psychiatrist who said the first two were wrong. I stopped medication
because of sentiment like that expressed in the article. A year or two later I
decided I didn't like what I was doing, and wanted to return to school. I saw
a second GP and got rediagnosed and prescribed. I'm now studying CS at a top 5
university with a 4.0.

My personal opinion is that there is more harm from the negative stigma
associated w/ ADHD prescription than good, but you can imagine I would be
biased given my narrative.

------
mtdewcmu
I think of ADD as Amphetamine Deficit Disorder. In a practical sense, "ADD" is
the disorder that afflicts people who function better when given amphetamines.
Personally, I feel that anyone who wants to take amphetamines should be
allowed to.

I think that inability to concentrate is a common pathway for essentially all
diseases that afflict man. Anything a disease does to draw your attention to
itself is affecting concentration, because you are not able to concentrate on
whatever you want to concentrate on. In some cases, this is insidious and you
are not aware of the disease as such; it affects your concentration and you
don't understand why. In some cases, you might only know that you can't
concentrate. Amphetamines will tend to help, because they allow you to
concentrate harder on what you want to concentrate on, regardless of the
actual etiology of whatever is distracting you.

~~~
falcolas
Small informational bit - ADD is not only "I have problems concentrating on
boring things". It's also "I can't automatically connect today's actions with
tomorrow's consequences" and "I can't stop focusing on this one thing even
though I need to focus on something else".

Note the "can't" in those; it's not a preference or a weakness, it's a
straight up inability.

~~~
mtdewcmu
I don't think it's ever a binary question of can versus can't. I think that
the disease manifests as a source of internal distractions that are hard to
ignore. Think of pain. Imagine trying​ to take a test while someone was
jamming a knife into your foot. I'm conjecturing that other distractions work
in a similar way to pain.

It has been noted that amphetamines are capable of relieving pain. That makes
sense if you conceive of pain as a distraction that forces you to pay
attention to it. Amphetamines allow you to concentrate harder on something
else.

There are most likely different forms of ADD or "ADD," and perhaps there is a
form of ADD that acts directly on the brain's attention mechanism. We don't
know anything about how the brain's attention mechanism works, so the idea
that it can be​ broken is pure speculation.

------
FascinatedBox
I suspect that this person has never encountered someone who actually has
ADHD, with meds and without. I was lucky enough to be diagnosed early on.
Right around Kindergarten I was taking Dexadrine which helped until Adderall
came along.

For me there's a huge difference between the two. Without the meds, my
concentration drifts. If I'm at home, I may be aware of an issue that needs
attention, but lack the energy and focus to carry it out. I'll start watching
a video, get distracted, and drift off there, then over there, and so forth.

Out in public it manifests as an occasional intense craving for sugar, though
it's possible that's just me. At the peak it can be intense uncontrollable
energy (the H part), as well as frequent "why did I come in here" or "I forgot
to do this". It comes in getting distracted from a task and forgetting to ever
come back to it.

With the meds, it's much different. I have a sharp focus. I can throw on a
whole music cd and let the tracks all play out without feeling the need to
jump around or to switch to a different album. Just me and the code that I
need to do, or solving any other problem tasks.

In public I'm able to control myself better. I don't have to think of doing
something before doing it as much, resulting in a better flow.

This isn't a matter of a diet either. I don't snack on fatty foods, and I
don't have soda to drink at home. My current doctor has me take an EKG every
year to make sure that it's not playing poorly with my heart.

There's a huge difference between "I get distracted from time to time" and
having a constant difficulty getting tasks accomplished and lacking the
motivation to complete small tasks from start to finish (getting interrupted
and forgetting to go back at all).

I suspect this person has never encountered someone with actual adult ADHD.
Consider also that in the past, many of these people would have just been
called crazy and left at that.

~~~
seattle_spring
Either I and everyone I know have ADHD, or the symptoms you listed seem pretty
benign, and affect almost everyone in the human race.

It reminds me of the Scientology episode of South Park.

"Do you ever make remarks... that you later regret?"

"Would you rather give orders... than take them?"

"Do you ever whistle... just for the fun of it?"

"Does life sometimes feel vague... and confusing to you?"

\---------------

"Well, I hate to tell you, but you're completely miserable and totally
depressed! Well, there's really no question that you're a perfect candidate
for [Scientology|Adderall]. All we'll need to get started is $200."

~~~
Bjartr
>symptoms you listed seem pretty benign, and affect almost everyone in the
human race.

The difference is that for those with ADHD those symptoms are not benign and
have a major negative impact on their life. Saying that it's not real or
important because everyone feels that way sometimes is like saying there's no
such thing as severe allergies because everyone sneezes sometimes.

------
how-about-this
I know this looks like junk but
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances)
was the lead editor of DSM-IV.

~~~
arthulia
What if I think the DSM-IV is junk, too?

~~~
pizza
Prepare for your sectioning...

Also,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment)

~~~
zzzeek
how have I never heard of this!

------
falcolas
One thing that's missing from this narrative - recreational Adderal users tend
to use dosages which are in the 40-60 mg range per hit.

ADHD users tend to be in the 5-30 mg range, often in extended release form.
Most neuraltypical people won't even notice any difference in concentration or
energy from such small dosages.

I am at the 15mg end, and the energy hit is not even enough to affect my sleep
if I make a mistake and take one at night (it's happened). A single coffee, on
the other hand, is enough to keep me up for a few extra hours.

------
fhood
"ADHD drugs have become the campus recreational drug of choice at parties"

Is there any well documented evidence for this? It certainly contradicts my
personal observations.

~~~
pdelbarba
ADHD drugs almost certainly means adderall which is pretty heavily abused as a
recreational drug, especially on college campuses. It's relatively easy to
acquire a prescription and it's an amphetamine.

~~~
snowpanda
Right but he/she asked for evidence, for which there is non that I'm aware of.
Given that it's the Huffington Post, it's most likely a baseless claim.

~~~
pdelbarba
[http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/adderall-
misuse...](http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/adderall-misuse-
rising-among-young-adults.html)

Edit: good article about the subject in general
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/generation-
adder...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/generation-adderall-
addiction.html)

~~~
twright0
Both of those articles are discussing the use of Adderall as a study aid, not
a party drug. I think folks in this thread are objecting to its depiction as
the latter specifically, not the fact that it is heavily used on college
campuses in general.

> In college, especially, these drugs are used as study-aid medication to help
> students stay up all night and cram.

> My friend pulled two blue pills out of tinfoil and handed them to me. An
> hour later, I was in the basement of the library, hunkered down in the
> Absolute Quiet Room, in a state of peerless ecstasy.

------
curun1r
I'm someone who has struggled with concentration issues my entire life. I used
to bemoan that I grew up in the time before medication existed to treat the
condition, since my inability to concentrate has caused some particularly
negative consequences in my life. But recently I had a profound realization
about my concentration issues. I attended a 10-day meditation training course
where, in addition to meditating most of the days, all my distractions (cell
phone, computer, books, etc) were taken away from me. The first few days were
extremely rough. I went through withdrawal symptoms that were really an
extreme version of my concentration issues since my mind felt the need for
distraction and there was nothing to sate that desire. But at the end of those
10 days, I had a brief period where I had absolutely no difficulty
concentrating. It was such a stark contrast to my life before then, that it
was particularly notable.

But addiction to distraction isn't like addiction to alcohol or drugs. Short
of a radical "into the woods" plan, you can't go cold turkey on modern life.
And since I've reintroduced my modern devices into my life, my concentration
issues have returned. But it's been important for me to have realized the true
cause of those issues because dialing back on TV, computing devices and
everything else I use to divert my attention can cause short-term relief when
things get really bad. Turning my cell phone off and spending the entire day
hiking outdoors can really help.

Based on my own experience, I wonder whether our practice of medicating
attention deficit issues is really just a horribly misguided attempt to treat
the symptoms rather than the underlying cause. Life has changed so rapidly
within the course of the past couple of generations and I don't think there's
been enough attention paid to the effect that it has on our bodies, minds and
health. I firmly believe that, in time, we'll look back at this period and our
computing devices and other modern distractions and view them in the same way
that we view asbestos insulation or lead paint...incredibly effective at
accomplishing their immediate goal but with devastating health consequences
that we only recognized years after they were introduced.

I'm curious whether this rings true with others, especially those who've had
concentration issues. Have others tried a "digital detox" and has it helped?
Or is ADHD something different from what I've experienced and that medication
really is the only way to treat it?

------
eruditely
It doesn't matter if people are abusing drugs, it matters whether it is
immoral or poor for them or not, it depends on what drugs are being abused and
if they're bad, since adderall is a general performance enhancer and humans
see significant benefits then such activities should be considered
permissable, people cannot be held back in their lives because their doctors
disagreed on their behalf, people cannot be held to the tyranny of
underqualified 'professionals'.

------
cypher303
_cough_ Awfully quiet in here.

~~~
bitexploder
Huh. Family with a history of ADHD. My father, me, son. Medication for my son
makes an unbelievable difference. For me with a moderate therapeutic dose,
huge difference as an adult. Took meds in school as well. Dad, ended up
addicted to meth and alcohol and never did much with his life. They didn't
know about ADHD when he was young.

The difference in knowing the enemy and practicing against it is a big deal.
To get ADHD meds as an adult I had to spend a lot of time with a psychiatrist
and I did machine based testing that is very difficult to fake. Some doctors
don't care and just write scripts. It is increasingly risky for doctors to do
so though, so most refer you to a psych first.

I will note, at the low to moderate therapeutic doses I use (often skipping
several days) it is far from some sort of epidemic of abuse like what the
author portrayed. And honestly, even if you don't have ADHD, so, what. It is
safer than meth. Alcohol is way, way worse than therapeutic doses of
amphetamines. (Therapeutic means relatively low and controlled dosing)

I think I would honestly rather see amphetamines a little overprescribed than
have true ADHD sufferers go without treatment. Of all the drugs psychiatrist
prescribe, amphetamines for ADHD sufferers have the largest observable
therapeutic effect, bar none. We aren't talking just among ADHD. Of all mental
illness amphetamines for ADHD sufferers produces a huge clinical effect unlike
any other drugs like anti depressants. For those of us that it really helps it
is not a game. This article read like scaremongering with no real talk of the
actual impact of prescription amphetamine use and abuse. There is no real data
to back it up. There is no doubt most people who think they ha e ADHD as an
adult don't have it, but at the same time there is no evidence presented that
1.) It is causing harm at any scale and 2.) How overdiagnosed it actually is,
but by god we need to do something about this amphetamines...

Kids addicted alcohol in college probably don't graduate. Kids scrounging a
few addy probably just write the most interesting papers about neoclassical
bullshit the history of humanity ever witnessed.

Edit: Just want to add that people with ADHD are hugely overrepresented within
alcoholics and drug abusers. When we don't get the advice and help we need
many self medicate. ADHD is a mental illness, just like depression, and other
mental illnesses. With addictive personalities being common among ADHD
suffered due to how our brains manage dopamine, it is no surprise. It is a
huge waste of human potential.

------
eruditely
short version: ADHD 7-8x less chance of graduating college with a degree, 10%
of dropping out of high school, 30% of repeating a grade(8-12 or maybe k-12),
E.F. deficits overpower High I.Q. very easily. As economy of time > economy of
information.

------
zkms
Talking about about “overdiagnosis” without addressing underdiagnosis is,
frankly, scientific and clinical malpractice. Untreated ADHD, which is
underdiagnosed in adults (especially in women) can be a debilitating condition
and there's ample evidence about this from peer-reviewed medical journals
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195639/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195639/),
among others). Self-medication with effective medication isn’t even really
possible because amphetamines aren't regular prescription drugs -- they're
controlled substances, so diagnosis tends to be a necessary condition to get
access to effective meds.

The “overdiagnosis” moral panic leads to parents not being OK with the idea of
their children being diagnosed with ADHD or _shudder_ be on effective
medication like adderall or ritalin, or people (of all ages)
thinking/internalizing the idea that they can’t ~ _~really~_ ~ have ADHD and
that they’re just “lazy” or “flaky” or “apathetic” or whatever other shitty
terms are used for people with executive dysfunction. It also makes doctors
more suspicious of people seeking treatment ("if it’s overdiagnosed it must be
rare, so some of the people I see as a doctor have to be be faking it, by
pigeonhole principle"), which actually causes harm to people who need access
to medical care -- finding a doctor who’s OK prescribing is _such_ a pain when
you’re ADHD and have run out of meds.

I've had enough bad experiences with psychiatrists for a lifetime and I've
absolutely no inclination to defend psychiatrists, their clinical practice, or
their DSM. There indeed are people who are diagnosed with ADHD who don’t have
it / don’t benefit from medication. However, the “overdiagnosis” meme
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/17709814/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/17709814/))
and other forms of ADHD denialism cause real harm to people who actually end
up needing critical access to controlled substances which are impossible to
legally get without the appropriate diagnosis. Regardless of how psychiatrists
draw the lines of diagnosis, there's plenty of evidence that there actually do
exist plenty of people with chronic and debilitating attention / executive
function dysfunction that do experience amelioration when they take a regular
dose of stimulants.

Furthermore, this isn't a straightforward discussion about the effectiveness
of some given pharmaceutical -- this is a moral panic that explicitly seeks to
use the _criminal law_ to curtail access to medication, regardless if it has
been shown safe and effective:

> The Drug Enforcement Agency is doing its best to contain the epidemic

------
xtajv
ADHD-er here. I have a 2-sigma attention span in the shitty direction. It's a
massive impairment. I've titrated my dose, and I've stayed at 45mg
Adderall/day for the past 3-4 years, which is quite high for someone who has
been careful not to develop a tolerance.

Every month, I have to spend a day (or five) dealing with the nightmare that
is filling my prescription so that I can function like a normal human being.

THE RULES: 0\. For ADHD people such as myself, being forced to go a day
without meds is like being forced to go a day without your favorite text
editor. It's not fun. In addition, I don't feel safe driving then. If I want
to go someplace without meds, I'm taking a cab.

1\. Adderall is classified by the DEA as a schedule II stimulant. Some other
schedule II drugs: cocaine, opium, morphine. If you opt for a paper
prescription, it usually has security features like microprinting, watermarks,
or holograms. You're going to be asked for an id (or three) when you fill the
prescription. After all, you might as well be getting a prescription for
cocaine.

2\. There are no refills on your prescription, ever. You have to get a new
prescription every month, which means calling in to your clinic and reciting
all of the details. Nurses are not allowed to copy-paste these details, so you
can bet your ass that I've dealt with a number of typos over the years.
Sorting out typos usually takes a few business days.

3\. A doctor must sign each prescription.

4\. Some doctors flat-out refuse to sign prescriptions that they didn't
prescribe. That's totally reasonable, except it means that you need to call in
for a new prescription _on a day when your prescribing physician is in the
office_. That means that you need to either learn their work schedule, or call
in at least 3-5 business days before you need to fill your meds.

5\. Most insurance companies will not allow you to fill your medication even
one day early -- if you want to do that, you're paying the sticker price
yourself. For my dose, the sticker price is $500-600.

6\. In some states... \- if you send a prescription to a pharmacy, then it
MUST be filled there, and may not be transferred.

\- pharmacies may not answer questions over the phone about whether medication
is in stock. They might be able to answer in person.

\- pharmacists may not call other pharmacists or access any sort of database
to find out whether there is any pharmacy in the area with medication

\- if there is not enough medication in stock, then the pharmacy may partially
fill your medication with the available stock, but you void the unfilled
portion of your prescription. Your insurance will probably not allow you to
fill your meds early, even if the pharmacy is out of stock and you choose to
fill a partial prescription.

Remember that you can't bring your prescription somewhere else, or call in
advance to inquire about stock. So you have to remember to ask the pharmacist
about their stock before you hand the prescription over, in case they don't
have enough stock. That gives you the opportunity to blindly search the
neighborhood for a pharmacy that has them in stock. Remember, you can't call
about any of this, so you're going to be doing quite a bit of travelling.

7\. Some pharmacists are antsy about filling a prescription for drugs in the
same category as cocaine. I've met pharmacists who will insist upon verifying
the prescription with your prescribing clinic. If you try to fill your meds
when your prescribing clinic is not open, tough luck. Come back tomorrow.

8\. Because of the effects that large-ish daily doses of amphetamines may have
on one's heart, most doctors that I've met will insist on meeting with
patients every few months to check your blood pressure, heartrate, etc. That
is, your prescription is not getting filled unless you make a clinic visit
every few months. Because I actually _have_ ADHD, the conversation usually
goes something like this: "Are you having trouble sleeping?" Nope. "Have you
been fidgeting?" Nope. "Has your heart been racing?" Nope. "Have you noticed a
change in eating habits?" Nope. "Do you want to lower your dosage?" Nope.

On one hand, I understand why it's smart to keep tabs on my cardiovascular
system. On the other hand, it's obnoxious to force me to get a checkup every 3
months just to fill the same prescription that I've had for the past decade.

COMMENTARY ON THE RULES: Because it's relatively easy to acquire an Adderall
prescription, the DEA makes it a pain in the ass to fill it, as a way to
restrict the supply for the illegal Adderall market. These rules make it as
obnoxious as possible to fill an Adderall prescription.

The thing is, a drug dealer with a bogus prescription isn't going to be _too_
bothered if they're forced to wait a week to get an Addy refill. Sure, it's a
loss of income, but it's not going to temporarily ruin their life.

I think the solution here is to make it easier to refill an existing
prescription, but make it harder to get one in the first place.

ADHD TESTING: In particular, I think that people should be required to get
formally tested for ADHD in order to get a prescription for amphetamines.
Usually, you can obtain a prescription just by telling your doctor that you
think you might have ADHD, describing your experience, and then answering some
basic screening questions.

But there _is_ a more formal test. At the behest of my parents (who were
skeptical about ADHD), I got formally tested. It was a 12-hour test, split up
into three 4-hour chunks. I was not allowed to take any stimulant meds (not
even coffee) during -or in the 24-hour period before- the test.

The test measured my IQ, short-term memory, and ability to deal with
monotonous or distracting tasks.

For instance, one of the tasks was to transcribe a page of symbols using a
substitution table. The problem was that the substitution table was printed on
the inside front cover of a stapled booklet, and I was transcribing pages
_inside_ the booklet. I was not allowed to remove the staples, so I had to
flip back and forth a ton. To make matters worse, I had to transcribe each
blob of symbols onto the back of the same page. More flipping back and forth.

Another task was to listen to a list of numbers, and recite them back in
order, or recite them in reverse order, or recite them in sorted order. The
number of numbers that you could recite correctly in the latter two situations
was used as a proxy measure for attention span, and for immediate short-term
memory in the former situation.

These are exactly the sorts of tasks with which I have severe difficulty.

The test did screen for mental health issues by asking some standard, but
nonetheless subjective questions about anxiety/depression/well-being etc.).
But on the whole, I thought that the test was largely scientific, and did a
good job of measuring my cognitive impairment in a fairly objective manner.
Admittedly, the test did not involve any brain scans, so it might not be the
best thing available.

But in any case, it would make my life a hell of a lot easier if the
inconvenience of obtaining and filling an Adderall prescription could just be
front-ended!

------
notliketherest
People have loved amphetamines for decades, and this is a legal way to obtain
them. End of story.

------
grangerg
Much of the time, ADHD is a medical term that simply means: "I don't like to
pay attention to things that I find boring."

~~~
newdayrising
Penetrating analysis.

------
partycoder
Sleep deprivation, not eating a breakfast, etc... can affect your
concentration. Prior to start treating ADD-like symptoms with medication just
try improving those things and see if that works for you.

~~~
dismantlethesun
Alas if you actually have ADD, you wouldn't be able to stick to such a rote
and uninteresting plan. Being unable to consistently do things that aren't
mentally invigorating is a key part of the failure in the executive directive
centers of the brain that ADD is known for.

This is akin to telling a depressed person to try and do things that make them
happy---they can't because being unable to find the _motivation_ to do
anything is part of a depression diagnosis.

~~~
partycoder
I am not recommending this to people who actually have ADD.

~~~
dismantlethesun
Diagnosis is part of the problem. Without taking a brain scan, there's no way
to know _for sure_ that you have ADD.

In fact many people do have ADD, but have 'grown out of it' because their
coping mechanisms, and life choices make it largely a non-issue as to success
in their adult lives. That said, they would have made different choices, and
spent less time 'coping' if they didn't have to.

~~~
partycoder
I completely agree, I am just saying that ADD is not the only reason of why a
person can perceive a chronic inability to remain focused. Sometimes bad
habits can impact your ability to focus, that's all. Then, my advice is by no
means substitution for medical advice.

------
Myrmornis
Psychiatry is such an embarrassment, in the US and UK at least. So many
otherwise reasonably intelligent people believe in the concrete reality of
"diagnoses" that are merely descriptive at best, and delusional at worst. The
number of parents who are led to believe that their child "has" "dyslexia" or
"ADHD" is astonishing; and the ramifications in terms of extra time in exams,
free laptops etc are absurd. One form of evidence for these assertions is the
lack of cultural replication: I don't have citations, but I understand that
many of these concepts do not have parallels in other languages/cultures where
one would would expect replication if these really were biological phenomena.
I guess people will always see shapes in clouds, but when it comes to serious
matters like education, the rational, scientific side of our society needs to
be kind but firm in stamping this stuff out. But when will it finally happen
-- perhaps not until we've also got over the idiocy of religion, and the
idiocy of the "postmodernism"-influenced humanities?

~~~
Myrmornis
This wasn't a rant, it was a perfectly serious comment. Think of the people
you know with spurious bipolar disorder diagnoses and who have been wrongly
prescribed lithium and antipsychotics and all the rest of it. You know it's
not real science.

