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?

Hmmm?

I keep reading something about ADH...whatever. Oh look! String!

Re:Hmmm?

Funny jokes, but it's reality [eloquentapathy.com] for some of us.

Chemistry in ADHD

Those affected with ADHD have a wide selection of medications to sort through, from those non amphetamine based (ala' stattera) to those which work instantly, or those that build up in the system, they all have their pro's and cons.

The problem with the amphetamines is that being a schedule II drug it is had to find the doctor who is not hesitant at prescribing such, also you have at the start have a doctor appointment to have it refilled, after such you can probably get the doc just to write it where you can stop by and pick it up. Adderall - XR is adderall's time release based medication which can be negated by the crushing or chewing of capsules.

It would be my preference to go with Adderall-XR as doctors see it as a less abuse able substance, and I've found it to be the best in increasing concentration and productivity, in a side note it offers a perk in euphoria, for those in a down mood and Iâ(TM)ve found Ritalin in different accounts to be "rough" on the system

For fun from the prescribing PDF on Adderall Alkalinizing agentsâ"Gastrointestinal alkalinizing agents (sodium bicarbonate, etc.) increase absorption of Amphetamines. Co-administration of ADDERALL XRâ and gastrointestinal alkalinizing agents, such as antacids, should be avoided. Urinary alkalinizing agents (acetazolamide, some thiazides) increase the concentration of the non-ionized species of the amphetamine molecule, thereby decreasing urinary excretion. Both groups of agents increase blood levels and therefore potentiate the actions of amphetamines. TIME (HOURS)

Also in the view of amphetamines it is nothing like those found on the street and sadly so as the meth found will undoubtedly bring you up, it seem to lack the focus of the combination of the amphetamines offered by Adderall. For those looking to the street for their fix Iâ(TM)d urge you to give up the expensive and non productive habit, Sleepless nights and worn out bodies, and talk yourself into some disease.

Ritalin is the most popular. It is used mostly for treating children. Its generic form is methylphenidate or MPH. Studies have shown that MPH is up to 30% less effective than the brand name drug, Ritalin. It can cause tics in children. Those who take Ritalin do not develop tics. Ritalin begins to work within 20 minutes after you take it, and lasts up to 4 hours. An extended-release form of Ritalin, Ritalin SR, has been developed, but how long the drug lasts still varies among individuals. Class action lawsuits against the manufacturer of Ritalin, Novartis, have been dismissed in Texas and California. In both cases, the judges found that the plaintiffs had not shown sufficient evidence that Novartis conspired with psychiatrists to "overprescribe" Ritalin.

Dexedrine is second most common to Ritalin in use for treating ADD. It is used mostly for treating adolescents and adults. The generic form of Dexedrine, dextroamphetamine sulfate, is considered inferior to the name brand, and not as long-lasting. Dexedrine begins to work 30 minutes after you take it, and lasts about an hour longer than Ritalin. Dexedrine is listed in the PDR (Physician's Desk Reference) under "diet control" drugs; thus your insurance company may not cover it for treating ADD.

Cylert is the third most common stimulant for treating ADD. The generic name of Cylert is pemoline, but no generic drug is available. Cylert begins to work an hour after you take it, and you must take the medication for 1-2 weeks before you feel the full therapeutic effect. You should not skip doses, or go off Cylert "cold turkey". Dosages are must be gradually increased and decreased by your doctor. Cylert is more expensive than Ritalin or Dexedrine, and has a higher incidence of side-effects, such as insomnia and appetite suppression. There is also a possibility of liver damage.

Adderall, formerly Obetrol, is a newer stimulant, approved by the FDA in 1996. There is no generic. Adderall is a combination of Dextroamphetamine and Amphetamine; its

Re:Chemistry in ADHD

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.

Personal experiences with ADHD, mood swings, etc.

I felt a personal need to reply to this posting, as it mentions many things I have tweaked within the last six months. Throughout my life, most of my symptoms persisted of bouts of hyperactivity per day including super-human concentration, followed by huge crashes and lapses of concentration, and the complete ability to think, with extreme anxiety thrown into the equation. Just within the last year have I fully noticed the mood swings, and how low I could get in the winter months, being in Canada around Toronto area -- similar in geographic location to Detroit and Buffalo.

1998 - added the minor things, like multi-vitamin, extra B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, ginkgo biloba, this was about 4 years ago, and these additions just barely helped me cope. Sleep was still a great issue, with it normally taking two hours to go to sleep at night
1999 - added melatonin to the mix, nightly took 3mg, switched jobs, quit working at a systems integrator (tech work, systems and network support on the road) to join a chain of long-term care homes as their regional technical support
Fall 2001 - started seeing a "naturopath", drastically changed diet, followed "Blood Type Diet", recommended from the book "Eat Right for Your Type", amazing results, super high energy (probably a manic episode), but still the anxiety and sleeping issues persisted, added Alpha Lipoic Acid to assist the liver and as a potent antioxidant
Winter 2001 - added 5-HTP, fairly high doses, around 500mg per day
Spring 2002 - cut down on the 5-HTP, limited it to 200mg per day, added Piracetam, thinking clearer than ever
March 2002 - went to a corporate conference, ate all of those sweets and stuff that they give you that weren't on my diet, experienced the worst brain fog in my life, saw my chiropractor the next day for an adjustment, got in a conversation about feeling "fogged out", he suggested CLA, amazing results, eliminated the fog!
Summer 2002 - cut down 5-HTP to 150mg per day, added L-Tyrosine to the mix, it gave me more of my personality back, strongly recommended over stimulants, as it helps long-term even after cessation of usage
Fall 2002 - blood type diet slips really hard, the 5 pints a day are getting in the way of it. . . at this point, not taking any 5-HTP or melatonin, flying really high, going out all of the time, getting 4 - 6 hours sleep per night, have never thought clearer in my life. Started further extensive reading on 5-HTP, Tyrosine, mood disorders, ADD / ADHD, bipolar, etc., had inklings I was cyclothymic, a mild version of bipolar disorder
December 2002 - had been going downhill for the last bit of November, honestly thought there was a more serious problem, anxiety flared up again, saw a doctor, started on Paxil at 10mg per day, zapped all of the life out of me, dropped it down to 5mg per day, ceased taking 5-HTP due to concerns of potential serotinin syndrome or overload with SSRI
Christmas 2002 - crashed out completely, nasty family Christmas sucked all of the life out of me, I had been going downhill for the month of December
Mid January 2003 - Paxil was not performing for the depression, I had since stopped taking anything to change mood, such as Tyrosine, 5-HTP, started on 750mg per day of Depakote/Epival, took a real edge off, minimized long-term mood swings and mood / energy level changes in the day
February 2003 - the first doctor didn't agree I should be on Paxil, as it didn't address the attention symptoms, so he cut it out, and added Effexor SR in it's place, an SSNRI (Selective Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor) at 37.5 per day for a week, and then 75mg for three weeks
Late February 2003 - feeling so flatlined it's not even funny, no desire for anything remotely social, have been at home now for two weeks straight not moving off the couch, getting up only when desperately needed for work, not returning any phone messages, voice mail box full!
March 2003 - recontinued the Paxil at 5mg, much more personality back, sold my house, moved back in with my parents (lovely...

Re:Personal experiences with ADHD, mood swings, et

A little while ago a fellow named "MichaelCrawford" posted a three part article on Kuro5hin describing his experiences with Schizoaffective Disorder. Some of the symptoms he desribed and some of the lengthes he went to treat them were similer to yours. Anyway here's that article. [kuro5hin.org] I hope you find that helpful.

Re:Don't take this the wrong way but

Amen to that. I don't want in any way dispute that people diagnosed ADHD etc. are suffering. But I think that a lot goes wrong in todays medicine business.

Kids bad in school -> Give them ritalin
Kids too active for their parents -> Give them ritalin
people don't care for themselves,f*ck up their lives and get in a bad mood -> give them prozac.
people eat too much, don't exercise, ruin their health -> need a plethora of medicaments.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think something like depression doesn't exist, or that people diagnosed ADHD are hypochondriacs - with ADHD though it might be that psychologists invented it to fill up the last "else:" statement of the diagnostic process.

The southpark episode "Timmy 2000" comes to mind to satirically show the processes which might happen in families and lead to kids getting drugs.

Re:Its called the "Lazy" gene.

/If you can find one person with it who actually thought school was fun but couldnt concentrate in class, well then I'll believe you. /

Me. I've just been diagnosed with ADHD, and I loved school. Hell, I loved school so much I did pretty well, and ended up at MIT...and before you say I liked high school with ADHD because I managed to do really well (unlike most high school students with ADHD) then I'd point out I'm having a ridiculously hard time with MIT...but I still love it there.

So there. It's not a "lazy gene", nor necessarily even a disability. It's just a different way of absorbing information.

-amysarah

Re:Its called the "Lazy" gene.

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.

Re:Theres no scientific proof for any of this.

• Look, Anger could be considred a disorder,

Umm. . . .

It is. Anger management problems ARE a recognized disorder, people get treated for it all the time. Hell I was treated for it.

• but if I were to declare Anger as a learning disability,

You would be laughed at, it is a social disability.

• this student cant learn, this student needs medication, this student needs to be studied"

A competent doctor (admittedly getting harder and harder to find by the day. . . .) would advice for therapy, much higher success rate and all. :) (I went in for a dual therapy / meds approach)

• This does not solve the persons problem. Please tell me why a person with a short temper is considered "normal" however someone with ADHD has something wrong with them.
• 
  
  Also please explain to me why people who have short tempers just need to take anger management classes, while a person with ADHD must go on all these meds?

Those two paragraphs contradict themselves. A person with anger management issues is NOT considered "normal" (WTF is normal any ways? :-P ), they are sent for anger management classes.

And to answer your second question, it is because the success rate of therapy classes for most very low to mild cases of anger management issues is very high.

Indeed, it is not until the extremely severe cases of anger issues that medicines start to be prescribed with regularity. But yes, they ARE prescribed.

• Its the SAME kinda problem, I consider ADHD a personality trait. Just like short temper is a personality trait, and manic depression is a personality trait.

HOW THE FUCKING HELL IS MANIC DEPRESSION A PERSONALITY TRAIT.

Please explain to me how the f*ck people trying to KILL THEMSELVES is a freakin PERSONALITY TRAIT.

regularly reoccurring bouts of SUICIDE are NOT an "issue" to be worked through, THEY ARE A SERIOUS FREAKING PROBLEM.

Yeesh, next you are going to tell me that OCD is just a personality trait to! (Oh it is perfectly A-OK that she cut her fingernails down to the point of SEVERELY BLEEDING, bleck!)

• Pills can only hide a persons natural traits, it cannot change them.

An alternative view, pills can allow a person's natural traits to come out instead of being OVERRIDDEN by a CHEMICAL IMBALANCE.

• Without pills these people wont know what to do with themselves,

Without the pills it doesn't much matter because I do not have any control as to what I do!

• I'm saying its treated like its some kinda disease that MUST be treated with drugs as the first option when most people in my opinion can learn to manage without drugs.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I have always advocated for a dual therapeutic and medicinal approach with the pure therapeutic approach being tried first, but the fact is that making a blanket statement DISMISSING all of wide variety of medical research that has gone into treating ADHD as being irrelevant is FOOLISH.

The pills CAN and DO and WILL CONTINUE to help people, it is unfortunate that some idiot doctors choose to over prescribe them out of either ignorance of malevolence.

• But ok, lets assume you are right, and these drugs are completely safe, harmless with no side effects, lets say these drugs help make the mind sharp and help people concentrate, if this is true shouldnt they be marketed over the counter like anti depression, pain medication, and others?

Where did I say they where side effect free?

I personally use Dexedrine, which has the side effects of SHARPENING my concentration and SPEEDING up my mind. Soon after taking my dosage I can work damn near miraculous math problems in my head and figure out the solution to just about

YANANS (You Are Not A Neuroscientist)

I am. I also happen to be an expert on the central catecholamine systems, which are implicated involved in ADD.

I really, really didn't want to be drawn into this debate because, like religion and politics, you are often either preaching to the choir or a wall.

However, your utter misinterpration of the dopaminergic system, along with the completely fallacious claim that many people have made regarding lack of scientific evidence is egregious.

ADD is real, and it's a problem of the brain. Its etiology is not completely understood, but better understood everyday. Is it over-diagnosed? Probably. Is Ritalin over-prescribed? Probably. However, the boundary between what is and is not ADD is fuzzy, and a difference of degree, not quality.

First, quick factual rectification: Increasing dopamine in the front of the brain does not slow the brain. In the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex), increased dopamine is thought to help keep focus on current task demands by sharpening their representations in attractor networks of neurons. That is to say, the front of the brain keeps "online" what it is you intend to do right now. If this "goal" or "intention" fades or is disrupted by competing intentions, you get off track and distracted. In ADD patients, this is thought to happen too readily. Increasing dopamine levels (via agonists like ritalin) is thought to help lock down intentions and goals, keeping them "online" and the person "focused."

However, the majority of your post is a kind of armchair philosophizing about the place of ADD in the spectrum of psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, convincing the general public of the reality of psychiatric illness and the utlity of psychoactive medications is a problem of paradigm. People, including you, are far and away dualists even when they claim not to be. And I use dualism here in an extended sense, to appy to psychology as it does to to metaphysics. People tend to be adamant that there is a distinction between the mind and the brain. People tend to think there are a class of "real" organic disorders of the brain, and then there a bunch of fluffy dysfunctions of the "mind" which are due to socialization, personality, will, judgment, and possibly genetics (although they don't see the contradiction of this last one).

Here's the truth: You are your brain, your brain is you. The brain gives wholly rise to the mind, and the mind is wholly derived from the function of the brain. One is a phenomenological construct, the other is the implementing hardware.

Here's another truth: The brain is plastic and every moment of experience changes it. Now, all organs changes and adapt, but no other organ is designed to be as profoundly plastic as the brain.

The first point invalidates the idea that some psychological problems are just "in people's heads" while others are "chemical imbalances." Every feature of a person's behavior is rooted in the brain. Some breakdowns in brain function have a gross, systematic nature that makes them easier to categorize (schizophrenia, parkinsons, alzheimer's, etc.). While some, like ADD are a little subtler. And some, like personality disorders, are subtler still and chronic. Generally, the more the disorder impacts the way the brain conveys personality, social interaction, or sense of "self" the more we believe the problem to be relegated to the artificial realm of "mind" not body.

The second point underscores the fact that both chemical and experiential treatment of the brain have real impact. By chemical, I mean psychopharmacology. By experiential, I mean things like psychotherapy, self-therapy, social interaction, changing the environment. All these things affect a person's mind and hence their brain (or vice versa).

Anyway, back to science: Here's a good reference on the scientific basis of ADD. Its a little dated, but it's by the same group that performed the neuroimaging study some AC linked to earlier (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/events/pradhd.htm ).

Me too!

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.

Re:Me too!

Tell the doctor you want Wellbutrin - it works better and has far fewer side effects.

It varies by person, as everyone has a different body chemistry. You might find yourself with uncontrollable shaking, cold sweats, loss of balance, and a number of annoying side effects if it doesn't work for you. (It didn't for me)

Horrible hives from Wellbutrin

I tried it once (as Zyban) in an attempt to quit smoking. It takes a few weeks to build up in your system. So about two weeks after I started I suddenly developed severe hives (large extremely itchy red patches all over your body) and my chest got kind of tight -- hard to breathe. I went to the emergency room for a shot of Epinephrin which worked for about a day, and then the hives were back in spades. I popped Benadryl like it was candy for the two weeks it took for the Wellbutrin to get out of my system. It was a horrible experience. They say 5% develop severe allergic reactions like I did. YMMV.

Re:Me too!

The fact that it's primary vindication is for blood pressure/hypertension shouldn't worry you, because that seems to be the mechanism whereby it helps with ADHD...

Most medicines used for ADHD were originally not used for it, and since they are effective, they are used instead, since ritalin's side effects include lack of appetite, and, suprise, affects blood pressure and hypertension.

Really, it's almost as sad that the people warning you not to listen to "slashdot MD's" are retarded as the idea that someone might listen to one in the first place.

PS. I recoomend asking your doctor about wellbutrin, I have found that the SR works significantly better than most other medicines/combos I have taken (and I've been around the block with this)

Medicines don't work

I've found a potential solution that doesn't involve taking all these crazy medicines. When I find that I have difficulty concentrating, I just go off and furiously masturbate like a banshee. 5 minutes later I could concentrate on a Ben Stein law lecture.

Re:Me too!

Maybe so, but you can look at a specific set of symptoms and categorise them. What you're saying is akin to "There's no such thing as cancer, only tumors growing out of control!"

See, you give a specific set of symptoms a name so as to distinguish it from others. Is it so hard to believe there is a set of people who exhibit the same symptoms and respond the same way to the same medications?

A truly amazing fact, is the response to nervous system stimulants among individuals diagnosed with ADHD. When a "normal" individual takes such drugs, they tend to become very hyperactive, whereas the inverse is observed among ADHD patients: stimulants slow them down.

Also, there is a characteristic imbalance of serotonin and dopamine. The result is depression, often severe, with no response to SSRIs and other such anti-depressants, because an SSRI works to block the reuptake of serotonin -- but in the case of an ADHD patient, there is less serotonin to begin with.

Re:Me too!

This is the first serious thread posted, so here goes. You may or may not need Ritalin; AMA docs just toss it at you because they are programmed to dispense pills. Get books from Thom Hartmann [thomhartmann.com]. I am not affiliated with Mr. Hartmann, I listened to an edition of The Aware Show on my local free-commie radio station, that he was on. I have found his books to be helpful. They helped me get a perspective on my hunter-uniqueness (compared to those descended from agriculturally based societies), that I can live with. It is not a disorder nor does it place me at a deficit. We are easily distracted unless properly challenged, and capable of focusing on a "real" challenge, come hell or high water, until the hunt is through. We make good leaders, as well as team members, once we recognize what we are capable of, and what we need others to do for us, to help us succeed.

My other suggestion is to get a Digital Voice Recorder. Make notes to self and listen to them while walking around. This helps me crunch the more mundane tasks by making it into a challenge: how to do x more efficiently because I'm on my way to this or that place.

Owning Your Medication and Your Head

It's your head. When you were a kid, your parents felt responsible for you, and doctors and teachers felt smarter than you, and some of them wanted to help you or whatever, but unless you were a really rare kid or had really good parents, they were in control of the medical aspect and you mostly weren't. You're not a kid now, and you're as smart as your doctors, and though they know more about medicine, and can give you some outside perspective, they're not inside your head, and they don't have to live there, and you are and you do.

So if you want to try meds to help you get along better in life, work with the doctor on them, but remember that you're in charge, and if that's not how your doctor wants to work, get another doctor. If Ritalin isn't doing it for you, and something else might, you and your doctor can experiment. (And of course that's for most other kinds of medicine besides ADHD as well.) Maybe Wellbutrin works for you (some people absolutely hate it!), maybe Dexedrine or other traditional amphetamines do (my niece's doctor had her on Dex in high school), maybe caffeine and/or exercise breaks work better. (Remember how schools dealt with energetic kids before Ritalin? Recess twice a day plus gym class, and sometimes actually paying individual attention to the kids...)

The big caveat with a lot of these drugs is that they are messing with your head, and everybody's reaction is somewhat different. If you find yourself getting wacked out or strung out, it's time to get attention quickly, because taking mind-altering drugs that aren't a good match for you can really mess you up, and the reason you're taking them is to help you cope better, not worse. Lots of people I know do anti-depressants, and some do manic-depressive drugs, and sometimes they find that after a while life just sucks, or that it doesn't suck badly but it just isn't any fun either, or that everything's fine and normal most of the time with occasional interruptions of suicidal depression or psychotic anger, which is not something you want to leave alone...

Re:Ok but first...

You are most certainly incorrect, my friend. ADHD is a neurological disorder and those tasks do not require true concentration -- just a form of "zoning out." They are non-chemical stimulants, exactly what caffeine does chemically. In fact, Ritalin is very close to cocaine in chemical composition -- and is a stimulant, just like your proposed caffeine. So, I'm no doctor, but I certainly can offer something along the way of non-useless pseudo-advice.

Re:Ok but first...

Also ADHD is about a problem in regulation of attention. The ability to stop paying attention to something is just as hard for people with ADHD as paying attention.

Re:Ok but first...

Can we just ASSUME, for once, that someone diagnosed with a psychological disorder actually has a psychological disorder?

I've been diagnosed as bipolar, and I am sick to fucking death of having people tell me that I don't have a problem, and that I've just been mislead by the drug industry. I'm sick of people telling me that I should stop taking my medication, because I don't need it, when in fact, I go off my goddamn rocker without it, and that I like taking it.

I know that ADHD has been notoriously overdiagnosed, but the asker isn't asking anyone to tell him whether or not he has it. He wants to know how others like him deal with the same kinds of problems.

I tend to distrust...

...any site claiming to have 'information' on something when that site is specifically in place to try and scare people away from something (like, say, psychiatry).

Reliable info on psychiatric medications is unlikely to come from a group referring to itself as the Antipsychiatry Coalition. That is what is referred to as 'bias'.

Yes, let's frighten people, not inform them.

Some people actually still find ECT useful. The second I don't know about; the third *worked*, but wasn't worth the price.

I'm not saying that they aren't necessarily right, but there are generally sources of information that have *less* interest in one direction or another. People who are researchers, not authors with books to publicize or, at the same time, pharmaceutical companies with meds to sell.

And, for that matter, said companies are usually fairly up-front about side effects, because people actually care more about lack of libido on SSRIs than the chance of tardive dyskinesia on an antipsychotic.

Now, I'm firmly of the belief that Ritalin's over-prescribed, especially with children. But I also have concerns about the fact that I can walk into my doctor's office, ask for Prozac, and he'll give it to me.

But in this case? The web page is pure scare tactics.

Of the people I've known in life who happened to recreationally abuse certain pharmaceuticals? It was never Ritalin. Of the people I've known with ADHD? None of them had trouble finding work because of the label, and only a few because of symptoms.

And then they start acting as if it's some global conspiracy or something. If Ritalin is over-prescribed, it's more the fault of the parents than the NIMH. And the manufacturer? Just trying to make money. Like every other corporation in the world. You can't fault a swan for swimming. It may not be *beneficial*, but it's not 'out to get you' or anyone else.

Even the charges that can be taken seriously--like that it sacrifices creativity and spontinaeity in favor of the ability to perform rote tasks? Makes me wonder if the author has actually held a real job anytime recently. Rote tasks are a part of the real world. The ability to do them? Quite necessary. Creativity and spontinaeity are great qualities, but less good at putting food on the table.

It's just bullshit. F-U-D. Preying on people who don't know any better.

Hasn't really been a problem

I haven't really had a problem with ADHD, even though I get distracted easily sometimes. I think coffee seems to help a lot, though that's just me. I never took ritalin, but I was on Adderall for a while (it's similar to ritalin, though not quite the same). I really disliked taking it though, because I felt really odd, lost my appetite and had frequent headaches. I honestly think that it's hyped to be a larger problem than it really is.

Receptor Myths

You read a lot about how drug X causes the brain to Y because it binds to receptor Z. The sad fact is that this is mostly crap. Nobody really understands exactly how most psychoactive drugs work. The politics of medicine requires that doctors talk about their therapies in absolute terms. But from a scientific point of view, they're guilty of a large degree of bullshit.

Which is not to say that biological psychiatrists don't actually help people. I myself have gotten a lot of good use out of them. But only after wasting a lot of time on blind alleys. It's taken them a long time for them to understand that people don't fit into the neat little models and categories that medicine likes to use. Only now are they beginning to understand how much empiricism there is in their art.

Now, whatever the chemical similarities between Ritalin and caffeine (and I don't think Eric Raymond is a reliable source for anything except his own pet theories) not everybody has a a similar response to these two drugs. I myself find R helpful for controlling the symptoms of ADHD, and coffee not at all. On the other hand I get a pleasant buzz from a cup of strong coffee, but no direct change of mood from Ritalin at all. (That's very atypical -- took my psychiatrist a long time to accept that I was being honest with him.) Bottom line: every body (pun intentional) is differnt. You use what works.

Re:Hasn't really been a problem

I honestly think that it's hyped to be a larger problem than it really is.

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.

Re:Hasn't really been a problem

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 had the same problem on Adderall (spelling?). It worked wonders for my career. I used it for about a year and got promotions and bonuses and was a hero at the office...BUT, I ended up with zero creativity. I was no fun to be around. I didn't even want to be a consumer of creativity (stopped reading novels, watching movies, playing games, etc). I was also sleeping about 2-3 hours a night and constantly going full bore. I was burning myself out something fierce.

Finally my girlfriend of 6 years intervened. She talked to someone at the office, the office forced me to take a week's vacation, the gf convinced me to lay off the Adderall for that week, and it was like I woke up from a nightmare. I had no idea who I'd been for the past year.

So now I take nothing, but I'm in danger of being axed from the job as I can't seem to get anything done. I fritter around and procrastinate and make lists and have really good intentions, but never actually work. Which in turn makes me depressed and down on myself.

I wish I could find someplace in the middle of those two extremes, y'know?

Re:Suck it up.

Sure, I'll bite, why not?

I can't read more than two pages of a book, even an engaging one, at a time.
I can't write (I love to write) more than a scene at a time.
I can't watch a whole movie in one sitting.
I can't read long web pages without just drifting off onto another page.
I can't listen to someone talk for more than one minute.
I can't drive long distances without almost getting myself killed because I zone off.
I can't organize anything in my mind. Nothing. When I had to put furniture in my home people wondered why I had the TV in the dining room. Truth it, that's the only place it fit the way I arranged things. Five minutes later my wife had it arranged properly. Five minutes.
I have to have to-do lists out the yang to remember the basics of everyday life.
I run out of gas because I forget to look at the guage until it's too late.

I like the fact I have to go to work, and I do it well. It's normal life I have problems with. Things like, well, reading a book. Fine, you don't have to live this life. I do. The core fault of prejudice is assuming too much. You're assuming that because you can't understand not being able to control what you are interested in, that the disorder cannot exist. That's a fallacy.

Well

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).

Re:Well

despite having a 3.8 in my major

This was the problem I had, the whole "in my major" thing. I was acing the tech stuff (CompSci, Chem, Math) but couldn't keep my eyes open for anything remotely liberal-arts-ish. My advice is realize you HAVE TO PASS THIS STUFF to keep your ride and get your sheep-skin, so just hunker down and do it. Easy to say.

I've found that latley I've starte to appriciate the crap they wanted to jam down my throat. I never read a single word of Mark Twain when I was 18yr old, but now I have his complete works on my Palm and read it whenever I have a spare moment, and really really enjoy it! _Conneticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court_ is just amazing. I was %100 sci-fi pre work-force, but now I really love the classic-lit stuff. Maybe we need to try to recognize this in our students and nurture it more appropriatly.

Oh! A butterfly!

M@

Medical Advice From Slashdot?

IANADr but I'd venture to say that getting medical advice from Slashdot would be about as wise as asking SCO for Legal advice.

Blockwars [blockwars.com]:go play!

30 hour cycle

Same here. If I could stay up for 22 and sleep for 8 then I would have zero problems. I'm just not ready to sleep after a mere 16 hours. Typically I sleep about 3 - 4 hours per night, feel like absolute crap in the morning, drag all day, and by 8pm I feel fine and am ready to stay up until 3am again. At 3am I force myself to go to bed, although I feel fine, but as soon as I am horizontal I'm out like a light.

For me, I find I have ADHD symptoms if I am tired but not if I am well rested. It is rather dramatic actually. Those rare occasions where I get a full 8 hours of snooze make me extrordinarily productive the following day. Thats a problem with technology jobs, you never become physically tired so your sleep cycle gets all messed up. When I worked labor jobs I was so physically tired that I never had much trouble making myself sleep.

Now that we are all more or less brains in a jar in front of a computer, the 24 hour cycle is just too short.

Bad medicine

ADHD is a often bad diagnosis. It's like saying "My kid is too kid-like." I'll explain...

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child because I could not pay attention in class. The real issue was I had/have a hearing disorder that makes it very difficult for me to zero in on specific sounds and tune others out.

This bogus diagnosis led to improper treatment. Sure, the drugs helped, but the underlying problem was not addressed, and I did not reach my full potential.

Do not trust western medicine like it's never wrong.

alternatives and cultural rant ahead...

Hmm, well. As someone who's also been diagnosed with ADHD, I have found that the most effective treatment is just to get outside in the fresh air and get a bit of excersize every day. Of course, in our current culture of instant gratification and having both parents working, we have come to a point where parents aren't willing to take the time to find a better alternative than to drug their child. Personally it sickens me. I knew this one family that put their 5 y.o. child on Ritalin. I ask you, what 5y.o. isn't hyperactive? And what kind of parent drugs their 5 y.o. kid for being a bit rambuncious?

I myself only took Ritalin a few times, and I hated the way it affected me. As such, I don't take perscription drugs (not that I don't do other drugs, but that's another topic). No, for me the simplest thing to do was go outside and and run a few laps.

Okay, now for the history of ADHD. Recent studies beleive that ADHD was a genetic defect that prooved useful for attracting mates, as the higher levels of activity exhibited by the ADHD addled individual was a sign of better health and strength.

So, if the ADHD is getting in your way, then you should seek treatment. But a lot of people take Ritalin when it isn't neccesary. And watch out for dependencies. I knew a kid who no longer needed it, but he continued to take it because he claimed he could function without it. Ritalin is a mind altering drug, and people today don't give it enough respect.

Anyway, how many posts are we gonna get reffering to Focusyns from the Simpsons?

I can't recommend that sort of confidence in M.D.s

Doctors try hard. They work harder than most people in U.S. society. But they are like auto mechanics, in that they are in the business of fixing something that they don't fully understand.

I went on chemotherapy for a platelet proliferation disorder in 1995 or so. It is called malignant by some doctors and benign by others, but definitely isn't metastatic. I researched my condition, found the expert researcher in the field, and made an appointment with him at the Mayo clinic. When I got back from there with a recommendation to go off chemo, my hematologist in Berkeley took his other three patients with the condition off of chemo as well. I am still symptom-free today. And I am a father now, but would probably have gone sterile if I stayed on chemo.

And this is just one of my three medical horror stories, another of which is a hyperactivity diagnosis in my youth with which I would take issue today, and the third of which is a motor speech and movement deficit that it took until I was 18 years old for me to beat. But I have beat all of these things.

You must fully engage in your medical care, and be the main person driving it. Not your doctor, you.

Bruce

Re:alternatives and cultural rant ahead...

This sorta relates to my biggest ADHD experience..

About 10 years ago, I used to go boy scout camp in the summer. The way the kids are supervised is that two or three dads stay for the week and watch all of the kids. Well, my dad was one of the ones there. One of the younger campers was wicked psycho, hard to control and being pumped full fo Ritalin. Well, my dad, being his self-reliant-farmboy-self, decides that this kid doesn't need those damn pills.

It was like he went into withdrawal. Staring at shit for a full day, then normal for the rest of the week. amazing.

when we got back, his mom saw the full bottle of pills and flipped. back on the meds he went, and psycho he stayed.

Hunters vs Farmers

Thom Hartmann ("ADD: A Different Perception.") doesn't believe that the ADD condition is a disability.

He believes there are two kinds of people, Hunters and Farmers. Hunters have to scan the horizon, taking in all the inputs in order to find game. Farmers plod ahead, focused on plowing their current row.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/hunterfarmer.shtml

He found a high incidence of ADD in some natives in Canada (Inuit?), a tribe that gets most of their food by hunting.

The problem with today's education system, is that we're trying to force Hunters to be Farmers. Ritalin, an amphetamine, calms Hunters down.

But there are many successful Hunters that don't need to conform to the Farmer world. So, the Hunter should find a career that utilizes his traits (as noted in the above URL), and he will be successful and happy.

My son was constantly getting kicked out of daycares for being too aggressive, and when his kindergarden teacher was totally exasperated because he would never sit down, we had him diagnosed. Giving him drugs was the last thing we wanted to do, but the alternative was major damage to his self-esteem because he couldn't control himself and felt like a failure. Too much Ritalin will make a kid into a zombie, I didn't like that. But just the right amount allowed him to control himself and he was much happier.

Now that he's in high school, he quit taking those drugs. Earlier he had switched to Adderol, but it affected his heart. Now he's trying to deal with being a Hunter. It's very challenging, he's smart and scores high but gets very low grades because homework doesn't get done.

I know he'll be successful in whatever he decides to do. I don't consider grades to be an indicator of his future success.

Read

"Driven to Distraction" [drhallowell.com] 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.

My $600 experience

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.

Re:ADHD a thing of the 90s?

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.

Re:ADHD a thing of the 90s?

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 grat

Moderators beware casual trolling!

Moderators, please refrain from spending all your points modding up every easy joke about ADHD to +5, Funny. Not only are you supporting misinformed stereotypes, you're also ignoring posts that might actually have some meaning.

I'd also ask you to overlook lengthy posts that ask "Do you really have ADHD or do you just play too many videogames?" People, lets assume, if only for this discussion, that the person asking does, in fact, have a real psychological problem, and really is helped by medication, and isn't lazy, or possessed by demons, or resistant to alien mind control, or any of the other oddball opinions that always come up.

ADHD is one of many psychological disorders

I'm going to reply to this because I don't have ADHD, rather I have a related disorder known as social anxiety, and I took interest to your mention of serotonin.

Serotonin is a chemical that is known to calm, and SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) prevents the brain from storing serotonin (thus keeping it in circulation). I'm not sure about the chemical specifics of ritalin, but I suspect it relates to many of the other newfangled medications that are on the market. I use an SSRI to calm myself, to prevent anxiety. You may use it to calm yourself to prevent overactivity.

All psychological disorders are related, though each has the same symptoms, they have each to varying degrees. My advice to you would be to seek a second opinion, even if you are absolutely certain that this second opinion will yield the same result.

ADHD is overdiagnosed in children, but an adult is a different matter. I would advise you to continue the medication that works, and look towards alternative solutions while you're taking the medication. There is no shame in taking a pill every day, and therapeutic solutions will only strengthen your resolve to conquer your problem--even if you're forced to take a pill for the rest of your life.

Do you object to having ADHD

I object to having social anxiety as much as I object to having a thorn in my side. It's an obstacle to be overcome, and even if it can't be eliminated completely, it can be managed.

How do you find it working in groups of people, either as the only ADHD'er there, or in a group of ADHD'ers?

This is somewhat irrelevant to your problem. ADHD should affect you in virtually every aspect of life, regardless whether it's with a group of people or on your own. The key is to understand how your mind works, and to become so educated with respect to your subconscious thoughts that you can control them with exercises and manage them as they come. A relatively new therapeutic study deals with cognitive thinking, in that you can catch thoughts [that cause feelings] as they occur, and eventually eliminate them. These thoughts might cause you to become hyperactive (hence the 'H' in ADHD), and you really have to focus on your internal thoughts more than the results on the environment around you.

I doubt that this advice will help you directly, but I admire your resolve in openly announcing your mental difficulties. Watching TV, I'm sure you'll notice more and more commercials regarding mental illness and the fact that it isn't extraordinary, rather it's a common problem that affects everyone, from every walk of life. My final suggestion would be to seek therapy. There's no shame in talking to someone about this, as much as there's any shame in taking medication for it. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

A Day in the Life of an ADHD suferer

Recently I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. -- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how this insidious disease manifests itself:

I decided to wash my car. As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the trashcan under the table, and notice that the trashcan is full. So I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the trash first.

But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take m y checkbook off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk where I find the can of pop that I had been drinking. I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the pop aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over.?

I see that the pop is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the pop, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye -- they need to be watered. I set the pop down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, we will be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers. I splash some water on the flowers, but most of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day: the car isn't washed, the bills aren't paid, there is a warm can of pop sitting on the counter, the flowers aren't watered, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses, and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm really tired. I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e- mail.

From Neal Boortz [boortz.com]

DSV IV criteria for ADHD

A. Either (1) or (2)
(1) six (or more) of the following symptoms of INATTENTION have persisted for at least 6 months to a degree that is maladaptive and inconsistent with developmental level:

Inattention:
(a) often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work or other activities
(b) often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
(c) often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
(d) often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions)
(e) often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
(f) often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
(g) often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools)
(h) is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
(i) is often forgetful in daily activities

(2) six (or more) of the following symptoms of HYPERACTIVITY-IMPULSIVITY have persisted for at least 6 months to a degree that is maladaptive and inconsistent with developmental level:

Hyperactivity
(a) often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
(b) often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
(c) often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
(d) often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
(e) is often "on the go" or often acts if "driven by a motor"
(f) often talks excessively

Impulsivity:
(g) often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
(h) often has difficulty awaiting turn
(i) often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)

B. Some hyperatice-impulsive or inattentive symptoms that caused impairement were present before age 7 years.

C. Some impairment from the symptoms is present in two or more settings (e.g., at school [or work] and at home).

D. There must be clear evidence of clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

E. The symptoms do note occur exclusively during the course of a Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Schizophrenia, or other Psychotic Disorder and are not better accounted for by another mental disorder (e.g., Mood Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Dissociative Disorder, or a Personality Disorder)

Re:DSV IV criteria for ADHD

Sounds like standard behaviour for any healthy kid who's a bit bored and wants to go running around with his friends, getting covered in mud, falling out of trees etc.
Alternatively, reading it again, it sounds more like someone who doesn't get enough exercise and enjoys sports more than office work. i.e. 99% of all office workers.
Could it be our bodies haven't adapted to our office/TV/car dominated lifestyle?

My experience with medication.

When I was first diagnosed with ADD (ADHD minus the hyperactive aspect) and put on Adderall, I was amazed to discover that it really was possible to follow the thread of an entire meeting and sit down for hours doing work that didn't absolutely fascinate me.

Adderall is a mix of four amphetamines used to combat Attention Deficit Disorder and Narcolepsy. It was originally prescribed to the obese as a hunger suppressant under a different name. I originally started on 3 doses per day of Adderall. That was problematic, however, because I would become more forgetful as it wore off, meaning that I needed to remember to take my next dose when I was at my most forgetful. I now take the extended-release version called Adderall XR. I only take it once a day, and it's helped enormously.

I've only been medicated for a couple of years now, so I've noticed a stark difference in my ability to function normally. Life before I was diagnosed was filled with frustration. I sometimes found it incredibly difficult to concentrate even on things that I enjoyed doing, or that I really wanted to do. My homework grades were terrible but my test scores tended to be quite good. Now, with a combination of medication and an intentional reduction of potential distractions, I can work steadily all day if I need to.

There are drawbacks, however. It completely obliterates my appetite. I find that if I don't make an effort to eat 3 square meals a day, I will forget to eat at all. Not being one who needs to lose weight, it caused some problems in the beginning. I won't feel hungry, but I'll get very cranky, headachy, and will find it difficult to focus when I don't eat.
I also find that I can be a little cranky in the late afternoon when I'm coming off the medication. ADD medications like Ritalin and Adderall are highly addictive, which really sucks. After taking Adderall for a couple of years now, I find that I have the attention span of a gnat on cocaine if I forget to take it.

Do I object to having ADD? Sometimes. But when channeled correctly, it's a really amazing source of creative material. It can also be quite entertaining to my friends. I'm just really glad I'm just really glad I have some control of it now.

Attention Deficit Disorder is hard for many people to understand. I've had people tell me to my face that ADD is a sham and that I'm just lazy. Fortunately, it's not a topic that comes up often.

Unfortunately, I don't know much about these alternative treatments, but I'm certainly interested in learning more.

Newer medication

You could talk to your doctor about atomoxetine. It's a new drug for adhd that isn't a stimulant. It's a norepinephrine uptake inhibitor that was recently approved for the treatment of ADHD. Good Luck.

I've had it my whole life.

My parents tooke me off Ritilan (sp) becuase I would just sit there and not do anything I was just too quiet and it spooked my mother..

In school I had trouble concentrating with any destractions including the teacher so nautrally I had lower grades though I fought like hell in high school to stay on the honor roll.

but the flipside is when something interests me I can shut everything out and pay attention it. I was great in band until I got bored and quit and I picked up my first programing language php within a relative amount of time and when I need to do something (I commonly debug others code) I can do it very effectively if not disturbed.

ADHD is basically a two edged sword and the treatments are the same you just have to take the good with the bad.

Sleep patterns?

There is new research out dealing with ADHD and sleep:

Sleep deprivation and ADHD [drgreene.com]

Sleep deprivation effects [sleep-deprivation.com]

Sleep deprivation may be undermining teens health [apa.org]

Other sites from Google [google.com]

Jargon file, Portrait of J. Random Hacker

I like to read the following from the Jargon File:
http://www.ack.ca/jargon/html/Weaknesses-of -the-Ha cker-Personality.html

(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).

Do you really have it?

ADHD has become an increasingly popular diagnosis, especially since it's very difficult to prove incorrect. ADHD is a relatively rare disorder, and has grown in the field to encompass both hyperativity disorder and ADD.

I was nearly diagnosed with ADD/ADHD when I was in 8th grade. The people didn't quite realize that I was bored. I could've taught my 8th grade English class, but I'm sure that if I were taken to a psychologist that I would be diagnosed with ADHD. I was near puberty. I was mad at the world. I didn't fit in because I had a rather poor self image.

Maybe you do have ADHD. I still find that I have trouble sitting still for more than an hour. I know that this isn't on the scale of ADHD, where they can't focus for more than 3 or 4 minutes. I do have thousands of things running through my mind, but I don't let myself get too distracted.

As the guy on everything2 hypothesized, I believe that people are evolving. The ones who have genius intelligence, but can't quite handle it are the ones who end up with ADHD. The ones that can handle it end up being true genius (like Einstein style.)

I have an easy time getting bored. I have an easy time getting energetic and jumping around like a hooligan. I might have good brain power, but I can only half-way handle it. Maybe God got distracted with something while writing "ADHD" into my head, therefore only giving me a semi-dose.

Anyway, the way I handle my self-induced stress is by working out. I lift weights and do cadio. I find that if my body is tired, I have an easier time getting to sleep. I have an easier time sitting still and writing my programs.

I hated ritalin I found it killed my creativity

and the vibrance of living. It did help me focus more and be more "productive" but I wasn't terribly impressed with what I produced. A little background: I was diagnosed with ADHD "off the map" by a psychatrist at the age of 28. I have a very keen awareness of how I see/experience the world and although it is not terribly well recieved in the industrial higherarchy it beats the hell out of staring straight ahead in a daze. Over the years I have developed a lot of coping mechanisims to make it so that my way of being didn't collide with the way I should be as much as possible. Still there are times where conformity is required and conforming without medication for me is very hard. So I will spot use ritalin to get through trouble spots. I will also happen to find it a nice mixer with a couple of beers and _\|/_ ;) it's a nice trifecta cocktail. Seriously, I found using behavioral modifaction like a well organized palm pilot and a strong social support network to be an effective and preferable treatment plan for ADHD than being medicated all the time.

you still won't want to do things that suck

The most important thing that I had to learn was that the drugs won't make you want to do things you don't want to do. You can divide tasks you currently fail at into three categories:

1) You can't focus and stick to it.
2) You don't really want to.
3) You aren't capable.

Before, I couldn't really tell the difference between the three. Part of that problem was that I was afraid to start things because I knew I couldn't follow through. It was all a muddle. And when things got tough, I'd give up. I couldn't tell whether that was because it really was too hard or because there was a threshhold of dedication that I just couldn't get over. Now, using the drugs, I have a lot more clarity. I know that if I'm capable of doing something and if I want to do it, it'll get done. That's a huge change for me. I also have a clearer understanding of what I really can do, so I know when something is just beyond my ability. The drugs have their side effects, but the clarity they have made possible is an unequivocally good thing. It also sticks with me when I'm not using them, which gives me some hope for a productive and drug-free future.

FOR PARENTS WHO ARE DRUGGING THEIR CHILDREN

"Too many children are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and improperly placed on psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall to be 'calmed down,' according to House testimony. Most child-health specialists agree that about 2% of schoolchildren 'are so pervasively overactive or inattentive that they are very difficult for anyone to manage.' But up to 17% of schoolchildren are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, said Dr. William B. Carey, director of behavioral pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia." --The Washington Times - 9 Jun 2003

---------

David Neeleman is the CEO of JetBlue Airways. He has now been told that he has ADD. He didnâ(TM)t take drugs. I wonder where he would be today if his parents had forced Ritalin on him. Most probably not the head of a profitable airline.
NYTimes - ADHD - Neeleman [nytimes.com]

--------

"They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive--termed them a 'disease.' Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term 'research.,' has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically--the "epidemic" having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today--this remains the state of the 'science' of ADHD."
adhdfraud.com [adhdfraud.com]

ADHD is not as funny as you jerks think it is.

Seriously. I have ADHD and it really sucks.

A lot of easy jokes have been made here, and frankly they all suck. I make sure not to mention to anyone that I have ADHD unless they are a good friend or need to know because the "did you take your meds?" joke isn't just tired by this point, it's painful.

I take Ritalin. It helps me a lot. It's the difference between holding down a good job and being unemployed and possibly even homeless. It really is that night and day. I am trying something new that can be taken along with Ritalin that might replace it, but in my all too real experience without Ritalin my life is a disorganized mess.

I don't really have more to add, but ADHD isn't as fun as you might think. It hurts your job prospects, it hurts your social life, and it hurts any projects you try to attempt.

On the upside, ADHD often comes with the ability to hyperfocus. I sometimes work on writing music for 8 or 9 hours at a time, completely obsessed with every minor detail, even forgetting to eat. If I could turn this on and off at the drop of a hat, I would have had a 4.0 in college. Instead I fought the ADHD like crazy and got a 3.3.

Most of you probably don't realize that ADHD has a tight association with dysthymia, a mild but chronic depression that in and of itself is self-destructive. If you're not careful the two disorders will feed off each other.

I'm 26 now. The Hyperactive part of the disorder mostly means that I'm a bit eccentric and excitable, where in the past it made me a social pariah. I've got a good therapist helping me leverage what advantages ADHD gives me and minimize the downsides. I'm glad I'm confronting my ADHD head on instead of dismissing it as a myth or an excuse for parents/teachers.

I agree that it's probably overdiagnosed, but for those of us who really have it, it sucks.

.

AD[H]D: Superpowers, with a steep price to pay

AD[H]D often confers a number of superpowers on those who have it: incredible memory for detail, ability to hyperfocus for long periods, ambidexterousness(!), and others.

However, in adults, especially adults who were not diagnosed as children, AD[H]D often co-occurs with a pervasive (mild) clinical depression, and a tremendous dose of ego damage resulting from having been told repeatedly in myriad ways that you're "not working up to your potential". (i.e., you could be good, but instead you're being bad, and obviously it's your fault.)

Learning to live really happily as an AD[H]D person can involve accepting all kinds of help: support from family, friends, and co-workers; psychotherapy; and medications such as Ritalin to help give the brain a more balanced level attentiveness (instead of only hyperfocused or totally scattered), and antidepressant medications (SSRIs), to help ease some of the inner self-flagellation that adult AD[H]Ders can do to themselves.

But fundamentally, there's one big lesson you and everyone around you have to learn: you don't perceive or process the world quite the same way other people do, regardless of what you (or they) wish. Acknowledge that, and you've started down a good path: finding your superpowers, living with your weaknesses, and getting support from people around you.

-Mark, diagnosed at age 30

You're Not Alone

There are all sorts of tactics you can take. I laughingly call it my "Shiny Ball" syndrome and joke about it with people who work with me.

But, what I've found is that an ADHD person makes an excellent "fireman." The truth is that you can sit in a room and catch a stray noise, or a grunt indicating frustration from one of your fellow employees -- and be there to help.

Talk to your manager. If he/she is less-than-a-troll, they'll work with you to use your "gift."

As for focus, I have gotten good at marking where I am in various projects and flitting between them without having to do a lot of ramp-up. Again, it's just adapting to the different way your brain works.

Now mine might not be as severe as some. I know that I got through LOTR books in three days of intense reading--because it fascinated me. But give me a 60-page manual to read at a desk and it will take me weeks to plow through it.

When learning new languages, I tend to bring the reference manual into the john with me. Laugh if you will but amazingly, it works very well. I learned C, Flash, Java, Python, PHP, piece-by-piece (ahem) using this method.

As long as you remain productive, you're an asset to yourself and your career -- find ways to make this work for you.

You may also find that you have a better-than-average ability to "read" people. In three other people I've met who are ADHD, we all had that in common -- my (admittedly parlor) theory is that ADHD people unconsciously pick up more of body language-type cues because they're paying attention to EVERYTHING and learn to process them at an early age...

For fun, next time you're in a restaurant, see how many distinct conversations you can follow.

Another thing that drives me nuts is when people in the theater are whispering to each other. They'll be a couple of rows back and it will break any chance I have of watching the movie. Of course my companions never hear a thing.

My experience with ADD

I had ADD as a kid, while my sister has ADHD to this day. I took ritalin from as young as I can remember until I was 12 (I'm 29 now, so I was on ritalin before it was 'cool'), then cylert and tofranil until I was 16, then cylert alone until I was 19. Once I hit college, I just weaned myself off of cylert over the course of three weeks (on my own, without doctors' advice..).

Once I hit sixteen, I realized I needed to start taking steps to bring things under control myself, rather than depend upon medication for the rest of my life. I started consciously working to focus my mind, admittedly no small feet. These days, I think I overcompensated, as I have the ability to, when I need to, focus solely on one task, blocking out the need to eat, smoke, and even move, in some cases. Even though heart rate is controlled through the autonomic nervous system, with a bit of focus, I can slow my heart rate down to approx 45 bpm, even able to go down to 1 beat every 2 seconds in the extreme case.

Personally, I don't know that ADD/ADHD really exist. I think it's kind of like saying that people with fair skin have problems with the sun. No kidding. Some minds are more frenetic than others, just as some folks' skin is lighter than others'. People with fair skin can spend time in the sun with either sunblock (drugs) or gradually building up a base tan and letting the melanin do its thing (mental control and focus).

Learning how to harness and control the power of that frenetic mind has probably had the single most profound effect on my life of anything I've ever done. In my career as a developer, it's been invaluable for marathon coding stretches. It's also helped professionally in that there can be many thought patterns whirling around at any given time, allowing for efficient multi-tasking. I've consistently surprised my co-workers with my ability to be deep in thought working on something, while simultaneously being able to hear conversations and chime in with cogent commentary. In my personal life, it's been useful for being able to learn things, simultaneously taking in new concepts and referring to old ones to create a mental framework for how things "work" together.

Best advice is to learn how to harness it and use it to your advantage. You may need medication while you're in that process, but once you're done, they may not be necessary anymore.

My experience with ADHD

I'm a 16 year old and I have ADHD (without the hyperactivity though). So basically stare out at the windows and day dream, or maybe I just go blank in space. Although this is a disadvantage at school, I do the best possible by sitting WAY in the front of my classrooms. I also let my teachers know my situation. Therefore when they see me going off they woulld maybe gesture to me or walkby a put a hand on my desk for a silent signal.

In school I'm one of the few people who makes the best multimedia presentations for school projects. I usually make incredibly creative webpages, bring my laptop the next day, and put it on a projector for the class to enjoy. It seemed to me that people with ADHD (or ADD), works much better when they have multimedia support, that means images, videos, audio, etc. Usually plain text gets me nowhere. I'd say that ADHD didn't effect my technical adversaries at all. In fact I think they're really creative.

I attend the San Francisco School of the Arts. I major in Piano. Piano is one of the hardest subjects to study for me. Sitting down at the same place and practicing for an hour or two daily, is not an easy thing to do because it requires so much attention and concentration. So what I do is I only practice at the first 15 minutes of each session, then go do something else, then repeat the same procedure. This way I can ensure that I'm getting the most out of each session. After 15 minutes I usaully begin to focus significantly less.

IMO, ADHD (without the hyperactivity) helped me in the arts. It has helped me develop a very passive and dreamy personality. I feel that this kind of personality plays a big role in studying the arts (Piano, in this case). ADHD has also helped me develop a creative mind for making webpages, multimedia presentations, and whatnot. Teachers and the principal have always enjoyed my web presentations, and the principal have decided that I can take over the school's website starting next year, with a few assistants.

For medicine, I have been taking both of these seperately:

*Dexedrine 10mg
*Dextroamphetamine 5mg

Initially, for the 5mg tablet, I've experienced some mood changes. I could feel the "ups" and "downs" quite significantly. When the medicine wore off I would suddenly more relaxed and in a more cheery mood. For the 10mg tablet, it made me even more sleepy at times, but it generally gave me a longer, more expanded time for focusing, at the scrafice of a direct focus (which is what the 5mg tablet does). I've talked with my doctor and since 3 months ago I've been taking the 10mg in the morning, and the 5mg afternoon, for my arts. (We have academics in the morning, and the arts during the afternoon). This has worked quite well.

But now here's the interesting part: My parents and I have decided to give a try at acupuncture. We believe that blood-flow plays a vital role in giving attention and concentration. Acupuncture can make sure the important parts of my body are well stimlated, and hopefully blood will travel through my body and into my brain more regularly.
Also I've found that doing excercise really helps the concentration. Aside from the fact that it pumps out adreneline, it puts your mind off to your physical activities for a change. When your mind is done with controlling your blood flood and so on, it's then completely ready to switch back to working anything mentally (especially something that needs sustained focus, like practicing piano, coding, etc.)

Well that's it for now. Just my two pesos.

Anthony

When personality control becomes an industry

I am being sincere when I say that I have much respect for everyone here. I am not suggesting that the "condition" of ADD or ADHD, OCD, RAD and all the other "diseases" and "disorders" do not exist. The circumstances that these conditions describe do obviously exist. However, I take offense to the industry that has cropped up to take advantage of people who are troubled, and promote this ideal that there is some sort of solution that more often than not, involves the medical/theraputical/pharmacological equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme.

What we are talking about, in essence, with the exception of extreme cases where people have very serious, identifiable physical handicaps, is a burgeoning new industry which revolves around the selling of drugs to alter peoples' personalities, and usually to just make them non-uppity so they fall into line like everyone else and don't make waves.

Take RAD for instance: Reactive Attachment Disorder. A psychological "condition" where people who have come from backgrounds of trauma, abuse or abandonment have trouble getting close to others. The same thing for ADD. It's a behavioral anomoly, but it's only really an anomoly by comparison to what is considered a social norm, so it's arguable as to whether or not anyone is ultimately "afflicted" or they're merely guilty of being different from those around them.

Do these issues need to be treated? Sure. But the way in which they are being treated, especially with drugs, for most people, exacerbates the condition and makes it worse.

The end result is that society pushes people who are different into little categories in order to explain why they are disappointing, unproductive, unusual, etc. Rather than taking some time to understand a person, let's just call him ADD and pop a pill in his mouth. What kind of goddam treatment is that?

Regarding ADD and its various spin-offs, I'd bet good money you can find a solid correllation between people diagnosed with ADD and being put on medication and: 1. Crappy, self-absorbed parents who would rather give their kid a pill or send him to a psychologist than actually sit down with him and take some time to understand his issues; 2. People who grew up with a very low amount of physical activity during formative developmental periods, and 3. children who were weaned on excessive amounts of television, video games and other forms of hyperactive sensory bombardment.

Especially regarding ADD. Who the fuck isn't going to have a short attention span when they spend X hours a day watching television or playing games, which nowadays are so amazingly explosive, redundant and senationalized in their presentation of information, it's obvious the media has the capacity to desensitize people to the many non-obnoxious nuances of communication.... THIS is the source of ADD.

I read an article the other day from a psychology publication that stated that people nowadays are so bombarded with redundant soundbytes of information, it now takes 6-7 transmissions of the same advertising message to "stick" in a person's head. And every day it gets worse.

Put down the controller. Pull out the GTA cartridge, get off your ass and go out and ride your skateboard... Get physically active; lay off caffeine; make an effort to alter your normal behavior via normal means! Stop going from high speed to sedating yourself before you go to sleep. Before we had mass-obnoxious-neuron-sucking media, humans got along well and had plenty to do. Our technology is turning newer generations into epileptic zombies.

Our brains are incredibly powerful instruments. They get used to things; chemicals we put in our bodies; stimuli we are exposed to. If you sit there for hours a day being bombarded with little soundbytes, then unless your boss is wearing a flat panel LCD screen around his neck with the NASDAQ scrolling off it, and flailing dramatically as he talks, you're probably somewhat board with the dullness of the interaction.

Who's fault is that? The

Biofeedback Therapy

Two words: Biofeedback Therapy. Allopathic Medicine has been the hard rule in the states for a long time, but the gap has been closing in the recent decades.

The kind of biofeedback therapy i'm thinking of is the kind where a computer accepts input from a crown of electrodes that measure the electromagnetic fields in the brain, interpereting the data in such a way as to allow it to use the input as the inputs for game-like tasks that train you to actually correct problems like bipolar disorder and ADHD not by adding chemicals to the stews in our brains, but rather approaching it from a cognative angle, perhaps analogous to exersizing a muscle.

These same tools were developed to study the effect of yogic meditation on the brain, and studies that used this technology in conjunction with yoga training found that similar mindstates could be acheived in a fraction of the time with the neural feedback provided by a computer (that is, giving you visual and auditory feedback of yoru current brain state, allowing you to consciously change it).

This may sound very blue-sky, but my younger sister has been undergoing biofeedback therapy administered by a holistic doctor for a condition that hasn't even been completely diagnosed by several traditional psychologists, ideas ranging from bipolar disorder, manic depressive, ADHD, they haven't really decided yet. Since she started the therapy, however, she's much improved.

To help further clarify what i'm talking about and perhaps provide further information for the interested, one computer program that she used in therapy displayed three rocket ships on the screen. She was told that the left-hand rocket represented something like being bored and daydreamy, and the right-hand rocket represented something like hyperactivity and excitement, with the middle rocket ship representing Focus. The computer program is calibrated much like a lie-detector test, and the computer will reward a shift in her brain state towards Focused Attention with the graphical representation of the middle rocket ship rising, with similar reactions in the other two ships when slips into the other two brain states are detected by the electrodes on her head.

She can play pacman without touching a physical controller, after calibrating the software correctly. Her current exersizes with the gear, i beleive, are simply transcendental meditation rouines aided by the biofeedback software. I'm pretty sure i saw a getup like this pilot a flight sim (without a controller) back in college. This is a legitimate field of study, folks.

The hardware and software (i dont know if its exactly what my sister uses, but its damn close) can be found at www.brainfingers.com, and even includes a midi-mapper interface for the brainwave interpreter (as well as some games and i think a development kit)!

Before I get any replies of this nature, I'm not entirely in the loop with what my sister's current scholastic/health situation is, but I -do- know that my mother isn't disregarding or ignoring the help of traditional psychologists or allopathic doctors, but from what i can tell, has just sought out options for treatment that don't involve drugging her up (not that i'm opposed to recreational drugging, just habitual drugging).

I, for one, equate the modern condition of psychopharmacy to be in the same state as surgery in the dark ages. I have several examples of how this is so and why, but i think this post has gone on quite long enough anyway.

Non drug bases approach

Since I never even take aspirin and already had to live with AHDH for 29 years before I even realized there was a name for my behavior and had arranged with a more or less fitting lifestyle, I had/have strong resentments against taking any drugs. To handle some of the problems I use some of the following tricks:

• use external frameworks: I've learned that I am ways (10-20 times) more efficient when I have to go to the office than when working at home without any fixed schedule. Main reasons seem to be:
  • starts at a specific time (not 9PM, so no I'll just finish this first till late night)
  • makes it impossible to just walk around and follow any distractions (someone would notice)
  • stops at a specific time (so it's more difficult to break your own schedule or to tell yourself at 3AM you still got plenty of time to start)
  Since I started being self-employed (again) I try to simulate the office.
  • I start at 10am, even if I only got three hours of sleep
  • I remove the name server from /etc/resolv.conf in the morning, so I can only reach my local machines and some that are noted in /etc/hosts (my own servers, python.org etc.) No more accidental surfing.
  • I try to keep interesting stuff off my desk
  • I keep track on my time in OpenOffice, so I always know whether I already have met my targets or if I have spend hour researching some of the infinite interesting side branches again. If the spread sheet would not remind me, I would have forgotten what I did all day by evening.
  • I make a lot of short term contracts with other people, so I have to report my own progress on at least a weekly basis
  • In a case of massive desperation I have tied myself to the chair (literally). You would be astonished how often I found myself in the other room wondering how the hell I got there again and again and again.
• involve other people: Over time I learned that I can really concentrate to save somebody else's ass, but not mine. So I try to make sure to work with other people, because the moral pressure to not let them down will somewhat compensate my lack of staying with the priorities. If they are involved actively this also gives me some feedback I urgently need to not forget what I'm trying to do in the first place. I also told everybody I know what I'm trying to achieve, so everybody keeps asking how it's actually working out, also keeping me on track.
• caffeine: I dislike coffee, so it's about 3l of Coke per day. To save my weight and teeth I switched to Coke light (hey, you can get used to anything), now my stomach is troubling me. You pay a price.
• choice of job: I'm excellent at finding (keys as well as solutions) in a minimum of time and miserable with long term projects. I can handle very complex situations in my head, but never make a small step for a long term solution. This works just fine for trouble shooting, so I was a quite successful sysadmin as long as things where on fire (I quit when everything is running again) as well as as a programmer (as long as the time lines where impossible). What I'm best at is technical consulting for nearly doomed projects, where I can play all my magic and improvise a solution in a short time on a very high adrenaline level. Never hire me for something that takes more than eight weeks.
• learning: Maybe other people can learn Python or Ruby in two days, but I can not. I can learn a lot about Python, Zope, WebDAV, XML-RPC, XQL, bioinformatics, BLAST, MPI, proteomics, NUMA, Chinese grammar, game physics, google ranking, CSS, ARM etc. in one day, but not Python alone in two. So I've basically given up on jobs that demand systematic learning of a specific topic in a short term, instead I give in to being an info junkie and base my consulting on my ability to connect hundreds of weird topics with each other t

Not ability nor disability.

I exhibits most of the diagnostic indicators of ADHD and/or Autism, but I've never been 'diagnosed' and firmly reject the premise these are a disability or disease. I am poor at sport and empathic stuff, I'm constantly told I lack focus and concentration yet I know I am quite capable of focusing and concentration on something I find interesting and challenging for much longer than 'normal' people.

The real question should what is 'normal' and why should everybody be 'normal'. When any ability, attribute or skill of people is measured some people must end up on the extremes of the curve, this is entirely normal and is called a normal distribution.

Some people are good at sport, some people are poor at sport.
Some people are high EQ, some people are low EQ.
Some people are high IQ, some people are low IQ.

My special abilities allow me to conceive unusually and innovative solutions to problems, I can think around a problem in a way that 'normal' people are unable to even contemplate because they think in what I see as simplistic linear manner. I think this makes me and other similar people gifted not disabled.

I think you should read the THE EVIL PRACTICE OF NARCOTHERAPY FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT by Dr. David Keirsey [keirsey.com]. It may change the way you think about yourself.

You should also know that many of the greatest minds in history have exhibited the same symptoms as what is now called ADHD and/or Autism, Albert Einstein, Issac Newton, Isambard Brunel, Alexander Graham Bell; to name four.

There are many more here [adhdrelief.com].

Finally two rhetorical questions.

Why are so many supposed 'normal' people prepared to label these abilities a disease or disability that must have a cause ? Many of these same people ascribe ADHD and/or Autism to MMR (or mercury in vaccines) because if it is a disease or disability it must have a cause. These 'normal' people are *supposed* to be empathic, yet give little consideration to our feelings in fact they do this despite our feels or thought on this subject. I think they should focus more effort into understanding that labelling.

ADHD Was Manufactured

99% of the cases of this being diagnosed is fake.

The entire thing was created as a revenue stream for the doctors and drug companies, especially in children.

That's why they say 90% of kids have it.. bah they are just normal kids. The definition of normal is what they are trying to change.

How to manage ADHD.

First off, I am ADHD but manage it quite well. In my opinion, many diseases like diabetes, hypoglycemia, ADHD, and certain mental illnesses are diet and lifestyle related. Note: I said "related" and not "caused".

Shocked?!!

We live in a society where the docs tell you, "You aren't responsible for your disease and condition, just take this magic pill."

Tell me about your diet. Is it filled with sugar, carbs, and caffene? How regularly do you eat (3 meals per day)? Also, have you ever had your blood sugar checked?

Tell me about your excercise routine. Do you excercise daily, infrquently, or never?

What has helped me is:
1. Laying off the caffene, only one shot in the morning.
2. Eating well balanced meals that aren't filled with sugar and carbs at regularly scheduled times. I even eat Oatmeal for breakfast everyday now.
3. Daily excercise.


Don't lose heart. If you can do it for 20 days you can make something a habit/lifesytle change.

As for ADHD in children, have you visited a school lately? Schools now come equipped with vending machines and the Pop companies (coke/pepsi) give some of the profits back to the school. Where has common sense gone? Give kids stimulants and empty calories like pop and potato chips then expect them to behave and perform well? Whaaaaaa?

Note: I do believe that there are people with legitimate brain chemistry problems. However the vast majority of people just need to eat right, excercise, and work on some self discipline and they will be fine. Check Amazon.com for these books..

The Myth of ADHD and Other Learning Disabilities. Parenting Without Ritalin.
The A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. Diet! Updated


And remember, you are responsible for you. You have a disorder. You are NOT this disorder. Also there are no "silver bullets". No magic pills or herbs that will magically cure. However, I do get daily emails from some guys telling me that have an ancient formula to make my "package" larger. :)

Good Luck!

Coping with ADHD

I grew up with ADHD. I took ritilin early on to help me focus, and according to my Mom and grade school teachers it worked ( one of my teachers thought I should be institutionalized, either I had it bad, or she was impatient, maybe both.. ) Realize this was in the late 60's early 70's, and it was not as common as today to diagnose someone ADHD.

Lucky for me, my Mom had some sense, and did not keep me drugged up all of the time. During the school year, she made sure I took the medicine, in as low a dose as was effective, in order to help me in dealing with learning, school, other kids, etc, etc. ( you need someone to monitor you, I had *no* idea how I was doing... ) Off times ( and I think weekends ), I was off the medicine, in order to help me to learn to deal with how I was. I thank God every day she did.

A crutch is a good thing, but becoming reliant on it will not do you good long term. IHMO, you will do yourself a big favor if you get to where you can cope without.

I now work as a programmer, and, I think, not too bad a one. I have taken on tech lead type positions as well, and I think I have been moderately successfull in that as well. I have a family and kids, and life is pretty normal for me.

AFA differences between me and my coworkers and being effective on the job, I have always found that my thought processes were different than the "normal" people around me. I dont know if that is a result of ADHD, or just how I would have been without. I find that there is no real/marked qualitative or quantitative difference in my thinking, just different, I find that I am able to function in the same league as the best of the developers I find myself working with. I write bugs just like everyone else, find and fix them like others, function in archetechtural discussions like others.

David J. Davison

Re:Existance of ADHD

"informative"? It's flame-bait!

If Ritalin improves the quality of your life, does it matter if ADHD is the correct diagnosis? And if Ritalin doesn't help you, why would you keep taking it, even if you do have ADHD? It doesn't work for everyone, and you still may have ADHD if it doesn't work for you.

Re:Existance of ADHD

The problem with Ritalin is that it tends to remove a person's sense of right and wrong. ALL of the kids who were involved in these mass school shootings were on Ritalin or similar substances. Obviously, it doesn't usually affect a person to that degree, but the effect is there nonetheless.

The sad thing is that such medication often curbs great talent that could be channeled through other means.

Note that I'm not talking about any individual case (I'm sure there _are_ valid uses of Ritalin), just that, for the most part, it is being misperscribed because society wants children to "sit still and listen" when they (especially boys), have the need to roam and explore. People who do not go along with the status quo are labelled as having a disorder, when actually they are the ones who keep society living and vibrant.

Sadly, instead of channelling their talents, we are drugging them out of them.

Re:Existance of ADHD

The problem with Ritalin is that it tends to remove a person's sense of right and wrong. ALL of the kids who were involved in these mass school shootings were on Ritalin or similar substances.

You sir, are a moron. You're actually stating that methamphetamines make people forget that killing is bad? Troubled students who shoot their peers have deeply rooted emotional problems that need serious attention. Ritalin is the wrong drug for these types of problems, but that in no way means it is responsible for their actions.

how obnoxious

Someone admits on Slashdot having a medical disorder that has had difficulty finding acceptance in society and all of a sudden dozens of insensitive jokes pop up on slashdot? And they're moderated up too? Would you guys laugh if Richard Stallman had scizophrenia? What about things like alcoholism or depression? Personality disorders aren't funny. They are difficult for the people who have them and making jokes about them is rude and insensitive. I am apalled by the Slashdot community's response to this.

Re:how obnoxious

Some of us who suffer from medical problems have to find a way to laugh at it. It's a damn sight better than being depressed about it.

There's such a thing as too much political correctness / sensitivity about some things. When you have problems you deal with every day, laughter is a great medicine.

SB

Please be respectful on this topic

For an honest "ask slashdot" question from someone with ADHD, can the mods please not mod up post such as this as "funny", because they're not and they interfere with the purpose of the question. Making fun of the subject in this manner is a tired joke anyway.

Try also to not let this turn into a debate as to the acceptedness of ADHD as a diagnosis. For many of us, this is a subject that is close to heart and quite frankly, many are tired of the obvious jokes and unacceptance. ADHD is real, it's here, so please, even if you don't have it, please respect it for what it is.

As for me, I did encounter a bit of uncertianty when I informed my boss about my own ADHD. Many do not know anything about it so understanding is a constant struggle.

As for meds, I have found Aderall XR to be quite effective, but like many ADD drugs, its amphetamine status makes it a pain because of the triplicate forms and many doctors can be apprehensive about prescribing it.

There is a new drug released this year who's name escapes me, but it's a non-amphetamine drug that is much easier to deal with. Problems I have read, however, are some rare cases of folks finding they get odd violent tendencies or it can only make their ADHD symptoms worse. Just goes to show how much we truly understand this disease.

For herbal remedies, I have yet to see a well controlled series of scientific studies of any treatment that makes as significant a difference as the more generally accepted medications.

It's a fact of ADHD, If you have it, you take mphetamines, aka speed. Many respond quite well to it, so once you get over the fact that you're taking a "controlled substance", you can move on with your life and actually thrive quite well.

Re:Please be respectful on this topic

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!"

Re:Please be respectful on this topic

Gee, for someone with ADHD, you sure managed to focus long enought to write that long post ;p

anyway, jokes aside. Lighten up! Seriously, do you think that Famanoran didn't expect all those jokes? Furthermore, just because Famanoran has ADHD and asked us about possible treatments doesn't mean that the /. community can't have a little fun. Honestly, do you want to wade through 200 comments about what drugs work for them? HELL NO! This site is more about entertainment than anything else. You shouldn't mod people down for not being politically correct. If you don't like such jokes, then why are you still reading /.?

Learn to laugh at yourself, you'll be a better person for it. Humorous AD(H)D stories [miningco.com]

Re:Please be respectful on this topic

ADHD is real, it's here, so please, even if you don't have it, please respect it for what it is.

nih.gov/adhd [nih.gov]
What Causes ADHD?
Health professionals stress that since no one knows what causes ADHD...

Can Any Other Conditions Produce These Symptoms?
The fact is, many things can produce these behaviors.

Does that seem to warrant placing 17% of children on a mind-altering drug?
Ritalin is just the laudanum of the 21st century.

When the drugs don't work...

Well, I've spent years working with children with severe and real ADHD problems, often mixed with other physical and mental handicaps.

I have only ever seen one approach result in a significant improvement in their quelity of life, and that is occupational therapy.

There is no drug out there that 'treats' ADHD, they all just mask it, which gives the brain no reason to learn its way to an improvement, the drugs are the worst enemy of an ADHD sufferer who actually wants to get better.

A seriously approached treatment program with a qualified and knowledgable occupational therapist can make a LARGE difference in even severe cases of ADHD, I've seen it - and I'm not talking about your average cases here but the type that land you up in perminent special care and are often linked to other physical and mental handicaps.

ADHD, like many brain dysfunctions, can be 'learned' out with enough work - maybe not totally, but often to a level that makes it very manageable.

ADHD=Bored Person Syndrome.

Why dont we name it BPS, every person with so called ADHD if you ask them why they dont pay attention to their task or job, they will tell you its because their task or job is borinng, its not exciting, etc.

I have not met one person who has REAL ADHD, meaning a person who cant even focus on doing what they like to do.

People with ADHD somehow manage to spend hours watching cartoons, playing video games, hacking on the internet, coming to sites like slashdot, so on and so forth.

These people however cant focus on their job, their school work, you know, the more boring aspects of life.

Theres two solutions, learn that life isnt all fun and games and that the majority of a persons life is just plain boring, and accept it. OR you can take pills, hide behind the ADHD, label yourself as inferior to "Normal" people, and try to get special benefits and privileges.

Now, if I had a job where I had to do Algebra and Calculus problems, suddenly I'd have ADHD as well, I'd fall asleep, or sooner look at butterflies before I could do that for 12 hours a day.

However, give me a job where I get to play PC games all day, or watch TV all day, suddenly I'm alert, and awake with no problem.

So go figure people, if you have ADHD, its not new, people have been lazy for centuries, people have had to do boring things for centuries, and thats part of life, adapt.

Re:ADHD=Bored Person Syndrome.

I have not met one person who has REAL ADHD, meaning a person who cant even focus on doing what they like to do.

You have met them, you just never noticed it. Unmedicated, I cannot consistently focus on things I like to do. This has nothing at all to do with boredom. I may decide to work on project X that has to be completed very quickly and several hours later find myself working on project Y that is relatively unimportant. Both projects may be fascinating, but the point is that I can't manage to work on the task that I intended to work on without getting distracted with something else. With medication, that is much less of a problem.

But the real problem with ADD is often how it interferes with normal life. You leave the house to mail a letter or a bill and end up in a bookstore a couple of hours later without the letter and unable to remember if it was actually mailed, or if it is sitting on a bookshelf someplace.

This is not a matter of people being lazy and your statement that it is shows how little you know or care about other people. My physics degree is proof enough that I am not lazy. Nor do I consider myself to be inferior to others. And I don't get any special benefits or privileges, despite your belief that I am somehow being coddled by the rest of society.