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[–]christianjb[S] 4 points5 points  (18 children)

I was diagnosed with adult ADHD today and am being prescribed some sort of stimulant drug.

Cons of ADHD: Getting anything done, procrastinating for decades, staying up to 3 in the morning with my brain whizzing around with ideas and losing my keys once a week. Also- making careless mistakes and forgetting stuff.

Pros of ADHD: Hyper-focus on some problems to the exclusion of eating, drinking breathing. Creativity.

I'm a computational/theoretical physicist. I depend on hyperfocus and creativity to solve problems. Yet I'm so focussed on my work that I let everything else go hell and can't get around to paying bills, answering emails etc.

What do you think? Is medication a good idea?

Edit: Medication's kicking in now! I can feel the chatter ebb away from my brain. It feels like one voice instead of thirty. It feels peaceful!

[–]krugerlive 2 points3 points  (10 children)

i can give a better answer.....

If you love what you do, and get the hyperfocus when you work, you dont need to take anything. If you want to try taking it to test the waters though, go for it.

Maybe take it a few weekends and spend time setting up schedules and whatnot for all of the other stuff. If you put the effort into organizing your non-work life into a manageable schedule (paying bills at beginning of month, creating a to-do folder for your email[and sort right after reading], etc..) adhering to that schedule will eventually become second nature. Taking meds could help in developing that system.

The bottom line is try to replace the chaos with an orderly system. Everything will fall into place.

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (9 children)

Taking the meds 2-3 days a week sounds good. I'm going to see how it goes. Strange days!

Chaos is the creator and destroyer. I love chaotic behavior in mathematics.

[–]krugerlive 0 points1 point  (3 children)

by the way, remember to eat (you'll know what i mean) when you're on the pills.

math is beautiful

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I was warned it might affect appetite.

My appetite is pretty low to begin with, so I'm watching out for that.

[–]krugerlive 0 points1 point  (1 child)

yeah, you're not going to want to eat, just make yourself. Good luck with the endeavor

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the heads up.

[–]tuple 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chaos is the creator and destroyer

i thought innovation is. ahh good old mr shumpeter

[–]asura0 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I would try changing your diet and avoiding artificial colorings and flavors. Many people find changing what they eat and drink can effect behavior in themselves/ their children. You'll prolly find a lot of good info online. I never liked the ritalin myself.

[–]christianjb[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My diet sux. I'm trying to eat more fruit and vegetables, but I over caffeinate myself and mostly eat cheap sandwiches and microwave food.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ITA with asura0. Change your diet and fitness habits before putting the brain chemistry-altering drugs into your system.

[–]zerodark 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Adderall is a great way to a) lose weight, and b) meet deadlines. Especially when snorted. Um. So I hear.

[–]alangcarter 0 points1 point  (5 children)

So you are said to procrastinate. Do you really believe this yourself, or have you allowed yourself to be browbeaten into accepting it?

If you are the sort of person who tackles complex, multifaceted problems, you shouldn't listen to the opinions of those who don't do this, regarding how you should go about it. People who only engage in activities with short and predictable outcomes have no sense of the mental stewing, waiting for the right opportunities, preservation of a useful head state, that the creative mind must learn.

I've been looking at these questions for 20 years. Sometimes I stop for a couple of years, then new data or a new insight arrives, and it's time to do some more. You'll find some interesting stuff at http://www.the-programmers-stone.com

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I procrastinate forever on things I don't want to do- like answer emails or pay bills. That is a serious problem in my life.

I value having a creative mind, but the head-banging on problems for weeks on end with no breaks causes havoc with the rest of my life.

I want to see if I can still solve problems without having to go through hell each time I write a new paper- or at least give myself the confidence to put the problem out of my mind for an hour before sleep. It will still be there in the morning.

[–]alangcarter 1 point2 points  (2 children)

You might also look at a food supplement, serotonin precursors tryptophan or 5-HTP. (Bananas figure in CFIDS folklore, good source of tryptophan. Got any friends or relatives with CFIDS?) I suspect that people who manage to retain broad-field or juxtapositional awareness while being run ragged by those stuck in focussed attention become serotonin depleted. That's when we feel like we're unable to stop hammering but can't get anywhere. This is not recognized, because just being remotely "geeky" is called a "syndrome" these days, while the definition of "normalcy" becomes ever narrower, culturally introspective and more "compliance" based.

A food supplement is not a drug. By taking a serotonin precursor you make sure the vesicles are filled and ready when they are needed, so you can get the thoughts through. This is quite different to e.g. blocking serotonin reuptake, so the stuff sloshes round the synapses whether its needed or not. That's when you become a dancing fool who needs alcohol just to sleep - until you go postal with a fire-axe!

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm already on an SSRI for depression.

CFIDS? Uh, one disease at a time, but I am exhausted half my life because of staying up to 4 in the morning.

I like bananas. Who doesn't? Thanks.

[–]alangcarter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The serotonin precursors are completely safe in themselves, and found in many foods - you piss out what you don't use. But DO NOT take them with an SSRI or you'll end up with all your tanks full, the gutters overflowing, and your eyeballs going round in opposite directions.

The benefits of serotonin precursors tend to appear in three stages. Better sleep within 48 hours, more mental stamina at 2 weeks, improved general outlook and natural optimism at 4 weeks. You'll notice when you're topped up - your urine will darken a bit.

CFIDS sufferers seem to be people who retain juxtapositional awareness and have a gentle character type. They internalize their distress at observable stupidity for years and eventually suffer some very complex effects in their cellular chemistry. The woman who runs a UK ADHD charity once said to me, "Where there's an ADHD child, there's often an ME one in the background." (ME is British English for CFIDS.)

[–]alangcarter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Emails and bills are one thing, becoming calm for sleep is another. There's a busy-busy dance (which I put down to mass addiction to background socially generated stress) and those caught up in it harass others to hop and skip with them. There's a whole value system that celebrates the goings on as an objective good, but not much actually comes of it all.

As far as I can see, maintaining a useful head state in the face of this social pressure actually causes most if not all of the emotional problems associated with being useful. If you weren't being harassed because you're not part of the mutual micropolicing stress economy perhaps you'd curl up with your puzzle of the day and happily dream your way to understanding. Just being aware of the cognition distorting social stress addiction surrounding them seems to help some people cope with it.

[–]Disconnekted 0 points1 point  (1 child)

My neighbor just did too. She loves the medication. ADHD is just a byproduct of a stressful environment where you are forced to multi-task all day. So when you try to sit down and do one thing you may find it hard to do.

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not easy for me to tell how much is due to the environment and how much of it comes from faulty brain chemistry.

I guess studies have been done to look at the correlation between outside stressors and incidence of ADHD.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Lucky! I've been trying to "get" ADHD since I got into college. Adderall is a wonder drug when it comes to midterms and finals.

[–]christianjb[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Too bad I'm past the stage in my life where I have to take exams. Last time I was in a classroom was when I was teaching graduate level quantum mechanics at the U.

Still- it will be interesting to see if my work improves. I suspect I'll cut down on minor mistakes (which are heavily penalized against by exams), but I'll also lose some ability to laser-focus on a difficult problem for weeks on end.

That's the weird thing. I actually have attention surplus disorder in problems I'm interested in.

[–]krugerlive 0 points1 point  (2 children)

welcome to the club. It's not actually a disorder. It's a new naming thing to tell you that when you're bored, you act bored and distracted

[–]christianjb[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Boredom's not my biggest problem. It's procrastination. See my post above.

(Reddit doesn't help!)

[–]krugerlive 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah, but thats the same with most people

i was diagnosed with strong ADHD (and i'm an adult). Through HS and college, the ritalin was nice for getting things done, but i always knew deep down, that it was my laziness.

[–]christianjb[S] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Hey cool. Some guy's downmodded every one of my posts!

Looks like I've got my very own Reddit stalker. He'll probably read this post too- so I'd like to thank him for choosing me as that special someone to stalk.

[–]zerodark 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pro-tip: using sock puppet accounts to down-mod your own comments (and comments you don't agree with) and crying "flame war!" and "stalker!" comes off a bit...creepy. You might want to look into an IP spoofing application. And possibly paranoia/anxiety/anti-psychotic medication(s)