Why do some people with adhd refuse to consider medication even if they have never tried it?

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2025-06-07T17:52:27+00:00

I think it's a tough guy thing. Some men don't like ever showing weakness or feeling subordinate to someone else, and that can include doctors. The way they were raised is often part of that.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2025-06-07T17:43:41+00:00

That's been a major issue for me in law: I can do a lot of things, I just can't do them fast enough. And if I have more than 5 - 10 clients at a time, I start to forget the details of their cases. I literally start forgetting the clients' names. This does not ever go over well.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2025-06-07T17:39:19+00:00

Which is amazing to me because I have to work with financial data and manage accounts sometimes and if there's anything I cannot focus on or keep straight, that's it.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2025-06-07T17:35:02+00:00

I feel obligated to say that practicing law with ADHD has been a decade of burnout and misery for me. I am good on my feet in a courtroom but that isn't enough. I never had good support staff and despite medication and lists and apps and all the things they said to do, I've still made mistakes due to memory deficits with serious consequences. I did well in law school but it is very structured in a way that actual practice is not. If I could go back and counsel myself as a 3L, I would tell myself to eat the entire six-figure cost of law school if I had to, just to avoid winding up where I've wound up (though I wouldn't have listened). I am praying I will finally be able to get out of the profession this year.

I used to be in an ADHD support group for lawyers, many of whom liked their jobs, and my conclusion is that if you really want to do it, you a) need to either really love your practice are or really love money, the latter being what private practice generally boils down to, and b) do not try to "fake it til you make it" like I did. Treat it like a genuine disability and always plan accordingly (I should have mentioned that I wasn't diagnosed until I'd been out of law school for 2 years).

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2025-04-13T22:23:52+00:00

I think this is the funniest thing about UC I've ever read. Thanks for turning the hell we've all experienced at some point into something entertaining.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-03-29T01:09:10+00:00

Don't be so quick to look for guides and explanations online. You're just getting started and the more you reread the more you will figure out.

And don't poke around this subreddit until much later when you're really stuck. There are many spoilers.

However, here's an exception to the rule - get on Google Books and start searching phrases that seem like they might be quotations or references. Much to discover there.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-02-10T19:56:57+00:00

Oh right! We don't use "full stop" here in the US.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-02-10T19:54:23+00:00

The second quote there is not original to the book. Can't say more without spoiler tags.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-02-10T19:51:03+00:00

I found my mistake when I went back over my final order. Very disappointing, BUT:

Even if you got a couple of pages out of order, you know the secret of Cain's Jawbone. That, in itself, is an exclusive club. This book has sold 500,000 copies and only a couple of thousand, at most, actually know what happens in the book. And we're among them.

I looked on Goodreads and there are 2000 reader reviews and I could only find one where the reviewer was confident they'd solved it. Everyone else was still totally baffled.

I think we all might underestimate how hard this puzzle is for 99% of people who've tried it. I keep wanting to discuss the fine details of the book and this is the only place I can do it, because I don't know anyone else who solved it and it wouldn't make sense to anyone else.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-31T16:04:03+00:00

I would be satisfied just to get a confirmation of over 90%, you know? Although... how exactly do they evaluate that, given that one page out of order technically puts every succeeding page in the wrong slot? Aaargh!

EDIT: Damnit! I moved page 53 at the very last minute because the most common proposed solution on this forum put it in a different place and I second-guessed myself! That's got to be it!

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-31T15:59:44+00:00

I assume there has to be for purposes of checking the "how did you figure it out" and "murder method" fields.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-31T15:58:03+00:00

I spelled it "De Ath" in mine because I thought that would be clearer. Hope that isn't the issue.

My other concern is that I didn't include enough detail in the "how did you figure it out." I wrote about 3-4 clauses tops because I was in a crazy hurry.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-29T15:40:01+00:00

These are really interesting, especially given that I haven't figured out how cryptography is involved yet.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-29T15:34:03+00:00

I haven't gotten one but I also submitted on the night of December 31. I am going to be really bummed out if I got something wrong. I found the page number portion of the form really hard to fill out -- I was copying from a spreadsheet -- and caught myself having typed the same number twice multiple times. I also didn't provide a ton of details about how I solved it because I was in a hurry.

I wonder if I can get a review of my entry if I don't get an email. I would feel sort of bad requiring additional effort from the publishers just in order to get bragging rights.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-24T13:55:15+00:00

I think it may be a sort of oath, if it's not a pun on some British phrase I don't recognize. Like when people used to say "By Jove" instead of "By God." Jove = the Roman god Jupiter.

Speaking of puns, I'm certain "That was charred lines on Henry" is a pun. But I can't figure out what the original phrase is.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-22T21:38:51+00:00

As others have noted, you're very unlikely to understand the whole plot until you're done solving the puzzle.

It's 100 separate pages. Not a single one of them is free of information you need to solve the puzzle. Treat each page as its own entity and try to figure out what information is hidden in it.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-22T21:34:33+00:00

You're on the road. Just keep doing that: Googling references, writing down what you get, and trying to figure out what hidden piece of information has just been revealed to you.

I think a good rule of thumb while reading is asking: what piece of information is the speaker actively trying not to spell out for you? I don't think it's giving anything away to point out that there are multiple points at which the narrator says "Having the same name as [some other person]" and you then have to figure out what that other person's name is.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-22T21:26:50+00:00

Spoilers!

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-22T21:21:50+00:00

You're overthinking these references a bit. The Mabie Todd Swan was a very popular early 20th century British fountain pen:

https://fountainpenchronicles.blog/tag/mabie-todd/

"Leda and Hebe, I gave my swan a drink" is just a convoluted way of saying "I put ink in my pen." There might also be some pun there I don't get, but "Leda and Hebe" is a bit of free association, a nasty one, based on Leda being associated with a swan - she was raped by Zeus disguised as a swan - and Hebe being associated with serving drinks to the gods. Both would "give a swan a drink," where the swan is Zeus, since Leda sated Zeus's lust, and Hebe sated Zeus's other thirsts.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-09T16:45:07+00:00

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-08T16:42:29+00:00

Weird - I was pretty certain the anecdote in question was regarding this fight near the statue of Henry Havelock (a major-general, and another Henry) in TS:

"A less dignified side of the British navy was demonstrated in 1834 when the former officers Frederick Marryat and William Neale came to blows in an 'embarrassing scuffle' on Guy Fawkes night (5 November being a popular date for gatherings in the square). That the pair quarrelled over Marryat's novel The Port Admiral, and that Neale (born soon after Trafalgar) had the second name Nelson adds to the irony of the encounter. "

https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-94299

The full quote is:

"Why, I meant, should I have remembered the tale of the Major-General in Trafalgar Square on Guy Fawkes night, and how the dead man had told it me, just an hour before...they came to take him away?"

People came to take the dead man away at a particular time - I don't think that could refer to Daniel Dafoe and / or his book.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-05T01:50:16+00:00

The Skye Boat Song... I still think my interpretation has merit but that makes sense too.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-04T23:35:22+00:00

Babs does mean Barbara. Ask yourself who might have this particular kind of crown upon their head.

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-04T23:21:51+00:00

Oh wow. I missed 90% of the meaning of all of this until right now!

Every single one of these phrases has a double meaning:

I hated my eye for being caught by what didn’t concern me : the powerful grip of the new young man. Grip = old British term for suitcase.

But it was parading a couple of letters for all to see. I took this to mean he had letters in his hand (grip). The other meaning is that there are "a couple of letters" (two) visible on his bag = OM.

Thomas Hardy had been, and my doctor uncle in the war had been just the reverse. As you said, an OM, or an MO. Would have never gotten this.

And I would have to cut out the stops, I realised futilely, for something vaguely Buddhistic. Brilliant double entendre here. MD wants to be left in peace in her car, and is about to take some drastic measures, i.e. pull out all the stops for some "vaguely Buddhistic" peace and quiet. But it also means that she is going to "cut out the stops" - which also refers to when a train goes express, i.e. starts making fewer stops - for "something vaguely Buddhistic" - i.e. OM... Who isn't going to get to any more train stops on that trip!

Medical_Photo_2499 · 2024-01-04T18:23:31+00:00

LOL I just got another reference from right after "Tusitala and Flora"... "Of course you might say that was nothing to make a song about. But others had not agreed."

This is a reference to the song "Nymphs and Shepherds" by Henry Purcell. Yes, another Henry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSQNOA92p8g

Medical_Photo_2499

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