Me: I need to leave this community. What if these memes are just making me think I have ADHD when I don’t.
Also me on literally every meme that’s posted here: haha, hard rel8
All these ADHD memes have several times made me think if there’s a light version?
But from what I understand everyone can experience ADHD “symptoms” from time to time, but people who are diagnosed with it have symptoms that are several orders of magnitude more intense.
Not diagnosed till late 20s.
I’m “twice gifted”, so my intelligence can help me mask my ADHD in some ways. Looking back, all… ALL the signs were there, but no one was looking, or just didn’t understand. Lots of “you just need to apply yourself” kind of shit.
Anyway, check out Russell Barkley, if you’ve got a thing for educational videos, his are interesting enough, I feel, since he’s talking about me.
He made me feel a lot more confident that I have it, despite 3 different psychs already agreeing I do… and made me feel a lot more comfortable with who I am.
I’m more than a little convinced ADHD isn’t really a disorder, society is the issue, and this personality/brain type is actually beneficial in simpler societies.
When it comes to neurodivergences that aren’t strictly universal negatives (for example: anyone would agree that DID is terrible, while modern autism advocacy strongly opposes any sort of “cure”, and even assimilation as opposed to integration), you can easily find the case that they work great as complements within larger groups. Having an autistic dude fascinated by working materials may result in your tribe being the very first one in the area that gets obsidian spears or composite bows, even if he isn’t a very good hunter otherwise.
The problem comes when an industrialized, profit-obsessed society attempts to standarize social customs, goods, living spaces and so on while individualizing responsibility for every aspect of your life despite plenty of its factors being outside any one person’s control. Perhaps you’d have a lot to contribute to society if you just had certain unusual accommodations, such as a very quiet house or freedom to set your own working hours, but companies in the contemporary market economy hisses at people who don’t fit like cogs in a machine, and having a house with very specific conditions is outside the reach of a lot of people. Perhaps you do even manage to find the means to become a very productive member of society despite the odds being stacked against you, but because the specificity of your situation means you barely have any negotiation power in the labor market, most of what you produce gets appropriated by someone who isn’t very smart, but has some capital and better “people skills”.
For sure. I am overeducated and chronically unemployed due to basically unsustainable levels of stress trying to not fuck up office work leading to cycles of self destruction and the erosion of my self confidence.
But I am not unproductive or lazy, I am just not suited to modern life very well. I have a level of reasonable competency at blacksmithing, gardening, first aid, brewing, cheese making, cooking, sewing, foraging, tool maintenance, educating young children, and animal care (also modern useless skills). I can’t sit still much so I’m also pretty fit and enjoy running through forests and keeping track of changes.
In a different period I’m not saying I’d be the best member of society but I could contribute much more. In earlier times people who were ok at lots of practical things with great memories for strange specifics served very useful roles contributing supplimental food, medicine, and upkeep. I would also probably be much less overwhelmed with distraction without all the modern blinkenlights and ads and such.
We are all the same apes that walked out of Africa 200,000 years ago. Our brains haven’t changed and it’s inevitable that the more we change our environment from the one we evolved in the more we will induce pathology in otherwise normal, and perhaps helpful, human variation.
To an extent, it is also beneficial in today’s society. Hyperfocus and fast context switching can be assets in some jobs, if the downsides are not too great and that can depend on the job and colleagues a lot.
But yea, I can imagine it has been more of an asset in a different time.
I used to work in a particular trade, and i noticed unlike most i worked with, i worked faster and more efficiently as the day went on, by 11 am I’d be right in that hyperfocus groove and my helpers just had so much trouble keeping up. They took advantage of that on occasion, like they could tell me it was quitting time and I’d believe them, an hour early. That only worked twice.
Could you share what that trade is, even vaguely? I’m curious what kind of job might be suited for someone with ADHD symptoms. I feel it might help me choose a career. No worries if not, and have a good one!
Absolutely, most parts of neurodivergence is evolved to be useful for “wild” humans, hunter-gatherers. Like gee i sure wonder how it might be useful for people living in tents in the wildnerness to have a dude who just cannot go to sleep before 2 in the morning…
Apprently court jesters were historically generally autistic people, whom the rulers kept around because they wouldn’t sugarcoat stuff and acted like a bullshit detector. Might be pretty handy for a tribe to have some people who’ll speak up when they think the leader is being dumb.
That’s not how evolution works. Traits don’t evolve “to be useful”. Anyone who claims a goal to evolution has failed to grasp evolution.
Evolution converges on local maxima by selecting for traits that are good enough to continuously propagate through the filter of individuals death. For sexual reproduction, if a trait is not bad enough to continuously reduce carriers’ presence in a mating pool, it can and will remain.
It’s survival of not inadequate enough.
You’re not alone in thinking that, and there are some studies which seem to agree.
I was reading your study, and got to the part where they said it is hard to empirically test this theory because of limited genome whatever, and it crossed my mind Africans don’t carry the neanderthal DNA Europeans do, so i looked up if ADHD was more common in either race and it apparently is much more prevalent in white people. Yeah correlation isn’t causation but it is interesting.
I haven’t done too much research into ADHD (which I don’t have) but if it’s anything like autism (which I do have) then it may well be that it’s just massively under diagnosed in people who aren’t rich, white, boys. I know they aren’t the same but that’s certainly the case for autism, and there is a high rate of co-occurrence between the two.
There are certain aspects of ADHD that would be disordered in any societal structure.
I have been so hyperfixated on something that I have been completely oblivious to my own body’s signals. As a result I have had accidents, developed UTIs, ended up in the ER with electrolyte imbalances, and dislocated several joints.
ADHD and joint Hypermobility are closely linked and while more studies are needed to understand exactly why and how, a lot of people with ADHD also meet criteria for Hypermobility spectrum disorders. In my case, I’ll be focused on a task and I won’t realise I’m clenching my jaw too firmly until the sudden sensation of undeniable pain sweeps over me and I realise my jaw has dislocated. Or ill be struggling with transitioning from a task to a rest, even though my knees are in agony, I can’t seem to force myself to stop.
ADHD is also inherently linked to circadian rhythm disorders, and while yes, delayed sleep phase disorder is only truly a disorder if you’re forcing yourself into a 9-5 lifestyle, ADHD sleep issues are more than just the shifting of the phases. A lot of people with ADHD will describe the sensation of sleep as being “passing out”, because of the way our brains (fail to) regulate dopamine, the way serotonin and melatonin is secreted to create drowsiness is also impacted.
I don’t get tired or sleepy, I get headaches and blurred vision and spasms in my back, and then I know that I can fall asleep if I lie down. I take sublingual melatonin tincture (I find it works better than tablets) and it’s such a strange phenomenon because about 15 minutes after I take it I feel my eyes are heavy and my body is calm and my mind ia slower, aka, sleepy. I don’t experience that without the help of supplements.
And sure there’s the argument that you “people with ADHD used to be on night watch duty”, but sleep deprived people make shit guards. If I’m not physically able to fall asleep until I’m “overtired”, and if being tired makes my ADHD symptoms worse, then I’m no good for anything.
It’s also not like hyperfixations are a super power (God I hate that way of framing things) I can’t choose when or why they happen. If I could, I’d be good at just job, instead, I’m loosing all sensation in my feet because I’m stuck in a fixation trying to pick at the skin on my thighs because I spotted one single ingrown hair while I had my pants down sitting on the toilet. Now it’s 40 minutes later, my alarm is going off in the other room, and I’m frozen, unable to transition away from this task.
ADHD is a spectrum, and for many people there are strengths, but it’s most definitely a disorder and for a lot of people, even if we lived in the most utopian ADHD friendly society, there are still internal issues to face.
For the record, I am unmedicated and always have been due to a heart condition, so maybe my view on the condition would change if I had different treatment and management options available to me.
I’m 42 and can put my legs behind my head and clenches his jaw, but i feel like this is written by someone enjoys methamphetamine.
Thing is… you cant magically fix society with the snap of your fingers. And theres stuff you NEED to do that you dont want to even in a star trek style luxury space communist utopia. eg. I have to use reminders/timers to do things like take medication, drink water, chores etc. There isnt really a way to “fix” society so that that is no longer true. I have to take medication. I have to drink water. I have to wash my clothes and clean up after myself. Everyone does.
ADHD is probably akin to a tribe. One that arguably has its advantages like hyperfocus, creativity and sensitivity to emotions (empathy) but it is at the cost of a tremendous amount of inertia when it comes to doing stuff and executive dysfunction that requires you to compensate for.
Yeah complex issue but I definitely think it’s become more of an issue in a highly specialized professional service economy. In previous structures maybe you were dependent on growing food and there were harsher consequences which would have been motivators. Or even in recent history, well paying jobs that required physical labor and little education. We know people in the past exhibited all kinds of issues, but the language used to describe is often hard to translate. They wouldn’t just not know adhd exists, but lack the understanding of the mind to even quantify disorders like this, and there would be an entirely different set of concepts and language.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I find many of these posts overly dramatic. I understand that dealing with it is challenging, but when I see others discussing it, I sometimes feel that some might not genuinely have ADHD and are merely exaggerating for attention.
pretty much the biggest inconvenience for me was getting people to write stuff down. Like when they’d try talk for five minutes about how they wanted something built, explicit instructions, I’d always have to remind them, write it down or draw it, if you want me to understand, we’ve been over this for years now, you know I know how to do the work once the desired result is presented in a way i can understand.
I hate explaining ADHD to people because it’s a completely unintuitive disorder. It’s like “I’m easily distracted” yet at other times I’m completely incapable of tearing my focus away from something. I have continual thoughts of things unrelated to my current focus, and other times I can’t think of anything at all, I just can’t hold on to any thoughts. I’m fidgety, almost all the time, but I can sit still and drive a car on the freeway for several hours with absolutely no issues.
It’s like, for every symptom I have of the disorder there’s always a “but sometimes” caveat that is present. It’s just a nightmare to try to make someone understand especially when they’ve never struggled with the disorder or anything like it. It’s a complete conundrum.
It’s not that you don’t have attention, what your lacking is the control over your attention. This means that you have a harder time directing your attention to what is “necessary”.
The result of this might be not being able to focus your attention on something, but it can show also as not being able to shift the attention away from something.
It’s actually not two different sides but rather the same.
Feel like my forgetting where I put things have any exceptions that aren’t average NT on my best days or because I have a system that most of the time works (it’s been a while since I’ve had to search for my wallet and keys because the basket is right at the front door now and immediately getting out of work clothes is a top priority, so removing the usual pocket stuff as I enter happens 95% of the time - the atypical stuff usually gets accidentally left in the pockets and remembering to lock the door on my way in is still RNG).
What if I don’t have ADHD and just smoke entirely too much weed? Currently working on figuring this out.
My next will be: Maybe I’m just a douche and don’t care about others enough to remember what they tell me. But I do care, I think.
Welcome to the gang. The natural follow up question then is that if it indeed is weed then which is worse; the ADHD-like symptoms or living without weed.
I’ve heard about many ADHD’ers unknowingly treating their symptoms with weed. Weed is especially addictive for us because it helps us feel better. Atleast in my own case it allows me to have long uninterrupted trains of thought. Like instead of the same thought just looping around it actually starts moving forward logically.
For some reason, the substance abuse genes skipped me, though it runs in the family. I have very firm rules on over indulging on weed. I have thankfully never had an alcohol problem and “failed” miserably at nicotine addiction. Hell, I somehow tested negative a couple months ago for weed when my doctor had to do his required Adderall confirmation test, and he tests at 10, instead of 20 or 50. If my depression ever gets the better of me and I feel like I am overdoing it to cope, I just stop for a while.
Finding the right strains that play well with my body and head can be a challenge at times. How do other people figure that out or deal with it? I have severe muscular issues and getting muscle spasms is rough. Or worse, it makes me hyper aware of the pain that I usually ignore. I have one or two that actually help with the pain some, but I can’t always get those. Freak Show is probably my favorite for that and it puts me in a good mood too.
Hahaha - this is my train of thought too! Didn’t smoke for the month of November as an experiment. Started dreaming vividly, but no improvement in my awake state.
I’m assuming a 1-month break probably wasn’t enough for my brain to re-build neural connections… but how long of a break is! Maybe I’ll try again?
How are you ‘figuring this out’?
I’ve had an almost identical experience, stopped smoking last year for less than a month. Terrible dreams that left me exhausted during the day, and if anything worsened ADHD symptoms. I’m also thinking it wasn’t long enough but it sure is a tough experiment.
Figuring it out just meant I’m trying again now.
It takes 30 days to detox from weed entirely. So a month is the minimum, personally I’ve found I don’t start noticing improvement until I’ve been sober for about three months, because sleep gets messed up for longer than it takes to detox. You have to go all the way through the withdrawal symptoms until you’re sleeping healthily again, then you’ll start to notice improvements in life. Small, incremental improvements.
Maybe I’m just a douche and don’t care about others enough to remember what they tell me. But I do care, I think.
This is also me but since people in general still seem to like me despite me considering myself a bit of an asshole I’m then also wondering that maybe I’m just a charismatic psychopath that manipulates people.
Oh. Good. I’d gone a few minutes without doing this mental check, thank you for putting it back in there for today. 🫠
