Notes on Managing Adhd

I seem to be in opposite camp where SNRI actually lift like majority of visual snow syndrome, but that was not the only syndrome I had. I believe I had something more like HPPD.

Believe me, I was scared as hell as I thought these meds will make it worse, and I am really glad now that I did try them and they did work for me. I still have a really small amount of snowing, but I can ignore it entirely and carry on with my life.

The good news is that after you’ve been diagnosed, getting near the bottom of the bottle of pills is a great reminder to call the pharmacy for a refill. Plus… shortly after noticing that you’re almost out happens to coincide with the medication taking effect, so you’ll be in the perfect place to make that call!

It's hard to reconcile with how difficult it was previously. Life on hard mode is a term ived used too. I try to think that it was all to make me stronger for the second half of my life, but I still regularly wonder what could have been.

Additionally, the boost in dopamines rewards anything you happen to be doing, so it can lock you into your avoidant behavior that day once you start doing it.

As a direct outcome it means I don't have bad thoughts and feelings sitting in the back of my mind when trying to do something else 24/7 so I'm generally more balanced. Indirectly, it was helped by actually getting stuff done and feeling less shit in general and not putting myself down as much for failing.

Pharmacology is not my main area of expertise but I used to do a lot of work in cardiology, and anything that increases the QT interval in the ecg increases the risk of Torsades de Pointes.

Rule of thumb is 5–7% more TdP risk per 10 ms QTc.

Quite a few adhs meds do this moderately, not enough to make an ecg mandratory.

I still believe that making medications the default for adhs is not warranted given the side effects, especially since in many cases it’s not clear if it treats the condition or just makes the lives of education professionals easier.

You know… I feel like my symptoms were not so bad when I used to have cigars

This led to what was probably the worst headache of my life. I don’t know enough pharmacology to understand how exactly that worked, but it was terrible. Having a cup of coffee reversed the effect pretty quickly, luckily.

Plus pretty bad for your health and crazy addictive. Absolutely not a good recommendation.

It feels strange to type that now, and I know these side effects are quite rare, but I can't help but warn people when I see it mentioned. It was genuinely the most terrifying experience of my life.

It happened about 6 weeks into treatment, quite acutely. I wasn't even aware it was happening.

My wife gets good results with atomoxetine, which isn’t a stimulant.

It doesn't look like obvious "bullshit". A number of ADHD medications are well-known intoxicating substances; it's not unfathomable that they might induce some kind of cognitive or behavioral impairment (not necessarily the same kind one might get diagnosed for, either).

Then you just don't get it officially diagnosed - then it doesn't exist! (officially)

Here's what discipline is and isn't.

Discipline is an extremely simple concept to develop but few actually know how to do it in any reasonable way because of so much misinformation out there, and malign influence seeking to take advantage and increase suggestability, and by extension addiction.

Discipline just like meditation is really a fundamentally simple practice.

Just like with meditation, where you don't use willpower, but instead simply focus your thoughts back towards a single point, and then relax that focus slowly, which stills your thoughts.

Discipline is simply the repeated practice of limiting when and where you choose to change your initial decision or choice, for all of the choices you make.

You take your time considering before making a choice, and once made you only change it when there is some new information that becomes available after the fact, whether that is a new consequence you didn't consider, or completely new information you received later.

Its a simple rule. You don't give yourself the choice except under those circumstances. When you are tempted, you remind yourself you don't have the choice. When you cave and fail, you don't beat yourself up because that destructively interferes with your psychology which only works towards outcomes framed in the positive. If you make a mistake you examine what led to it right away, and mitigate those circumstances moving forward. You imagine what you will do next time, with a successful outcome a few times that day.

With this repeated ritual comes an understand that willpower is always finite, and you pick and choose what you will spend that on each day. You recognize when its running low, and defer important decisions pigeonholing them for a later time. With repeated practice in everything this become a unconscious ritual with good outcomes.

You do what you say you will do, and you don't compromise yourself, and people recognize that level of discipline. It becomes easier with each successful choice, and its so damn simple.

These two things together make a world of difference in coping with everything. It places the locus of control for your life within your grasp.

> only to discover medication later and find it instantly turned around everything.

First, medication in most cases in psychology doesn't instantly ever turn around everything. You still have the problems that led to your mental state, they are often subtle which have built up over time. You are just better able to cope with them where you weren't coping before, and following the initial euphoria of relief you still have those problems.

I know quite a number of people that have been diagnosed and use medication to cope with professional burnout. Eventually you pay the piper.

Sure you can take a drug, and maybe you feel better, but also maybe you feel like everything is 100x worse and to relieve the pain and suffering you end yourself; (a known sideeffect) or you have a chemical reaction that ends up in sudden death (a known sideeffect). Few actually consider this, minimizing it.

There is no panacea. Soma is just treating the symptoms. What you do, and things you choose to live by are far more important, especially in contrast to the fact that many medications make one more suggestible. For good or ill.

> As a thought experiment, insert "type 1 diabetes"

This is an apples to oranges fallacy flawed example, how about we do something that isn't apples to oranges, like heavy metal poisoning. How about we insert chronic low-level mercury poisoning in place of ADHD.

Here is a shocker, the symptoms are the same, and there are many other such environmental based issues that lead to these symptoms. The diagnosis is still ADHD/ADD which is made regularly because its a catchall, and so its the same label but its not the same thing.

So that ADHD diagnosis is ADHD, and its automatically neurological changes, or is it really Heavy Metal Poisoning, which then isn't being treated?

Are my sentiments causing real world harm to people when that diagnosis has been misdiagnosed? Really? This happens on the regular because of exposures that occur but aren't recognized or achieve testing thresholds.

The diagnostic label for spectrum disorders has been for decades incorrectly applied to people, in effect treating symptoms as a catchall.

How ridiculous do you sound in my particular example? Your causing harm to people because they thought they had ADHD because of the symptoms but actually were being poisoned because of a misdiagnosis that isn't questioned (which happens in centralized systems). Who is actually the one causing harm here. The one supporting that system and its consequences, or the one questioning the underlying truth of the matter (which has real anecdotal experiences backing this across a group of afflicted people).

Blood testing doesn't work well at detection of chronic low exposure without causing acute poisoning through a chelator, something that isn't done that regularly. Most doctors won't even order the test even after requests to do so.

Seriously, this kind of armchair theatrics and polemic is why the world is in such a horrible state today, but by all means continue shouting down people that actually know a thing about what they are talking about.

I think conflating structured meditation practice with "just willpower your way out of it" is a pretty severe misconception of its own. That's not at all how it's supposed to work. (In fact, if you struggle with focusing your attention in a meditation setting, you're taught not to apply willpower at all; just "notice" that your thoughts have drifted away and comfortably bring them back without judgment. You wouldn't expect this to help, but apparently it does.)

> Good. This is a good thing. Treating symptoms is a good thing and we like good things.

You frame this in fallacy, false dichotomy circularly. For a refutation, is treating poisoning with something that masks the symptoms of poisoning without resolving the cause a good thing?

The poisoning is still there its having a detrimental effect leading to harmful outcomes, and you don't know its happening because you masked the symptoms thinking its something else.

A concrete example? Chronic low-level exposure to heavy metal poisoning was quite common 20 years ago. It came largely from silver fillings which were in-fact 50% b/w, mercury amalagam. It was claimed stable and thus fit for us in dental fillings, but later found in the presence of acidic beverages to leach into your systems, and this is not the only exposure. Mercury has also been used in the efficient production and manufacture of Soda beverages, you have to dive quite deep in industry literature to find these facts such as they remove those chemicals after production, and label them as contaminants. No chemistry is ever perfect at removing things. They have been found present in many cases, and not all processes use this but the cost effective ones do. Similar environmental issues are neglected, such as lead paint and other products, arsenic from the water; you get the drift.

Ironically, these can easily fall into the same diagnostic criteria as ADHD/ADD and blood tests aren't sensitive enough because those substances binds so easily to remove it from the bloodstream rapidly (into tissue) to protect you. It bio-accumulates. You literally have to cause induced acute poisoning through medication (chelator) before taking the blood to get an appropriate test result.

> The gaslighting is pushing shitty wellness cures.

Ad Hominem, and lacking in facts.

> I literally had to fight to get access to my ADHD meds...

Ancedotal.

I've met quite a lot of people who initially thought they had ADD/ADHD because that is what the doctors decided. Once you have a label, there is no need to look at anything else that suggests otherwise, a common bias of your average doctor.

These people found that they actually had low-level poisoning, and half the battle was finding a doctor willing to order the chelation tests to prove it. Upon completion of rigorous chelation therapy and removal of exposure sources, and related lifestyle changes they were medication free without the symptoms. They, in effect, cured their ADHD/ADD, and some of them had been to hundreds of psychologists/psychiatrists, all being told they had ADD/ADHD.

Blind trust in centralized systems has an indoctrinated bias that some aren't able to overcome. Nothing is perfect, and some things are the worst possible solution of any solution.

The label in these cases was a classic authority based fallacy. The patients eventually did figure it taking their health into their own hands because the system had failed them, basically saying its all in their head. (Gaslighting).

It was a journey for many of them because they were repeatedly given false or misleading information from the vast majority of so-called experts. Desperation doesn't make things true.

Mind you not all experts are like this, there are some very decent and intelligent experts out there that know exactly what they should and act accordingly; but in the grand scheme they are almost impossible to find or differentiate.

What makes you blind is you assume the diagnostic label is automatically the disease, and that simply is not true in aggregate, or the correct way to approach these things.

You have to train your brain. If you always walk with a crutch you will never walk properly. IMO, you should only try drugs once you can sort of stick to the schedule and you are still not reasonably productive.

If you start with drugs you'll become dependent and will need more and more. There is no magic pill.