Culture - I don't believe in ADHD.

[SmokeRings]

Any and everything we put into our bodies, no matter when/where/how/what, can adversely affect us. No matter what we do or take, our bodies will do with those substances how they wish, everyone's chemistry is different, in SWIMs opinion.

SWIM totally thinks most kids are just being kids, not ADHD, kids are hyper, it's up to the parents to make the right decision. Most parents don't, most parents just give them the drugs so they don't have to deal. SWIM doesn't agree w/the mentality, it's just a fact of life unforunately.

Gotta take a test to drive a car, but anyone w/a working uterus and a sperminated egg can have kids. Scary, but true. It's like the 50 year old man who drops dead of a heart attack, he eats healthy, works out 4 times a week, non-smoker, non-drug user. When our times up, it's up.

If a kid has crappy parents who feed them stims w/out second opinions, etc, nothing he/she can do about it until they are 18 and grown. Unfortunate, but true.
SWIM sounds a bit jaded and unemotional over it, because unfortunately, it's just how society is, and she doesn't see it changing. Her contribution is to not have kids!

[Hollow Hippie]

I would say ADHD is real but 95% of the cases are mis-diagnosis.

[Rise against]

I can tell you that ADD is very real. I have it bad, and trust me im not lazy. When i was in 7th grade my ADD was making my life HELL. I was failing every class even though i spent hours and hours doing my homework every night... I wasnt stupid either, my test scores were way above average, in the top 5% range... My school councilor tried to put me in all LD classes and she wanted to assign me my own personal learning assistant, but my parents refused. After the first semester i went to a pshyciatrist and was diagnosed with severe ADD. They prescribed me stratera and my grades went from F's to straight A's...

[kse667]

ADHD is very real, I would know because I have it. I wasn't diagnosed with it until my freshman year of high school because I didn't think I had it and neither did my parents because I am not physically hyperactive. I could sit still I just couldn't concentrate. Freshman year of high school was when I actually got tested because I was failing some of my classes and barely passing others due to my lack of concentration. I got tested and diagnosed with ADHD after that year. I was prescribed concerta and have been taking it for years and my grades and ability to stay focused have been improved immensely. Before I started taking medication I could not get myself to focus in class. Even if I wanted to, I would mentally drift away without even thinking about it. If you do not have ADHD it is hard to imagine just how little control people such as myself have over their focus.

I agree completely with Rise Against above me because he has a story similiar to mine. I have been taking concerta for a very long time and use it now purely as a tool to help me pass my classes now that I am in college.

If anyone has any questions that I can answer or at least shed light on I would be more than happy to try my best and help you understand ADHD.

[a0a0]

Originally Posted by doggy_hat

I don't think ADHD is a genuine disorder. While many people think that not being able to spend hour upon hour of everyday reading textbooks, or writing essays, or doing desk work of some sort means that someone has a deficit in attention, I think being able to do that without a problem is insanity.

Compulsory school is only about a century old or so, and the explosion in numbers of jobs in the office, or other nonphysical labour is also new. Even writing is only a few thousand years old. And for the 2 million or so years before the dawn of civilization, people did little more work than what was necessary to feed and shelter themselves(which was a lot less work than what we do today, and was a physical activity, unlike sitting at a desk for 8 hours). Only recently, our society has become so demanding of us that we need to take speed pills just to keep up.

Maybe ADHD isn't an inability to perform at a normal level, but society is simply demanding too much of us, and we need to slow down? Maybe institutionalization at very young ages(school), and the constant bombardment of stimuli(weather it be TV, videogames, cellphones, ect) has atrophied our mentality, making it more difficult to slow down and focus, when everything around us is so fast?

I can't be the only that feels this way. Or maybe I'm wrong and I'm just lazy and stupid. God forbid I stop occupying myself with the desire for material goods(that fuel the desire for work, or higher education to get a better paying job) long enough to realize that there's more to life than, work -> TV -> sleep -> repeat.

You're amazingly wrong. I was diagnosed with ADHD at a very young age, everything they tell you is true. I cannot focus, I have a million things going through my mind at once and when I was younger I used to bounce off the walls constantly all day every day (when I hadn't taken my medication, that is). It's not just a thing of I can't sit there and read book upon book, page upon page, etc etc etc I can't focus on basically _ANYTHING_. SOME visual things are easy to focus on, such as video games and other fun things, however if I'm being lectured by a teacher then I won't be able to focus at all! You can't take me to the cinema (movies in US English) and expect me to follow the whole film, it's not that I don't want to or I don't try, my mind just kind of, wonders off and can't focus. . .

[salviablue]

Thing is.....being devils advocate here, at what point does it become adhd from poor application of focusing skills?

These focusing skill are poorly taught and not directly at that. They are generally learnt through observation and trial and error - there are some aspects taught by parents or schools, how to revise, how to approach/solve a problem etc.., but not taught specifically, yet focusing skills are an important part of being human.

In aeons past, these skills where required for some life and death situations, hunting, food gathering, problem solving etc, where the out come meant survival or not. Over the past few millennia , these skills have become less and less important, as there are enough of the human race to continue its survival should a good few morbidly "fail to focus" and since technology, convenience, relience on others etc. are enough to carry the rest of civilisation.

In todays society the focus skill has becomemostly redundant, so we seemed to have invented reasons for maintaining the skill. It has become as man made a skill as comparing business plans etc..

So, just like skills such as human interaction, human decency and parenting, focus skills are not really taught, they are something thats "picked up on" and 'inferred'. So if someone has poor application in that skill, like they may have difficulty in maths, or football, at which point does it become a disability? Someone with difficulty in football, pretty much any aspect can be worked on and improved, it may require different approaches for different people/problems. It becomes an 'incurable' problem when that skill cannot be effected sufficiently without out side crutches, so in the bad footballers case, bad tackling technique can be improved upon, learning how to kick the ball properly can be acheived, but if the bad footballer has no legs, nothing but an outside 'crutch' (i.e. fabricated limbs, wheel chair etc.) is going to be able to improve that persons football skill.

But, we can have say a foreign immigrant driver whos country of origins driving test is significantly different to ours (the country immigrated to) thus all their life , they have learnt to drive in a particular manner. They take our test to "naturalise" their license and fail catastrophically. After many lessons the immigrant driver still cannot drive to our "standards", as s/he is too used to driving by, say, crossing over their hands when turning the wheel, which in their country is standard practice (this is a fictional example!).

So, I think what I am trying to get at is whether like the legless footballer, the adhd sufferer cannot possibly improve their 'game' due to a physical (I know its in the brain but its still physical) 'non-entity' or malformation/malfunction OR is it just poor application, like the immigrant driver whom after trying a few more times to pass the test, s/he continues to fail and thus has no license, is not a 'normal' driver, and do we say s/he can now only proceed to travel in a motor vehicle via a 'crutch' (taxi, bus, chauffuer)?

At what point do we stop trying to ascertain the underlying inefficient application of life skill and decide its hopeless/more convenient to use a crutch. Is there any evidence to suggest its more likely with adhd that there is indeed a crutch needed. I know the business to do with the fact stimulants generally tend to have an opposite effect and calm down as opposed to stimulate, but that happens to SWIM and s/he doesn't have what most people describe as adhd. S/he gets painfully restless often and has difficulty concentrating, esp if that something triggers interesting thoughts, deviance from the subject at hand cannot be helped.
The only time this isn't the case for swim is if s/he is totally submerged into something, at which point s/he usualy can't switch off, even the use of all available willpower will normally just act as a temporary distraction, unless ofcourse that starts a new 'submersion', usually tangentially!

[a0a0]

Search YouTube for "The truth about my disorder", should be the second one down, he explains it and clears things up quite well in that video

[salviablue]

Basically, you're saying its like being stoned all the time?

Do you feel you get bored, or do you associate it with boredom, when trying to concentrate on one task and your thoughts roam - the tediousness of constantly having to come back to "the task in hand"? Thus the task becomes boring, you end up feeling lazy/lack of commitment for not completing the task at hand and starting another in ernest, just to have the same thing repeat.

Can you retain focus on a "larger target area" by obsessing over a subject (often based around task at hand - which in itself often leads to divergence).

On your internet browser, do you often find many many open tab/windows, each few going indepth into a tangiential/slipped thought train. That when trying to find out about one specific thing, you often end up cramming indepth knowledge over many many things which athough not directly related, have some kind of bearing of the original subject matter? A simple search for one thing often leads "learning" about a million other things and something that should have taken a couple minutes ends up consuming hours, often not completing the initial task, or forgetting about it altogether. Or does the nature of ADD prevent you from spending that much time on the computer in the first place?

Do you find yourself forgetting why you are angry at someone, often minutes ofter the fact and knowing maybe they did something and you're mad at them for something you just don't know what......why am I mad at them.....was I mad at them?(etc.)


I'm sorry for the questions sure you have had to repeat and explain yourself millions of times before and that there are pleny resourses that these answers could be answered, but that requires more reading and time/effort that I can put in for a while.

Still doesn't explain whether its down to a "missing component" or just a lack of (or lack of application of) "focusing skills".

I'm not rubbishing ADD, infact SIOK* and their parents thought they had ADD or ADHD but disbeleiving any like that at the time nothing was investigated and siok just got stoned all the time, at least then there was a reason for hier** "abnormality".

This kind of thing really interests me and everytime I see links to theories I have had or something I have investigated during and around my "neuroscience degree" daysit really makes me sad I never completed the course (like I haven't anything since school)

<hr>
*someone I once knew
**his/her

[a0a0]

Originally Posted by salviablue

Basically, you're saying its like being stoned all the time?

It's NOTHING like being stoned all the time. SWIM smokes weed three days of the week, SWIM has noticed in the last year or so as SWIM had moved to Florida and started smoking the best weed around that he can concentrate a lot better while stoned than while sober.

[salviablue]

I suppose that may be an erroneous question from me, considering compounds often have differing effects on those with ADD type family of "complaints/'abnormalities'" and those whom don't (though not necessarily).

soik found that when stoned, anxiety was controlled (although constant saturation lead to worse anxiety when not "totally addled") and the "fluidity of thoughts" and digressing thought trains and "space outs" a comfort than the same "thought deviances" when 'sober'. The only difference being that when sober these thought trains could get "stuck" at unpleasant places and being like that for a "reason" (i.e. due to a drug etc.) easier on the mind than being like that for "no reason" (i.e. sober and otherwise apparently healthy).

I likened it to being stoned all the time because from the descriptions, that is the closest I can imagine the 'condition' being like, relating it in terms to the 'common man'. I didn't mean any offence by it (I'm not sure any was taken but just clarifying).

Have to go.........

[Venusia]

OK, I'll bite.

So Swivy thought ADHD was not a real disorder until Swivy started to recognize some of the symptoms in her self. She was compulsive, would interrupt conversations, cut people off while talking, never finish a task within a reasonable amount of time and start a new one instead only to leave it unfinished too. She'd never be able to concentrate on someone else's side of the conversation 100% of the time and many more little things that added up to lead Swivy to believe that she really had something in her brain that made her act these ways. Since starting on stimulant meds, she's happier, more productive and a better communicator. She finishes tasks and can control her impulses a lot better. Speed didn't make her hyper or all over the place. It paradoxically slowed her head down enough to let her finish a thought, a sentence and an idea. It allowed her to focus on taking care of children (an age old duty) and to have enough patience to allow them to do what children do, rather than losing patience with them at the drop of a hat.

It may not be well-understood, but I do believe that since we did not evolve in this modern world, and life is faster paced and more complex now more than ever, that there are people who have an issue with their brain chemestry being off and thus requiring a boost in the neurotransmitters speed helps with. It may be over blown and overly diagnosed in children, but I believe there are people who actually have an issue that speed does help sort out. That's just my 2 cents though.