Do people "celebrate" ADHD-like dysfunction in adults? Seems like a lot of adults struggle substantially with those issues (in particular without a diagnosis).

If you overlap Elon Musks behavior (or a number of quite famous musicians) with ADHD diagnosis charts, you’re going to have a fun time.

Like most things, we celebrate the high functioning folks and denigrate those who aren’t. Kids are also expected to fall in line and be easy to manage, and those that aren’t get medicated.

> If you overlap Elon Musks behavior (or a number of quite famous musicians) with ADHD diagnosis charts, you’re going to have a fun time.

That's cocaine. You're thinking of cocaine.

There's users[1] finding out later they got hooked because they had ADD, and they could have gotten all the benefits of a stimulant without the medical harm, medical risk, legal risk, expense, burned bridges, and emotional problems of cocaine if they could address their ADD properly.

[1] I think it was on this forum that there was a comment about people finding out they had ADD after landing in prison for drug-related crimes.

Interestingly enough, many people can easily mistake untreated ADHD (or not adequately controlled) with cocaine and stimulant use, especially hyperactive type. Cocaine and stimulant use in people without ADHD obviously causes that issue (cocaine use), along with some other problems (euphoria, lack of empathy, megalomania, sleep problems).

It’s quite striking when you see it happen with someone you know (all while wondering if they’re high on cocaine or something), then they get treated and are able to calm down and focus - and still can be hyperactive if pushed that way environmentally - but are functional, calmer, have more empathy, are able to talk and be more social, etc. All while getting large doses of Adderall or the like that would make your average non-ADHD’er impossible to be around.

> Interestingly enough, many people can easily mistake untreated ADHD (or not adequately controlled) with cocaine and stimulant use, especially hyperactive type. Cocaine and stimulant use in people without ADHD obviously causes that issue (cocaine use), along with some other problems (euphoria, lack of empathy, megalomania, sleep problems).

This is true but I should point out that "normal people" taking stimulants won't necessarily get hyper. You might get more calm and focused too. Claiming that Adderall works differently on ADHD people is a sort of marketing technique to stop it from getting banned entirely (like it is in Asia), because otherwise even more people would be trying to use it as a study drug.

Somehow modafinil has a reputation as a wonder drug that works on everyone, even though the way it works is not very different.

If you have resources and time to let your ADHD brain go free it can be fun, but it becomes a struggle when you try to be a working adult with normal job.

I'm not even talking about 'not being able to concentrate' because that's easily fixed with medicine. nowadays But ADHD is so much more involved on the emotional and psychological level.

My childhood was mostly 'driven by impulsivity', so having medicine available to me back then doesn't sound bad.

> My childhood was mostly 'driven by impulsivity'

That's the definition of being a child.

Do you think that a child is driven by long term planning or wisdom?

Haha of course not

But for example, I picked my next school based on where my elementary school friends went and insisted to my parents that this is where I wanted to be, despite it being a worse choice for my then-grades. And then a few years later again, I picked for my school path to be economics over math (what I actually wanted to do), because my friends picked it.

Or, I was convinced for a while I wanted to work in a hotel post-school for no reason, despite learning programming by myself and being a computer kid writing my own programs and websites. I even applied to hotel-related jobs constantly until my parents pushed me to go to software engineering instead.

So what I mean with 'driven by impulsivity' is that often important decisions aren't handled with reason, but with pure emotion and impulses. Most of the time that's fine when you're young, but there are still times when you want to use logic over impulses.

As a child and adult, I am impulsive AND a long term planner.

When the mood strikes me, I make GRAND long term plans. Then, when I'm gripped by impulsively, I try and keep it honed into the plans I made.

> ADHD-like dysfunction in adults

If a lot of people are struggling with the institutions, it's probably the institutions that are the problem. Not the people.

We don't celebrate those adults. We call them underachievers and have them do menial jobs.

Or we call them “classic absent-minded geniuses” and celebrate their accomplishments in high-level knowledge work, while treating their challenges as cute and endearing.

IQ, co-occurring conditions, and socioeconomic factors have a pretty big impact on which of those (or a number of other) outcomes are realized.

Like Elon Musk's menial job.

Yes, often you can leverage those issues when you start with a lot of money.