Really?
How do you know that?
I don’t think you can come close to relating to what a non-ADHD person knows or feels as you have ADHD.
I'm pretty convinced that I have ADHD, will be seeing what I can do about it when the doctors are less stressed, one of the things that struck me recently is that almost everybody I meet causes me to think "wow, they're organised" - even to the point where someone who I know very well even has the piece of paper to prove he has ADHD is like a scheduling algorithm compared to me.
I’ve always thought it was a decent representation of how ADHD works.
Hyperfocus is harder to simulate, since it requires one to focus on exactly one thing for hours on end. To the point where you don’t even think about things like “do I need a drink? Do I need to pee?”
My wife is fairly nurotypical, and it blows me away sometimes how she can decide she wants to work on something, and then works on that something. For hours on end, while being able to interrupt herself with things like pee breaks and food, while being able to go back to the project after.
HARRISON BERGERON
In any case, thank you!
I had no idea what normal people felt like until I took doctor-prescribed amphetamines for the first time at the age of 35. Most people take speed for a high, but for me I just felt "normal" for the first time ever. I could think clearly. I could remember things. I could react entirely proportionate to the demands of circumstance. It's like something clicked and I was suddenly knew that is why life's a struggle! It was no longer my failing, but something I was born with.
Anyway, point is that thanks to medication we can get a glimpse into what life is like for non-ADHD people, and it is glorious. You don't know how easy you've got it.
Hyperfocus in ADHD doesn’t have to be about the focus being rewarding. It can be about the reward of getting the unrewarded thing out of the way. The exact opposite of what you’re describing, and what you might perceive as a “work ethic”, but totally absent any kind of time allotment or sunk cost analysis.
We can get hung up on something so displeasing to deal with that we cannot get it out of our heads, no matter how insignificant the resolution, and not let it go. For days, weeks, months. I’ve been through a fairly severe stretch of this recently. I hated every minute I couldn’t break out of it. But I couldn’t walk away and let the thing be unfinished, even knowing the “reward” at the end would be totally meaningless to me and the whole world.
I would even tell myself at the beginning of my day I was going to abandon these things. But I couldn’t do anything else! Things I wanted to do that I would enjoy more!
It’s not, though. With ADHD, people are as likely to get stuck in hyperfocus in things that are not fun and that they actively dislike, and be unable to maintain focus on things that are fun and that they like. People that have bought into the that behavior reveals preference have trouble understanding this as it directly conflicts with that wordlview, and tend to view ADHD as a failure of willpower in which people refuse to “properly” deprioritize their own desires for what is socially appropriate, but that is very much not what it is about.
I’ve been having such a hard time managing my symptoms because of burnout, and a long stretch of unemployment when I left my last job, and a determination to get a more healthy life set up that I haven’t been able to listen to music. I’m a musician, primarily for my own personal enjoyment, and I can’t even bear to hear a song. Because so many other things are jammed up in my brain.
Since then, I decided to build a personal site/art project (link in bio) and yeah, months struggling to finish and excessive perfectionism. Not excessive judgment once I got to some kind of finish line though, I’m super proud of what I started and excited about stuff I plan to do with it in the future.
Now I’m just focused on getting back on track financially. I’m not broke but have some pretty severe trauma response to the possibility having spent years earlier in life in poverty. Makes it hard to think about much else until I’ve got a bit of cushion again.
Has it helped or just continued the inevitable?
Good luck with it!
It fries your dopamine receptors, this is drugs 101. Your are not going to take speed every day for years and function normally, and you will literally need confirmation bias to make sense of that reality.
Also, here is another weird tidbit from life. You might not like the stuff you used to like anymore but you won’t even know since you are sure it’s the disease.
Funny you should say that, as there is much research to say that ADHD is primarily a resistance to dopamine and serotonin. See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychia...
This is how Ritalin works, by slowing down the reputable of dopamine.
So, imagine the state of anhedonia you’re familiar with from long-term drug abuse - then imagine that is your base state.
If you play games with this daily you will need to believe that all hard work should be primed with a natural feeling of euphoria.
If you start the kids on it that young, up the pressure, and put them in the same room where everyone else is doped up on it, I can promise you will cook an entire generation of knowledge workers by the time they are 30.
Fuck that noise. Seriously. It’s somehow more ignorant than the “just cheer up if you’re depressed” hot take.
The only reason why I am where I am today is because I happened to bump into physics and programming early because I have such a short attention span.
I'm not overly familiar with the meaning of hyperfocus but what else is it if you literally don't sleep before the single most important exam I will ever take (due to the ridiculous UK school system) because I was stuck reading a more advanced textbook. I agree that some of this is on the individual - i.e. me - but I have been like this from pretty much day 1, i.e. I actually worked out the other day that I've only ever done something early I think twice in my whole life.
This feels especially jarring when it's so easy to enter a hyperfocus/flow state and tackle a task for 4 hours straight on some tasks but on others I'm _constantly_ trying to pull myself back on track every 30m or so. It's doubly frustrating when it's the Same Task, where I've made a ton of progress one day, and the next day I get caught in a distraction loop. It's triply frustrating when it's something that I know should only take 30m tops if I could Just Focus but ends up taking me hours and hours. Quadruply frustrating when that expectation of "oh it'll take me forever" turns out to only actually take like 15m (and for some reason my expectations rarely adjust) but I'm digressing a bit.
Sure they're problems everyone deals with, and everyone finds a way to deal with it. But some people find it More Difficult to deal with. I find medication to help when it comes to controlling my attention. Or copious amounts of coffee. Sometimes it helps cut down on how frequently I enter my core distraction loop, or it helps me notice the loop earlier so I can abort.
Anyways, yes executive function is a skill everyone has to learn at some point in their life; these are problems Everybody encounters. But it's Harder for some people, the same way learning to read is harder for someone who's dyslexic or public speaking is harder for someone with a stutter.
And executive functioning disorders are frustratingly self-perpetuating; how do you put more effort into focusing/putting more effort into things if you have trouble Choosing to put more effort into things in the first place? It's recursive. Medication helps break the loop (but is often over prescribed or misdiagnosed, and imo should be a scarce or temporary measure; a crutch to help develop the right skills to fill one's executive functioning gaps, but that's a different discussion).