It's ok, although I have a tendency to wear myself out mentally when I take stimulant meds.

Certain kinds of programming have a very high activation energy. In each programming session, it can take a lot of time (sometimes hours) before I've gathered enough context to start making progress on a problem. Once I start making progress my motivation is usually self-sustaining. Sometimes I can't focus long enough to get to that point, and in that case the stimulants do help.

However, I also become very reluctant to take breaks and lose the context I've built up, so I often end up working quite late. I feel exhausted and sort of disoriented sometimes after these sessions. I can't do days like that too often without sacrificing health, relationships, etc.

In 2020, meds didn't help me at all. I just ended up being really focused on some useless distraction or cleaning my house or whatever. My problem was more fundamental than "I can't focus long enough to build up self-sustaining momentum."

What don't you like about programming on meds?

I've been a programmer for 20 years and you just described my daily struggle with my job so precisely. Is this kind of experience happening to neuro-typical people or is this a very ADHD thing?

I ask because I have often wondered if I am undiagnosed as something or other and this post hit me hard.

It is common with tasks requiring deep focus also in people without ADHD.

I think for neurotypical people it is easier to create some kind of system/framework for being more efficient in work. Every solved problem add some mental tools to this systems. But it is much harder for ADHD because of how our brain works. Working step-by-step is hard for me. It is easier for me to load as much info to my brain RAM and try to digest it. And it is not something that you can get better in because it's not really a systematic method.

I've seen coworkers that I'd describe as neuro-typical work in a similar way sometimes. But the tendency to alternate between periods of difficulty focusing and periods of hyperfocus is a recognized trait of ADHD. If you're interested in learning more I'd recommend Hallowell's book, the one I read was "Delivered from Distraction" but he might have a newer one. Just read the first couple chapters and if it resonates a lot then it might be worth getting tested.

Just wanna say I relate strongly to these posts. Sometimes it just feels like i'm trying everything to manage my motivation and adhd and it just doesn't work and I just gotta breath get outside and be unproductive for awhile.

I hear you.

If you otherwise like your job and the people you work with, then I think it's good to just accept that some days you won't get work done and that's ok.

If you feel that way all the time, maybe it's time to find work that you care about more.

Thanks, I resemble all those statements, and I've often wondered if I'm undiagnosed ADHD. My occasional brushes with modafinil... well, sometimes it works, and sometimes it turns me into the best damn house cleaner on the planet.

In my brief experience of SSRI drugs, they left me fuzzy and unable to concentrate. Like baby brain without the baby.

I sometimes take modafinil before starting a day of work.

So far there hasn't been a single instance where I did that and didn't get sidetracked thinking up a new software project I could start using technologies I barely understand to solve a problem I just learned about.

The upside is you're a lot more focused, so you can get a lot done. The downside is it's really easy to nerd-snipe yourself, and the increased focus means it's hard to stop thinking about whatever problem caught your attention.

I found meds to have enhancing effects on my code. Everything I have earned is because of it.

My best guess is you are still in the phase of titration and finding the correct type of medication that works for you.

Having an empathetic doctor who is willing to work with you can make that road smoother. She printed out papers from pubmed to help me better understand what I'll be taking and what to expect. It felt very nice to actually be taken seriously.

I do notice that the other experiences may not truly reflect the efficacy of medication. The actual symptoms are still not well defined, not all doctors are equal, being misdiagnosed, etc.

Hard truth? It's still guess and check. There are so many comorbid conditons associated with ADHD - most of the time it is just the symptom of an underlying cause. ADHD meds only work on people with ADHD :)

Not OP, but I have ADHD and would love to chime in here. I love programming on meds and I hate programming on meds. Meds connect the dots, but meds also over-engineer everything. Then the meds wear off and I am stuck with a huge solution and I have no idea what I just did.

As a person without ADHD that sounds weirdly similar to my experience of studying or coding on amphetamines (from brief experiments in college that I quickly decided were not worth it). Is there actually any difference between ADHD meds and speed?

Depends on the meds, but Adderall is a combination of different amphetamines and dextroamphetamines. Some of which are added just to make it uncomfortable if you take too much.

The greatly simplified idea is that people with adhd have trouble using parts of their brain at the time they need to. So by increasing all brain activity the parts that are normally diminished are about normal. The side effect is that all the rest of the parts are amped up.

This isn't quite right. Adderall is a 3:1 mixture of dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. These are different enantiomers (configurations) of the amphetamine molecule. The two molecules have subtly different effects in the body, but as far as I know, neither is added to "make it uncomfortable if you take too much".

Fair enough. A doctor basically explained it to me like that over a decade ago, and I took their word for it. Which is uncharacteristic of me to just take someone's word for something, and repeat it.

I had a coworker with ADHD and I'm pretty sure he was prescribed stimulants although he was discreet about it. His patterns of focus were idiosyncratic, and occasionally he wrote code that just oozed "hopped up on addy" stylistically — particularly spurious and superfluous abstractions.