Comradez said:

Part of my ostensible ADHD is that my interests seem to change very frequently in the first place.  So this masters program is something that my heart WAS into just a short while ago.  It probably wouldn't even matter if I were doing something else that my current heart was into right now; I'd probably lose interest in that. 

For example, I have 75 pages written of a book on the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as a metaphor for the psychedelic experience.  I'm already a good ways towards finishing it, and by all accounts I should be working on it this very moment.  But I can't seem to finish any project I start.  I'm always starting projects and never finishing them.  That's a big problem, and to me that sounds like it could be ADHD. 

Plus, even if I come out of the other side of this masters program absolutely hating it, what I anticipate is also higher earning potential, credibility, and the ability to pursue more of what I really want to do.  For example, it's going to be more difficult to get a book about the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as metaphor for the psychedelic experience taken seriously with just a bachelor's degree vs. having a master's degree.  Finishing this program will be an ongoing asset to my life, just as finishing my undergraduate program at Harvard has been and will continue to be, even though I wasn't always the happiest doing that either, and even though it took a few occasional Adderall XR to get me through a really tough spot where I really didn't feel like doing my school work when I was there as well.

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It all sounds pretty ordinary to me. So your interests change sporadically, and you shuffle projects and sometimes they fizzle out and you don't finish them. It's not a big deal. If you're breaking your own set deadlines then it's a matter of self-discipline. Although that may all be simply representative of a bigger picture only you can see, I don't see any reason here to be taking ADHD drugs or even referring to yourself as a sufferer of ADHD.

One common way to treat this is to reduce the level of distraction in your daily life. Hell, the internet in itself will induce a temporary ADHD in anybody.

On a sidenote, I don't think I'd be the least bit interested as to whether the guy who wrote a book about the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as metaphor for the psychedelic experience has a master's or a bachelor's degree.

SpiritualSnorkel said:

Wooden Spoon said:

SpiritualSnorkel said:

Comradez said:

to investigate possible adult-onset ADHD.

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You sat down and wrote out a post too long for most of the Pub to be bothered with reading.

I think you'll be all right with your ADHD.

P.S. Stop giving your money to/putting your faith in quacks and frauds.

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Wow doctor! you sure are good at diagnosing ADHD over the interweb!


i found this very interesting actually and i hope you keep us updated on what you talk about in your next session.

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The question to me isn't whether he has ADHD, by some psychiatrist's definition, or not. It's irrelevant to me. If they prescribe him the drugs then the Doc is one step closer to that GlaxoSmithKline fruit basket or all-expenses-paid vacation to some conference in Vegas, and the guy will be stunted in whatever area he's having trouble in for the duration of the time he takes them. If you can't concentrate then change your lifestyle, exercise some old fashioned self-discipline. Enough with these fucking inventions of modern psychiatry, seriously.

Sounds like you also willfully and lovingly give your money and time to hacks who don't know shit about anything and love every minute of it. Good for you.

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You are incredibly cynical about the entire psychiatry industry.  I am too.  For example, based on the information I have so far, SSRIs appear to me to be an absolute scam that I would never even try.  The same thing goes for doctors prescribing nasty atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel as fucking SLEEP AIDS or for anything other than acute psychotic episodes.  But nobody would go to psychiatry at all, or take its drugs, if it didn't actually benefit people at least some of the time.  For instance, Adderall XR is a drug that WORKS.  It does exactly what it says it's going to do.  The risks are significant, but they are upfront and can be mitigated with intelligent use.  That is my personal experience, and my personal opinion. 

Part of what this going to this psychologist is about is that I don't want to have to break the law (or put friends in legal risk for supplying me).  Yes, I'm compromising with The System.  I'm willing to fatten the coffers of Big Pharma ever so slightly in order to obtain personal help.  How is that any different from getting a marijuana card and fattening the coffers of a dispensary (many of whose owners likewise appear to be of dubious ethical intent, judging from their voting no on Prop19 last election)?  Oh wait, I forgot, some drugs are good, and some drugs are evil.  That's not how it works.  (Except for SSRIs. I'd like to reserve a special place in hell for the people who push those while knowing full-well that they don't outperform placebo while also saddling people with very real and very awful side effects and chemical dependency.) 

Any drug can be abused.  Just because certain meth-heads abuse amphetamines doesn't mean that I will.  And do they "stunt" one's emotional growth?  Maybe when given to developing children. 

One day I hope to have, once again, the strength of will, focus, and self-discipline to do everything I want to do, and everything I need to do, without any sort of drugs.  But I've been trying that, and lately I've been failing at it.  Either I continue failing at it, with the consolation that I get to feel a false sense of moral superiority and strength for not having achieved the failure all by myself without the help of any drugs, or I can take a little help for the meantime. 

As for just "manning-up" and exercising some self-discipline...isn't it a bit like telling a person with a broken leg to just "man-up" and deal with the pain without opiates?  I'm just supposed to overcome the CONSTANT and OVERPOWERING feeling of, "I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE..." every time I'm working on something that I SHOULD be getting satisfaction from, and that would greatly benefit me?  I've been trying, and last semester I failed. 

Now, like taking opiates for a broken leg, I'm not content with taking ADHD medication forever.  It would just help me to take them long enough to survive in my career while I figure out what the fuck my broken leg is.  Until I re-learn self-discipline, and figure out how I lost it in the first place. 

I have a strong feeling that it has a lot to do with Civilization IV (no joke).  In the same way that people will say, "Me and cocaine had some good times." I'd say that "Me and Civilization IV had some good times."  It was too good.  For several years, it was an addiction by any other name.  It is a wonder I finished Harvard.  There was one span of playing it where I started a game of it on a Thursday night, stayed up all night, went to class Friday morning, came back and resumed playing it, and stayed up straight playing it all the way to Sunday morning, at which point I crashed for the rest of the day until Monday morning.  It was, looking back, a cheap dopamine high that re-oriented my reward pathways around something that gave me no long-term benefit in life.  What I hope to do with ADHD medication is possibly re-train my brain to associate reward with activities like school work--stuff that will actually benefit me long-term in life--by doing school work while I am under the influence of the ADHD medication.  It has seemed to incrementally work the few times I have tried this with my friend's illicitly diverted medication.  One aspect of my going to this psychologist is that I would like to try this legally.  If it doesn't work, or if it starts trying to lead me down a different path that I don't want to go on (like, addiction to the ADHD medication itself), I'll be the first person to say, "Oh shit, not this again..."  Because I know what even seemingly-innocuous cheap dopamine highs like Civ4 can do to me, how they can almost wreck my life.  I don't want to go through that again.  That's also why I really hope I can get the extended-release version of whatever I end up getting prescribed (assuming that my psychologist concludes in favor of an ADHD diagnosis), because I have found them to be less prone to abuse and addictive tendencies.  But she may very well conclude that I have depression or something and try to get me to take SSRIs, in which case I'll have to politely decline.

SpiritualSnorkel said:

Comradez said:

Part of my ostensible ADHD is that my interests seem to change very frequently in the first place.  So this masters program is something that my heart WAS into just a short while ago.  It probably wouldn't even matter if I were doing something else that my current heart was into right now; I'd probably lose interest in that. 

For example, I have 75 pages written of a book on the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as a metaphor for the psychedelic experience.  I'm already a good ways towards finishing it, and by all accounts I should be working on it this very moment.  But I can't seem to finish any project I start.  I'm always starting projects and never finishing them.  That's a big problem, and to me that sounds like it could be ADHD. 

Plus, even if I come out of the other side of this masters program absolutely hating it, what I anticipate is also higher earning potential, credibility, and the ability to pursue more of what I really want to do.  For example, it's going to be more difficult to get a book about the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as metaphor for the psychedelic experience taken seriously with just a bachelor's degree vs. having a master's degree.  Finishing this program will be an ongoing asset to my life, just as finishing my undergraduate program at Harvard has been and will continue to be, even though I wasn't always the happiest doing that either, and even though it took a few occasional Adderall XR to get me through a really tough spot where I really didn't feel like doing my school work when I was there as well.

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It all sounds pretty ordinary to me. So your interests change sporadically, and you shuffle projects and sometimes they fizzle out and you don't finish them. It's not a big deal. If you're breaking your own set deadlines then it's a matter of self-discipline. Although that may all be simply representative of a bigger picture only you can see, I don't see any reason here to be taking ADHD drugs or even referring to yourself as a sufferer of ADHD.

One common way to treat this is to reduce the level of distraction in your daily life. Hell, the internet in itself will induce a temporary ADHD in anybody.

On a sidenote, I don't think I'd be the least bit interested as to whether the guy who wrote a book about the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio as metaphor for the psychedelic experience has a master's or a bachelor's degree.

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Comradez said:

You are incredibly cynical about the entire psychiatry industry.  I am too.

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Quote:

But nobody would go to psychiatry at all, or take its drugs, if it didn't actually benefit people at least some of the time.  For instance, Adderall XR is a drug that WORKS.  It does exactly what it says it's going to do.  The risks are significant, but they are upfront and can be mitigated with intelligent use.  That is my personal experience, and my personal opinion.

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Quote:

Oh wait, I forgot, some drugs are good, and some drugs are evil.  That's not how it works.

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Quote:

And do they "stunt" one's emotional growth?  Maybe when given to developing children.

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Quote:

One day I hope to have, once again, the strength of will, focus, and self-discipline to do everything I want to do, and everything I need to do, without any sort of drugs.

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Quote:

As for just "manning-up" and exercising some self-discipline...isn't it a bit like telling a person with a broken leg to just "man-up" and deal with the pain without opiates?  I'm just supposed to overcome the CONSTANT and OVERPOWERING feeling of, "I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE..." every time I'm working on something that I SHOULD be getting satisfaction from, and that would greatly benefit me?  I've been trying, and last semester I failed. 

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SpiritualSnorkel said:

Anyone with any energy or individuality, who is bored out of their minds in a classroom and doesn't play nicely with idiots could be diagnosed with ADHD. This sets a pretty dangerous precedent and is among the worst parts about the entire sham.

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SpiritualSnorkel said:

Comradez said:

You are incredibly cynical about the entire psychiatry industry.  I am too.

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I am. I have a total lack of respect for the entire field of study, but it does stem beyond one dynamic or another. For instance, it's not necessarily just about fighting "Big Pharma".

Quote:

But nobody would go to psychiatry at all, or take its drugs, if it didn't actually benefit people at least some of the time.  For instance, Adderall XR is a drug that WORKS.  It does exactly what it says it's going to do.  The risks are significant, but they are upfront and can be mitigated with intelligent use.  That is my personal experience, and my personal opinion.

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Clearly it's possible to demonstrate that the drugs can be beneficial, as long as the time-frame is narrow enough. Short-sighted enough. While psycho-stimulants may not be as unmanageable in their side-effects as other drugs, I'm still generally wary about advocating them to anybody. Especially when all other avenues haven't been tried which would have a much more rewarding end result. A more permanent, fulfilling solution. When the time comes that you don't want to rely on the drugs anymore, you'll be left off where you were, in a sense. Except your underpants will be on inside out.

Quote:

Oh wait, I forgot, some drugs are good, and some drugs are evil.  That's not how it works.

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That's exactly how it works. It's just easier to say it doesn't work like that because of all of the personal opinion usually involved.

Quote:

And do they "stunt" one's emotional growth?  Maybe when given to developing children.

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Not emotional growth. Just growth. The growth that would create a person who could finish projects of their own volition, pay attention for long amounts of time, and when a project fizzles out, accept that maybe it wasn't meant to be and to hell with it.

Quote:

One day I hope to have, once again, the strength of will, focus, and self-discipline to do everything I want to do, and everything I need to do, without any sort of drugs.

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No pain no gain! 

Quote:

As for just "manning-up" and exercising some self-discipline...isn't it a bit like telling a person with a broken leg to just "man-up" and deal with the pain without opiates?  I'm just supposed to overcome the CONSTANT and OVERPOWERING feeling of, "I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE, I WANT TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE..." every time I'm working on something that I SHOULD be getting satisfaction from, and that would greatly benefit me?  I've been trying, and last semester I failed. 

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It isn't like that at all. But I'm not a big fan of analogies because they never seem to be right.

If you have those constant overpowering feelings of hating what you're doing, it's pretty clear to me that you should be doing something else.

As I said in one of my initial posts though, the choice is up to you. It sounds like beyond taking the drugs and continuing on your set course, you'd have some tribulated decisions to make. That's understandable.

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Comradez said:

SpiritualSnorkel said:

Anyone with any energy or individuality, who is bored out of their minds in a classroom and doesn't play nicely with idiots could be diagnosed with ADHD. This sets a pretty dangerous precedent and is among the worst parts about the entire sham.

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I admit that much of what schools teach is useless trivia, and that most students are boring, unexpansive thinkers.  That said, even the expansive thinkers need to be detail-oriented at times so that they can marshal those details to support their expansive ideas--so that their expansive ideas don't become entirely speculative (which I have a tendency towards because I'm not very detail-oriented).

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badchad said:

I wouldn't necessarily expect someone in health care to know about psychedelics.  There are specialists in health care just like any other field, even psychology.  The same way I wouldn't expect my podiatrist to know about a heart condition, a psychologist wouldn't necessarily know about psychedelics.

Also, I'm sure you're aware that many psychologists can't prescribe drugs.

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Kada said:

Until they started coming out with a plethora of drugs that supposedly fixed your particular diagnosed mental disorder, psychologists were barely considered doctors at all and hidden away in metal wards. I think we should go back to thinking that way. Everyone want's to be diagnosed with something these days. Everyone wants a reason why life is so hard for them. It's easy to get away with BS when people WANT something to be wrong with them. Sure some people might benefit from some of these drugs, but I think 99% of the time these quacks are just diagnosing people to stay in business. 

That's how I feel about psychologists and their new fangled drugs.

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