The lighter side of ADHD
Image not quite for ADHPeeps but I feel this sort of thing happens regularly for us as well.
Reminds me of when people find out I do cocaine and Adderall.
"Oh Michael likes to get high"
No, Michael doesn't have health insurance and has very severe adhd. I can't live a normal life without stimulants and drug dealers are cheaper than doctors. welcome to America.
Damn mate, that's really rough. I did see recently how US companies are taking advantage of the made-up scarcity to scalp people with ADHD to the point where the black market is more affordable. I only you know what you're doing vis-a-vis risks from tainted batches.
I do worry about getting a hot batch and dying but that's just the state of America today. Women will be getting dangerous back ally abortions as well soon.
Cocaine bad for mental health. Even with ADHD cocaine is so cut and stepped on its not reliable enough to get anything done.
It falls into the "better than nothing" category for me. I'm aware it's absolutely not a good idea.
I'm sorry your government failed you so badly. That's a tough place to be in.
Thank you Mr poopybutthole
Alcohol. Before getting formally diagnosed and medicated, drinking was the only thing that would quiet the inner restlessness. It worked but it's not a healthy lifestyle at all.
This is something I like to bring up to people who are hesitant to medicate their kids. Yeah, I know you think Timmy is fine because he's not completely failing in school, but you should at least show Timmy that he has options and that it's OK to talk to a doctor and take medication if he needs it. He doesn't have to rely on Jack Daniels and Folgers to eek his way through life.
This one surprised me, too.
I had a nasty habit of waiting until the evening to do my papers in college, because that was when it was acceptable to have some wine or whiskey while I wrote. But it was amazing just how much easier it was to stay on task after having a drink, and during finals - or after college when i was on deadline - i would alternate between liters of coffee in the morning and several drinks in the evening.
Now that I'm medicated both coffee and alcohol are just occasional indulgences... well, alcohol is at least. But I didn't expect it to help curb my impulsive consumption habits like it has- it's been a game-changer.
Neurotypicals think they have this superior discipline and attitude to "get on the task", and I believed them, too! Now, medicated, I realise that they only work on these constant dopamine micro rewards in their prefrontal cortex. Which I now get, too.
I think I got this from lemmy?
Look, as long as I can convince myself to go to sleep and not hyperfocus on whatever is in front of me I'll be fine. Problem is, it's a 50/50 toss up whether or not I can ignore my brain on any given night.
Apparently videogames are a "medication" for my adhd because since i started adderol they don't "pull me in" like they used to.
I miss it a little bit, it's also kinda weird but its also nice to not be compelled to play like before
Your brain is dopamine deprived, video games are designed to get our dumb monkey brains to squeeze out all the happy juice. Adderall floods your brain with dopamine so the video games just don't hit like they used to.
I used to drink 4 red bulls or 2-3 rockstar energy drinks per day. This was on top of any coffee.
Now, diagnosed and medicated, I'm down to zero and I rarely drink coffee.
I became a pothead because it made the cacophony of thoughts in my head stfu. I didn't realize that my thoughts were like that because of ADHD, since I was only diagnosed in my 30's (started smoking weed when I was 19).
Chewing gum almost every waking moment of the day. People used to assume I was trying to quit smoking, I would joke that I was actually trying to build my way up to starting.
Wow people that drank redbull have kids in college already, I guess it does make you move quicker
Recently got diagnosed with asthma and just have an albuterol inhaler till I can see a specialist in 4 plus months, haven’t been able to get an ADHD test despite my doctors referral, just so you have a preface for my story here.
On days I work toward my goals I generally start with a 16 oz doubled tea, gives me stimulants which I can’t get at the moment and I generally am able to focus on my tasks for 2 hour stents or so. I have some days though that despite getting rest and having a dose of caffeine I get real low energy around my first hour. Recently, during one of these moments I was trying to take a break and realized my breathing was quite shallow and I was somewhat short of breath, so I used my inhaler and I had a rush of energy and was able to knock out all my tasks with energy to spare. Turns out most of my low energy days have been actually about my low blood oxygen and the effects of having undiagnosed asthma. This has happened to me several times now and it blows me away each time. I think to myself “So this is how normal people breath and get so much done.”
My sympathies as a fellow asthma sufferer, but congrats on the medication at least. It’s really crazy how much easier everything in general is when you can breathe!
Nicotine. I started smoking at 16. Vaping now but nicotine and caffeine are carrying me through my unmedicated life
So much fucking coffee. My god it was too much.
W dad
suprised nobody said smoking weed, i smoke like 10 times a day minimum
That sounds a bit concerning, ngl >_<
People that "smoke 10x a day" usually take half a day to go through a single joint. Still a lot of weed but not at the level you're thinking.
Extreme anxiety.
For the longest time, I couldn't recruit enough concentration to get homework or big projects done until it was this huge looming threat. Frequently, that would involve an all-nighter since it was something due the next day. Other times, it meant cranking out last night's math assignment in home room mere minutes before it was due. It turns out that adrenaline and other stress hormones are great at shoving all the ADHD noise out of the way, however temporarily.
I'm in the middle of diagnosis. I do have Bipolar and have been medicated for 4 years or so. My shrink and I suspect that ADHD is there. It seems to be a common comorbidity. I was self-medicating with alcohol, until I got to a very bad place.
Both bipolar and ADHD have a frightening percentage of substance abuse, often as a form of self medication.
I went to the shrink around the time when I got sober. Quitting drinking and meds literally saved my life.
BTW, I got sober thanks to SMART Recovery. SMART is science based and behavior oriented, so even if you don't have an addiction problem (substances and/or behaviors), You can learn a lot of stuff applicable to behavioral problems. Much of the program is based on Cognitive Behavioral therapies, no higher power required. Confidential. Free.
Tea. Extremely strong tea, the kind russian convicts drink.
Wait what, I have below average blood pressure and have always leaned on caffeine to focus better. I never had any idea the two might be connected.
Holy shit! This post gave me an epiphany.
I was a cartoonist for the student newspaper, and drawing a funny comic strip every day was grueling. But I did better when I drank a Coca Cola before I started to brainstorm. Later, guess what - diagnosed ADHD.
Anyway, I probably took 2-3 hours on each comic, and was paid $5 per strip. And spent some of that on soda. So, it was a labor of love and foolishness. Also, I was semi-famous on campus for edgy cartoons that were occasionally funny, most of which I am embarrassed about in middle age.
ADHD, self-medicating behaviour from childhood in the form of candy seeking. Impossible impulse to control and occurs when experiencing a dip in concentration/boredom. It helped me focus for very brief moments.
pseudoephedrine
my Adderall script is in USA insurance purgatory and pseudoephedrine is probably the only thing keeping me employed tbh
I was about to say same!
Accidentally, though.
The story is roughly like this: I had bad allergies and fucked up sinuses - I thought. Got sinus headaches every day during bad periods. Lots of sinus infections. Went on for like 10-15 years through periods of being intense and focused and stressed with sinus issues and periods of checking out, being aloof and dippy without sinus issues.
In 2019, sinus rinses, pseudoephedrine, nose sprays, and pain killers weren’t doing it. Resigned myself to having to get the sinus roto-rooter, where they scrape out your sinuses to make it easier for all that junk to drain off. So I went to my doctor to get that in motion. Doctor sent me to an immunologist, who sent me to an ENT, who sent me to a neurologist, who looked at my records for 30 seconds, declared that I had migraines, and sent me on my way with a preventative script.
I was so fucking mad. Didn’t think he could possibly be right. But he was. And then Covid hit and by the time things got normal again, I realized I wasn’t able to work like I was before. So I got got tested for ADHD, and… here I am, rambling.
Mini thins (gas station speed) and Red Bull. At least that’s what I did in the 90s before I was diagnosed. Oh and pulling all nighters since my tired brain worked more like a normal brain.
Drinking a litre (~32oz) of espresso every day... ETA: I also have narcolepsy. its rough out here
Similar but Pistachios. The mechanics of opening the shells and eating them allowed me to focus on the college professor's material after an 9-10 hour work shift. If I showed up to class without pistachios or sunflower seeds I was nodding off in class.
When I was younger they gave me Ritalin, mostly to stop me from burning the building down. It worked, because I never burned the school down.. can't say the same for the neighbors shed... plus there was that incident with the bridge, luckily the fire department showed up quickly.
I'm a heavy tea drinker. When I got diagnosed with ADD at 40 I realized I was probably (lol) self-medicating with the copious amounts of tea.
Still better (and tastier) than meds IMHO. Of course don't take my advice always, ALWAYS, talk to your doctor.
You should know that there is data that backs you up: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8875377/#sec5-nutrients-14-00739
And also on the self-medicated front: nicotine is effective too. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8741955/
What this makes me wonder is how much of the population is self-medicated in this way but doesn't know it?
I was put on bupropion for depression and, while it didn't work perfectly, it worked far better than the other antidepressants I had been on. Then I found out that it's frequently used off label to treat ADHD and I started to have some suspicions. Long story short, now I'm diagnosed and on a stimulant and it's amazing.
When I was a kid I read that mint flavorings can help the blood vessels in your head dilate, increasing the amount of blood flow to your brain and therefore helping you do better on studying and tests.
Whenever I have a test to study for or to take, I made it a point to keep some sort of mint flavored candy around, and consistently across the board I have always done better on tests than my peers.
That being said, it is entirely plausible that this is a placebo effect, but I like my placebo and it works for me. Perhaps it will work for you as well.
A friend of mine chews nicotine gum. I have another friend that vapes and drinks like 12 energy drinks a day.
This is caffeine acting on brain and unlikely any change in blood pressure per se. You can try measuring bp a few time before and after chugging red bull to see how much it changes.