It hasn't occurred to you that playing video games for 8 hours straight may serve some escapist purpose that maybe is worth shining a light on?
Has it ever occurred to you that I dried out an entire sea fortress in Minecraft for sound, tangible reasons?
Anyway, I politely dislike all stimulants stronger than coffee and if I make a mistake and drink too much coffee, I'll hate the day until it wears off. Also, I have way less trouble focusing now that I'm old and people give me money for focusing on things.
I don't think I have ADHD, but I understand not being able to take Ritalin.
There's a line near the end, about how while taking the drug he hasn't fallen in love with anyone for at least five years. How often do most people fall in love? For me, I'm thinking twice lifetime so far -- five years without being head over heels for someone does not sound like a symptom to me.
I think drinking too much works if you absolutely must fall in love.
It's probably for the best that every time I try to take up daily drinking, I get crippling stomach pain.
I love you so much it hurts, but it's probably my stomach reacting to the alcohol?
6: When Cupid's Arrow Is A Vodka Enema: A Memoir
I assumed he meant 5 years without getting distracted and excited by a new dating prospect? Like 5 years without butterflies.
I just meant that, with or without love, I enjoy being just a little bit drunk too much.
The first part of 2 was definitely me, I just don't like stimulants. The effects in terms of ADHD itself were neither obviously good nor obviously bad. I was able to better focus on what I was doing sometimes (but not as well focused as when I'm in a groove), but there was no improvement in my ability to aim that focus on where it needed to be. I could spend a very long time playing video games without simultaneously trying to read the internet while playing the video game, but this wasn't a clear improvement. It's possible that after a few weeks I could have learned to better channel that focus. But it just made me so miserable physically that there wasn't a point in trying to go through that process. But the weird thing was just how happy I felt going off of it. I felt relaxed without feeling mildly depressed for basically the first time since the quarantine started. I've also been much better at focusing since then, but I think that's really about the semester starting again and is not directly related to medication.
I think HG is right that the author is in need of some talk therapy. But I do think there's also something interesting to the relationship between ADHD and salience of old memories. I spent a year in therapy with the main goal sorting out and moving past thinking about an old relationship and breakup that bothered me way too much, and it did a really great job of getting things to a pretty manageable situation where I still think about it several times a day, but they're brief thoughts that no longer bother me. But it just didn't ever go down to zero, I never had that moment of "oh it's been a week since I thought about it." And my theory for the last year or so was that the little that's left is mostly driven by boredom, and when I'm bored my brain is trying to find something to think about and goes for ready standbys. I think this theory was largely confirmed by ADHD medication bringing those thoughts it way closer to zero. That is there's somehow two axes, one is how emotionally charged memories are which is what talk therapy is good for, and the other is how often your brain is randomly trawling for memories which is related to ADHD.
I'm playing Civ, attending a Biden meeting, and doing this.
4 et seq. "Falling in love" is surely a totally subjective thing and what X calls falling in love, Y calls mildly fancying someone. If the author means they haven't met somebody in the last five years that they would totally change their life to be with, then good for them. But if they mean that taking the drug has seriously depressed their sex drive, there is probably a real problem.
The real erections are the friends you meet along the way.
11: would it be nosy to ask if you're talking about RWM?
When a Vodka Enema is Cupid's Arrow - a rather different memoir.
No, I think that ends up pretty much the same.
As it were.
No, everything with RWM is great and always has been. It was the relationship before that when I was in college.
Hence the frequent appearance in renaissance art of winged figures armed with funnels and leather tubing
This blog post has convinced me that the reason work has been so frustrating this year is that I need ADHD medication.
I relate to this more than I would expect. I grew up reading for pleasure, and concentrating for hours at a stretch was nothing to me. These days when engage with a book my concentration is a much weaker thing. I find myself frequently distracted. It's harder to get immersion. I don't know how much of that is getting older and how much is internet addiction.
I'm reminded of someone who said that for a couple of years, before you get burnt out, you can seem like a genius if you use amphetamines daily.
I wonder if some of the people treating their ADD are just enjoying burning their candle at both ends.
Y'all have candles? I'm working with those cardboard matchsticks and worn out striking paper.
Things like this sound a bit familiar. I keep hearing that the only "real" way to diagnose ADD/ADHD is applying meds and seeing if it helps, and I would kind of like to conduct that experiment on myself, but it's a bit daunting in terms of talking the medical establishment into it. And that's without the pandemic making everything medical that much more fraught.
Regarding the curse of a memory,IME the issue is that there are so many details that can connect to details of the present, so way too much of the present is unreasonably likely to bring up memory XYZ ---- and more particularly *bad* memory XYZ, because that sharpness of detail is often not "on" during good memory formation.
Hey, post author here. First, I wanted to say I genuinely appreciate the link and the discussion.
I did want to clarify though -- because it's important. I'm still taking my medication! As I tried to communicate in the middle of the post, I'm utterly useless without the meds right now, I turn into a furball of depression and anxiety.
The moments I've been without them have been mostly related to times when I've run out, forgot them, ran into insurance difficulties, etc. Haven't decided, willy nilly, to just unmedicate. Not a good idea.
I *have* been in communication with therapists and psychiatrist the entire time, and at various moments we've adjusted the medication up and down.
Talk therapy is great! I highly recommend it, and it's definitely helped me quite a bit.
LizardBreath -- yeah, exactly. It *is* possible I haven't met the sort of people I've fallen so hard for in the past. But I wonder if my focus on the present has, in some cases, stopped me from meeting those people or finding those prospects? It's a theory, nothing more.
Hey. That worked out better than it usually does.
Welcome! And thanks for writing the post, I did really find it useful to have it appear in my twitter feed (via Jord/an Ell/en/berg) at the exactly as I was experiencing what things were like with and without ADHD medication.
28: no kidding! welcome! Sorry for being hard on you in the front page! I did enjoy your insights.
Oh, no problem. I just wanted to correct the misinception that I was intending to suggest that I was in anyway smarter than my psychiatrist/therapist. I intended to communicate very much the opposite! I've felt very dumb throughout much of this.
That makes sense, and I hear you. It was an uncharitable assumption on my part.
Have you switched meds around for the anhedonia? I'm on Vyvanse now, and it's ...mellower and smoother than Ritalin was, if that makes sense.
Mellow as the first violin you ever saw.
I hate that I can vividly remember a large number of embarrassing situations, starting from when I was like 7 and I answered the phone and someone asked for my brother and I said he's in the bathroom. My brother and parents got mad at me and said you're just supposed to say someone isn't available when they're in the bathroom. And so on through middle school, high school, college, grad school family vacations, work, etc- I could quickly pull up visualizations of embarrassments from every stage of my life.
AIHMHB we just started learning golf this summer as an alternative COVID-friendly activity and it's turning out to not be such a great sport for me because I can vividly remember shots that were so bad they were embarrassing to make in front of whatever random people we were paired with, to the point that I had trouble falling asleep the other night because of some bad ones.
We were supposed to say "couldn't come to the phone" for our parents but with siblings, we could just say they were on the can.
More life skills that the Kids These Days aren't picking up.
"I'm sorry, but I can't take your call now. I'm using my phone to play Pokemon Go while I'm in the bathroom."
35: I never understood those rules. OMG, nobody is allowed to know that I go to the bathroom!
35: I did use to have historical embarrassment syndrome. I would remember something stupid I said 30 years earlier, and the shame of it would overwhelm me. That doesn't happen to me anymore - now I'm amused by those memories. I think this is one of the gifts of old age.
Not my old age. This still happens to me.
Of course, a separate part of the problem is that I haven't stopped doing stupid things.
If you do enough stupid things you'll eventually have too many to remember and might forget some. If you still remember them all you can use it to brag about your awesome memory when you're President and everyone thinks you have neurodegeneration.
The OP and comments are really interesting to me, because I think they are directly relevant to my life, but I'm not really clear on how they are relevant.
My son is doing Concerta, and I was at first puzzled by the fact that he (like me) has intense powers of concentration. But now I see that this can be part of the ADHD phenomenon. And I kind of think that I ought to look into some kind of medication, too.
I was talking to him the other day about his inability to focus on things he isn't interested in. I said, "Well, nobody is really good at focusing on things that don't interest them." He looked at me like I was nuts: "Lots of people can do that."
And once he said it, I realized that he was right.
I think that being embarrassed by decades-old foolishness -- even harmless foolishness -- is normal. Am I wrong about that, too?
I was talking to him the other day about his inability to focus on things he isn't interested in. I said, "Well, nobody is really good at focusing on things that don't interest them." He looked at me like I was nuts: "Lots of people can do that."
And once he said it, I realized that he was right.
I'm not sure your son is right! I think people can sort of white knuckle their way through something out of anxiety, or they have tricks for finding something interesting about the job at hand. But actually able to focus, without qualifying it, on something that is boring?
And it doesn't count if you kind of find a pleasant rhythm in a monotonous task while listening to music or something.
43: Isn't this all a matter of degree? I would guess most people are better able to focus on things they are interested in. And a fair number of people experience retrospective embarrassment. But when it gets to the point that you're not able to comment on Unfogged, because you can't get over the time you double-posted something stupid 5 years ago, but you're still writing comments that you know you won't send, because you can't focus on what you need to get done for your job, then you may have a problem.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to take drugs to do. Play consists of whatever a body is able to do without drugs.
Indeed on my list is an unfogged comment from 2006. Can tell you exactly where I was when I posted it and someone called it out.
It's a good thing I've never done anything really bad in my life like hitting someone with a car or I'd never be able to get it out of my head.
I ran over my brother, but hardly think about it at all.
Re: focus, I always read those ADD lists, and the only thing I recognize is hyperfocus. I am sure I'm an outlier, but basically, once I buckle down to a task, even a boring one, I'll almost always get through it (or to a good stopping point). I'm not great at starting, but if I can do 10-15 min, I'll be good for at least a couple of hours. It's a bit of a joke in our household, but if I'm reading, I don't hear . . . sounds just completely tune out.
Old embarrassments, though? Yeah. I learned, though, you have to recall something a few times for it to stay in long-term storage. So, the more you relive that moment, the more likely you will be to keep reliving it. That said, once upon a time, on the second day of seventh grade, I walked up to a girl who looked like my friend Jenny and said, "Hi, Jenny." It wasn't Jenny, and she was confused, and the girls she was with laughed at me, and I've clearly never recovered.
Sixth grade I sat in an old chair in music class and it collapsed. Given that I was already overweight, that felt awesome.
I can take this thread to 1000 on my own.
I once got a detention for farting. It's not really an embarrassing moment because I think I did it very well.