If you are 6 foot tall and a building has 5 foot ceilings and you keep hitting you head and some doctor says you have a height disorder and prescribes a foam helmet and pain killers, this is what it's like to be ADHD.
You are being diagnosed as not fitting into a malformed environment, that's all it is. Oh, you aren't super into being stuffed into a deck for 8 hours a day for 12 years? Here are some amphetamines, this will help you conform to your role as an input in an industrial process.
As someone with ADHD, this is horrible advice. Being unmedicated certainly derailed my academic career, and very nearly destroyed my marriage. It is a seriously debilitating condition, and stimulants work very well to treat it.
An “academic career” is an unnatural environment. You weren’t build for it, you were built for fasting days at a time, covering 25-50 miles a day in often harsh wilderness environments.
Your oldest ancestors had the physique of professional athletes and the default was not eating and spending time in packs coordinating for survival. All of them. That is the environment we are adapted to.
So again, ADHD is to a very large degree a by product of modernity.
This is true of a wide swath of our so called mental health issues.
Amphetamines may help people cope with a suboptimal environment, but you can also dramatically change your environment and the way you approach your life.
Even if what you say is true (it doesn’t line up with what I have read), it doesn’t change the fact that anti-stimulant advice is bad for the patient. I WANT to be a better husband, and a better father. Of course I could just lower my standards and accept a divorce, because my brain isn’t wired up for being a responsible adult in our society. Or I can take my prescribed stimulant medication and be a better person with literally no downsides.
If you are 6 foot tall and a building has 5 foot ceilings and you keep hitting you head and some doctor says you have a height disorder and prescribes a foam helmet and pain killers, this is what it's like to be ADHD.
You are being diagnosed as not fitting into a malformed environment, that's all it is. Oh, you aren't super into being stuffed into a deck for 8 hours a day for 12 years? Here are some amphetamines, this will help you conform to your role as an input in an industrial process.
Get into nature, run wild, follow your bliss!
As someone with ADHD, this is horrible advice. Being unmedicated certainly derailed my academic career, and very nearly destroyed my marriage. It is a seriously debilitating condition, and stimulants work very well to treat it.
Your story isn’t incongruent with my observation.
An “academic career” is an unnatural environment. You weren’t build for it, you were built for fasting days at a time, covering 25-50 miles a day in often harsh wilderness environments.
Your oldest ancestors had the physique of professional athletes and the default was not eating and spending time in packs coordinating for survival. All of them. That is the environment we are adapted to.
So again, ADHD is to a very large degree a by product of modernity.
This is true of a wide swath of our so called mental health issues.
Amphetamines may help people cope with a suboptimal environment, but you can also dramatically change your environment and the way you approach your life.
I’ve seen it in myself and in others.
Even if what you say is true (it doesn’t line up with what I have read), it doesn’t change the fact that anti-stimulant advice is bad for the patient. I WANT to be a better husband, and a better father. Of course I could just lower my standards and accept a divorce, because my brain isn’t wired up for being a responsible adult in our society. Or I can take my prescribed stimulant medication and be a better person with literally no downsides.