[twojacobtwo]

Have you looked into the possibility that you have ADD/ADHD?

I ask because your description sounds spot on for how I have felt throughout life. The 'fog', lack of motivation, and sensitivity to even the slightest stimulus especially ring true. When I first took medication for ADD, I felt like I had been driving through a downpour my whole life and finally discovered the window-wipers - the storm didn't stop, but I could finally look forward and see my goals and desires clearly. Every few weeks I try to do a reset and test how I feel without medication and I definitely still feel that 'fog' that you mention. I would say my fog is more like being in a lightning storm, because I feel the constant 'patter' of thoughts hitting my subconscious (for lack of a better word), but the occasional lightning strike will pull my attention completely away from everything else momentarily.

If you want to learn more, I highly recommend looking through the ADHD subreddit[0] - especially the sidebar material.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/ADHD/

[ditonal]

It's very common for people on HN to tout the benefits of their ADHD diagnosis and I feel compelled to point out that getting on ADHD meds was one of the worst mistakes of my life. They triggered a manic episode. The psychiatrist solutions to all my problems was always more meds, different meds, etc. I've mentioned this a few times and I'm always accused of abusing them but the truth is I took a small dose as prescribed. Of course I was "pre-disposed" to mania but how was I supposed to learn that without finding out the hard way? I believe that if I just avoided all the psychiatric pill I never would have gone full manic (hypomanic, but not manic).

The article is right that "chemical imbalance" is a myth as there's no sort of blood tests or normative chemical ranges for any of these mental conditions that people get diagnosed because they are outside of. A quick Google search would show there's no scientific support for chemical imbalance theory, just some pills that affect brain chemicals that people report depression improvement on self-reported survey so a huge, unscientific leap is made that depression is some chemical shortage in the brain. All the psychiatrist diagnoses are basically glorified personality tests, and the criteria are based on the DSM-5 which was made closed door and with heavy influence from pharmaceutical company lobbying.

Mental health is probably one of the most complex aspects of health, things like placebo have a huge impact, it's hard to study, and there's huge bias introduced by a for-profit pharmaceutical industry that pushes treatments to pills.

The field of psychiatry is not that scientific, it's not so long ago it was forcing people into lobotomies and I see the unscientific rush to diagnose everyone into these boxes of depression and ADHD as a similar gaffe that will be looked back on poorly.

I am diagnosed with GAD, ADHD, and bipolar type 1 and I'm doing MUCH better since I went against-medical-advice and quit all meds. For bipolar disorder/anxiety, meditation, yoga, exercise, sobriety, journaling are my key treatments. Mindfulness is key, but not the Hacker News McMindfulness variety where you try to emulate a celebrity monk from Tibet so you can reach Zen all so you can write more code for your startup.

For ADHD, meditation, techniques like pomodoro, and most importantly, just accepting that maybe it's better to achieve less peak productivity than take prescription amphetamines.

I just wanted to provide some counter-perspective as someone who's followed advice like yours much to my detriment.

[toomanybeersies]

As a counter point, being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication was one of the best things to have ever happened to me. Everybody is different though, medication is beneficial for some and detrimental for others. It's important to be aware of your mental state and how treatment (whether drugs or other) affects it, and to be able to make informed choices regarding treatment. A good doctor/shrink should take into consideration your feedback and act accordingly. Bad doctors will just push pills on to you. This is why I'm deadset against prescribing stimulant medication to children, it's easy (and common) for doctors and parents to basically force feed their kids amphetamines, often causing them great harm (I also believe that it stops children from learning proper ADHD management strategies, leading to them being completely incapable of functioning without medication or illicit drugs)

Meditation and yoga do nothing for me. Seeing a counsellor has been good though, and I think that its something that everybody should do, regardless of neurotype or how well they appear to be functioning in life.

[minerjoe]

> deadset against prescribing stimulant medication to children

I've seen it first hand. Child is beautiful and active and happy and sad and angry and living and the Mother just can't handle it and BAM - drugs.

Child grows up, becomes a teenager. Prescription drugs stop. Teenage moves to Methamphetamine, start cooking. Eventually is busted and jailed.

The connection, for me, is clear.

I feel very very lucky that I grew up before the ADHD diagnosis was a thing as I could have easily been that child.

[toomanybeersies]

> and the Mother just can't handle it

It's unfortunate that it's often the case that psychiatric help is only sought for "problem children", who negatively impact those around them. These are the kids that get "easily distracted and distracts others" on all their report cards.

Well behaved children with ADHD (generally those with inattentive-type) tend to have their poor academic performance written off as laziness or stupidity. Their report cards tend to say "has great potential, if only he would apply himself"

Unfortunately, it's common just to give kids some pills to settle them down, especially when therapy is expensive or resource limited, without helping them learn healthy coping mechanisms and management strategies.

Often as they grow older, they become less hyperactive, which leads to the belief that they've "grown out" of their ADHD. There's a common misconception (even amongst doctors) that ADHD is a children's disease, when in fact up to 2/3 of children with ADHD carry it through to adulthood. I have friends who went to their GP and were straight up told that they couldn't have ADHD as they're adults.

Therapy should be the first-line strategy for treating children with ADHD, with medication being an alternative or supplemental treatment. Otherwise you end up with adults who never learned healthy management strategies as children, as the medication suppressed the need to learn them. Then as they "grow out" of their ADHD, they're taken off medication and are unable to function as effective members of society.

[lwkl]

Medication allows therapy to be effective. And it depends where on the spectrum you are. Just going to therapy and talking won‘t change anything. For me a main symptom is and was the inability to take action on existing knowledge. Therapy can’t fix that.

Treatment of ADHD without medication needs action accommodations from the school, teachers, friends, boy scouts and parents. And it‘s not possible for every parent and every school.

If you feel emotionally numb because of the stimulants your dose is probably too high and it should be adjusted.

But I agree with you. The treatment can‘t be just a pill. It needs at least to be a pill and education for the involved parties. And especially education for the patient. So they can adjust their treatment and lifestyle according to their needs.

[chc]

It seems like you're conflating accurate diagnoses with misdiagnoses here. Nobody thinks being medicated based on a misdiagnosis is a good thing, and especially not as a substitute for parenting.

[jmole]

Do you (or parent, or GP) have allergies or food allergies by any chance?

I recently did a ~7 day liquid elemental diet [0], followed by a 3 day fast, and at the end of the fast I was more mentally acute and more lucid or "present" than I have ever felt in my life.

The results were far better than any medication or treatment I've ever tried. Unfortunately, re-feeding brought me back to the same state I've known for all of my life.

[0] - https://www.siboinfo.com/uploads/5/4/8/4/5484269/homemade_el...

[twojacobtwo]

I know it's late to respond to this, but I just want to say thank you for offering the opposite perspective. I can only say it was a life-changing improvement in my case and in most of the cases that I have read about. I do want to clarify that I wasn't advising anyone to get medicated immediately; I just offered my perspective and a link to more information.

I agree that we should be focusing more in individualized treatment and not attempting to adjust everyone to some averaged version of 'normal'. Tbh, if I could find a way to live comfortably in a profession that I enjoyed, which didn't also require 'neurotypical' focus, I would drop the medication as well. I do enjoy being able to focus on things which would normally be near impossible for me otherwise, but I certainly feel less creative and mentally adroit when medicated. It's a difficult trade-off at times, but in my current circumstances, it's one I simply have to make, as nothing else works(including meditation, pomodoro, etc.).

In any case, it makes me happy to hear that you have found a solution that works for you.

[patmorgan23]

I would like to recommend the book 'crazy like us' it's about how mental health functions differently in different cultures and how we been exporting western conception of mental health and they've actually changed the symptoms people report to their therapist. It also touches on the pharmaceutical industries influence. Really a fascinating reas

[hemantv]

I had similar experience. Especially if you sleep deprived it fucks your whole mood regulation system.

[viburnum]

There’s a view that ADHD is badly named, because many ADHD people have incredible focus (at times), and many are not hyperactive in the least. It’s more of an issue about emotional dysregulation, which can be exceptionally painful for those who suffer.

[PragmaticPulp]

> because many ADHD people have incredible focus (at times)

The concept of "hyperfocus" as a symptom of ADHD is relatively recent idea. It didn't appear in any medical literature for a long time. The first appearance I could find was in some author's book about ADHD, which wasn't even targeted at medical professionals.

It might be a symptom for some people, but misinterpreting it as a symptom of ADHD leaves the door wide open for misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis. When we start diagnosis a disorder notorious of lack of attention in people who demonstrate an abundance of attention, there's a problem.

The pop-psychology definition of ADHD is so broad that it's rare to find an HN commenter who hasn't self-diagnosed as maybe having ADHD at some point in their lives.

As you said, pathological ADHD (as diagnosed by a medical professional) can have a severe impact on people's lives. It's best that we leave the diagnosis to professionals and not give people the impression that the regular ups and downs of focus (studying/focus/mental endurance is work for everyone) are indicators of a mental health disorder.

[dragonwriter]

> When we start diagnosis a disorder notorious of lack of attention in people who demonstrate an abundance of attention, there's a problem.

Inattention in ADHD has always been the lack of ability to appropriately direct attention, not the absence of attention to anything.

While “hyperfocus” by name is a fairly recent association, at least as far back as the DSM III-R ADHD has included both tendency to be easily distracted by extraneous stimuli (inability to maintain appropriate attention) and that of not having attention drawn by stimulus that should draw it (appearing not to listen.)

Hyperfocus is simply the latter.

[skissane]

> The concept of "hyperfocus" as a symptom of ADHD is relatively recent idea

Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD, ASD, and schizophrenia [1]. So a person who experiences hyperfocus may be experiencing one or more of those conditions. (Although, when I say "symptom", not necessarily a diagnostic one – conditions can have both diagnostic symptoms, which form part of the diagnostic criteria, and non-diagnostic symptoms, which don't, but nonetheless have been commonly observed clinically and/or in research in those formally diagnosed.)

Since it is possible to have subclinical manifestations of psychiatric diagnoses, a person who experiences hyperfocus without meeting the diagnostic criteria for any of these diagnoses may have such a subclinical manifestation of one or more of them. The formal name for subclinical ASD is "Broad Autism Phenotype" (BAP) [2]; I don't think subclinical ADHD [3] or subclinical schizophrenia [4] have distinctive names, but both have been researched. (A lot of people who incorrectly self-diagnose themselves as having X despite not actually meeting the diagnostic criteria, may in fact be correctly identifying the existence of subclinical traits of X in themselves.)

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31541305/

[2] e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5949081/

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2547346/

[minerjoe]

> leave the diagnosis to professionals

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821855

[toomanybeersies]

I was diagnosed in my mid-20s with inattentive-type ADHD. I had never even considered that I had ADHD until about a year prior to seeing a doctor, because I don't "look" like I have ADHD. There's this stereotype of people with ADHD being unable to sit still, constantly bouncing off the walls, which isn't really me at all.

There's so much more to ADHD than that though. I'm smart enough that I never struggled academically, and wasn't hyperactive enough to cause significant enough disruption in the classroom, so externally it was never picked up that I might have ADHD. But now that I'm aware of it, I've come to realise how significant of an impact it's had in my life, all the self-destructive and self-sabotaging behaviour, the instability of my relationships, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, the lack of internal motivation, emotional hypersensitivity, a lack of emotional and object permanence, and more. I could go on for days (and have) about the less obvious effects and symptoms of ADHD.

[twojacobtwo]

I completely agree that it is poorly named. One of the reasons I never even considered that I had ADD/ADHD was that I was never really exhibited hyperactivity and during certain activities -reading an amazing book or playing my favourite games- I can focus for hours on end. I think it would be great for the scientific/psychiatric community to seriously consider a new name.

[patmorgan23]

I do like the category ADHD is put in though. It's a form of 'executive disfunction' which I think describes it much better.