| HN Mirror

Sorry for the delay. I tend to lurk more than I tend to contribute, and I still haven't investigated any methods for alerting myself if someone replies to a comment I made, assuming it's even built in.

To preface my reply, I must say that I was also diagnosed, albeit not until my early 20s. People tend to think I am intelligent, but I would argue I am just tend to luck out more than others, or at least, I am not as intelligent as people think I may appear. I just have a ridiculous strong long-term memory. Not "total recall" levels, but definitely above average.

The doctor that conducted my psychoanalysis said I had the strongest long-term memory he has ever seen, but I also went to college in a small town, so perhaps his sample size should be considered, or perhaps he was just trying to boost my confidence.

I find you math PHD to be impressive. I am probably average to low-above-average. Good enough to make it through a comp sci degree (mostly unmedicated), but I feel like my critical thinking skills would fail me before I reached PHD potential. I hated math growing up, and my significant other was a math major who now tutors children in the same school system I grew up in. It was a rather affluent area (excluding my middle class family), and the school system reflected that. However, she said she can understand why I struggled in school growing up with the way they still teach students, so maybe weak fundamentals are partially to blame. But look at me, I am already getting distracted. ;)

Regardless, your lack of medical credentials does not mean much in a world, where credentials may have some positive correlation with domain knowledge, but the relationship is definitely not causative e.g. I've met many medical professionals in my life, like any other field, that baffle me as to how they even made it that far into their field. I feel like many never read another journal or book the second they step out of med school. There is natural distribution to all elements of humanity, I suppose. But, that is just my opinion.

> * My personal experience. This is obviously 100% true, as I'm the primary source on that.

> * Relatable illustrations/comics, made by ADHD advocates, and relatable memes, taken from ADHD communities, which indicate that my experience is shared by many other people, and help you understand it better.

For both these points, how do you mitigate confirmation bias, or do you not even try? I have yet to read your blog, but I will when I have more time available. Confirmation bias is a problem I have noticed with ADHD material e.g. "I forgot my lunch on the way to work because I am so ADHD" implying that only ADHD people do this, or "I can barely focus on anything, but I sleep only 4 hours a night, do not exercise, and eat junk food all day." Again, those are things that ADHD can be attributed to ADHD, but any body in those same circumstances would ail the same way.

> However, again, this blog is not meant as a diagnostic tool or an authoritative source. It's for other undiagnosed people with ADHD to learn about what it is that they have.

But what do they have?

Im curious about your opinions:

Do you really think ADHD is a disorder or a set of naturally distributed attributes that cause disorder circumstantially based one's environment? While a reductionist might think the differences are semantical, I disagree. I believed the first option when I was initially diagnosed, and when I learned more about the condition. However, as I have aged I am starting to believe the latter.

How are all these disordered people like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, etc. able to be the best of the best in their Olympic sports medicated or not? How are you able to achieve a math PHD, but I struggled in Calc II? Maybe there is more factors in life that hinder one than just ADHD. (I'm not implying you didn't struggle in your studies or life in general, I am just using you as probably inaccurate example -- the idealistic image I have of you perhaps.)

I am not saying ADHD is "not real." All I am saying is that the way society is structures, and given the demands of society for a particular type of person, anything outside the scope is considered to be disordered.

For example, I am not particularly tall -- I am with the mean range for adult human males. While many professional basketball players are n + 1 standard deviations taller than the average person. If I were to be compared to them in a game of professional basketball, would I have Height Deficit Disorder? I would have a height deficit in comparison to the other professional around me, and surely might height would hinder my abilities and probably cause disorder for me during the game.

Am I making any sense? Society tends to swing towards whatever works for the majority of people e.g. boring and dull classroom setting tend to have a distributed effectiveness for different types of people. Some people thrive, some people survive, some people derive, and some are buried alive.

I have no problem focusing on this novel I am typing right now, but I also should be working, but why can I not focus on work? Is it because I have ADHD? Because I hate my job? Perhaps both?

Besides attention, what other human attribute isn't on a spectrum? Height, like we already covered, but also weight, intelligence, athleticism, strength, longevity, skin color, eye color, hair color, etc.. Do you get what I am saying?

I just often wonder how much ADHD is really a disorder, and how much is socially induced. I know the "Woe is me" type will instantly shoot my claims down with something absurd like, "I am so ADHD, if I were on a deserted island I would starve to death because I would be so distracted that I forget to eat until I die." Hyperbolic or not, if that were true, then I am sure evolution is just doing its job weeding them out of the gene pool, as dark as that may seem. After all, modern medicine thankfully allows us to "play God", so to speak, but let's not forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.

What bothers me most is that we allegedly have known about this disorder for how many centuries now? Didn't the ancient Greeks even notice it? I wonder how/if the "less advanced" societies noticed these attributes. Medicine even acknowledged it a century ago +/- a few decades. Obviously, science grows damn near exponentially, so many of those centuries accomplished less than we could accomplish in weeks currently, so I am not trying to say that we have had 1000s of years to solve this. I just wish we had more answers than we currently do.

All this time, and we still have no other reliable way of verifying the condition other than symptom-based diagnostics where the person doing the diagnostics might have an implicit bias -- every screw looks like a nail to the man with a hammer.

"But fMRI brain scans have shown difference in the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus acumbines in people with ADHD vs. a controlled population" Great, it's 2022 where's the diagnostic criteria? But wait, even much of the research claims the difference isn't significant enough to be used for diagnostic purposes. Then are the brains truly that different? Maybe it's a lack of technology? Who knows?

What is thefamous quote med school professors tell med students when learning about rare conditions? "Don't look for zebras, when there are horses in the room." Maybe when trying to find differences in the brains, human biases might create zebras. Imagine how damaging it would be if the research claimed there were no differences at all? Then what? The world of psychology might actually implode upon itself.

Perhaps I have a bias -- some axe to grind. But, real or not, there is disorder in my life. I do not care about naming conventions for my disorder, titles, identities I can cling to, all I want is to live the best life I can with my one and only chance. Sometimes the meds work, and sometimes they do not, but it's a small price to pay for a chance to improve my life regardless of whether ADHD is socially constructed or not.

Anyway, sorry if this is too long. It's easier for me to type than to read lol.

I will check out the blog, and if you haven't have you ever considered writing about how one can tell if their medication(s) are working well or not? Doctors act like I asked them to solve if N=NP when I ask that question. Not saying your blog is lacking without it, I just thought I would throw out a helpful suggestion. After all, life for many doesn't magically turn to easy mode once diagnosed, but for the lucky ones I suppose it does.