[helldritch]

That's a fair point, although some people do constantly multitask.

I have ADHD and I'm capable of doing work while focussing entirely on two tasks, often I'm looking at one screen where I'm writing code while reading an article on another screen.

Sometimes I feel like "reality" is too slow and I've already figured out the code for the unit test (or whatever I'm working on) in my head and I'm impatiently waiting for my hands to catch up while filling in a boilerplate template. I often focus on two things at once because the main work I'm doing isn't stimulating enough.

A lot of people question how I'm able to do this without making constant mistakes, but before I started on my medication my brain and the world around me was so incredibly noisy. Not necessarily sound, it's just that everything around me was a distraction. When I'm taking my medication, the distractions don't exist and there's almost so little happening that I find it unsettling.

I don't really know how to describe it properly so this probably made little sense. Just imagine you have a really angry baby screaming at you 24/7, it would probably effect your work? Now the baby is suddenly being quiet and you're able to work really effectively, but you got so good at coping with the baby distracting you that now you have all this spare CPU time in your brain which used to be devoted to denoising.

[therealbilly]

Do you take Vyvanse? That is what I take. It makes a world of difference!

[helldritch]

I do! I was on 30mg for a week, then increased to 50, and I've been stable there ever since.

I was worried at the start I would end up on 70mg, but it just seemed to work from day one onwards.

Do you get the reduced appetite? I basically don't eat from 11am until 8pm most days, which has worked quite well for weight loss. I wasn't super heavy (18st, now 14.5st) but I had put on quite a lot during COVID.

[seunosewa]

Your ADHD medication is performance enhancing.

[helldritch]

Absolutely. But you first have to factor in that my ADHD is performance degrading.

As an example: Mirtazapine is an antidepressant used to treat major depressive disorder, but that doesn't mean you can give it to an otherwise emotionally healthy person and it'll give the same effect delta to them.

If you put a crutch on a healthy leg, it doesn't suddenly become a better leg.

My medication allows me to experience the world without crippling anxiety and constant distraction, it just so happens that 30 years living with those issues means that a large portion of my attention and time was devoted to dealing with them.

So, yes, my ADHD medication is performance enhancing, but that's an incredibly reductive way to look at it. That doesn't mean that anyone can take it and perform better, in fact studies of studies have found that the results of stimulative medication for people without ADHD (such as those who are using it to try and improve cognition during studying) can be similarly triggered by placebo effects:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489818/

    As it remains unclear whether stimulant medication has the same effect on healthy individuals as for those with ADHD, it is possible that many reported effects of prescription stimulants in healthy individuals may stem from placebo effects. Looby and Earleywine (2011) examined whether placebo effects influence reports of subjective mood and cognitive performance among college students who endorsed several risk factors for prescription stimulant misuse (e.g., low grade point average, fraternity/sorority involvement, binge drinking). Interestingly, participants believed that they had better ability to focus and persevere, particularly for a sustained amount of time, when they expected to receive MPH (Looby and Earleywine 2011). This is similar to circumstances in which participants may engage in nonmedical-stimulant use to study or cram for extended hours. On the other hand, when experimental participants did not expect to receive MPH, their attention appeared disrupted resulting in inconsistent reaction times throughout the CPT.

I take my medication because I have a disability. I was diagnosed later in life and have a well tested / carefully controlled history of use with this medication where I'm frequently checked against diagnostic guidelines. In almost every metric of my life the disability had a negative effect, you can see a history of that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28739990#28741432

If my medication is performance enhancing, then literally any antidepressant, antianxiety, anticoagulant, anti-inflammatory, antihistamine, antibiotic, etc., is also performance enhancing by the same thought. What we need to consider is the baseline it lifts you from and the place it takes you to.

It's probably worth mentioning that I'm in the UK, not the USA, where access to stimulant medication is a _lot_ stricter and it can be very difficult to get a diagnosis of ADHD. I had to go through several hour long sessions with specialised psychiatrists to receive the diagnosis after spending years being tested for other conditions like Mixed-Anxiety Disorder.

An excerpt from my remission notice is here showing the clinically recognised reduction in symptoms, it mentions that the decision was based on both subjective and objective justifications: https://i.imgur.com/RJQCAs6.png

The diagnostic screening questions for the ASRS1.1 are here showing the areas where I subjectively improved: https://add.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/adhd-questionnair...

On a side-note, your comment came across very harshly. It's very easy to make a short, pointed statement like that about a topic you aren't very familiar with, but you should consider how informed your statements actually are - if they're backed in data or long term subjective beliefs. Sometimes, brevity imparts a lot of information in few words, sometimes it just comes across as rude.