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by jknutson 1393 days ago
I had undiagnosed ADHD all throughout highschool and got diagnosed my first semester of post secondary. Out of school now and I’ve been medicated for ADHD for six years or so now. For me, the only thing that reliably works to combat my ADHD is my medication (supplementing the meds with a healthy sleep schedule also helps improve their effectiveness).

In my personal life, when I’ve had friends mention that they think they might have ADHD, I have always been very adamant that the very best thing they could do for themselves is to schedule an appointment with their doctor and ask for an assessment.

For me, the assessment was very simple— I was given a self-reporting questionnaire of 20 or so questions and told to monitor my symptoms and be mindful of what I was doing during the next week, and bring it back in at the end of the week for my Doctor to have a look at my answers / questionnaire. I did that, and my Doctor agreed that my symptoms were strongly correlated with ADHD, and gave me a two week supply / trial prescription of Vyvanse 20mg.

The first time I took my ADHD medication, it was like a light switch was flipped on in my brain. I was immediately so much more productive, less lazy, more capable, more focused, etc. After I finished the trial I scheduled another appointment and told my Doctor how I felt about it, which was that I felt it provided me a great positive effect. It was at that point that I was then “officially” diagnosed with ADHD, and six years (and a few dosage / medication changes) later, here we are.

Personal anecdotes aside, I highly recommend that you take the time to simply schedule an appointment with your Doctor as soon as you can. Once you have the appointment, the first step is complete and the process is more or less on autopilot from there (provided you show up to your appointment, that is).

If you’d like something quantifiable to help you determine whether or not you’re likely to have ADHD, you can take the questionnaire I took and see how you score [0]. I am Canadian, but I have an American friend who told me he filled out the exact same questionnaire when he was being assessed for ADHD as well, so I believe it may be standardized to some extent, at least for Canadians and Americans.

[0]: https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/ftpdir/adhd/18Q_ASRS_Eng...