[hoorayimhelping]

I was diagnosed 15ish years ago when I was 26. I tried medication and absolutely hated it. It changed who I was. Medication is a crutch. If you're completely crippled and you need it, then you should use it temporarily. But be very very careful developing dependence on it and using it instead of doing the work to deal with your behavior.

What worked for me instead of medication:

- Get on a sleep and wake schedule that follows natural sunlight. Try to wake up soon before or right around the time the sun comes up. Plan backwards on when to go to sleep to get the proper amount of sleep you need (I almost always wake up six and a half hours after falling asleep with no alarm, whether I want to sleep in or not), so I usually go to sleep around 11:30 to wake up at 6:00 AM.

- Get on a meal schedule. Whether it's 3 meals or 5 or 6 meals, eat them around the same time, every day. No more skipping lunch, or working through lunch then eating it at 3:00 PM.

- Eat some kind of protein and fat for breakfast. Don't eat breakfast made of sugary carbs (like bread or cereal). Eggs and a breakfast meat are really good. Steel-cut oatmeal cooked in a rice cooker and eaten with peanut butter and fresh fruit is also very good.

- Workout regularly. I lift weights in the moring 4x a week, and I'm on a program that uses progressive overload, meaning I'm making continuous (but slow at this point) progress. Having a goal that improves yourself is the key here.

- Spend time away from your phone and computer outside. Hiking, birding, fishing, surfing, hunting, etc. Do something that takes you out of your four walls and puts you into a place with plants and animals, and do it regularly.

- Pay attention to your behavior. Be wary of getting into a hyper focused flow for hours where you ignore everything else (like lunch). Similarly, pay attention when you find yourself bouncing around. Becoming aware of when you're doing this is a big step to breaking the habit and forcing yourself to focus or take a break. I'm not saying getting into a state of flow is bad, I'm saying staying in a state of flow for hours on end where you ignore everything else isn't healthy or sustainable.

[fzeroracer]

Bold of you to assume I am physically capable of falling asleep on a specific schedule. Believe me, I've tried. On multiple occasions I'd spent 2-3+ hours ruminating on a coding problem laying in bed. Or just toss and turn for those hours until I hit where my sleep cycle is at for that month.

Beyond that, you basically just have stereotypical self-help 'advice'.

[theshackleford]

> Medication is a crutch. If you're completely crippled and you need it, then you should use it temporarily. But be very very careful developing dependence on it and using it instead of doing the work to deal with your behavior.

Your giving piss poor, dangerous advice that goes against established front line treatment.

If you actually have ADHD, completely ignore this terrible advice and treat it in line with a qualified professional instead of getting your medical advice from unqualified HN posters.

[331c8c71]

I remind you that bloodletting also was the first line treatment back in the day. And it's fair to say that our understanding of the human brain and how most drugs work are very rudimentary.

I have heard advice resembling some of points above from a qualified medical professional, specifically the "temporary" part. And I didn't appreciate it at the time - mentally I already was on "medication for life" bandwagon.

Few years later, however, the medication gradually became the problem rather than the solution. All the negative effects amplified with the benefits becoming sporadic and unreliable. The dosage adjustment didn't help.

Luke the hooray guy I also feel best on low-carb (or at least low-sugar) diet and when I am lifting consistently. Occasional outdoors is also kind of necessary to break the routine. If I don't do it at all I slip into some kind of degraded hamster-wheel mode eventually.

Just to be clear, I am not discouraging anyone from starting or continuing the meds. But similarly, don't be too afraid to stop them for a while if you feel this might be the right step for you personally.

[theshackleford]

> mentally I already was on "medication for life" bandwagon.

I was the other way around for most of my life, from diagnosis as child, through to my early 30s. I was surrounded by people telling me it wasn’t real, didn’t need drugs, and that if it was real, that instead I could just eat/sleep/exercise/meditate it away, that I just had to “try” harder. “It’s a scam from doctors to get you hooked on drugs you don’t need bro.”

And so that’s what I did, I tried harder and I tried harder right into an eventual psych breakdown at a hospital at what my life had become despite all I was doing and had been doing for years.

Since being medicated, my life has been fundamentally altered in ways that leave me with significant regret in not having more seriously medically addressed it earlier. I’ve lost years of capability and capacity for growth and education I’ll never get back. Years of unstable emotions and outbursts and associated outcomes that could have instead been avoided.

It’s now going on almost eight years of being able to have stable relationships, stable emotions, stable capacity to learn and grow, etc. Without what the meds have done for me, I was on the road to suicide. I was broken, battered and constantly disgusted and ashamed that no matter how hard I tried, or what I did, I simply couldn’t do what others around me could. And every increase in effort, to only see the same failures drove me further into that spiral of shame and depression.

> low carb diet

Already been on one for years as an attempt to control an inflammatory autoimmune disease. I don’t know if it helps the ADHD to be honest, but it became easier to stick too at least once drug treatment for ADHD began. When I’m not drugged, my craving for carbs is beyond what I could even describe. Along with the huge addiction I had to “non prescribed” stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine. (Apparently I was effectively without realising it attempting to self medicate.)

> don’t be afraid to stop your meds

I take holidays all the time (to which the professionals don’t love). If I don’t have to work/learn/be productive, I don’t take them. Aka weekends, holidays, etc. I try to minimise how much and how often, but I do that for all my medical issues. (For instance I’m prescribed permanent high level dosages of lyrica/opiates/valium for a spinal cord injury, but for which I take considerably less than I’m prescribed, and from which I take as many holidays from as I can humanly tolerate.)

I didn’t mean to infer that drugs are the ONLY option, to the exclusion of anything else and to do nothing else. You should focus on sleep, diet, exercise, building yourself coping systems etc, but really, that’s applicable to everything, and in many cases, it’s going to be a lot easier to build these things if your treated and stable first.

Before and after medication, I run my life with what’s effectively a running “blog” that is also my todo list/life goal tracker. I write down everything I hear/see that I think I’ll need to remember/action/do in the future. This blog runs my life and serves to provide a function that my own brain often can not. A stable memory of what’s important, and what’s not.

Anyway, sorry for the blog I suppose. Currently in Vegas, ironically, un-medicated because it’s a holiday and when unmedicated, I tend to have a tendency to drone on and on.

[ldom66]

That is a bit harsh. I think the OP had good intentions, but I agree that focusing on breaking habits might be the wrong way to go here. I think medication works for some, therapy for others. But the focus really needs to be on finding your strengths, which are also part of your ADHD brain, and working on those.

[theshackleford]

It’s not harsh when it’s advice that can literally destroy lives. People like me, who allowed such nonsense to prevent them seeking an actually effective and proven treatment for years whilst I flailed and failed to exercise/meditate/productivity/diet it away. My failure to seek real treatment due to listening to such shit for a long time robbed me of years of productivity, capability, time and outcomes that I’ll never get back.

It’s like telling a diabetic to not take the insulin crutch. “Just eat a salad bro you don’t need insulin pffft.”

People with ADHD should do all those other things as well, in fact most people should. However it’s not going to adequately treat many more, who can be treated, provably and effectively with a real medical treatment. A treatment that has again and again proven to be an effective, gold class standard of treatment and outcomes.

Telling people to break bad habits is one thing, convincing people with real medical problems to explicitly avoid proven frontline treatment for which we know can improve/prolong and save lives is an entirely different thing.

[sgarland]

The issue is that most of these are incredibly hard to do for someone with ADHD who is unmedicated. Hell, I'm medicated, and I still find myself skipping lunch entirely too often.

When your brain is rewarding you for solving complicated problems, you really don't want to stop. This is probably easier for people who don't love what they do, but for me, my main hobby is also my career. I have a server rack in my house. I do deep-dives into databases for fun.

I can confirm that being in nature is wonderfully calming, but unfortunately my two preferred biomes – mountains or ocean – are several hours' drive from my house, so I can't easily do so. My back yard doesn't exactly cut it.

[gtirloni]

> Medication is a crutch. If you're completely crippled and you need it, then you should use it temporarily

So in other words, "just stop having ADHD, what's the big deal?"

[mwpmaybe]

I hate to downvote your comment because you have some really good advice in here, but unfortunately this:

> I tried medication and absolutely hated it. It changed who I was. Medication is a crutch.

Is absolutely misleading. Just because medication didn't work for you doesn't mean it's a crutch to be avoided by everyone.