Absolutely, as someone diagnosed at 6, and 33 now. Being on medication allows me to actual live my life. Ive tried to be "normal" and not be medicated various times in my life, but it's just been bad every time. Our brains are wires differently, you can't just overcome it.
My family has a long history of alcohol and substance abuse, I'm the first to be diagnosed and medicated for ADHD. If you're not medicated and have ADHD the risk of substance abuse is much higher, and there is a strong link to alcoholics being undiagnosed with ADHD.
I'm always scared of the long term effects of the medication, but without it I can't work or hardly even function.. I'm not sure of these benefits another user mentioned, but whatever they are is not worth the trade off at all.
Research on kids show that as long as you do 5d/week 10m/y, the effects on height are not noticable. If kids are on drugs all the time, they will be on average about 1.5 cm (IIRC) shorter.
Based on that, and my experience with taking meds everyday (diagnosed at 35, weekend school), where they tend to "accumulate" tension and I eventually have to take few days off, I'd extrapolate that side effects of 5/7 10/12 dosing are minimal.
But there's a whole other dimension to thinking about side effects. Based on research (I believe on thousands of Scandinavians) on pregnant women with ADHD, giving them stimulants during pregnancy is better for their children than not. (Based on lectures by Jarosław Jóźwiak, Polish MD, psychiatrist, specializing in ADHD, which themselves are based on current research). There's so many side effects of having unmedicated untreated ADHD other than deaths and accidents, that, quoting Joe Rogan's common sense comment, "giving amphetamine to kids (end of quote)" is a no brainer. Obesity, drug abuse, poor diet, depression, anxiety, emotional disregulation in general, ppl at school hating and mobbing you for being overly emotional and "crazy", poor school and life results, avg. age of first sex at 13 vs 18 for women, not having sex at all for young guys, and the general feeling that something is wrong with you compared to others.
In light of all these and other ADHD symptoms and effects, treating it with a well adjusted dose of stimulants sounds like the much better alternative. Just talk to your doctor early, when you suspect sth wrong with meds. They change how they work through lifetime, sometimes requiring dose adjustments. You might have to consciously eat more food (due to less appetite and burning more calories), than feels needed.
When I hear the "giving amphetamine to kids" crowd, i.e. the people who oppose medicating children with hard drugs, I instantly think of an article from 1930's, where a bunch of farmers burned down a radio station, because it "interfered" with their crops.
Just knowing that drugs are bad, without understanding the underlying mechanism with mutated dopamine pathway system and how it benefits from miniscule (for that individual) doses of stimulants is such a bad Dunning Kruger example. And it will hurt people (unmedicated ADHD sufferers) until the general population level of awareness rises. Or until people stop distrusting science and doctors, but I think that ship has sailed.
I have ADHD, which to avoid boredom, “tells” me to do more risky things. Is it a surprise that life expectancy is lowered with higher risk? And that the ADHD medication lowers the risky bits therefore increasing life expectancy?
Question to my fellow ADHDers who take the meds, is fun still fun and happening? or has calmness become the new fun?
ADHD meds unlocked a new dimension of -social, normal people- fun previously inaccessible. Hanging out with people without annoying them, not being late to events, remembering to call friends.
But the -crazy- fun is still accessible. I'm more risk aware, but still get the unconventional ideas. And I can always drop meds for a day and have a "high" day with less productivity and more "crazy" ideas. And I don't mean crazy as a negative, more like an adjective that describes it well.
However, it's important to love yourself (and this can be practiced and trained) and all your aspects. Even your ADHD self without meds, even your depression and dark thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s9PbBfwDfo
Also, I went through a lot of meds, and one I ended up with was because the first one made me a little too much "robot" like for my own liking. I'm too used to being "me" and didn't like how much the first one changed me. But I'd rather people try for themselves than have an opinion based on mine.
Stimulants don’t dampen the fun. More fun, if anything. Very few downsides.
But being a Category 2 controlled substance means health care providers are always pushing me towards off-label use of antidepressants that DO have very big and worrying side effects.
For me, yes, I still have all the fun. I just have a much lower baseline stress level to compare the fun times to. Like, if now I’m going from 70% joyful on a normal day to 100% fun on a special occasion, it’s not as much of a swing as when going from 5% joyful to 95% happy.
I have the inattentive version but it's simply not bad enough to take meds.
What I don't like about this study is that they only take meds into consideration, but there are other treatment options. For example cognitive behaviour therapy.
Also, they included studies that included self-diagnosed ADHD. Self diagnoses are on the rise and very often wrong (I.e. trauma response might present with adhd like symptoms). Aside from some other flaws I think the significance of this study is limited...
I got diagnosed super late in life and I'm currently enjoying the fun cessation phase of said medication. Calmness is not the word I would use to describe it, but I'm glad it works for other people. Couldn't pay me a million dollars to take another pill, I'll just procrastinate and get bored often
there is a lot more of me getting to choose what it is i end up doing each day. i find fun in doing those things now pretty regularly. cracking a tough problem can feel as good as jumping out of a plane did. that is to say, my brain is still not a great judge of how relatively cool something is, because even something like scuba diving or fast sports were wildly cool the first time and then the second time it was like "this again?".
i feel much safer though knowing that now when i sometimes get a little bit of the itch, i'll think about it for a few seconds and go "eh, maybe later," and return to trying to make a thing, or play some music, or why is that stupid thing still broken oh its because i broke it.
You may have the Hyperactive-Impulsive presentation (or the Combined one), which is relatively rare among adults. I have the other one of the three (Inattentive), and I wouldn't say it raises my impulsivity, though I guess it's hard to know. The meds literally saved my life and career, but I also almost exclusively take them when working or in lowkey social situations so it's hard to say what they might do when, like, rock climbing or whitewater boating or something.
I suppose impulsivity in terms of working on what I should be working on instead of going into some rabbit hole is a type of impulsivity, and that's certainly decreased! I wouldn't call the former state "fun" though... more like "shameful", "irrational", and "distressing". Personally -- YMMV.
Anyway: yes that's plausible, as this review found pretty strong evidence of increased mortality from injury. Still, I'd personally say it's unlikely for two major reasons:
1. Presumably most injury deaths happen to adults, which are relatively quite unlikely to have the HI presentation.
2. There's just so many plausible causes of injuries, especially in a society with cars. The inclusion of "intentional injury" also introduces a factor that's no doubt strongly corellated with socioeconomic status (i.e. being murdered/manslaughtered), another very plausible cause.
I know that my rate of low speed car accidents has dropped dramatically off since I got on the meds.
Just an anecdote there, but I believe there's a study or two demonstrating a correlation between ADHD and car accidents - I imagine being inattentive in a car is likely to also increase your risk.
As a person with severe ADHD, who has never taken any medication, I find this study troubling. It uses statistical correlation to indicate causation.
People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society. At the same time, the effects of ADHD medication numb their responses and emotions to what seems outwardly stable and normal but deep inside it is an inhibitor of development.
So excuse me for saying so, but I don’t buy into the conclusions of this study at all.
It sounds like you are confusing ADHD meds, which are stimulants (basically speed) with benzos, which they give for depression/anxiety. First you have to understand what ADHD even IS, which is a lack of executive function. All that means is it is harder to know what to do out of the millions of things floating in front of your brain every second. Stimulants, which usually make people feel more wired, tend to make those with ADHD feel more calm. Because they aren't flitting between thoughts and the stimulant empowers them to have a more normal executive function to actively choose what to pay attention to.
Worth noting this feeling of calm comes solely as relief from spastic thoughts. Your body still responds in every other way as you would from taking a stimulant, and yet people feel calmer and more orderly because their baseline thoughts are so frenetic.
maybe what you're saying is true for some patients but I tried the stimulants when I was diagnosed and they just made me feel uncreative, suppressed my appetite until I was a dangerous weight, and overall felt horrible. also made my dick temporarily smaller while I was on the drug. but sure, explain to that person how their brain works. I'm sure you know better than them. And me too, I obviously made up those effects and chose to go back to being unmedicated because I'm wrong about the effects of the drugs.
and I have pretty severe ADHD, so I strongly believe the diagnosis was correct. drugs just affect people differently. GP is talking about stimulants. I experienced what they describe.
they even took away my sense of humor. I'd rather die.
not everyone experiences this. I know people who love these drugs and report none of this. but some do
and they didn't for me. that they are common effects just makes you sound more tone deaf. I'm allowed to decide what chemicals I do or do not consume, and to judge the costs and benefits for myself. I don't care how the drugs affect other people. I'm not other people. It's so insulting the way you neurotypicals condescend in your prescriptions, you just want us to behave more like you, because you find our fidgeting annoying.
it's a valid and personal choice to be medicated -- or not
and you NTs need to shut up and fucking listen when the patients tell you why they don't want a treatment.
yes I'm sure you know better than I do about how drugs affect me, thank you hacker news person, I'll ask my doctor about that. actually, no I won't, because I'm not interested in trying more drugs, I tried plenty when I was diagnosed thanks
this site is full of people who think they know everything, full of free advice, who know nothing
The other problem with the study is that it does not take income into consideration. This is my largest pet peeve with so many studies, they're basically ignoring a major indicator of quality of life and then make weird conclusions.
it is a review of existing literature. maybe someone will attempt to explore those factors in the future.
from the paper:
"Future research should consider psychosocial and sociodemographic factors to understand how being female,
being of a minoritized race or ethnicity, and having experienced childhood maltreatment may contribute to the risk of mortality in people with ADHD. More diverse and representative samples are needed to improve generalizability and to identify inclusive pathways for intervention. Subgroups of people with ADHD who experience the highest mortality risk should be examined to support informing of initiatives to reduce premature mortality in people with ADHD. Clinically, these findings underscore the importance of long-term, comprehensive care for individuals with ADHD, with particular attention to identifying and addressing modifiable factors that may contribute to excess mortality risk. The association between medication use and lower mortality also highlights the importance of equitable access to evidence-based ADHD assessment and treatment."
But ADHD has been shown to significantly affect income. It’s hard to excel in a high paying career when it’s affecting you strongly. It’s probably pretty hard to normalize for income, then, because it’s a confounding factor.
How would we know which way that runs? Lower income could expose you to stressors that make ADHD worse, maybe especially in childhood. But ADHD could also easily make it harder to earn money or hold a stable career down too.
Ooh, let me count the privileges I get, starting at zero.
Zero…
There, done. What treatment for ADHD has done for me in the real world is drastically cut my anxiety and stress. Turns out the most challenging parts of my life involved knowing I had to do a thing, or I’d get fired or evicted or sued or such, and being utterly incapable of getting myself to do it until it became a crisis. What a piece of crap I must be, right, for ignoring the things a responsible adult would be doing!
And then I started taking meds for it, and found out I could, just, decide to sit down and gather my tax paperwork, or write that report, or balance the checkbook, even though those things didn’t need to be done for several more weeks. At first, it was utterly liberating. And then it was kinda soul-crushing. I could’ve been living like this the whole time, minus all the stress and self esteem issues and anxiety? And then it was liberating again. Well, bummer life use to be like that, but it’s not anymore, so yay!
And it didn’t do a single thing to my emotions, other than removing about 90% of the anxiety from my life.
(I have to get this in before the inevitable jackass opines: no, life isn’t suddenly “easier because you’re taking meth”. I get no stimulant sensation whatsoever from my dose of Adderall. My morning coffee has a much stronger effect. It just allows me to decide what I should be working on at any given moment, even when no one’s angry at me. It is not an energy booster in any way.)
Well, you've made some incorrect assumptions. You seem to think yourself verysmart, so you should understand a snap judgement like this is worth very little. You don't need psychological treatment alongside it and the results are pretty obvious and immediate. Try it or don't, but I have trouble seeing the value in your narrow and uninformed opinion.
It is more efficacious to have therapy alongside the medication, according to various studies I've read, but I have trouble accessing the therapy because it's expensive, so the meds alone will do for now.
I still need a list or five, but at least now I can remember I have a list, where I left my list, and to use my list.
There’s also the chicken-and-egg problem here. Know what makes it super hard to get organized and motivated to start therapy for ADHD? ADHD! Dealing with insurance companies is the exact kind of demoralizing nightmare that makes it extremely hard for the people who need the treatment to actually get it.
No offence, but how do you know what the effect of the medication is, if you've never taken it? Your description doesn't match my experience.
I'm unsure about the inhibitor of development bit also, do you mean physiological, intellectual, emotional... ...software?
Are you able to clarify what special care and privileges are you thinking of? I have seen a psychologist a few times, but I can't afford to do so nearly as much as I need to.
What a wild, unsubstantiated take. It's wild to suggest ADHD medications are dulling emotions and wild to suggest that this effect is less damaging than the developmental disorder which is unmedicated moderate to severe ADHD. I have watched this disorder destroy people to the point of homelessness. I've had my own struggles with it in the past. And your comment isn't even accounting for comorbidities such as severe anxiety or depression, or complications from broken executive function such as not taking care of your body, not exercising and not eating healthily. I don't think you know much about ADHD at all.
Well they dull emotions as you probably don't snap and hit some bystander/teacher/parent/friend, but also you probably feel as normal people feel as 'fine' which might be issue for some people eg if you are musician and you need strong emotions to perform. But good thing with stimulants is that effects are pretty short term and if you feel that they dull emotions too much for now you just can stop taking those for moment and then continue when you need it.
meanwhile, as a fire-breathing, unicycling, sensation-seeking, self-care-neglecting, bad-choice-making, person with severe adhd on medication, I dont buy what you dont buy. This shit's rough.
I mean, does it though...? The strongest claim they make is that "timely diagnosis and treatment" (via medication) "may reduce the risk", which seems like a pretty indisputable statement based on the observed corellations.
Anyway, as a side note:
People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
I mean technically yeah, but the vast, vast majority of psychiatric medication management relationships don't involve therapy. Still more likely to pursue it though, I agree. Is that a bad thing, though? Absent of evidence pharmacological treatment doesn't help, this feels like a time we can just recommend and embrace both.
the effects of ADHD medication numb their responses and emotions to what seems outwardly stable and normal but deep inside it is an inhibitor of development
Your musings are not at all based in science, but instead personal anxieties. That's fine for you, but please don't casually muse about the secret nature of lifesaving clinical treatments, especially the treatment that is possibly the most stigmatized yet effective treatment in our society (after PrEP, I suppose).
> This review also showed a significant association between ADHD medication use and reduced rates of all-cause mortality in people with ADHD.
Can someone let the fine fellows at the DEA know this so they can knock it off with being stupidly strict with the manufacture of the stimulant medications?
My family has a long history of alcohol and substance abuse, I'm the first to be diagnosed and medicated for ADHD. If you're not medicated and have ADHD the risk of substance abuse is much higher, and there is a strong link to alcoholics being undiagnosed with ADHD.
I'm always scared of the long term effects of the medication, but without it I can't work or hardly even function.. I'm not sure of these benefits another user mentioned, but whatever they are is not worth the trade off at all.
Based on that, and my experience with taking meds everyday (diagnosed at 35, weekend school), where they tend to "accumulate" tension and I eventually have to take few days off, I'd extrapolate that side effects of 5/7 10/12 dosing are minimal.
But there's a whole other dimension to thinking about side effects. Based on research (I believe on thousands of Scandinavians) on pregnant women with ADHD, giving them stimulants during pregnancy is better for their children than not. (Based on lectures by Jarosław Jóźwiak, Polish MD, psychiatrist, specializing in ADHD, which themselves are based on current research). There's so many side effects of having unmedicated untreated ADHD other than deaths and accidents, that, quoting Joe Rogan's common sense comment, "giving amphetamine to kids (end of quote)" is a no brainer. Obesity, drug abuse, poor diet, depression, anxiety, emotional disregulation in general, ppl at school hating and mobbing you for being overly emotional and "crazy", poor school and life results, avg. age of first sex at 13 vs 18 for women, not having sex at all for young guys, and the general feeling that something is wrong with you compared to others.
In light of all these and other ADHD symptoms and effects, treating it with a well adjusted dose of stimulants sounds like the much better alternative. Just talk to your doctor early, when you suspect sth wrong with meds. They change how they work through lifetime, sometimes requiring dose adjustments. You might have to consciously eat more food (due to less appetite and burning more calories), than feels needed.
When I hear the "giving amphetamine to kids" crowd, i.e. the people who oppose medicating children with hard drugs, I instantly think of an article from 1930's, where a bunch of farmers burned down a radio station, because it "interfered" with their crops.
Just knowing that drugs are bad, without understanding the underlying mechanism with mutated dopamine pathway system and how it benefits from miniscule (for that individual) doses of stimulants is such a bad Dunning Kruger example. And it will hurt people (unmedicated ADHD sufferers) until the general population level of awareness rises. Or until people stop distrusting science and doctors, but I think that ship has sailed.
If yes, check for [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis
Question to my fellow ADHDers who take the meds, is fun still fun and happening? or has calmness become the new fun?
But the -crazy- fun is still accessible. I'm more risk aware, but still get the unconventional ideas. And I can always drop meds for a day and have a "high" day with less productivity and more "crazy" ideas. And I don't mean crazy as a negative, more like an adjective that describes it well.
However, it's important to love yourself (and this can be practiced and trained) and all your aspects. Even your ADHD self without meds, even your depression and dark thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s9PbBfwDfo
Also, I went through a lot of meds, and one I ended up with was because the first one made me a little too much "robot" like for my own liking. I'm too used to being "me" and didn't like how much the first one changed me. But I'd rather people try for themselves than have an opinion based on mine.
Edit: moved a coma, added yt link.
But being a Category 2 controlled substance means health care providers are always pushing me towards off-label use of antidepressants that DO have very big and worrying side effects.
What I don't like about this study is that they only take meds into consideration, but there are other treatment options. For example cognitive behaviour therapy. Also, they included studies that included self-diagnosed ADHD. Self diagnoses are on the rise and very often wrong (I.e. trauma response might present with adhd like symptoms). Aside from some other flaws I think the significance of this study is limited...
But it does exactly that. There have been enough studies about this. CBT and medication combined improved faster, but CBT alone catches up in a few months. E.g. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108705471667119... or this study here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31280035/
>Stimulants are the gold standard treatment.
I'm not arguing that they don't help, but CBT also increases other metrics, e.g. self esteem, acceptance, self-efficacy, and so on.
i feel much safer though knowing that now when i sometimes get a little bit of the itch, i'll think about it for a few seconds and go "eh, maybe later," and return to trying to make a thing, or play some music, or why is that stupid thing still broken oh its because i broke it.
I suppose impulsivity in terms of working on what I should be working on instead of going into some rabbit hole is a type of impulsivity, and that's certainly decreased! I wouldn't call the former state "fun" though... more like "shameful", "irrational", and "distressing". Personally -- YMMV.
Anyway: yes that's plausible, as this review found pretty strong evidence of increased mortality from injury. Still, I'd personally say it's unlikely for two major reasons:
1. Presumably most injury deaths happen to adults, which are relatively quite unlikely to have the HI presentation.
2. There's just so many plausible causes of injuries, especially in a society with cars. The inclusion of "intentional injury" also introduces a factor that's no doubt strongly corellated with socioeconomic status (i.e. being murdered/manslaughtered), another very plausible cause.
Just an anecdote there, but I believe there's a study or two demonstrating a correlation between ADHD and car accidents - I imagine being inattentive in a car is likely to also increase your risk.
You are born with ADHD and it does not get better, so the "rare" in adults is not factual, some people just get better at managing it.
Fun fact, now that you're here: adhd is severely over represented in prison populations. Several times the baseline general population rate.
People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society. At the same time, the effects of ADHD medication numb their responses and emotions to what seems outwardly stable and normal but deep inside it is an inhibitor of development.
So excuse me for saying so, but I don’t buy into the conclusions of this study at all.
Worth noting this feeling of calm comes solely as relief from spastic thoughts. Your body still responds in every other way as you would from taking a stimulant, and yet people feel calmer and more orderly because their baseline thoughts are so frenetic.
and I have pretty severe ADHD, so I strongly believe the diagnosis was correct. drugs just affect people differently. GP is talking about stimulants. I experienced what they describe.
they even took away my sense of humor. I'd rather die.
not everyone experiences this. I know people who love these drugs and report none of this. but some do
it's a valid and personal choice to be medicated -- or not
and you NTs need to shut up and fucking listen when the patients tell you why they don't want a treatment.
this thread is deeply offensive and insulting
this site is full of people who think they know everything, full of free advice, who know nothing
> going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
1. How could you know ADHD medication numb their responses if you've never taken meds?
2. I hope you have the live you deserve. You seem like a happy person.
from the paper:
"Future research should consider psychosocial and sociodemographic factors to understand how being female, being of a minoritized race or ethnicity, and having experienced childhood maltreatment may contribute to the risk of mortality in people with ADHD. More diverse and representative samples are needed to improve generalizability and to identify inclusive pathways for intervention. Subgroups of people with ADHD who experience the highest mortality risk should be examined to support informing of initiatives to reduce premature mortality in people with ADHD. Clinically, these findings underscore the importance of long-term, comprehensive care for individuals with ADHD, with particular attention to identifying and addressing modifiable factors that may contribute to excess mortality risk. The association between medication use and lower mortality also highlights the importance of equitable access to evidence-based ADHD assessment and treatment."
Zero…
There, done. What treatment for ADHD has done for me in the real world is drastically cut my anxiety and stress. Turns out the most challenging parts of my life involved knowing I had to do a thing, or I’d get fired or evicted or sued or such, and being utterly incapable of getting myself to do it until it became a crisis. What a piece of crap I must be, right, for ignoring the things a responsible adult would be doing!
And then I started taking meds for it, and found out I could, just, decide to sit down and gather my tax paperwork, or write that report, or balance the checkbook, even though those things didn’t need to be done for several more weeks. At first, it was utterly liberating. And then it was kinda soul-crushing. I could’ve been living like this the whole time, minus all the stress and self esteem issues and anxiety? And then it was liberating again. Well, bummer life use to be like that, but it’s not anymore, so yay!
And it didn’t do a single thing to my emotions, other than removing about 90% of the anxiety from my life.
(I have to get this in before the inevitable jackass opines: no, life isn’t suddenly “easier because you’re taking meth”. I get no stimulant sensation whatsoever from my dose of Adderall. My morning coffee has a much stronger effect. It just allows me to decide what I should be working on at any given moment, even when no one’s angry at me. It is not an energy booster in any way.)
it makes no assertion like that.
> People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
what privileges?
I still need a list or five, but at least now I can remember I have a list, where I left my list, and to use my list.
I'm unsure about the inhibitor of development bit also, do you mean physiological, intellectual, emotional... ...software?
Are you able to clarify what special care and privileges are you thinking of? I have seen a psychologist a few times, but I can't afford to do so nearly as much as I need to.
What mental health and special care privileges are you talking about ? Other than having to have a special aid in school nothing has been of benefit.
Anyway, as a side note:
I mean technically yeah, but the vast, vast majority of psychiatric medication management relationships don't involve therapy. Still more likely to pursue it though, I agree. Is that a bad thing, though? Absent of evidence pharmacological treatment doesn't help, this feels like a time we can just recommend and embrace both. Your musings are not at all based in science, but instead personal anxieties. That's fine for you, but please don't casually muse about the secret nature of lifesaving clinical treatments, especially the treatment that is possibly the most stigmatized yet effective treatment in our society (after PrEP, I suppose).Can someone let the fine fellows at the DEA know this so they can knock it off with being stupidly strict with the manufacture of the stimulant medications?
I'm sure this will be fine and you really have nothing to worry about.