ADHD

Maybe this doesn't need to be said but this is a different question to which video game genres do you enjoy. For example, I enjoy playing Dota 2. Every few months or so, I'll play it for a couple of weeks and put it back down. I'll never play more than two or three matches and I feel 'present' for the duration.

Paradox grand strategy games (especially EUIV), however, I can start playing at 7am and in a blink of an eye it can be 11pm and I won't have eaten or used the toilet or anything. I can do this for multiple days in a row. Furthermore, I don't often feel like I'm 'enjoying' it. I'm just consumed by it.

I'm intrigued to hear whether or not anyone recognises this difference in themselves. If you have any insight as to why you're consumed by some games and not others, I'd be very interested.

First off: I am still undiagnosed. I've followed the ADHD topic for more than a year now since I seem to match a whole lot of symptoms and behavior patterns. An official diagnosis will most probably still take another year. I live in Germany.

One thing that got me wondering was caffeine. As I've heard, drinking coffee will make ADHD folks not feel any more awake, maybe even a little tired.

While it doesn't make me feel awake as well, I very vividly remember my first coffee a long time ago that caused a massive outburst of productivity when all of the time I was known for being 'lazy' and distracted. However the effect quickly diminished with each subsequent coffee over the next year.

Isn't this a contradiction though? If I actually had ADHD, why did coffee have this awakening effect on me back then?

I was diagnosed in 2019; late in life, mid 30s. One of the biggest issues I've been struggling with lately are these huge cyclical mood swings that can last weeks. I'll be up and active, optimistic, and productive for a week or so, and feel like there's nothing I can't do. I'm excited about everything and often make a lot of overly-aggressive plans. Then the wave of depression comes, and I'll spend a week in bed, crying, and then a week or two basically just disassociating and actively avoiding any responsibilities. The down is always longer than the up, and I feel like I'm slowly losing ground to the depression. I'm not sure if I've always had these issues or if they've just gotten worse lately. My ability to look into the past, especially in regards to my own emotional state, is limited.

My doc says that "cyclothymia" or mood cycles are not uncommon with ADHD, though they are not technically related I guess. That said, I don't see too many people talking about it. Anyone else dealing with this sort of thing?

If you haven't heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.

Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.

As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.

At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.

The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/30077456

Stolen from Mastodon.

When I take Ritalin, I need to take an initial dose of 15-20mg for it to be effective (and then taper it down every 50 minutes otherwise I get jittery). But when I was on Concerta, 18mg was not enough, even though it is roughly the same dosage. Is the Concerta dosage not comparable to that of the Ritalin as it is spread out over a longer period? I know 30mg of Ritalin would be way too much for me – but does that necessarily mean that 36mg of Concerta would too?

As the title says. I always really struggle to be on time (last year I missed around 30% of school😅). I did try some of the popular advice and sometimes it worked, but never for longer than 2 days. Since then I've also found out that it's very likely that I have adhd. Well school is starting soon and I really need to get this under control.

Probably not a problem for everyone but it was a problem I was running into where my meds weren't being as effective towards the bottom of the bottle and then would work great after a refill.

My meds are supposed to be stored between 67F and 77F and my apartment has been routinely getting to around 85F for days (and weeks) at a time and by the time I was getting close to the bottom of the bottle it wasn't really working that well for me.

So I took one of those can fridges and added some temperature control to it to automatically keep it in the temperature range I need and also added a large bag of dessicant in there to keep the humidity low as those little can fridges suck up moisture something fierce.

So basically make sure your meds are stored properly or you'll probably have some additional issues that you really don't need.

Hey everyone,

I still was rather recently diagnosed late in life. Some very helpful people already helped me on another topic, so I wanted to come to you all again:

I have had sleep issues for ages. I didn't get why, I tried pretty much all the neurotypical advice I was given my whole life or learned about. Sadly I am among the many that still have loads of sleep troubles. Not gonna lie, they broke my spirit more often than I could recount.

I have the full party going:

• Trouble falling asleep due to a few factors (among others: Negative thought spirals, sponanious ideas and impulse control to keep them in check, but mostly that - with hunger, thirst or pain - I just don't notice my own needs.
• Trouble sleeping longer than (3-4 h) and not being able to fall back asleep
• As consequences of the above I am usually not rested at all. Sometimes I just pass out after work, which makes things harder later at bed time.

As I learned, our bodies should usually sleep at night and our brain chemistry is built for that (duh). But sometimes with ADHD our whole bodily clock is just being off by a lot. That's apparently why some of us sleep from late at night till late in the morning. Per se fair enough, but not super healthy. And I personally couldn't find a job that starts at 12 a.m..

Also neurotypical people are apparently not supposed to be bored out of their mind, trying to fall asleep. Supposedly they can lie down, relax their thoughts and can be asleep between 10-20 minutes. My brain for once won't stop being flooded with thoughts, sensory inputs and such. Those 10-20 are more like 1-2 for me and only with a 25% chance I sleep more than 4 hours.

The only successes I had so far falling asleep when I wanted to, was with prescription meds (with serious health risk attached). The othet thing that works sometimes is, if I can focus, to go on mental adventures, which ideally keep me occupied till I doze off. And the worst thing that works is just having to sleep due to sheer exhaustion.

When we wakes up, apparently many of us can also struggle to fall back asleep. At least I know, wrong bad thought and that was it for the night.

I didn't know I had ADHD and didn't really know how it affects every part of me. Therefore i coulnd't treat my issues properly either. I am still learning lot, but quality adult ADHD resources suck, to be frank. Kinda sad how we are aware ADHD is rough in the mildest cases and you still have to filter all the pseudoscience and bullshit out, just for breadcrumbs of advice.

I must have tried basically all things of the neurotypical advice, I thought could help me. I think especially sleep hygenie is something all people can work on regularly, also us with our ADHD. Improving sleep hygiene might take many forms with ADHD., though. How does yours look?

I'd kindly ask everyone with some knowledge or personal advice to chip in. That's if and how you found ways to make it easier to sleep for youself. Would you share your stories, so we might all learn more?

Not all tools are for everyone, as we know. But I will give everything here a fair shake and your experiences can be very valuable to me and others too.

I don't mind starting with basics, mine are probably shoddy. If someone more knowledge or experienced could share their wisdom and get me pointed in the right direction. A bit of advice on where to start and maybe some resources would be appreciated greatly. I feel I fucked up so much treating the comorbid problems of my ADHD, I might have to start from scratch here with "how to human". I probably learned and adapted many things, which might make my sleep troubles even worse and gotta unlearn some.

Any and all comments are much appreciated, thank you.

Title really. I don't think I will ever have a traditional career (or path) because there are just too many things I want to do. Anyone with ADHD knows i'm sure, that when you even have so much as a few household chores to do, it can take you ages to even start. My problem kind of extends beyond the scope of little things, I seem to want so much out of life that it leaves me not wanting to do anything at all because it feels overbearing. I never finished college or chose a career because of this too, sometimes I get a goal in my head so it becomes my focus for some months then i get burnt out and move on to something else and it repeats in a circle.

I commonly read youtube comments that state a drug like Strattera completely changed their adhd for the better.

Whilst I havnt tried this(yet) I wondered what other options exist?

Any ideas? I'm 21 so not too many bills to pay.
I just need something that will give me the financial freedom to move around and hopefully some time left over.

Note that this doesn't work for everyone. I find that gamifying your own tasks is a bit like trying to tickle yourself.

Link

Cross-posted from Health

Personally I'd like hear some of your experiences with different types of organizational software, no matter if it runs on a PC, phone or the cloud:

• What are you using and in what ways does it help you with the troubles you are facing with your ADHD?

• Do you use different tools for different use cases (e.g. one to organize and track bigger projects, one just for reminders or one as a knowledge base etc.)?

• Is there any software you would specifically avoid and how so (e.g. cause it is distracting, pricey or you due to lack of data privacy)?

• Or is there things you'd really recommend to try out, because it helped you immensely in a way?

To start it off: Personally I got diagnosed as an adult rather recently. I somehow have haphazardly kept my life together without meds and ADHD-Therapy/Counseling/Coaching so far, but got no idea how. I made use of all sorts of organization methods and tools without it ever occurring to me that I could have ADHD.

Looking back it became painfully clear, I never consciously took my brain being different into account at any point. Therefore I failed very often and very spectacularly with my organization. I still do, especially at work.

Personally I use synched calendars (Thunderbird & Fairmail synched over Nextcloud) on my phone and PC at the moment. I also found I use ToDoList-Apps a lot (currently TickTick) to put at least some structure to my chaos. I am really awful with reminders though: I have too many and not enough at the same time. There is no structure to the types of reminders I have and I geht them from too many different sources. And sometimes they are too distracting or worse yet, sometimes not noticeable enough (Looking at you there, Outlook).

What have your experiences been like?

I'm asking out of curiosity mostly.

Is anyone here into digital marketing? That's what I'm studying for right now.

1. Do you have 1 or more calendars, what are they called?

2. Do you differentiate between events and tasks/todos?

3. Does it make sense to have a seperate Holidays calendar?

I either have an exciting plan,
or when that fails, no plan (I resign).
Since the exciting plans usually fail, I end up living on autopilot.

I really struggle making things in life move. There's too many simultaneous Big Tasks* whose logistics I need to keep track of that I can’t hold them all in my head at once (I can only focus on one Big Task at once). Especially when most tasks are timelines where you need to wait for responses, compose emails, search for things (there might be none – what then?) etc. and where you need to think about the order of the tasks in the timeline so that you save time. Not to forget remembering to notice if people haven’t replied to your e-mail and having to either remind them or come up with a Plan B (this usually leaves you stumped because you now can't get the thing you started the whole journey for). There's so many steps to keep track of and you can't even write them down because the amount of steps keeps changing.

*Finding the next place to rent, booking a dentist for my hurting tooth, planning journeys (what is the Plan B if the journey is too expensive?)

The cluelessness and dread of having to come up with a Plan B is why I hate searching for things. Having to come up with a Plan B is so disorienting. And it's the opposite of stimulating: you've put in a ton of effort and gotten nowhere. How do you all deal with it?