I see what you did there.
ADD isn't a real disease. It's called being bored. It happens to everyone. But sure, take some meds.
I fit every single "symptom" of ADD. I can't sit still through a half hour show let alone a 2 hour movie. I never went to class in college because it was so fucking boring and I would lose concentration after less than 5 minutes. If I try to read a textbook i'll start daydreaming after less than a page. Give me a good novel and I can sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting.
But if I do something that truly interests me, I can be engaged for hours. I've sat down and programmed for 10 hours straight (but only if it's something I am having fun doing). I can go out and work on the house or yard for hours at a time.
It's not a disease. People just use it as an excuse to justify living their shitty life. Find something that your are actually interested in doing, or find what it is that your kid is actually interested in doing and maybe they will be able to focus on it. It's just an excuse for parents and teachers who don't want to give their kids the attention they need.
Smarter kids get bored and their grades suffer. This is a known fact. I didn't do shit the whole way through highschool and college and managed to get a 4.0 in highschool and a 3.7 in college.
The fact that your kid can't sit still through a movie IS A GOOD THING. Or I guess maybe you want your kid to park in front of the TV for 8 hours so you don't have to pay attention to them.
edit: I think that the symptoms are real, and obviously the medication will treat the symptoms, but that doesn't make it a disease. It just means you found a drug to mask peoples life problems.
Wow, this turned into alternative medicine(if it works why is it alternative...hint hint, it doesn't) versus big pharma.....
To be fair, you can't just make blanket statements for an ADD medication you have taken.
ADD - like clinical depression - isn't simply based on an On or Off switch in the brain, where the medication works to correct that failed switch, and does so the same way for every individual.
In fact, quite the opposite is true, as every individual has a different chemical imbalance. In reality, these chemical imbalances are hardly "wrong", each creature in nature is going to be a little different, neurotransmitter levels will vary across the board in different ways. Hell, the physiology of the brain varies all over. Then again, this could be thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of swapping genetics with relatives.
Each case of ADD could present fairly similarly, but might be induced due to a different ratio of NTs, one group too high, one group lower than normal, etc etc etc.
The majority of ADD medications work on the method of increasing norepinephrine (predominantly), and maybe a few others. At least, the medications that are based on stimulants take that route - I'm not super familiar with the chemical activity of the non-stimulant meds.
I know a few people with ADD who had a prescription for Adderall (amphetamine-class) - one person got super hyper with it, and one person got crazy lethargic and he said he hated the way it made him feel.
In truth, they are stimulants but for the people it actually works on, it makes them calm, it kind of slows them down.
*****Not everyone has consistent ADD, because diet can come into play (diet does indeed impact NT levels), and a few other lifestyle choices will also impact chemical levels. And for those who have a genetic coding for the range of abnormal NT levels that can cause ADD, each person basically needs to try both a stimulant and non-stimulant medication, and maybe from there a more specific approach in each class.****
Wow, this turned into alternative medicine(if it works why is it alternative...hint hint, it doesn't) versus big pharma.....
Do I need medicine to function? No, I have survived almost 32 years without it. However, until recently, I just thought it was a personality trait and something I just needed to focus more on fixing.
So if I get into why I think my issues are ADD related:
-Unable to focus on tasks/projects to completion(work and personal). Many of these things I am interested in. I start a lot of crap and rarely finish. If I do finish it, it is because I literally had no choice.
-Extreme difficulty working on projects that don't interest me. And when I said difficulty, I mean I try to work on them but my mind never stays focused to accomplish what needs to happen. Like I said earlier, I have been lucky in that I get to pick my projects at work.
-Literally can't sit still on the phone. Drives my wife crazy, I must be moving when on the phone. If at work, I am on my headset pacing around my area. At home, I go from room to room pacing. I try to sit down but even without thinking, I get up and pace more.
-I have issues sitting still in general. I am always at the very least, shaking my leg. Another thing that drives my wife crazy.
-In college, I barely survived and graduated. Outside of my comp sci classes, I had trouble passing my other classes. People would say I should just pay attention but once again easier said than done. I would go to class, try to take notes but my mind would always drift to something else that interested me. I failed at least one class every semester because I just couldn't manage to focus in class. I pretty much have a high GPA in major(and mathematics) and everything else sucked.
-I have to make a conscious effort not to interrupt people. If I don't make the effort, I just cut people off and act rude. This is one area I have been able to make some inroads in but I still have trouble paying attention to everything being said when someone is talking to me.
All of these things don't mean I can't function in life. I can and do function but if some therapy/meds can help then I see no reason not to explore it.
ADD isn't a real disease. It's called being bored. It happens to everyone. But sure, take some meds.
I fit every single "symptom" of ADD. I can't sit still through a half hour show let alone a 2 hour movie. I never went to class in college because it was so fucking boring and I would lose concentration after less than 5 minutes. If I try to read a textbook i'll start daydreaming after less than a page. Give me a good novel and I can sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting.
But if I do something that truly interests me, I can be engaged for hours. I've sat down and programmed for 10 hours straight (but only if it's something I am having fun doing). I can go out and work on the house or yard for hours at a time.
It's not a disease. People just use it as an excuse to justify living their shitty life. Find something that your are actually interested in doing, or find what it is that your kid is actually interested in doing and maybe they will be able to focus on it. It's just an excuse for parents and teachers who don't want to give their kids the attention they need.
Smarter kids get bored and their grades suffer. This is a known fact. I didn't do shit the whole way through highschool and college and managed to get a 4.0 in highschool and a 3.7 in college.
The fact that your kid can't sit still through a movie IS A GOOD THING. Or I guess maybe you want your kid to park in front of the TV for 8 hours so you don't have to pay attention to them.
edit: I think that the symptoms are real, and obviously the medication will treat the symptoms, but that doesn't make it a disease. It just means you found a drug to mask peoples life problems.