←back to thread

129 points surprisetalk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
alterom ◴[] No.45958585[source]
This article (and the title alone) is harmful. Adderall is not about increasing mental efficiency.

What Adderall is about is:

- helping with executive dysfunction for people who suffer from it.

- allowing people with ADHD like me to function. To do the things that everyone else does, things that we want to do and need to do, but can't do because of the way our brains are wired.

- increasing the lifespan of ADHD people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].

- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).

Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.

No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.

To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:

https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Medication

If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.

Thank you in advance.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/23/nx...

[2] https://add.org/adhd-and-depression/

[3] https://crownviewpsych.com/blog/adhd-increased-risk-suicide-...

replies(12): >>45958847 #>>45959152 #>>45959284 #>>45959603 #>>45959622 #>>45959716 #>>45959738 #>>45960105 #>>45960113 #>>45961075 #>>45962592 #>>45970217 #
freetime2 ◴[] No.45959284[source]
It's long, but I listened to this podcast a while back with Peter Attia and Trenna Sutcliffe discussing Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety, and found that it really reduced the stigma I associated with medication for treatment of ADHD. In particular, understanding the risks of not effectively treating ADHD, in comparison with with the potential risks/benefits of the medication. That's not to say that we should only rely on medication - behavioral therapy (with parents involved too) should also play a part.

https://peterattiamd.com/trennasutcliffe/

replies(3): >>45959959 #>>45959995 #>>45960851 #
luckydata ◴[] No.45960851[source]
Behavioral therapy is only needed to make people feel better about taking amphetamines. It takes only a very cursory review of published reputable papers to realize there's nothing behavioral therapy can do to improve ADHD because as Russell Barkley says ADHD is a disability of doing, not knowing what to do.
replies(2): >>45960927 #>>45961170 #
freetime2 ◴[] No.45960927{3}[source]
If medication alone has worked for you, that's great! But I don't think your opinion matches the medical consensus.

> For children with ADHD younger than 6 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends parent training in behavior management as the first line of treatment, before medication is tried.

> For children 6 years of age and older, the recommendations include medication and behavior therapy together—parent training in behavior management for children up to age 12 and other types of behavior therapy and training for adolescents. Schools can be part of the treatment as well. AAP recommendations also include adding behavioral classroom intervention and school supports. [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/treatment/index.html

replies(1): >>45963533 #
1. skywhopper ◴[] No.45963533{4}[source]
This makes sense for very young children, for various reasons, mainly that it’s hard or impossible to diagnose ADHD with reliability at such a young age, and because medication is hard to dose properly to a rapidly growing child. But these recommendations are honestly more about helping the parents cope than about treating the child’s ADHD. Behavioral therapy is more about learning how to fit in than addressing the actual problems (which are often exacerbated by the inevitable failure of such behavioral treatment and its corresponding expectations in folks with genuine ADHD).
replies(1): >>45967114 #