Can ADHD be a good thing?

It looks like ADHD evolved for some pretty good reasons. It’s only recently (in the grand scheme of things) that these things have become “problems” for kids who are required to sit still in classrooms instead of out there helping their tribe survive.

Also, this.

First, you will be dependent on medication for the rest of your life, because of chemical imbalances in your brain.

Really, you know this. Look at your life without the medication. You had trouble staying focused and finishing things. Now, you have turned it around. That was made possible by the medication.

You could explore other medications with your doctor if you are experiencing side effects or having other problems. I know someone who has had great luck with Welbutrin as a treatment for AADD.

As to good things to come from it, perhaps your empathy for others with illnesses has grown. Perhaps your patience has improved or you now believe in giving second chances to people. Only you can say for sure what the good things your condition has brought into life are.

I think it is over diagnosed and over medicated. It is the easy way out to medicate everybody. Big Pharma loves it, and doctors can placate overbearing and ineffective parents by offering that pill. Teachers also love the docile drones created. Although it is probably a valid diagnosis for some, the exponential increase in those claiming ADHD seems unlikely as being accurate to me. In general, I think what one once considered exuberance now needs a label.

@dannyc Don’t confuse exuberance with a true ADHD condition. You are making the mistake that many people with false diagnosis of ADHD make. It is a real condition and requires real treatment. The failure to realize this has left many young people without the medical intervention they need.

I know a guy diagnosed with ADHD and he is one of the most creative guys I know. I can explain a project need to him and he will run off and produce the device – sometimes in a totally different manner that outperforms what I needed. He is also a very skillful wordsmith. It is hilarious. It seems like he knows the words to every song ever produced and can weave word strings that are a joy. You can drop a microphone in his hand and say “go” and he will create a story or description that would take me days to rehearse.
He’s fantastic.

I agree with @dannyc

Not to say there are not SOME cases where medication might be beneficial, but, also protocol for the Prozac Nation.

I have long joked I am slightly ADHD, never have been diagnosed, but, what I HAVE read also mentions lots of high creativity if not downright giftedness in many areas.

Depends on how your life is functioning all in all.

I am a very free spirited type, highly creative, rather non-linear in my thought processes, have a great sense of humor, am usually optimistic, positive and high mental energy…..works for me. :-)

I can live with with a bit of unfocus once in awhile, I LIKE my brain. lol

@worriedguy

Haha..I love it! One mans ADHD is another mans genius! ;-)

Very often, people who are entrepeneurs are ADD people because they are non-linear thinkers. They need to surround themselves with people who can fill in the gaps to get things done. People do manage ADD/ADHD without medication and do just fine, but they really have to work at putting in the extra effort. Part of it is accepting that you cannot be spontaneous or disorganized when things matter. An upside is hyperfocus. People with ADD can often mentally “disappear” into projects for a prolonged period of time if the work is engaging.

I have similar issues (Aspergers has enough symptoms in common (in many cases) that diagnosis is difficult) but never went the medication route, so I never had the bad reactions to meds that many people do.

It helps me notice things that other people don’t; sometimes very important things. It gives me insight that more focused people will overlook/ignore due to tunnel vision. Sometimes a little bit of ADD/ADHD is a good thing.

Here’s a list you might find interesting.

One thing I’ve recently discovered is that it’s important to find other underlying causes of ADHD like behavior. I have ADHD and I take medication. After my daughter was born, the medication just stopped working once I went back on. My doctor kept wanting to ramp up my meds and I’d have to stop nursing. I didn’t want to do that, so I looked into alternatives.

It turns out I have severe sleep apnea that got worse with my weight gain from pregnancy and my general new mom’s lack of sleep. I still have ADHD, but it seems much more severe because I can’t pay attention because I’m constantly taking micro naps (dozing off for a few seconds at a time whenever I’m not directly engaged in an activity.) If I hadn’t have gone looking for an alternative solution, it never would have occurred to me to get my sleep apnea treated. Not only would I have been gorked up on stimulants, but I would have only been treating the symptoms and not the cause of my inattention. Also, sleep apnea can be deadly, so it’s very good I found out about it.

I wonder how many people who get diagnosed with ADHD actually just suffer from severe lack of sleep. Our society is so “go go go” and “sleep is for the weak” that I bet many people are just chronically exhausted and become severely inattentive because of it.

Anyway, one thing I’ll say that is actually cool about having ADHD for years is that it helped me think in very unconventional ways. And it seems that even with medication, the creativity stays with you. And that’s the best!

Living with ADHD requires you to set up circumstances you need for the task(s) you have to do. Strategies to help you learn such as finding places with few or no distractions (for me this was a carrel in the library) learning strategies (I had to take notes while reading non-fictional material. I also found that setting a timer for the amount of time I felt I could work productively) In my life now, I find it distractlng when people are talking around me when I am trying to listen to instructions. I have to ask them to stop talking. They don’t always like it and I apologize and explain that I can’t shut out or distinguish between competing sentences I’m hearing.
I agree with those who say ADHD can allow your thought processes to be more facile and imaginative. And I rarely miss a birdcall or other stimulus to my senses.

@marinelife I disagree. Partly because saying you’ll be “dependent” on the medication seems so extreme – to me, saying that you’ll be dependent on a medication for the rest of your life is true more in cases of kidney failure, where you will literally die if you stop taking it, not that your quality of life will change. But mostly because, there really are alternatives to Ritalin and Adderall, from herbal things to meditation to various therapies and neurotherapies. It seems more accurate to say “This is a problem you will have to deal with your entire life” than to unequivocally say that this one treatment is the be-all-end-all of ADHD. Plus, it’s all dependent on the idea that the OP has been properly diagnosed. 6 years old is one of the worst ages to diagnose someone with ADHD, because it’s damn near impossible to figure out what’s ADHD and what’s kids just being hyper and if this kid is exceptionally hyper but still in a phase… The number of children who have been improperly diagnosed as ADHD is really staggering. Even with new therapists, they often look at the old medical records and previous diagnoses and base their diagnosis off of that, instead of solely from getting to know the patient and doing a whole new diagnosis that may or may not match up with what others said. And that’s not even going into the issue where the whole system of diagnoses isn’t based upon the psychological field really and truly thinking those are the only things that can go wrong and only in those strict definitions, so much as providing a platform with which professionals can communicate with insurance as to why a patient needs x,y, and z treatments.

@rOs Yes, ADHD can be a good thing. It can be a great thing. It’s up to you to figure out which parts you feel are good for you, and which aren’t, but it’s definitely not just a horrible, horrible burden for each and every person.

I did not discover I have ADHD until I was in my thirties. I wish I had found out earlier.

I learned early on that I could only concentrate when I was alone in a quiet place with few distractions. I avoided situations like parties where my lack of filters made me feel disoriented and lonely. I preferred the company of friends one at a time or in very small groups.

Once I learned to adapt to the limitations, I was able to take advantage of the strengths such as the ability to work for hours on a complex task with no need for breaks or diversions.

I managed to get my PhD despite my ADHD.

I also found love and was able to love and be loved.

Don’t ever allow yourself to feel defeated.

I took my first night with the CPAP machine, to treat my sleep apnea. I didn’t take my Adderal today. I had better concentration that I EVER had even with a double dosage with Adderal.

Here’s a little something to think about—ADHD is frequently getting overdiagnosed. Many doctors think that the lack of attention may be caused by a myriad of different things, but it’s very cheap to diagnose by just looking at someone in an exam room and relatively cheap to dispense meds. So ADHD medication could be just treating the symptoms of whatever is taking away your attention instead of the cause.

Meanwhile, it’s estimated that less than 10% of people with sleep apnea and other sleep disturbances are ever diagnosed and only a small number of the people diagnosed ever get treatment for it. This is because even with insurance, a sleep study is very expensive and even though there is a home screening test (to see if you actually need to take a sleep study), most doctors won’t prescribe it for whatever reason. Many people with sleep disturbances don’t feel tired, but almost all of them suffer from poor attention spans AND very vivid dreams. (They are vivid because you wake up during REM sleep a lot.)

Sorry to bring it up again, but I was astounded at the difference just one night on the CPAP machine made. I am actually wondering if I ever had ADHD in the first place. While I didn’t start feeling tired until the last few years when the apnea because severe, I have had very poor attention and extremely vivid dreams my whole life.

I wonder how many other people out there may have sleep disorders and they just keep taking their ADHD meds as their sleeping problems gradually get worse. I wonder how many people have neurological disorders that are more expensive to diagnose than ADHD is and how much better off they’d be with treatment of their actual disorder instead of ritalin just jostling their attention.

Sorry to bring it up again, but I was so surprised how it seems like I got “cured” of ADHD overnight.