Given the whole point of the article is that this person's thinking style isn't dysfunctional, in fact seems to be working out just fine for them, why wouldn't we just look at this and say "this is a normal way for a human being to operate" and refuse to pathologize it? Why drug your way to a different thinking style?

Everyone is on their own journey and there are so many reasons a person might think a particular way.

The comment you are responding to is just trying to explain their own situation and say the person who wrote the article might want to investigate a similar experience compared to their own. I read the article as one where someone is exploring and ADHD is would be exploration. I would specify that ADHD inattentive type is the one that it reads most like to me.

I don't see why you'd want to knock someone's choice of treatment for a particular condition. You might not see a need for a particular treatment option, but many folks get relief from anxiety or other things such as RSD while being medicated for ADHD. They can make their own decisions.

Because inattentive ADD has done real damage to my life, both personally and professionally. It very nearly destroyed my marriage.

I politely suggest that you check your anti-medication bias at the door. OP is describing a lifetime of feeling s/he is a failure and unable to achieve the goals he would otherwise set for themselves. This is classic ADD symptoms, and the only real therapy with lasting results is medication.

For ADD people such as myself, medication is life-altering in a positive way. I clearly divide my life before and after as different eras: before was a lifetime of failure measured against my own goals (not only external / work requirements), and after a still-ongoing period of self-empowerment and growth.

Yet people such as yourself would attempt to guilt trip and shame us from seeking the only thing which actually helps: modifying our brain chemistry. Why? What reason do you have for shutting down discussion of taking medicine to address a medical condition?

This is an astute point. I’m a mid-40s mech engineer in the Bay Area. HN is my tribe, by and large. I’ve been bombarded with perspectives that ADHD medication is the answer. (Not officially diagnosed, but I’m confident I meet the criteria and very likely “afflicted.”)

The brain is complex—adapted, or maladapted, for different tasks. My working hypothesis: mine is maladapted to the behaviors currently rewarded in corporate America. And I know I’m not Feynman.

So here I am, stuck in a bi-modal world (or maybe just worldview). This piece hits hard.

> why wouldn't we just look at this and say "this is a normal way for a human being to operate" and refuse to pathologize it

I don't think it's so much about that... it's more that having a label for a common set of behaviors/symptoms can be a shorthand to explain things more succinctly.

Btw, would you say the same thing about clinical depression? Why/why not?

> Why drug your way to a different thinking style?

Because ADHD (and other things) can be crippling when it comes to actually getting IRL shit that needs doing... done. "We live in a society" is a meme, but there's actually a lot of stuff that can present non-trivial hurdles for neuro-divergent people IRL ... like filing taxes, going to an unemployment office, etc. etc.

(Also, that's not quite what the drugs do if you have ADHD, but I digress)

I don’t think that’s what the parent is describing it at all, not at the end. It’s a framework for understanding OP’s style of thinking, and connecting it to the research literature - sluggish “cognitive tempo” is the clinical jargon.

Well that's sort of the fun things about psychiatric "disorders", in many of them you can genuinely ask is this difference with the brain actually harmful unto itself or is it harmful because of the way society is set up?

I have struggled with this myself with ADHD where I think my brain is great and it is society that is wrong as many of the ways I do things/see things/operate are subtly shunned by society and the way it works. Everything from the typical 9-5 (my brain works best 11-7), to most white collar careers revolving around stationary work at a desk (I love difficult mental work, but think better when I'm moving around), etc.

I don't think my brain is wrong or performing poorly, I excelled at school but did not learn much from lecture style formats (figured out how to study on my own). But I have gone back and forth with medication because it is very, very difficult to construct my life in a way that plays to my strengths when they are so different than the norm. Medication helps my brain fit into society better, but I don't think it improves my brain function.

Parent post clearly explained the advantages and disadvantages of stimulant use and how they are useful in different situations. Nobody is saying it's dysfunctional. This isn't reddit, you don't need to always be searching for something to be outraged about.

Wow, this got long.

TL;DR: The author, by their own words, is simply coping. ADHD is a disorder, not a "different way of thinking" one chooses to "drug your way" out of. Discovering one has ADHD can be a huge relief. Generally, if you have it, you want to know.

---

I disagree with your reading. The article describes the mechanisms the author has developed to cope with their "thinking style." Whether they merely have a unique thought process, or they are suffering from a common mental disability, their optimistic, solution-oriented attitude is adaptive and healthy.

> I'm not a quick witted person. In fact, I’ve always been worried about my brain’s slow processing time.

> But recently, I've realised that slow processing time is not as much of an issue as I thought it was. And even if I was wrong about that, I still think I’d do better for myself by leaning into it, instead of spending energy trying to fight it.

The author has "always" been worried about this. But he's realized it's "not as much of an issue." It reads to me like the author is working to cope with a long-standing difficulty. And they do not say that they have overcome the difficulty, but only that they've found certain approaches to be superior to others.

If the root cause of this long-standing, much-vexing difficulty might be a well-understood condition with standard methods of treatment that have been helpful to many people, it's reasonable to think the author might appreciate that suggestion.

Also, ADHD is not a "different thinking style" anymore than anxiety, depression, or autism are "different thinking styles." It can feel like that to someone who hasn't been diagnosed yet, and even many people diagnosed with ADHD will downplay the condition as being different--not worse. Furthermore, there are even doctors who will indulge in this wishful rhetoric. This is not unlike those in the Deaf community who assert that deafness isn't a disability[1].

In fact, ADHD is a mental disorder. It does not give one special powers of creativity or insight or anything else in compensation for the lack of executive function and emotional regulation. As Dr. Russel Barkley says[2]:

> Now let's be clear, this is a very serious disorder. This is not some trivial little fly-by-night disorder.

> Also, to emphasize something which I don't think is emphasized enough: ADHD is no gift. There is no evidence in any research on any of hundreds of measures that we have taken that show that ADHD predisposes to anything positive in human life. Now let's be clear, ADHD is but a small set of hundreds of psychological abilities that people will have, and many people may be gifted and talented in various aspects of these other human abilities, but never attribute that giftedness or that success to ADHD itself.

I know you hold no malice in your heart, but your comment has drawn several indignant responses because it expresses an attitude that those with ADHD frequently see, and one that easily shades into an outright stigma towards people with ADHD.

I'm not saying that you were saying this, but many people seem to think that people with ADHD are pathologizing normal difficulties and using it to get their hands on fun drugs.

> You get bored at work. Sure, everyone gets bored.

> You have a hard time starting big projects. I can relate.

> You lose track of time sometimes. Me too!

> You know, it kind of seems like you have all the normal struggles in life we all do, but instead of bucking up and just getting stuff done, you've decided to cry to a doctor so you can get cheap addies.

There is nothing admirable about refusing to acknowledge a mental disorder. ADHD is more or less severe in different people, and it's perfectly valid to make an informed choice to forego any treatment for any condition. But it isn't doing the author or anyone else any favors to "refuse to pathologize it" by ignoring the resemblance to a common disorder.

The other part of the puzzle you are missing is that getting diagnosed with ADHD was a hugely positive, life-changing event for many of us who were not diagnosed until adulthood.

To live with undiagnosed ADHD is to live with a condition that makes others see you--and you see yourself--as chronically late and unreliable, unfocused and slow, and disorganized. You are, by all appearances, lazy, irresponsible, and careless: a bad, virtueless person. And over and over again, you fail to reach the eminently achievable goals you set for yourself.

It's an immense relief to discover your life-long shortcomings are not those of a morally defective soul, but of a medically defective brain. And this relief is entirely apart from the hope that medication or another treatment might help.

So perhaps you can now understand why those who have experienced this unburdening are eager to pay it forward. It's not like being diagnosed with cancer. We've always known the struggle. Now we know the enemy with whom we struggle.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/134tw70/do_you_identi...

2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9w6YL5__Z8

Edit: Added a TL;DR, removed an unnecessary quote, and made a couple slight wording changes.