> normal life for most people ... except perhaps to the degree it is felt or needed

Well, yes, precisely. Almost everyone can relate to experiencing mild or moderate back pain for a couple of days when they sleep in a weird position, but some people have chronic back pain that makes life unbearable without prescription pain killers.

While talking to people about my ADHD in real life I noticed that many of them speak like they understand ADHD. Even when I try to explain in more detail they come really close to "getting it" by superficially relating to some of the ADHD symptoms, but unfortunately almost all of them end up taking the logical leap to say that "everyone deals with this" and start recommending "solutions".

Most people will never understand ADHD just like I don't truly understand what life is like for people with chronic pain, and that's fine.

People seem to at least conceptually understand that chronic pain = pain like they know it + much worse + never-ending, which they recognize as being awful. The thing that bothers me is that when it comes to ADHD (and autism) the calculation suddenly becomes ADHD = concentration problems they experienced + exaggeration + lack of discipline.

ADHD is relentless, it follows you everywhere, you can take many months off from work for stress relief and it will still be there (I tried). You can make sure to sleep well, eat well, exercise, avoid all stressors, focus on hobbies that make you happy and it'll still be there.

People juggle sleep deprivation, stressful job and/or kids, socializing, chores, appointments on a daily basis and say that concentration problems are normal, and yes, of course they are if you're overloading yourself like that. But many people with ADHD experience those (and much more) at our baseline and if I tried to achieve half of what other people achieve on a daily basis, I would burn myself out in under a month.

Some people might read this and think that this I'm an outlier but I think I'm pretty average as far as ADHD severity goes, I managed to finish university before struggling to keep up outside of highly structured environments, and ultimately getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.

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selestify 14 hours ago | parent [-]

What did you end up doing for your ADHD post-diagnosis? Has it fixed your concentration problems?

	▲	dns_snek 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm currently on Elvanse and it's a far cry from being a fix or a cure, but it makes things more manageable. My concentration on work that I find stimulating has always been alright so that hasn't changed much, I'm slightly less distractible during boring work, but it's been most helpful in other areas of executive functioning like task initiation. For example at home I usually knew which chores needed to be done, and I desperately wanted to do them but I could never get started because I didn't have enough willpower. I would procrastinate for weeks or even months while constantly beating myself up over it. I still don't enjoy chores, nobody does, but with medication I have noticeably more willpower to get started on things that need to be done. The thought of folding laundry, a task which I always knew would take me no longer than 5 minutes, no longer overwhelms me with dread and I end up doing it in a "reasonable" amount of time (reasonable for me, plenty of people would find it unreasonable if we lived together).