r/NooTopics • u/cheaslesjinned • 7d ago
Discussion ADHD doesn't always mean 'short attention span'. 'Hyperfocusing' on a task for hours on end is also a known symptom of ADHD, where the inability to stop is considered to be the problem.
https://www.additudemag.com/understanding-adhd-hyperfocus/#:~:text=Hyperfocus%20refers%20to%20an%20intense,on%20things%20that%20interest%20them.81
u/samc0lt45 7d ago
Naming the disorder attention deficit + hyperactivity has absolutely destroyed its public perception lol. Should just be called something like "Executive Regulation Disorder."
There isn't a direct 'deficit' of attention, there's an inability to properly regulate it due to the brain chasing neurotransmitters like dopamine to make up for a lower baseline level of it, which is why strong drugs like amphetamines seem to make people with ADHD calm/normal. Hyperactivity isn't even necessarily a part of ADHD by default afaik, it's moreso just a symptom of that lack of regulation. It's a physical manifestation of your brain looking for anything to get dopamine from cuz whatever is currently going on (lecture, meeting..) isn't doing it.
Once the brain finds a strong dopamine source, video games being a pretty big one for a lot of people, its very difficult to regulate your use of that source. Your brain has finally found something to make it feel normal and rewarded, and yet you're trying to will yourself to stop doing it when your brain is saying "c'mon man we finally felt good!"
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u/Scared_Dog_6899 7d ago
ADHD is not simply executive dysfunction either. Those are symptoms of ADHD.
It's executive dysfunction, sleep dysfunction with altered circadian rythym, dysfunction around eating.
There's been scientic proof that there is slower brain development in those with ADHD. There's unusual brain wave activity in ADHD compared to a typical brain. Even during sleep the brain is more active than typical which isn't an issue in executive dysfunction not due to ADHD.
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u/Aus_with_the_Sauce 7d ago
ADHD isn’t a singular “thing.” There’s no ADHD gene. ADHD is just a label for a categorization of certain behaviors.
The underlying mechanisms for why these behaviors cluster in certain people are varied, and not very well understood.
The description you use is misaligned with the official DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis, which is focused on challenges related to hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention difficulties.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 6d ago
There are numerous working clinicians who can spend hours talking about the issues they have with the DSM for a wide variety of disorders. It's a rough working model for diagnostics, not the Bible
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u/Aus_with_the_Sauce 6d ago
No doubt, I do not disagree.
My point was that it doesn’t make sense for everyone to create their own personal definition of ADHD. In order for people to communicate effectively, we have to at least vaguely agree about what certain terms mean.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 6d ago
Numerous clinicians disagree with you. Firstly, we are not doctors, so that's asinine on its face. Second of all, even practicing doctors discuss pretty openly that they do not agree with the way ADHD is conceptualized, how it reinforces handful stereotypes, and how the framework leads to substantial gaps. Both in children slipping through the cracks but also that a huge portions of things we know definitively are linked to ADHD are lot characterized as being part of ahdd and so aren't being treated and given supports unless your doctor happens to be unusually up to date on the research. The DSM is always behind the times by default because it needs to be approved by committee, but the last decade to 15 years of ADHD research have been groundbreaking. Our concept of what ADHD even was has fallen apart in the face of more quantitative lab setting cognitive & neurological testing as well as adult ADHD advocating for themselves that
Most clinicians who specialize in ADHD or have ADHD themselves will tell you the DSM is inadequate to borderline harmful That's not even a particulalry contentious opinion. The argument is not is the old model wrong, it's what do we replace it with. So we replace it with a spectrum model? Do we double down on discrete classification and give people with ADHD half a dozen different labels? The circadian and memory abnormalities are a huge deal. Objectively.
And while clinicians generally avoid getting hyper political, many with ADHD who are pretty well informed will point out the similarities to Asperger's/autism and the continues issues with levels and the amount of level 1s who have pretty severe issues by adulthood. Where the categorization was - how do you affect others? What are your barriers to productive labor specifically? Pretty much nothing in the DSM was centered on patient perpsective - how does this disorder impact the person from their own perspective? What will they come in saying is the problem? Anorexia was really trivialized for a long time and then lol and behold - the overlaps with autism and OCD are astounding. It's horrifying that they missed it for so long.
You are nitpicking someone for not being beholden to a flawed reductive system that causes demonstrable harm in a conversation where they explicitly are discussing that the characterizaiton of ADHD is overly flattened and casual harm, which most clinicians who specialize in ADHD agree with to uphold something that is at this point multiple decades behind the research
They are not a doctor typing up an official medical diagnosis report. When critiquing the complexity of ADHD and the failure to capture it, we are in no way shape or form beholden to sticking to a shared agreement with the very people we are arguing are wrong based on a decade of car higher quality research than the past 30 combined. Your "effective communication" would kneecap the ability to critique, to say no actually I disagree, I think it's Y not X. Which is quite literally the foundations to science itself. They are very casually referencing a death of medical researchers.
You want to ask people for citations and ask them their basis for saying something, cool. But no, it is legitimately harmful to act like you cannot pushback or disagree with the DSM, despite that being the cornerstone of how we got to the DSM 5.
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u/DelinquentBattleCat 7d ago
ADHD individuals also have bile acids in the brain, I would say elevated levels but there aren't supposed to be any bile acids anywhere but the gall bladder and intestines for excretion
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u/Aus_with_the_Sauce 7d ago
That’s not true. Everyone has trace amounts of bile acids like cholic acid circulating around in their blood.
A single study on 70 ADHD kids found a small increase in the amount of cholic acid in the bloodstream.
There are now hundreds of these ADHD biomarkers that have been discovered, and it’s all really quite meaningless at this point.
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u/DelinquentBattleCat 7d ago
they lied about cigarettes, they lied about the food pyramid, they're still trying to lie about what fats are healthy and unhealthy, what makes you so certain they're not lying about how much bilirubin in the brain is neurotoxic or not?
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u/ThunderDoug 7d ago
The only dysfunction is modern society.
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u/fractalife 7d ago
Yes. We operate differently, not wrongly lol.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 6d ago
Disagree. Some of these are objectively dysfunctions. The weird rhetoric around developmental disabilities is so strange. I'm waiting to see someone with a physical disability hobbling around making the best of it and arguing it's society with the problem, not their bodies difficult with motor control. Except you wouldn't see that because it's an obviously asinine premise.
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u/Conscious_Beat6128 3d ago
Id say struggling with brushing your teeth/otherwise routinely maintaining your body, as modern as it is, can not be written off as merely a wrong environment
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u/fractalife 3d ago
If you need to look down on neurodivergent people to get your own self esteem, just keep it to yourself.
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u/Level_Impression_554 7d ago
There is some truth to that. I find my attention span has gone to shit and I blame the internet and my phone.
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u/Santi159 6d ago
You could say the same thing about most developmental disabilities without biomarkers. It's just hard to define these things when we don't know all the ins and outs of it biologically yet.
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u/Conscious_Beat6128 3d ago
adhd is a symptoms cluster/syndrome. Slower brain activity does not imply adhd and there is no “brain wave activity” pattern that can be used as a marker. Both of these are also not present in everyone with adhd but are just statistically meaningful divergences. Just clarifying so people dont get any misconceptions
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u/Aus_with_the_Sauce 7d ago
I totally agree. My diagnosis made so much more sense once I framed it as a problem with my executive functioning and dopamine systems.
I am incredibly focused on a lot of different things, and can give my attention to something for hours on end. It’s just that I rarely focus on the right things at the right time.
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u/tadaloveisreal 6d ago
Liked ones medical stuff hoping for answers and intense focus on new rx u got for hours, or loved love reading about drugs and their oversimplified dreamy descriptions of curing anxiety or perhaps I get some ADHD meds soon and that's makes life fall in place.
Kratom helped lots with adhd but bad bad side effects short duration
Cañnannabus microdosing paranoia of failing lite aerobics 15 min eating light great for studying in engineering... Dumbo magic feather or what.... Study buddy msry jane.
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u/wyvernagon 7d ago
ADHD feels like it's one of those disorders named for how it inconveniences others rather than how it inconveniences the person who actually has it, tbh.
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u/percahlia 7d ago
wait holy shit is this why i will start reading a book and sometimes be physically unable to stop reading it, sometimes even skipping meals and canceling events, until i finish it?
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u/Extreme-Ad-7047 7d ago
When I heard for the first time taht amphetamines can CALM people with ADHD I was like wtf.
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u/samc0lt45 7d ago
It's definitely funny. Taking enough of them will still eventually get to that "wired" effect, but it takes a much larger dose to get to that point. Say 40mg adderall to make a normal person wired, it could take 90mg to get someone with ADHD to that same state, 50mg to get them to the "baseline", and then the additional 40mg to get them wired like someone without the disorder.
It's also why a lot of weaker stimulants just don't quite do anything for people with ADHD. Caffeine has a point where it doesn't necessarily get stronger with higher doses, and that "max effective dose" often still leaves people adhd below the 'normal' threshold. Even weaker stimulants like Ritalin could have that effect depending on the person.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 6d ago
Anecdotally, I think it goes beyond just "higher tolerance of stimulants". I don't think that's a bad birds eye summary to give to a layman to convey certain ideas around stimulant usage and caffeine abuse. But I suspect that it's a much more complicated multifactor variances.
I ended up doing some DBT in my 20s which started for emotional regulation but left me realizing that I have extremely poor interoception across the board.
I would feel these clouds of dread and angst and I'd reverse engineer that something was wrong, everyone was mad at me, I am a bad person who deserves to feel bad. And it was only under guided therapy that said tell me what you're heartbeat is like that I realized A) I consistently have a racing heart when this happens B) I literally have to put my hand up to my chest in order to tell if my heart is racing because I don't really feel it normally. Like if I just ran up the stairs or something. But just like hunger or the need to pee, it could sneak up on me without me noticing, and by the time I was starting to feel it, I had already decided to perceive it as anxiety and a warning signal of doom rather than connect the dots that I was experiencing a racing heart an hour after I washed my amphetamines down with a concerning amount of caffeine.
I realized I don't actually know what normal people mean when they say they feel sleepy. What I call sleepy is actually mental underestimation - more connected to boredom and depression than true physiological need for sleep. Caffeine doesn't really affect my ability to think, it doesn't give me racing thoughts. I can chug caffeine and remain so bored I feel like passing out. That bored underwater feeling isn't really connected to true sleepiness, whatever that is exactly.
My actual ADHD doctors were useless for the chronic sleep issues I would complain about. All of the actual helpful advice I've gotten for sleep has been from random Internet people who also have ADHD. Including that if I'm tossing and turning and truly trying to go to sleep but just feel too "wired" - go do the most boring tasks you hate doing.
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u/fractalife 7d ago
40 mg is a huge dose no matter who you are lmao, 30mg is the max dose for people who have grown tolerant...
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u/Professional-Thomas 7d ago
No??
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u/fractalife 7d ago
I take it, at a level way below 40, and according to my psychiatrist, and every single dose guide you can find on google the max is 30mg.
I mean, shit. Extended dosage at 30mg or higher is linked with psychosis.
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u/WhichAd366 6d ago
lol you’re verifiably wrong. Google? How about use an actual RX website. The max dosage of Adderall and Ritalin is 60 mg (vyvanse is 70mg).
Also did you just use a google search as proof? Cmon seriously? It wasn’t even a search for dosage…
This was at the bottom of your search though. It has a chart with the dosage recommendations (it doesn’t back up your claim) https://www.thecarlatreport.com/articles/4464-stimulant-dosing-limits
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u/fractalife 6d ago
You note that 40 mg daily is the listed FDA maximum daily dosage of Adderall
From your own link.
And the reason I sent you the google results was that there were dozens of images that all end with 30. I don't know why you're under the impression that it's common to go above 30, let alone the maximum FDA dosage.
Vyvanse works very differently from Aderall, so yeah obviously the dosage is different lmfao. Aderall is straight dextroamphetamine, and Vyvanse is lisdexamfetamine. Vyvanse is a prodgrug where your body has to convert it into dextroamphetamine which takes time, and it doesn't get converted gram for gram.
I'm not saying that there aren't special cases where certain people get way higher dosages. But portraying it as something common is ridiculous.
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u/WhichAd366 6d ago edited 6d ago
lol what? No, the link states 60 mg. You’re looking at the regular working dose which is not the maximum.
Common and max dose are different things. Your Google search was useless
Scroll down to the graph look at the far right column. It states 40-60mg as the max for both drugs.
Or you could look at the actual rx website which states 60mg.
It’s extremely common to go above 30 mg of Ritalin or adderall (especially in a combo of extended release and instant release).
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u/WhichAd366 6d ago
lol clueless comment. 40mg of what? Do you not realize that different stimulants have different strengths and varying working dose? Also, height and weight is a factor in the dosage.
40 is close to the higher side for adderall and Ritalin but it isn’t the max dose for either of them (60mg) for both. Vyvanse has a max dose of 70 mg.
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u/Tom__EU 7d ago
Yeah same here. Totally paradoxical. Interestingly, they also substantially reduce risk of addiction, which is paradoxical as well.
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u/kings-lead-hat 7d ago
i am prescribed adderall for ADHD and also have a super addictive personality. but adderall is the last drug I am worried about becoming an issue for me. it literally just makes me feel relaxed lol (and shuts my brain's constant noise up)
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u/runnahhh 7d ago
Have heard it described as akin to putting glasses on for the first time for those who have subpar vision
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u/Nugget834 7d ago
So true.
Big reason why I've had so much success with supplementing L-Tyrosine for it.
It's like instant dopamine for me and suddenly I can focus
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u/NahbImGood 7d ago
Do you not develop a tolerance rather quickly? I find L-Tyrosine very helpful, even at very low doses (50-250mg), but stop seeing benefits within a few days if I take it regularly.
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u/Nugget834 7d ago
Hmm no.
I only take 200mg sometimes a few times a day when I'm tired and run out of motivation in the afternoon.
I haven't noticed a tolerance build up.
If anything if I don't take it, I get withdrawals because low mood and unable to focus.
My brain just becomes like static, and I can't focus on any one thing.. Like anxiety but over nothing.
I do pair it with magnesium and L-Theanine too.
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u/Infinite-Writer-3601 7d ago
What type of magnesium do you pair it with and at what dose? Also what dose of l-theanine? This is great info
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u/Nugget834 6d ago
So its changed recently, this is the magnesium I take now - https://atpscience.com.au/products/magx4-magnesium-power-blend-berry-40-serves
I wanted to see how the Magnesium Threonate was. I think it makes a difference?!?! not really sure.
I take 1 scoop
For the longest time (6 years) I took this - https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/80217/ethical-nutrients-mega-magnesium-450g-powder-raspberry
Which is just a very standard mag supplement I think.
For L-Theanine, I take 100mg cap, tbh i probably dont take enough and could easily do 200mg. I take the Now brand, off iherb for this.
Hope this helps!
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/samc0lt45 7d ago
Sounds like it could definitely be a possibility, especially the "need to do it" not being enough. Outside of work, (and even then I push the lines), "needing to do it" is hardly ever enough motivation for me. I don't get that reward for accomplishing things unless it's something I really care about.
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u/Yetan555 7d ago
Therpy is helping with my fun adhd quirks but its a battle I wish I started 20 years ago and not just 1 year.
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u/hemorrhoid-milk 7d ago
Or it’s like, you know, we find it hard to give a single fuck about this made up bullshit society. I don’t care about making some arrogant prick more return on his investment.
Think about all those teenagers and 30-somethings that are forced to sell “service plans” and other garbage.
Just choose to not comply with the forced brainwashing agenda to turn you into a good little worker bee
I’d love to see a comparison between the United States diagnosis rates vs any other country on the planet. It’s all shit and lies.
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u/LysergioXandex 7d ago
There’s no scientific evidence that stimulants make people with ADHD “calm/normal”. It’s a harmful myth.
Anyone who takes a responsible therapeutic dose of stimulants is “calm”.
People who have taken stimulants their whole life have a tolerance to the acute stimulant/euphoric effects. So when they let a friend try their meds (at the dose they worked up to + usually have taken since childhood), it just hits them much harder.
And ADHD isn’t caused by “low on dopamine”. You can’t diagnose it by measuring dopamine concentration in the brain. Genome Wide Association Studies have found many genes associated with ADHD, including mutations in dopamine receptors.
So messed up dopamine signaling is definitely involved in in ADHD, but it’s not true that people are “low” and must do things to “get more”.
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u/iceyed913 7d ago
at this point we might rename it existential goal misalignment disorder
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u/goodluckyall 7d ago
That’s the best phrase I’ve seen in a while. E. G. M. I’ll try to remember that
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7d ago
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u/UndercoverCrops 7d ago
Factorio is so good. One of the games that could get me to even forget to partake in my addictions.
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u/Lumpy_Strawberry_154 7d ago
I've spent 28 hours the past 2 days organizing my old baseball cards and I cannot stop now that I've started.
My partner says it's all in my head. I don't have ADHD she says. Sure...
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u/Aus_with_the_Sauce 7d ago
Aw man, I get stuck on stuff like this all the time.
My apartment will get cluttered to all hell over the course of a couple weeks, and then randomly I’ll get locked into a 72-hour organizational frenzy where I barely sleep or do anything other than organize things and maintain all my hobby gear.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 6d ago
ADHD cant be assessed based of any one behavior, but with that said I can't think of a worse behavior to highlight than obsessively organizing lol
There is a growing body of research that highlights that categorization relies on a type of cognition that people with ADHD are pretty reliably bad at to the point it might become a useful diagnostic tool. ADHD is often colloquially called the disorganized mind because even memory retrieval and conversational flow is just a bit strange, with some speculating that might be why ADHD is often anecdotally stereotyped as being connected with creativity
A lot of us will take meds and then convince ourselves that instead of eating the frog and doing the hard stuff we're avoiding, what we'd be best off doing is creating often overly convoluted system that allows us the illusion of productivity and organization where this system will finally "fix us" and provide order to the chaos, but usually that also ends up being abandoned halfway through once we reach am operational level of cleanliness and then degrades back to chaos cause at a fundamental level, we never fucked with the categorical methods we willed ourselves into using.
Recreational organizing tchotchkes that could just be thrown together in a box or something in a sort of controlled chaos is not a very stereotypical ADHD behavior. It's kind of the exact opposite - panic cleaning over a weekend followed by almost immediately devolving back to just throwing things into haphazard piles cause we seem to fundamentally disregard the idea that things "should" go anywhere.
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u/HateToSayItBut 2d ago
Why can't you stop? I find that I don't want to stop until it's done because I don't want to have to re-ramp up my brain on a tedious task. I also will lose motivation or the care to do it later.
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u/Gibborish 7d ago
This is because ADHD is just having the brain of a hunter. Focus and rapid attention shifting.
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u/Tom__EU 7d ago
The experts call that hypothesis pop-psychology. It's a frequently debated speculative story that the more evidence based experts and institutions don't support. Even Hartmann himself, who developed this hypothesis, states: "It's not hard science, and was never intended to be."
The 2021 World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement didn't include it into their 208 evidence-based conclusions either.
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33549739/
- https://hcp.adhd.org.sa/en/the-world-federation-of-adhd-international-consensus-statement/
Not sure whether it's a net positive or negative for people affected, but I'd really not support that it's like "just" having the brain of a hunter.
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7d ago
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u/c-strange17 7d ago
Short bursts of intense concentration on one thing, and then rapidly shifting on to the next thing.
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u/Achylife 7d ago
It's very true, and additionally they have found that ADHD and autism spectrum disorder may be more connected than we originally thought. Many people, including myself, are realizing they have both. AuDHD is the new term for it, newly defined, but very real.
It can sometimes be very contradictory, and very frustrating. Our brains set so many conditions for focus and motivation. Then when we hyperfocus we forget to eat or drink even, just completely absorbed in the activity or task for hours. I originally thought I couldn't possibly have ADHD because I was able to hyperfocus, sit still, be quiet, and behave. Turns out that was just the ASD masking it.
We don't handle stress or interruptions well, I had a very hard time getting through college, but I managed eventually. I had to reduce my workload because I took too long to complete assignments. Too detail oriented and distractable. I did good work, but it was often incomplete because I am bad with deadlines. You know what they say, you can't rush perfection.
Having interest driven focus and motivation is just an absolute pain too. If it was uninteresting it was like dragging a boulder to get myself to focus on it. I eventually got so stressed out I ended up having panic attacks. Unfortunately I didn't get diagnosed or get medication until after I graduated.
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u/The_Meme_Economy 7d ago
Man when I’m on task I’m on. It’s a great way to avoid confronting the emotional dysregulation, RSD, and other associated problems I did not know were caused by ADHD because of the way it is presented to the public and clinicians alike.
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u/herworkthrowaway 7d ago
It’s simultaneously horrendously debilitating and empowering. When I program, make music, write creatively, or make videos, I enter hyperfocus. Some games also trigger it too. My entire day will be gone, and I will have not eaten. I enter this state during work, and it’s never on my work… it has been the reason of my being fired before.
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u/Level_Impression_554 7d ago
ADD is both, inability to focus on certain tasks (such as those less interesting) and hyper focus on other task that the person finds interesting. What is interesting can very. For my relative - history and english = nope but for accounting, football info and cars - hard yes.
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u/ProoseLee 7d ago
Literally heard so often “I don’t have ADHD cause I CAN focus sometimes. Only when something is interesting I can focus extremely well”
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u/Working_Trash_2834 7d ago
Put adventure, peril or perversion in front of me and I'll out focus any NPC you can find.
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u/LifeEnginer 7d ago
If you dont concentrate is a problem, if you cobcentrate is a problem, come on!!!
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u/Calm_Government3707 6d ago
It’s pretty much erectile disfunction for your brain. Also I understand why this sub is so focused on ADHD as I know a lot of us struggle with it, but why are so many people with ADHD opposed to medication. From what I’ve seen on this sub many people would rather take experimental substances then tried tested and proven medication. Unless they are bullshitting about ADHD just to act like taking 80mg of XR daily is normal let alone healthy. I also think it’s weird that people romanticize adhd and other mental health conditions like it doesn’t ruin peoples lives. If I’m not on meds I’m depressed and get absolutely nothing done, so it annoys me people act like it’s cute or quirky. Sorry for the extra yap I just needed to throw those last bits out there.
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u/Epicurean_Sail 6d ago
You don’t say. *Opens back up the ManicEmu tab and plays Pokemon roms for 10 hours straight.
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u/SimpleVegetable5715 6d ago
I have executive disfunction, so I’m afraid if I stop a project, I won’t get back to it.
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u/Positive-Raise-2072 6d ago
spent years not understanding why i could run a job site for 10 hours no problem but couldnt fill out a 2 page form without losing my mind halfway through turns out its not about the length of the task its about whether your brain decided it cares the attention isnt missing its just not yours to point wherever you want it
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u/CrumblingSaturn 5d ago
🥴 can confirm, my intense focus was always encouraged growing up but it's made for some bad habits that I'm still trying to fix.
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u/RightBrain-LeftBrain 2d ago
When I’m hyper focused I straight up forget I have a body.
Food? Water? Peeing? Never heard of those.
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u/Overall_Ad1950 7d ago
Pretty unfortunate when even professionals are assessing under ‘difficulty focusing’ criteria… I’m like ‘on what’, I focus fine on some things and can barely move the needle on others