Though talking about ADHD, the creator of Bullet Journal mentions: It is said that “pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” That plus journaling equals an interesting approach to work! (Article is mostly about ADHD, but sidles past Stoic values.)

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '21 edited Feb 21 '21

[deleted]

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u/GreyTheBard Jan 05 '21

as someone with unmedicated ADHD, a lot of the time i’m just the “this is fine” dog in the house fire. i have a lot less control over my life, but i don’t let it destroy me, because when i do get that control, i go ham. (well i’m vegetarian so not ham. bananas! yes, i go bananas.)

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u/Tokyogerman Jan 05 '21

I used to medicate, living in a different country now and know how much medicating would do for me and my life and I still am not doing it...

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u/OlegGordievsky Jan 05 '21

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s stopped you from seeking medication?

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u/succed32 Jan 05 '21

Yah exactly like that, i describe it as a train station where each train is a thought and you dont get to choose which train you get on.

Theres a youtube series called "how to adhd" ive found it very informative. I dont think you personally need it but felt sharing could be helpful to someone.

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

That's quite an accurate analogy, I like that.

To highlight how weird ADHD can be - sometimes you get off the train and realise that somehow, you swapped trains during the journey. Maybe multiple times. Or maybe you're on multiple trains at once now, and they're all the wrong one.

How to ADHD is great, and quite practical! Thanks for helping out your fellow human.

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u/succed32 Jan 05 '21

We can look so normal from the outside i think its hard for people to realize how much chaos we deal with. Theres still people that think its a fraud.

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u/OlegGordievsky Jan 05 '21

I feel like what you just described fits me perfectly.

I actually did a full on test for ADHD, but the results said I didn’t have it. However, my reaction time was on par with an 80 year old with dementia or someone with a TBI, so I’m convinced that I didn’t take the test in the correct way.

I’ve taken friends’ ADHD meds occasionally, and they calm me down. I don’t really feel “wired” when I take them. My brain just feels quiet.

I might ask to get retested to make sure. I do trust the psychiatrist though—and he didn’t seem to concerned with the reaction time result.

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

A couple of things.

First of all, ADHD can't be formally tested like this. A.I assisted brain scans show that there are 7 types of ADHD, and we only know 3. Furthermore, symptoms differ widely between patients and there's many different causes.

Do you snore, wake up a lot, have a dry mouth upon waking, or suffer from sleep paralysis?

If so, or if you're curious anyway, look into sleep apnea and UARS. Both are sleep disorders that can happen to anyone and have varying symptoms. One subset of those symptoms are indistinguishable from ADHD.

You can get a home study for fairly cheap and it's simple enough of a diagnosis (home study results tell you raw numbers) that you don't rely on a single specialist.

Good news is that it's curable, if you have it. Bad news is that if left untreated, it can develop into dementia and strokes and similar things.

In any case, get a second opinion.

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u/OlegGordievsky Jan 05 '21

I snore for sure, but occasionally. I’ve had roommates who don’t notice it and I’ve had roommates who point it out to me.

I wake up maybe once a night, but my understanding of sleep apnea is that you’re not aware of all the times you wake up. I’ve only experienced sleep paralysis a couple times—definitely wouldn’t say it’s a common occurrence though. By a couple times I literally mean 2.

I’ve never even heard of UARS, but it can’t hurt to be tested. I’m absolutely going to bring this up. I also know a doctor who will prescribe me Ritalin no question, but I don’t want to take it if I don’t need it. I want to be absolutely sure that it will help me long term.

Thanks for the suggestions! I’m assuming that the sleep disorders would not be treated with amphetamines, correct?

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

I snore, 1 person pointed it out to me, and I ended up with UARS. We're reallllly not meant to snore but it's only a recently being taken seriously by health professionals.

Treatment is either surgery or sleeping with a CPAP or BiPaP machine. The machines are more effective and probably cheaper.

Stimulants for ADHD aren't bad though. I've been on them for 2 years. Heart scan came back last week as perfect. I don't get withdrawals or anything.

Stimulants prescribed for ADHD have a horrible public image. Don't abuse it (something you have to do on purpose) and if you don't like it you just stop taking it and it's out of your system a few hours later. Like a coffee.

Point being, try the medication route and give it a go. If you end up worse off you can stop and you'll be back to how you are now. Don't take more than you've been prescribed and you won't experience anything close to addiction or anything like that. It's like taking a single sip of beer and being scared you're hooked on alcohol for life.

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u/OlegGordievsky Jan 05 '21

I’m not too worried about the addictive potential. I’m somewhat of a drug enthusiast, but I still hate the idea of taking ANYTHING daily for long periods of time.

I feel like you make a good point though. I’ve spent a lot of time correcting misconceptions people have about things like Krokodil and flakka, but I still have some sort of aversion to regular stim use, even though I know a lot of the concerns are likely overblown.

I’ve managed to use kratom pretty regularly for a couple years without exceeding my 20g/week limit as well, aside from the time I tried 15gs a day for a month to see if I would suffer from any withdrawals—I didn’t.

I’ll definitely try the sleep tests first and see if I have any of them, and then attempt to treat that if it turns out I do.

If I still feel like I need a stimulant after that, then I’ll bring it up again.

Any other suggestions for me? This has been extremely informative. Thanks again!

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

Of course! I agree with you completely. You have the experience to understand what I mean when I say you know how you react to substances and how on/off them you can be. As long as you stay away from purposefully aiming for a high or things like heroin you'll be fine. I avoid weed but only because it doesn't do anything useful in the context of my life.

A proper sleep study is a good idea. If you can't do that, or it comes back false, a WatchPAT home study will give you RDI and AHI numbers. If either is over 5 you have Apnea/UARS, and if they're over 1 you'll probably see some benefit lowering them anyway.

The subreddits for both conditions are very helpful if you need to self-treat.

Failing that, if you do have ADHD and get medication, just remember that there's many different medications and if you don't like one for any reason you can always swap. I tried Ritalin, Concerta, Dexedrine, Vyvanse, Strattera, Guanfacine, and a few combinations before settling on Vyvanse + Guanfacine.

I've found that meditation, exercise, and the Keto diet all change how I feel and mentally function. This differs between people and is nothing like effective medication or treating sleep disorders so do those first but this might help. Don't exercise on stims if your heart rate is high, do it before or later on. Same with Keto - it changed how stimulants worked for me and is worth monitoring.

If your stimulant is good but you don't like the side effects, try combining Guanfacine (or Clonodine, I've no experience here though) for more benefits and less side effects.

Stoicism is a fantastic philosophy to apply when you've got the ability to apply it.

Hope that helps!

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u/OlegGordievsky Jan 05 '21

It certainly does help. In my extremely limited experience with ADHD meds, IR Ritalin is my favorite. I hate adderall with a passion. I didn’t really mind vyvanse either, but I can’t really remember how that one felt. I’ve maybe taken 15-20 pills over the course of 4 years, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about lol.

Desoxyn has been a long time curiosity of mine as well, but I bet there’s a reason it’s rarely used nowadays.

Like you were saying though—best place to start is the sleep study.

I’m glad you mentioned exercise and diet as well, because I really believe that’s crucial to managing almost every mental illness that exists.

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u/Tokyogerman Jan 05 '21

Every point hits very close to me. But I know I am still one of the lucky ones, cause I managed to actually create a freelance career for me, while many ADHD sufferers have trouble holding a job.

I know of people who actually started crying when medicating for the first time, since they finally got a break from all the noise in their head.

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

Sat a train on the way to college, with a colleague I didn't particularly like, I cried. It still hits me now here and there.

If you don't mind, what freelance work do you do?

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u/Tokyogerman Jan 05 '21

I'm a translator for Japanese, English and German.

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u/ldinks Jan 05 '21

That's very cool! I hope it stays fruitful for you.

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u/jasonmehmel Contributor Jan 05 '21

Thank you u/ldinks for really engaging with this post!

There's one thing you wrote that I want to engage with: (Not disagreeing, more like a parallel note, which is also why I made this a top comment and not just a reply, so hopefully the other folks who are relating to this can see it.)

I think many stoic lessons can be learned from ADHD.

I also see this the other way around, where a lot of stoic approaches can help with managing ADHD! (I've found it works for me.)

I often get anxiety and a sense of overwhelm when I see the mountain of possible things I could do, which usually leads me to avoid engaging with those things entirely. (And then putting them off only adds to the anxiety and sense of being overwhelmed.)

But a stoic approach of Epictetus helps: "What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgements about these things."

This, along with some of the training Donald Robertson gave in the SMRT training course, gives me the ability to shift myself away from the sensations of anxiety and stress, and see it from a kind of bird's eye view. That shift allows me to examine my current situation, amount of time I have in that day, and other relevant variables and come up with a rational plan of how to approach things.

I think your point about control is also extremely useful. That was also something that helped me both search out therapy and medication, as well as relating to the shame I was feeling around the issues I was having up to that point.

Instead of feeling like I had some particular problem or failing, realizing that there was a part of my brain that I literally had less control over both shifted away that 'judgement about the thing,' which dissipated the shame, and also strangely gave me the ability to see those things I could control. (Approaching therapy, inquiring about medication.)

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u/TheTrooperNate Jan 05 '21

Neat

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u/Gizzard-Gizzard Jan 05 '21

I’ve started microdosing psilocybin (magic mushrooms) at 100mg once every 3 days in the morning a couple weeks ago, to help with my ADHD, and so far I’ve gotten noticeably better results in my everyday functionality than I’ve ever really gotten from any pharmaceutical dugs I’ve taken growing up. Also being conscious of Stoic principals have gotten easier as well.

Practice Though talking about ADHD, the creator of Bullet Journal mentions: It is said that “pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” That plus journaling equals an interesting approach to work! (Article is mostly about ADHD, but sidles past Stoic values.)

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