For those whose drugs were ineffective or had bad side effects (like my child), which alternative treatments helped with your ADHD, e.g., AttenGo, Learning Breakthrough Program, Focus Pocus, Play Attention, or EEG neurofeedback? Has anybody here ever done neurofeedback while playing poker, e.g., increasing beta brainwaves for focus?

time-management, organizational, cognitive therapy were also helpful

Sounds stupid, but last year had to do a personal journal for 40 days in my social context of business class, and its really help me acknowledge and face some of my habits/tendencies that we're part of my routines and contributing to my difficulties.

great incentive in doing this for a class. once the class was over though, it would prob be difficult to keep something like this up. still beneficial in highlighting bad habits like you said.

anyone have any opinions on the benefits/variations between ritalin/concerta/vyvanse/adderall?

Even though doctors have known about ADHD for 100 years, it's still a matter of trial-and-error. About 1/3 of ADHDers do better on amphetamine-based drugs like Vyvanse and Adderall. One-third do better on methylphenidate-based drugs like Ritalin and Concerta. My child had horrible allergy-like side effects from both types of drugs, so I am researching if any alternative treatment such as neurofeedback will work.

concerta seems to okay (similar to vyvanse imo) but lacks the potency of adderall. the recent trials have made me realize the differences between the four.

The exercise itself required detailling every single thing you do in a day. Every single thing. And then trying to assess the importance of it. Why are you doing it? What happens if you do it differently? Are you acting in an assertive manner? Are you simply doing it in a responsive way? i.e its always been done this way? its expected out of you? etc etc.


To me the main takeaway was just coming to realise how everything was interconnected. How putting little discipline into sustaining healthy sleeping patterns and eating habits contributed to make my ADD symptoms in schools several times worse. My inability to concentrate in school left me feeling out of sync with academic content and the class' progression. This triggers some of my anxiety issues and a severe amount of procrastination. This builds up in self-reinforcing ways to the point where maybe one month into a semester I start socially isolating myself, maybe limiting myself to only seeing 2-3 of my best friends, as I contemplate what feels like a blurred mass of things to do and feel overwhelmed and anxious. I get the feeling i don't have time for anything else but schoolwork, yet I'm unable to do anything as i have difficulty organizing my time and coordinating my efforts.

Just getting 8 hours of sleeps, going to bed early, eating properly and committing to proper exercise can make a world of difference.

I just got diagnosed with ADHD last week after some reading on it for the past month or so. I'm on ritalin atm and only taking it when I need to do school work but even that is still hard to do..

Here are some of the things I thought about and concluded that must of been attributed from it.

-Always disrupted people in the class and rebelled against some teachers
- never put in effort for my school work and barely studied in my 5 years of highschool (probably studied 5 times max)
- I was quite fidgety but I think this has lowered down now. I've redirected it to playing guitar and computer games lol
- Always late to class
- no motivation which led to me failing year 8 but I was allowed to continue cause they felt sorry for me but ended up dropping out in year 11.
- Interests always switching frequently; took up a lot of things and dropped them quite fast.
- I'm not sure about this one but it takes me a LONG time to write. I would write 50-80 words in 30-40 minutes in a test and would cross it out and write it again, nitpicking on words that didn't sound "right" to me. Needless to say I got a bad English score in my final year. I still have this problem now and am quite unsure how to fix it.. uni is getting tough because of the 1.5k word limit essays..
- I had a tendency to annoy others back then and I think I still do now? Always question peoples motives behind things by saying "Why would you do that?" or "Why don't you just x instead of y?"

[QUOTE=Nash_equilibria;[B]34175367For those whose drugs were ineffective or had bad side effects (like my child),

So youre kid was a bad side effect huh.

I was diagnosed with ADD 2 a couple years ago.
I do think the whole disease thing is just bullshiit though.
It is just who i am, why should you take meds to change who you are.

In 50 years EVERYBODY has a disease because every behavour what isnt normal gets marked as disease or something.
Luckily i don't live in America where everybody get drugged for live for every tiny little thing.

Yeah, attention "deficit" is really a misnomer, it's more of an attention management disorder I would say.

The way I heard it explained once, that has kind of stuck with me, is that it's like a bunch of different streams of attention, going all over the place. It's really good for multitasking, and also for occasionally hyper-focusing all your "streams" of attention onto something you find really interesting, but really really bad for trying to force yourself to focus on one single thing that you find boring, like a college lecture.

For example, if I'm driving, I have to have music on, or too many of my attention streams will get bored and wander off to find something interesting to ponder. If too many of them find something interesting to think about, they'll start ganging up into hyperfocus mode, take over and I'll stop paying attention to the fact that I'm driving! Music keeps enough of my attention streams occupied, that my driving attention streams'll stay put where I need em.

The disease is real. I don't know your situation, but there are definitely people out there who really suffer from it. The meds are very good in those situations to keep the patients functioning in work/school and socially, as well as keeping them safe from their otherwise very impulsive behaviors.

If you have asthma, that's a disease, it's not who you are. You wouldn't forgo taking your inhaler if you weren't able to breath. It wouldn't be fair to you to have your activity or even life impaired by the disease when a treatment is available. Same with ADHD. It's not fair to those who suffer from it to have their lives impaired when we have a treatment available.

LOLL thats me

"Your" kid, not "youre", there's no such word. Anyway, the drugs' side effects were not only bad, but we did not notice much improvement with her ADHD.

I just bought a Neurosky neurofeedback headset. If it helps me focus while playing poker, I'll try the "Focus Pocus" computer game to help with her ADHD.

I think the people in this thread without medical degrees should refrain from dispensing medical advice. There IS a such thing as ADD. And yes, the medications, along with some behavioral therapy do indeed work. Giving out wrong information is more harmful than helpful.

What is the best way to convince your doctor that you have ADHD or need concerta? Specifically, for law school.

First, you need to get a reference to a Psychiatrist that specializes in ADD/ADHD/Aspergers. Then, you get run through a series of tests. After that, the drug is a part of a treatment program, not something that is just taken solo.

I suspect that you're not ADHD, that you just want a cheat to study. Frankly, if you _really_ want to study law (or anything else), then the ADHD ability to focus on something of interest is more than enough to get you through - WITHOUT DRUGS!

FWIW, I am Aspergers and studied the crap out of computer science and poker. I was able to because I actually like both.

I'm not a medical professional, but I work in mental health. There are a bunch of different teams in the organisation, and one is the 'ADHD Diagnosing Team'. Their waiting list is THREE YEARS. And that's just to be screened for the damn thing so you can get the diagnosis.

Part of my job is to take calls directly from people and tell me about their mental health and what they want help with (in a non-clinical way, as I'm not a health professional). But I've taken thousands of calls. ADHD comes up a lot (and often other issues at the same time, ranging from drugs, lifestyle and relationship problems). My gut feeling is that people are often chasing a white rabbit when they look for the diagnosis of this or that. People often want to because it's easier to look for an easy answer outside of themselves.

Not so long ago, I joined in on a Teams meeting at work. It was all about ADHD and hosted by that team. It was meant for the medical people, but I joined in. I am going to quote two of the things that the ADHD lady said. These are her words, not mine. She definitely does have a lot of direct experience with mental health. But then again, the talk didn't go down with some of the CBT talking therapists where I work (not sure why though, I should find out more about that).
But there was a couple of things she said that stuck with me :

1) In my experience, people with ADHD get habituated in patterns and especially jobs that they are not very good at
2) Cognitive behaviour/talking therapy does work well for people with ADHD

I think the first one is probably many people can relate to. That's how I feel sometimes. And I think it is both sad that this would happen to someone and curious to medicalise it. But maybe that is what happens even worse for those with adult ADHD.
The second one is just food for thought. Definitely don't say no to talking therapy, it could really help you. It's possible this was a bit of a political thing too, because the mental health teams are under one organisation, but they struggle to communicate well and support god knows how many patients. Many of them do like to play ping pong with the referrals back and forth between themselves (My God, so much time is spent on referring and re-referring and rejecting referrals and filling forms. And this is all time that someone needs and is waiting to get help).

Anyway, I don't know how health services are where the OP is from. But if I were advising someone here, I would tell them not to be so quick to run to medical professionals. Don't give away your power so readily. Regardless of whether ADHD is real or not (personally, I believe it does exist on a spectrum), it is a good thing to work on yourself. Change is hard, but putting in the effort to stop bad habits or gain more self-control, for example, will pay you back for the rest of your life. If you work on these things for six months, and really do still feel stuck, consider talking to a professional about it.