<story><title>Ask HN: How did an adult ADHD diagnosis help you?</title><text>My therapist wants to explore an ADHD diagnosis, run tests and dive deep. My question to you is; how did this help you or impact your life?&lt;p&gt;I am in the later half of an adventurous and successful career. I continue to grow, have a long-term stable marriage, good savings, great life. I went to my therapist to handle a lingering family issue and now we&amp;#x27;ve come up to the ADHD talk.&lt;p&gt;They want to run neurological tests, said I&amp;#x27;m &amp;#x27;twice exceptional&amp;#x27; and I see this as an expensive and time consuming diversion of my goals. I do admit that there is some validity in the idea, I do see symptoms, but how would this help me at this point in my life?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>subroutine</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure which med you are on, but I&amp;#x27;ve been on adderall for about 12 years. Started during 1st year of a phd program.&lt;p&gt;In my experience with adderall... everything initially good about this particular Rx eventually fades away. Amphetamine makes you feel great. At the beginning really, really, great. It certainly helped me focus on whatever was in front of me, whether it was math homework or an iphone game. It became very important to ensure the right thing(s) were in front of me before taking meds (e.g. homework textbook or open IDE; not, for example, wikipedia, or email, or HN). Not getting enough sleep was the most acute negative effect of the meds. The battle for sleep continues to this day. The meds do suppress my appetite - they still do. It didn&amp;#x27;t help me lose as much weight as I&amp;#x27;d hoped; turns out staring at a computer screen doesn&amp;#x27;t require a ton of calories.&lt;p&gt;These days I take as little Rx as possible, and I feel a lot better. I attribute a portion of this mood improvement to using a treadmill desk, which I started using ~2 years ago. I walk about 15-20 miles a day, while working (coding&amp;#x2F;writing&amp;#x2F;etc). I feel like it helps me focus, because I am &amp;quot;burning off&amp;quot; pent-up ADHD restlessness while working. And probably most helpful of all, I&amp;#x27;m tired at the end of the day, so I fall asleep much easier.</text></item><item><author>corobo</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been on medication for about a week now and I&amp;#x27;ve not thought about offing myself once since starting. That seems dramatic but honestly that used to be the default go-to answer for any problem that couldn&amp;#x27;t be resolved within a day or so. Seems a bit excessive of a response to problems now.. It really looks like my depression might be rooted in undiagnosed ADHD.&lt;p&gt;I can also if not properly focus on tasks at least &lt;i&gt;force&lt;/i&gt; myself to finish whatever I&amp;#x27;m working on before wandering off. I&amp;#x27;m going to give it another week then ask for a bump on the dosage to see if that helps that one&lt;p&gt;Negatives:&lt;p&gt;Sweating a bunch, especially at night. Then again we are just about cruising into summer and in my old place I had aircon so that might be unrelated, but it is a possible side effect.&lt;p&gt;Appetite seems to have taken a hit too. While I am fully for that (I could lose a bit of weight no bother) I will keep an eye on it&lt;p&gt;Due to covid restrictions I&amp;#x27;ve not been seen for talky therapy or anything yet, this is purely medicinal treatment currently but it&amp;#x27;s been a MASSIVE positive move for me</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pcthrowaway</author><text>I was on Adderall for roughly 10 years, and it really didn&amp;#x27;t make me feel great. I tried taking larger doses when I was going through my &amp;#x27;experiment with all the new drugs&amp;#x27; phase in high school, and didn&amp;#x27;t really get the euphoria I hear about. In general, Adderall in any dose makes me sweaty, smelly, and antisocial.&lt;p&gt;I hated taking it. Yet it would in fact improve my performance. For 3 years since my last filled prescription circa 2012 I had enough adderall to just take it whenever I felt like I &amp;#x27;needed it&amp;#x27;, which was rarely, because I hated taking it so much. Since I&amp;#x27;ve run out, I do have issues with ADD still, but fortunately have been able to cope as an adult in my (now) 30s.&lt;p&gt;I do think having it on hand is really great for some people, but I don&amp;#x27;t think &amp;#x27;feeling great&amp;#x27; is a unanimous experience.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How did an adult ADHD diagnosis help you?</title><text>My therapist wants to explore an ADHD diagnosis, run tests and dive deep. My question to you is; how did this help you or impact your life?&lt;p&gt;I am in the later half of an adventurous and successful career. I continue to grow, have a long-term stable marriage, good savings, great life. I went to my therapist to handle a lingering family issue and now we&amp;#x27;ve come up to the ADHD talk.&lt;p&gt;They want to run neurological tests, said I&amp;#x27;m &amp;#x27;twice exceptional&amp;#x27; and I see this as an expensive and time consuming diversion of my goals. I do admit that there is some validity in the idea, I do see symptoms, but how would this help me at this point in my life?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>subroutine</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure which med you are on, but I&amp;#x27;ve been on adderall for about 12 years. Started during 1st year of a phd program.&lt;p&gt;In my experience with adderall... everything initially good about this particular Rx eventually fades away. Amphetamine makes you feel great. At the beginning really, really, great. It certainly helped me focus on whatever was in front of me, whether it was math homework or an iphone game. It became very important to ensure the right thing(s) were in front of me before taking meds (e.g. homework textbook or open IDE; not, for example, wikipedia, or email, or HN). Not getting enough sleep was the most acute negative effect of the meds. The battle for sleep continues to this day. The meds do suppress my appetite - they still do. It didn&amp;#x27;t help me lose as much weight as I&amp;#x27;d hoped; turns out staring at a computer screen doesn&amp;#x27;t require a ton of calories.&lt;p&gt;These days I take as little Rx as possible, and I feel a lot better. I attribute a portion of this mood improvement to using a treadmill desk, which I started using ~2 years ago. I walk about 15-20 miles a day, while working (coding&amp;#x2F;writing&amp;#x2F;etc). I feel like it helps me focus, because I am &amp;quot;burning off&amp;quot; pent-up ADHD restlessness while working. And probably most helpful of all, I&amp;#x27;m tired at the end of the day, so I fall asleep much easier.</text></item><item><author>corobo</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been on medication for about a week now and I&amp;#x27;ve not thought about offing myself once since starting. That seems dramatic but honestly that used to be the default go-to answer for any problem that couldn&amp;#x27;t be resolved within a day or so. Seems a bit excessive of a response to problems now.. It really looks like my depression might be rooted in undiagnosed ADHD.&lt;p&gt;I can also if not properly focus on tasks at least &lt;i&gt;force&lt;/i&gt; myself to finish whatever I&amp;#x27;m working on before wandering off. I&amp;#x27;m going to give it another week then ask for a bump on the dosage to see if that helps that one&lt;p&gt;Negatives:&lt;p&gt;Sweating a bunch, especially at night. Then again we are just about cruising into summer and in my old place I had aircon so that might be unrelated, but it is a possible side effect.&lt;p&gt;Appetite seems to have taken a hit too. While I am fully for that (I could lose a bit of weight no bother) I will keep an eye on it&lt;p&gt;Due to covid restrictions I&amp;#x27;ve not been seen for talky therapy or anything yet, this is purely medicinal treatment currently but it&amp;#x27;s been a MASSIVE positive move for me</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>OkayPhysicist</author><text>With he sleep thing, I experienced the opposite. The ability to just lay down, decide to sleep, and sleep, combined with a bit of a chemical cue from the comedown really helped to regulate the insomnia I had struggled with since adolescence.</text></comment>