drew's blog

In this blog post I will talk about ADHD (ADD), my experience with it, and some ways to manage it.

What is ADD?

ADD stands for attention deficit (hyperactive) disorder. There are around 8.7 million adults with ADHD (5% of population) in the USA (Forbes).

Well I never thought I had it, but it turns out I do. I was diagnosed 10 years ago. I didn’t really think of it seriously then but now when I examine alot of behaviors/patterns in my daily life, alot of time-wastage can be attributed to ADD.

What this means is that my attention span could be improved due to not strong enough pathways in the prefrontal cortex needed for executive decision making and focus.

Symptoms when my brain is low in dopamine include dopamine seeking behaviors like doomscrolling, playing lots of video games, chasing high dopamine events etc. It’s important to recognize this so I can manage time-wasting events (tagged high-dopamine by ADHD brain, not that important in real life by logical brain).

Systems to manage ADD

I have developed some systems to manage ADD:

1. Medication
   • stimulants like 5mg Dexamfetamine/Adderall prescribed by a specialist (I used Circle Medical to get a prescription)
     • sometimes I don’t take the whole medication or I split it into 1/4 chunks
     • I’m trying to run experiments to see if the placebo effect is taking place
     • if I don’t have a planned piece of work, I don’t take it (e.g. Sundays)
2. Exercise (running, swimming, cycling) (reddit)
   • after I go for a run I notice that I don’t have executive dysfunction and start cleaning the house/apartment (reddit)
3. Learning about ADD [1]
   • understanding the causes of ADD can be very beneficial to developing habits/systems to manage its symptoms.
4. Meditation (I use tergar app (free) to track meditations. I try to do 1 minute a day to build an atomic habit)
   • helps to develop a deeper connection with the present (long term pattern)

Conclusion

In conclusion, ADD is not something you really have control of (genesis).

It may even be the case that ADHD is a symptom of modern society and a lack of connection to what is real / present-ness.

However you can develop systems to manage ADHD. I think alot of people in the modern age are trying to have that deeper connection.

Sources

1 – Scattered Minds – Gabor Maté