Yes I get that sometimes too! I like your explanation because I had been struggling to explain. I generally just need to sit in silence or something at that point and give myself space to readjust. Definitely tell your doctor if you are feeling good and if the meds are lasting long enough for you right now. Speaking up for yourself is important to make sure you are getting what you need, not what someone else assumes you need. You could always increase the dose later down the line if you need to.

This is the right approach if your goal is to change people’s minds. Reasoned, fact-supported, logical debate is valuable, and I respect that. There is no need to shame individual creators for how they choose to explore their ideas or make use of available tools. I do not agree with every point you raised, but I think these are serious concerns worth discussing. That includes issues like corporate influence, data usage, and environmental impact. I am always open to that kind of conversation when it is grounded in good faith.

They all get SO alarmed by the overshare

Magnesium glycinate, +1. It saves my sleep...

I have had a few drinks on Ritalin and it feels like the drink doesn't do much. I have read that lots of alcohol can cause heart arythmia with methylphenidate but that's not 1 drink.

Etymotics

Lists. Music. Earplugs for if I can’t remove myself from an overstimulation situation. Reminders and calendar events for everything. Keep all my stuff in the same spot. Take walks every day. Try to remember to eat and sleep well by keeping a strict routine. The last thing is crucial for me.

Most absurd thing with dentists: They do this thing where they check the depth of the little pockets in the gums. It seems to have 0 medical value. Just to be like: "Watch out, it's 2.5 mm now! Two years ago, it was at 2.3 mm. Just so you know what's up." Ironically, it takes a long time for the whole mouth and is very painful, worse than fixing actual problems, e. g. by drilling. Mostly for that, I left my reputable high-tech dentist of two decades for a small practice with old equipment that specialises in anxiety.

I never really thought about it, but it's certainly possible. It definitely makes me feel better to have certain things in these uncertain times.

If I sit still I get way more sensitive to temperature than if I move around. Like lying under a warm duvet, it's almost impossible to remove it. But get up and do some frog leaps and burpees and you'll soon want to throw off that duvet and change your situation. Same with shivering in a cold wet towel, being cold isn't enough to get me to get dressed if I'm sitting down. But doing some squats or hip raises to raise my body temperature and suddenly I'm able to move around and get shit done again. My brain is motion powered. I need to move to function. Find some movement you can do in bed (hip raises, crunches, pushups) that get you warm enough to get out of bed. Maybe it helps!

Many of us just hate talking on the phone, which gets even worse when the call is not on our own terms; although both suck, being called sucks more.

I don't really see it as randomness. More of a craving for novelty and a constant stream of consciousness. I was talking with another another ADHD person today and it might seem random, but every change in the conversation had a logical connection to the things before it. We both were content to flow with the conversation is it naturally moved between topics.

I've been working at getting better at being mediocre at things. So far, it's been a source of positive growth, but I do find it ironic how even when it comes to this, I feel compelled to frame it to myself as improving at a thing

My PCP recommended me to a specialist office that does neurological testing at scale, so I was able to get through it all pretty quickly. I asked about it at my yearly insurance physical in March, got an appointment for online testing on the 3rd, and got my results two weeks later. I was surprised by how easy it was. I have pretty good insurance from my job. Here's the specialist I used I'm not sure if they take patients outside Michigan or not, but everything I did was remote, so I don't see why they couldn't. Their reviews on Google are bad, but my experience was great, and I've had friends say good things about another doctor also at this practice

Thank you! That is encouraging.

Actually I don't, I have a new psychiatrist and the team is hesitant to give a stimulant when I'm on so many other meds for depression, anxiety, insomnia, and pain. They want to start with non-stimulants. I'm at a loss at what to do. Am I really going to start over AGAIN?! I've already done this. I just want to feel better already, I want that silence everyone talks about. That ability to just DO.

I have a todo app and have set up recurring reminders for daily/weekly/monthly tasks. Daily for like dishes/trash/meals Weekly for laundry/groceries/etc Monthly for budgeting/deeper cleaning I don't stress if I miss one (or many,lol) but at least having them in the app means I have the list handy already when I realize I should check it, and not be wondering "what was that once a month thing I meant to do....?"

I ended up getting reevaluated for some reason in high school back in the '90s, by a complete pompous asshole. So, according to this dude, not preferring to sit at the front of a classroom is proof positive that it cannot possibly be ADHD. I must just be lazy and manipulative. (That second part was a new one, at least. Trying to dodge accountability? Idek.) That was it, that was the entire rationale stated for why ADHD was supposedly no longer an issue in my life. I am not joking. Thankfully my parents thought he sounded full of it too, and did arrange for a more comprehensive educational reevaluation through a university center. Where my own seating preferences never came up, incidentally. Yeah, I also had PTSD and actual (partly documented) reason not to trust some people behind me at that school. Turns out I'm also on the autistic spectrum. I still have not magically grown out of either thing, 30+ years later. Funny how that works. That little anecdote aside, I do get the idea that this is probably one of those longterm received wisdom things. Just because it's a go-to suggestion, doesn't mean that this strategy is going to work best for everyone. Useful point to bring up, OP.

Interesting insight! I travelled the same road in the other direction. As someone who loves science, I always saw my role as a patient to just report symptoms and let the doctors do their thing. And I'm sure this would be the ideal approach if everybody had the House M.D. team on their case. But after decades of this failing, I realised that this method does not work with a real-world medical system where doctors have more bias than they should, work with methods from their studying days that assumed they had more time and resources per case, and wrong monetary incentives. So Method 1: I say I have X, and make it clear that I'll be a PITA if their test doesn't confirm it. If there were no bias, there would be no harm to this, but if there is, it's working to my advantage now. Method 2: Just think of them as the idiot who is clueless but gatekeeper of the much wanted prescription. Nobody wants to hear this, but a layman's web research, LLM and 1000 hours of thinking often beats 10 years of medical training if the doctor interrupts the patient after 20 seconds and only thinks about the case for 5 minutes. (With 30 minutes, my money would be back on the trained professional, but nobody has 30 minutes.) A patient can also fixate on a premature assumption just like a doctor can, but my very subjective experience is that doctors are more prone to that.

Surprised they werent just stored as strings you could edit in a hex editor or something, but then I know nothing about fonts