ADHD is a common condition in adults, estimated to be around 3-5% of the population. It's very frequently comorbid with other behavioral disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. But even "pure" ADHD can be quite disadvantageous. People with ADHD are much less likely to finish school, have trouble staying employed, more likely to be divorced, have greater health care utilization among other adverse outcomes.
Despite these factors only 20% of ADHD individuals receive treatment which can make a big difference. Medications can be helpful but are not by any means a "cure". Rather specific behavioral therapies are a necessary part of an effective treatment program.
As a physician specializing in behavioral health, I've treated a great number of ADHD adults. It's impressive how much improvement patients could make over a period of months to years as a result of their determined effort. I came to appreciate patients' innate talents that many were eventually able to exploit. It was gratifying to see some become top-tier innovators in their fields including technologies.
Of course people will "identify" unique traits as part of their sense of "self". ADHD individuals may come to regard aspects of their quirky cognitive styles as part of an "identity" but that's not necessarily the same as having ADHD as the biggest component.
Last thing I'll say is that ADHD is considered a developmental disorder. IOW there's no sharp line between having/not having it. The extent it's a problem depends on the context, which is a huge discussion topic in its own right.
I am 30. I got diagnosed with ADHD a few months ago and I started treatment (adderall and lifestyle changes).
Growing up, ADHD was my biggest enemy in life and I didn't even realize it.
Once I began treatment, the change was almost overnight. I know I'm just one data point in a sea of data points, but I really just want to add that I'm on the other end of the parent comment and getting diagnosed, other than my marriage and the birth of my son, was the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Same here, minus the marriage and son. It's sobering to realize how much failure and self-loathing could have been avoided if it had been diagnosed earlier.
> "Growing up, ADHD was my biggest enemy in life and I didn't even realize it."
That corresponds to what many ADHD adults have experienced. Based on what I've observed among ADHD patients, early response to treatment is a reason for optimism. Chances are ongoing treatment will support continued improvement for months if not years. And not just the patient but also the person's family and beyond. Differences in outcomes are decidedly non-trivial.
One interesting idea I've read is that life long treatment might enable long lasting behavioural and even physical changes in the brain that makes functioning easier when unmedicated.
Basically, meds set you on a healthy path that might lessen the effects of the disorder.
I can't speak to the neurology of it, but I could see that being the case. Forming habits & routines + making lifestyle changes are almost certainly easier when medicated for ADHD. If you engrain those changes into yourself long enough, I bet they would stick after you're off medication as well.
I definitely found I could decrease my dose after a few years because I had developed habits while on it that I never could have without. It's not magic, but I'm in a much better place now.
I understand why you're asking. I have often felt that way myself and it's why I put off getting treatment for so long. I was worried I would just end up being some 30 year old tech dude addicted to adderall who didn't actually need it. I want to address those questions in others since getting a diagnosis was so helpful for me. I want to educate around it.
The short answer is that I was diagnosed independently by 2 professionals, I have a family history of ADHD, and I exhibit all of the symptoms of ADHD.
Anecdotally, I know what stimulant abuse looks like. I have seen friends abuse adderall and other stimulants. I react totally different to it than they do.
Since starting: I'm less angry. I'm less annoyed. I have the ability to listen to my spouse talk to me. I'm not jittery or jumpy any more. I am not always singing, tapping, humming, talking over people, talking at yelling volume in normal conversations. I know when to stop talking. I can actually take naps now and go to sleep before my body almost literally shuts down like I used to not be able to.
I'd be happy to give you or anyone else a more in depth walk through how I got here and how I'm sure of what I have, but I understand that's not what you asked for.
> Since starting: I'm less angry. I'm less annoyed. I have the ability to listen to my spouse talk to me. I'm not jittery or jumpy any more.
THIS! Absolutely this.
Bit crazy that these are also the symptoms of someone on withdrawal from amphetamines and other stimulants†, huh?
But wait a sec... we had these before going anywhere near medication?
Could it possibly be we've been living a life of dopamine withdrawal?
† I was going to say "amphetamine addiction" but stopped myself... a significant number of these poor folk are self-medicating to escape the constant agony of their inner turmoil. They just couldn't get what they needed under the supervision of modern medicine, and micro-dose their intake so it delivers the beneficial effects and minimises the side-effect.
Since not all ADHD medicines are dopaminergic, people would have to be short on norepinephrine and… whatever it is Intuniv/Tenex does as well.
I'm not very keen on the "everyone needs a dopamine break" hypothesis because I'm not sure those are actually the symptoms of amphetamine withdrawal. I mean, for me when it crashes it just makes me unable to get off the couch or go home from work because I forget to do it.
I know I'm telling you what you likely already know. But please please please please try to make the appointment. The only reason I was able to was because I created some sense of urgency to do it. Maybe have a friend that you make yourself accountable to? Tell them you owe them money if you don't make an appointment before X date and then more money if you don't go to the appointment?
If you need someone to talk though it with or if you have questions, my email is in my profile.
Thanks, but i did multiple :) It is just that they tend to take a few months of waiting list each time, to hear at the end "yeah you may have it, but i do not do adults".
It is not taking the first appt the problem, it is continuing despite the system spiting in your face.
The scientific consensus of the medical community is very clear [1]. ADHD exists. It is also clear that the individuals who have it do in fact suffer from it.
Unfortunately medical science is not at the point yet where it can, in an individual case, objectively verified with e.g. a brain scan or a blood test.
You should be aware that comments like yours, while surely not your intention, do real damage to the large category of people (more than half; ibid) who have the disorder and are not receiving treatment because they are being gaslit by a society that already minimizes the disorder at every turn.
Thanks for this. You can discuss any disorder with people and they'll take you seriously, but mention ADHD and everybody is quick to point out that it can be cured/you need to eat better/you need to do more exercise/you need to try harder/it's a talent you need to embrace/it's just a ploy to get stims.
I used to be this kind of person, I ignored the fact that I had many ADHD signs, and it's taken me decades to finally figure out what was wrong with me all along was something I thought was bullshit. Getting diagnosed has completely changed my life.
I would assume from the fact they were diagnosed (as they stated) by a professional (hopefully)?
As someone who also fights an internal battle with my diagnosis 24/7, comments like this are not helpful and can even be hurtful.
Would you ask someone with a hearing aid how they could be sure they were deaf? Or someone wheelchair bound how they could be sure they can't just walk if they try hard enough?
The world of work that we have made for ourselves as a society can be as inaccessible as the built environment can be to those who need accommodations to move around it safely.
Yes, I was diagnosed by two professionals independently of each others because I was so unsure of the first diagnosis.
Comments like these are hurtful. I ask myself the question the commenter asked me every single day. I just try to approach them with care and the assumption they are coming from a good place. I know that isn't always the case, but it's the best I can do.
Also, it's wild that I already have a strategy and thoughts about dealing with comments like these. It's only been a few weeks, but it's already happened a handful of times.
Musk and Andreessen's recent comments on the matter angered me. And though I don't think Andreessenn's were necessarily out of the same place of hate's as Elon's were, they were still framed in a damaging way.
> Comments like these are hurtful. I ask myself the question the commenter asked me every single day. I just try to approach them with care and the assumption they are coming from a good place. I know that isn't always the case, but it's the best I can do.
I try to as well, I had to rewrite that comment several times to be bit more generous but had to leave it where it was. It's hard - Ironically it comes from a place of wishing the world would be more generous to you. Beyond regular therapy I don't talk openly about this, both for this reason, and as I had been struggling with, and treated, for depression for over 20 years (which it now turns out is exacerbated or even caused by the untreated ADHD).
I've spent an incredible amount of effort and energy actively hiding this fact and any consequences from employers, teachers and loved ones out of fear of what it would mean for my already difficult to maintain status quo. I've seen what the stigma of mental health can do to ones career and future opportunities (unless of course you are an active and visual advocate, campaigner as well as your normal role).
It's deeply unfortunate that it's so asymmetrical. u/symlinkk has asked a question that in isolation is merely a category error, a lazy intellectual argument regarding burden of proof, subjectivity inherent in the DSM, clinical standards regarding impairment, etc., that can be dispatched in short order. However the emotional effect of a question that implicitly denies the existence of the illness remains long after the intellectual error is corrected.
It's structurally similar to LGBT erasure. We have already gone through life for years believing that there was something wrong with us that we could fix, and therefore was a moral failing and source of shame ("just use a planner" [1]). If in fact it is an immutable characteristic akin to sexuality, then it cannot be a source of shame. One would not ask nowadays whether one was really sure about their sexual orientation. Then again, very few people recreationally take testosterone.
I can only wish you the best regards, and be grateful that we live in the modern day where science (but not the general public yet) has developed an understanding of these things.
To play devil’s advocate, wearing hearing aids would suck because you are at the whim of whatever algorithm on the aid. Furthermore, they are adjusted to your hearing range. This is how they know your hearing is gone. Phones tend to be problematic especially in ambient environments. It isn’t like wearing earbuds more like noise canceling with fairly low pass through frequency. You’d be hard pressed to find people who would prefer this over normal hearing. I assume most people would also prefer to walk. Adderall is the exact opposite. Each pill is worth $20 at any university during cram time. That tells you it is desirable by all.
There is at least some question about whether or not ADHD meds actually have cognitive benefits for non-ADHD users. This study, which is admittedly limited, shows that Adderall doesn’t provide a serious neurocognitive benefit to healthy individuals: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4787/6/3/58
At the very least, it’s possible that the benefits to healthy individuals are highly subjective.
> "I mean, anyone benefits from Adderall whether you have ADHD or not."
What benefits of Adderall are you referring to?
Drugs like Adderall can have distinct adverse effects, like cardiac arrythmias, increased blood pressure, jitteriness, insomnia, anxiety. And drug misuse/dependence is a major problem with stimulant-class agents.
So for sure it's not true that everyone benefits from Adderall. Widely abused on college campuses, among non-ADHD students it has a small positive effect on academic performance and at higher doses is a distinct negative. OTOH for people with ADHD the right treatment (Adderall or alternative) can be greatly beneficial. (That is, ADHD treatment allows recipients to perform closer to their non-ADHD peers.)
Finding out if a person has ADHD requires evaluation by a qualified behavioral health clinician. Often it's not an easy diagnosis to make for even the best clinicians. Anyway I'd concur that diagnosis and treatment should not be attempted as a DIY project. Collaborating with a trustworthy practitioner is by far the best option.
I think you’re purposely pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Adderall gives you euphoria, focus, and energy whether you have ADHD or not. For people without ADHD it’s kind of like a strong cup of coffee.
> I think you’re purposely pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
No I wasn't. Though I'm aware of the effects you mention in this comment. Adderall or any amphetamine, including methamphetamine acts similarly. But I do think "euphoria" and "focus" are kind of antithetical, so likely not happening at the same time.
However people with ADHD don't experience these things, not euphoria or energy anyway. "Focus" is more like decreased distraction or clarity of thought. With medications ADHD people typically are calmer, more "centered" and more appropriately motivated to get done what they need to.
Ironically the "stimulant" medications aren't stimulating to those with ADHD. IOW they don't feel anything in particular from the medications, it simply allows them to function more fluently. Of course if the dose is way too much, even ADHD folks will have side effects (usually jittery sensations, anxiety, interference with sleep, and other effects).
Naturally I can't recommend using prescription and DEA-controlled drugs without a good medical reason, but of course I'm sure you knew I'd say that. :)
A strong cup of coffee (or anything above the low Vyvanse dose I usually take) actually makes me so jittery I concentrate even less. Though at least if you took too much Adderall IR, at least it'd wear off in 3-4 hours instead of 12.
> Drugs like Adderall can have distinct adverse effects, like cardiac arrythmias, increased blood pressure, jitteriness, insomnia, anxiety.
Because Adderall is (IMHO) suboptimal. Most of the physical effects come from the 25% levoamphetamine, a primarily physical stimulant.
Other ADHD drugs [1] are 100% dextroamphetamine, which exerts most of its effect in the brain, with minimal physical side effects. D-AMP doesn't increase my blood pressure, doesn't increase my RHR, doesn't cause insomnia nor jitters. It feels smoother than a cup of coffee.
1: then there's methylphenidate, which I've never tried and haven't studied as much.
Adderall has been one of the most popular recreational drugs since the 01960s, despite causing multi-organ failure in common recreational doses, which are higher than the therapeutic doses. If it didn't work on neurotypical brains, it wouldn't be popular.
I think you're purposefully misrepresenting what "works" means in this context. ADHD people can think a lot more clearly with it. The effect of stimulants is completely different on a brain like ours compared to a normal person as it helps regulates brain function in a way that ours can't.
For normal people it just gets you euphoric and agitated, we get CALMER cause we live in a state of constant agitation.
Spencer RC, Devilbiss DM, Berridge CW (June 2015). "The Cognition-Enhancing Effects of Psychostimulants Involve Direct Action in the Prefrontal Cortex". Biological Psychiatry. 77 (11): 940–950. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.09.013. PMC 4377121. PMID 25499957.
Ilieva IP, Hook CJ, Farah MJ (June 2015). "Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, Working Memory, and Episodic Memory: A Meta-analysis". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 27 (6): 1069–1089. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00776. PMID 25591060. S2CID 15788121.
Malenka RC, Nestler EJ, Hyman SE (2009). "Chapter 13: Higher Cognitive Function and Behavioral Control". In Sydor A, Brown RY (eds.). Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (2nd ed.). New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Medical. pp. 318, 321. ISBN 9780071481274
Bagot KS, Kaminer Y (April 2014). "Efficacy of stimulants for cognitive enhancement in non-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder youth: a systematic review". Addiction. 109 (4): 547–557. doi:10.1111/add.12460. PMC 4471173. PMID 24749160.
Wood S, Sage JR, Shuman T, Anagnostaras SG (January 2014). "Psychostimulants and cognition: a continuum of behavioral and cognitive activation". Pharmacological Reviews. 66 (1): 193–221. doi:10.1124/pr.112.007054. PMC 3880463. PMID 24344115.
Teter CJ, McCabe SE, LaGrange K, Cranford JA, Boyd CJ (October 2006). "Illicit use of specific prescription stimulants among college students: prevalence, motives, and routes of administration". Pharmacotherapy. 26 (10): 1501–1510. doi:10.1592/phco.26.10.1501. PMC 1794223. PMID 16999660.
a quick scan of the papers you linked (top 2 results, I got bored after that) shows that the studies specifically refer to ADHD patients. I'm not sure the links prove the point you're trying to make.
Tangentially related, interesting tidbit from Russel Barkley:
The first of those papers (mostly about a different drug with similar pharmacokinetics) is a review paper mostly about experiments on rats, though it does also include some results on ADHD patients, and the second one is a meta-analysis of 48 experiments, specifically excluding experiments on ADHD patients.
It's not literally false that "the studies specifically refer to ADHD patients", because they do refer to them in order to explain that the results they're reporting are not in ADHD patients—in the first case, primarily; in the second case, at all. But your comment is crafted to create the false implication that their results were limited to ADHD patients. Either that is a knowing lie, or your claim to have scanned the papers is a knowing lie and your false implication is merely reckless disregard for the truth.
— ⁂ —
The first study you said you scanned, Spencer, Devilbiss, and Berridge 2015, is about the effects of amphetamines and methylphenidate in rats and healthy people, and how that relates to their usefulness for treating ADHD:
> A major breakthrough in our understanding of psychostimulant action was the
demonstration in 1980 that the cognition-enhancing and behavioral-calming actions of
psychostimulants are not unique to ADHD, with similar effects seen in healthy human subjects
(11).
> This and subsequent studies unambiguously demonstrate that when used at low and
clinically-relevant doses, psychostimulants improve prefrontal cortex (PFC)-dependent
behavioral/cognitive processes in human subjects with and without ADHD (11-15).
In the summary, it concludes:
> Low-dose psychostimulants are the first-line treatment for ADHD. At clinically-relevant
doses these drugs improve frontostriatal cognitive function in ADHD patients and healthy
individuals.
> The procognitive and behavioral calming actions of psychostimulants are in stark
contrast to the behaviorally-activating and cognition-impairing effects seen with higher doses.
— ⁂ —
The second study, Ilieva, Hook, and Farah 2015, is titled, "Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, ...A Meta-analysis." Here "healthy" means neurotypical, i.e., not "mentally ill," specifically including ADHD diagnoses as "mentally ill" and excluding them from "healthy". They explain, "Research on children, elderly, criminal, or mentally ill patients was excluded," elaborating, "Twelve studies failed to meet the criteria for eligible participants (mice: n = 1; elderly participants: n = 6; children: n = 2; mentally ill participants: n = 2, including one study on ADHD and one study on cocaine abuse; criminal participants: n = 1)."
— ⁂ —
In short, you are telling baldfaced lies about the studies I'm citing, as easily shown by the most cursory analysis (in the second case, the title of the paper), in order to continue posting vile calumnies against my integrity.
I do not think you should post any more on this site.
Perhaps you should...relax. You and the person you're responding to are having a miscommunication. It happens. No one is making any statement about your integrity.
Also, perhaps you should take a better look at the comment tree. My original request for a citation was levied against the commenter speculating that "this was made up to stop it from getting banned entirely like it is in Asia"
So really, maybe go get some fresh air. It's just a discussion on the internet, it's not worth getting worked up over.
> No one is making any statement about your integrity.
That is not correct; in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31231494 luckydata said, "I think you're purposefully misrepresenting...", and in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31241664 they said, "I'm even more convinced now than before that you're in bad faith." Decent people considering commenting on here should not have to worry that they'll be subjected to such character assassination.
(And neither should I.)
Thank you for clarifying your comment. I think the Spencer et al. paper shows that it wasn't made up to stop Adderall from getting banned entirely; rather, it was a belief that was common among researchers in the field until 40 years ago, based on clinical observation. Also, Adderall is not banned entirely in Asia; for example, last I heard, it's legal in Thailand.
It's not completely different or even mostly different. Getting euphoric and agitated happens with doses an order of magnitude higher than therapeutic doses. Low-dose Adderall has been used to help neurotypical people focus for at least a century, though not of course by that name.
Your vicious, baseless attack on my integrity has no place here. Withdraw it immediately.
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243297 I caught you outright lying about what the relevant studies said, I suppose in hopes that other people wouldn't read them. Your accusations of bad faith are groundless and have no place here. That kind of conduct does not belong on this site.
It absolutely has, going by people's subjective ratings, different effects on NT people. That's not to say it doesn't work, there are plenty of explanations. We don't really get how neurotransmitters interact, so it's possible these drugs trip some cascade effect which incidentally treats ADD. More likely, there's a good place to be on the tradeoff curve and different symptoms below and above it. Perhaps large enough doses could push through (though I doubt that amphetamines are so well targeted to permit it), but it's fair to say that if I'm at a 0 and Adderall takes me to a 2, and an NT person is a 3 with Adderall taking them to 4, I can get to 2 and they can't. Is that "working differently"? Depends on how you look at it.
It, for many people, works differently. If you look at people talking about their experiences, those with ADD consistently describe different effects than NT people. It's still good, but it has more of an effect on energy than focus, though the two are well correlated. It might be an overshoot/undershoot thing, it might be that different effects are salient, but I can assure you that if Adderall could do as much for a healthy person as it does for me, we'd be living in utopia.
Thank you for having this perspective to help treat your adhd patients, wish there were more like you. I’ve encountered quite a few doctors who admitted they are scared of the DEA and losing their license and make us jump through flaming hoops to adjust dosages of stimulants or force us to navigate a byzantine maze of psychiatry to get to a psychiatrist that will take the liability away for prescribing/adjusting scheduled medications.
This is even with 10+ years of diagnosis.
Do you have any insight into why it is this way? Have physicians always feared the DEA and threat of losing their license in pursuit of helping their patients try different controlled medications? Did the pill mills ruin it for the entire medical industry?
Amphetamine has such an interesting history. Synthesized in 1887, first used in the 1930s, and in 1937 discovered to have a remarkably favorable effect on hyperactive boys. Methylphenidate (Ritalin) came along somewhat later.
85 years later these two drugs are still the mainstay of ADHD treatment. Sure delivery systems have proliferated and drug variants have been available. Stimulant-class medications remain first-line treatments. Amazingly even after nearly a century nothing better has ever been developed, and it certainly hasn't been for lack of trying.
Prior to 1970 there were relatively few restrictions, but widespread abuse lead to legislation establishing the DEA and tightened regulations. Drugs of abuse were sifted into a schedule of classes 1 to 5, where class 2 drugs were legal to prescribe but subject to limits intended to reduce diversion and misuse.
BTW one of the legal schedule 2 drugs is methamphetamine, approved for ADHD. We know it can be misused, leads to severe dependency problems, but used properly is an effective and quite tolerable treatment for ADHD. Indeed I have prescribed it for a number of patients in the past.
With the huge opioid crisis that's emerged in recent years scrutiny by state licensing boards has increased regarding prescribing patterns. This is making many prescribers nervous to the max. While the thrust of regulators has been in regard to opioid drugs other scheduled drugs such as stimulants, benzodiazepines are caught up in it as well.
Primary care docs are affected by the zealous "witchhunt" in regard to prescribing practices. Hospitals, clinic administrators, etc., are equally touchy about docs prescribing scheduled drugs. So prescribers anticipate getting static if they prescribe stimulants however reasonable it may be. Especially true for PCPs who lack specific training in managing ADHD--harder to defend their actions if challenged by admins.
Among psychiatrists (who should know about ADHD) other factors are operating. Some don't like dealing with ADHD patients, notorious for poor follow through, don't show up for appointments, lose prescriptions, don't pay their bills, etc. Also ADHD cases are frequently more complicated than average due to comorbidities, social issues (marriage/family problems, difficulty at job, etc.), potential for substance use disorder.
Patients without ADHD are more likely to be comparatively more straightforward to deal with, so ADHD sufferers aren't accepted as patients.
Yes indeed, "pill mills" have made everyone's life more difficult. But it doesn't mean every doc who prescribes scheduled drugs operates a pill mill. The tendency to throw out babies with their bathwater is fearsome to many doctors.
Here's my advice to colleagues: every patient deserves a thorough diagnostic evaluation. If ADHD is one diagnosis, it should be treated vigorously within appropriate clinical guidelines. If stimulant treatment is indicated start with a low dose, titrate gradually until reaching an effective and tolerable level. Do not neglect behavioral treatments, these are essential. (Book-length description in progress.)
The SECRET to successful treatment and keeping regulators at bay: excellent clinical documentation. I never was "in trouble" over prescribing, I had the records showing rationale for every prescription, so nothing to be afraid of.\
Your story isn't unusual, there's a shortage of qualified, and willing, providers in this domain. Combined with a cultural bias against and misunderstanding of people with ADHD the treatment situation is troublesome. Educating providers and the public is badly needed. If that's done, over time availability of high-quality care for people with ADHD will improve.
Thank you so much for your detailed and response. Your patients are so lucky to have you! You should really speak at conferences, your voice needs to be heard on this topic!
Do you know how a patient would get funneled to someone like you with expertise on this matter?
My experience with GPs is that they do not understand those issues and do not know how to direct to someone who does. It's not like a physical ailment where they know with a fair degree of certainty what the next avenue is.
Yes, it is a problem finding clinicians with interest in and experience with ADHD adults. In larger cities there are usually a handful of people who qualify, sometimes associated with teaching hospitals. Another possibility is asking at a college or university health clinic (even if you don't attend there).
Organizations like CHADD, local or state psychiatric associations have referral lists that can be useful. Likewise some insurers publish lists of clinical specialists. Other folks with ADHD who are in treatment might have a practitioner with room to see a new patient.
Pays to keep trying to find a provider you can work with, it will happen sooner or later and will be well worth all the trouble you went to.
What improvement would an adult with ADD (without H) have without being diagnosed and without having access to a treatment ? I may or may not have ADD but diagnosing adults in my country is extremely uncommon, and anyway the symptoms I have can be indicative of many other mental troubles, so I'm interested in not-medical ways to cope
Despite these factors only 20% of ADHD individuals receive treatment which can make a big difference. Medications can be helpful but are not by any means a "cure". Rather specific behavioral therapies are a necessary part of an effective treatment program.
As a physician specializing in behavioral health, I've treated a great number of ADHD adults. It's impressive how much improvement patients could make over a period of months to years as a result of their determined effort. I came to appreciate patients' innate talents that many were eventually able to exploit. It was gratifying to see some become top-tier innovators in their fields including technologies.
Of course people will "identify" unique traits as part of their sense of "self". ADHD individuals may come to regard aspects of their quirky cognitive styles as part of an "identity" but that's not necessarily the same as having ADHD as the biggest component.
Last thing I'll say is that ADHD is considered a developmental disorder. IOW there's no sharp line between having/not having it. The extent it's a problem depends on the context, which is a huge discussion topic in its own right.