> Honest question: could your success be at all attributed to placebo? IOW, is there any question at all as to whether or not you could have made a conscious decision to "buckle down" and have met the same result?
I'm 27 now. I began taking ADHD medication when I was 21. With the exception of methamphetamine (yes, it's actually an old, crude ADHD treatment) I believe I've taken every FDA-approved ADHD drug there is - both stimulant and non-stimulant. Even the patch. It was a hard road to figure out what is effective for me with minimal side effects, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that medication contributes heavily to my success.
The sensation is difficult to describe, but when I'm not medicated I'm often completely unaware that my focus has shifted. No amount of mental exertion (aka "buckling down") changes that for me.
I'm a very passionate software engineer. I wake up in the morning and before I've put clothes on I'm reading about something to do with software. Chances are the last thing I look at before I fall asleep also has something to do with software. This has been constant since I was 12 years old -- long before I was medicated. In college, before I was medicated, there was absolutely no way I'd be able to make it through a lecture and retain all of the information -- even while taking notes. I'd pause to think about something the professor said, and a few tangents later I'd be drawing unicorn fish or something in the margins. I still have the notebooks. I've gone back and looked -- the difference between before and after I was medicated was stark [1].
Whether or not medication is the right choice is a very individual decision. Hell, even your doctor doesn't really know. If you have the ability to "buckle down" when needed and you don't feel like your life is ready to crumble because you're just barely getting by - you're probably fine. There's a ton these drugs can do to mess up your life [2] and the narcotic effects can be plenty distracting on their own if your doctor is too liberal with your dosage.
1: Something worth noting is that an outside observer might view this as having my creativity squelched. "Oh look at all the drawings, and now just boring mechanical notes? This person's soul has been snuffed out by the evil chemicals!" The truth is just the opposite - I was finally able to direct my creative energy where I wanted, and the feeling was utterly profound.
2: Appetite suppression, insomnia, depression, addiction, heart palpitations, aggressiveness, diminished sexual desire, and horrible irritability are all common side effects. They might not all meet the FDA definition of "common," but they're plenty common enough.
I'm pretty much the same as you, only that during lectures I don't draw anything, I just space out after a while and it's hard for me to sustain focus for long periods of time. Lectures are largely a waste of time for me.
I ended up going to a special ADHD clinic and I got diagnosed. Unfortunately, a week and a half after beginning the titration process of Concerta I started getting side-effects (palpitations). Apparently, I also have anxiety, so the doc told me that I could either start again with a slower titration process, or take antidepressants along with the ADHD meds. I decided to drop it and not take any of the meds because the side effects of the antidepressants scared me (not to mention the negative vibe you get from people when they hear that you're on psychiatric meds).
College is really hard for me. I do very well in some classes (mostly in the applied CS courses), and just average to poor in others. The reason is mainly because even though I love programming, many of the Computer Science courses are theoretical and boring to me, so after about a month into the semester I start spiraling down and barely doing the homework assignments, or seriously going over lecture notes to try to gain a deeper understanding of the material.
During the finals, I end up wasting days on doing nothing productive (like right now -- I have a final next week and I'm sitting here doing nothing) until I conjure up enough willpower to actually open the books and start studying (usually the fear of failure takes over and then I force myself to study... with lots of anxiety). And even then, I still find it hard to fully concentrate on the material.
I find myself trying to read a textbook, and I feel like my mind and body are pulling me away, so I end up just getting up from the chair, and walking back and forth around the house while my mind just entertains some random thoughts.
I realize that I've been like this my whole life (my High School years are very similar). When I find something that really interests me, I will do it from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to sleep. For example, I've done programming projects that forced me to learn new technologies where I had to read over 1,200 pages of documentation, and I would just do it obsessively until I'm done with the project. After the project is done though, and it's time to just maintain it (fix bugs, for example), I usually get very bored with it and dump it.
I guess because College assignments aren't interesting to me (for some reason, the grade on the final exam isn't enough of a motivator for me to study) I have a hard time applying myself to them the way I apply myself to things I'm really passionate about.
I wonder if ADHD clinics are a bit like a hammer in search of a nail. Unsolicited suggestion: go to a neurologist. Failing that, go to a psychiatrist.
When I took Concerta I had similar problems. The irritability was awful. My nerves just felt raw. Methylphenidate (aka Ritalin) anecdotally amongst the people I know who've taken it seems to be the most likely to cause heart problems - with one friend having been hospitalized.
If you feel like you aren't making it, there are other options.
Many neurologists don't have a deep understanding of ADHD, so if I were to go to one, I'd need to find one that specializes in this field. My ADHD doctor was a psychiatrist, by the way.
I agree with you about the Concerta. I have a short fuse, but Concerta made it much worse.
Unfortunately, I don't live in the US, and the only gov't subsidized ADHD medication is 'Ritalin'. That's right 'Ritalin'. Not even the active ingredient 'methylphenidate' (which is why Concerta is much more expensive than Ritalin around here).
I know some people report that methylphenidate based drugs doesn't work for them, and yet the amphetamine-based do (Adderall, Vyvanse, etc...), but if I get a prescription for either, they're going to be very expensive, and the import process for these kind of drugs is a bureaucratic nightmare.
I guess I'll just have to suck it up. Next year is my senior year, so the end is very near!
I'm 27 now. I began taking ADHD medication when I was 21. With the exception of methamphetamine (yes, it's actually an old, crude ADHD treatment) I believe I've taken every FDA-approved ADHD drug there is - both stimulant and non-stimulant. Even the patch. It was a hard road to figure out what is effective for me with minimal side effects, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that medication contributes heavily to my success.
The sensation is difficult to describe, but when I'm not medicated I'm often completely unaware that my focus has shifted. No amount of mental exertion (aka "buckling down") changes that for me.
I'm a very passionate software engineer. I wake up in the morning and before I've put clothes on I'm reading about something to do with software. Chances are the last thing I look at before I fall asleep also has something to do with software. This has been constant since I was 12 years old -- long before I was medicated. In college, before I was medicated, there was absolutely no way I'd be able to make it through a lecture and retain all of the information -- even while taking notes. I'd pause to think about something the professor said, and a few tangents later I'd be drawing unicorn fish or something in the margins. I still have the notebooks. I've gone back and looked -- the difference between before and after I was medicated was stark [1].
Whether or not medication is the right choice is a very individual decision. Hell, even your doctor doesn't really know. If you have the ability to "buckle down" when needed and you don't feel like your life is ready to crumble because you're just barely getting by - you're probably fine. There's a ton these drugs can do to mess up your life [2] and the narcotic effects can be plenty distracting on their own if your doctor is too liberal with your dosage.
1: Something worth noting is that an outside observer might view this as having my creativity squelched. "Oh look at all the drawings, and now just boring mechanical notes? This person's soul has been snuffed out by the evil chemicals!" The truth is just the opposite - I was finally able to direct my creative energy where I wanted, and the feeling was utterly profound.
2: Appetite suppression, insomnia, depression, addiction, heart palpitations, aggressiveness, diminished sexual desire, and horrible irritability are all common side effects. They might not all meet the FDA definition of "common," but they're plenty common enough.