ADHD insights for ADHD people
I happened to learn about the book ADHD 2.0: New Science and Strategies for Thriving with Distraction from Childhood through Adulthood, by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. and John J. Ratey M.D., via the app Imprint: Learn Visually (also for iOS).
The authors describe themselves this way in the Introduction:
Since we both have ADD, we were able to describe it from the inside out, validating for readers the symptoms and describing what it feels like to live with them. Since we are also both psychiatrists who work in this field, over the years and based on the available information and research, we have—between us—written seven books about assessing and diagnosing this condition and about parenting, being married to, and treating people who live with it.
It takes one to know one.
Having read the slides that summarize cursorily the 9 chapters of the book in 6 sets of slides (also called “chapters”), I was curious to read the book, but I guess I’ll postpone it for a while. Why so? Not because of the ADHD, but because I was pissed off by this statement:
The psychologist Russell Barkley, one of the top authorities in the field, sums up the danger in stark statistics:
Compared to other killers from a public health standpoint, ADHD is bad. Smoking, for example, reduces life expectancy by 2.4 years, and if you smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day you’re down about 6.5 years. For diabetes and obesity it’s a couple of years. For elevated blood cholesterol, it’s 9 months. ADHD is worse than the top 5 killers in the U.S. combined.
Having ADHD costs a person nearly thirteen years of life, on average. Barkley adds,
And that’s on top of all the findings of a greater risk for accidental injury and suicide…. About two-thirds of people with ADHD have a life expectancy reduced by up to 21 years.
In which fucking way can ADHD reduce one’s life expectancy?! This is utterly absurd! “Nearly 13” or “up to 21”… that’s insane!
I cannot read a book that starts such a ludicrous nonsense in the very introduction, but I discovered that the slides from the Imprint app can be read for free in any web browser, so I thought, as a public service, to present you with the respective links:
● Chapter 1: A Condition of Misconceptions
We learn that there is also the VAST: Variable Attention Stimulus Trait.
● Chapter 2: The Search for Mental Stimulation
People with ADHD experience time differently from others: “now” and “not now.”
● Chapter 3: Distract Yourself From Distraction
We learn about neurons and the Task-Positive Network (TPN) vs. the Default Mode Network (DMN). In ADHD people, both networks are activated simultaneously.
● Chapter 4: The Balancing Act
Strengthening your cerebellum by improving your balance through daily exercises could reduce ADHD and also the emotional imbalance. Wow!
● Chapter 5: Shaping Your Ideal Environment
ADHD also involves “superpowers” such as the ability to “hyperfocus”! But you need to avoid fruit juices, because they’re full of sugar, which can trigger hyperactivity! Water, tea, or even coffee, are much better! Caffeine (in moderation) is “the best over-the-counter focus medication there is.” Oh, and you need “The Other Vitamin C”: Vitamin Connect.
● Chapter 6: Finding the “Right Difficult”
“Creativity is impulsivity done right.”
20 minutes should be enough for anyone with a decent understanding of English (and with ADHD) to read the slides. Leave the mouse alone and navigate with the arrow keys.
ADHD is indeed a condition of contradictions and paradoxes.
Medical things I leave them usually for my wife since it is her field. Yet, my understanding is the difficulty of diagnose, let alone quantify ADHD. Moreover, definition and perception has sifted recently so long-term studies are of no much use. Any conclusive data derivative from it is, therefore, in highly shaky grounds already. They should wait a few years to come with statements on life expectancy reductions.
Very cool the Imprint app!! I won’t install these proprietary things in my mobile, but seems very promising for some type of learners!
All fields are my fields, especially medical ones. My wife is more knowledgeable in symptoms, but I’m better in pharmacology. In the 1980s and 1990s, I was a living “drug formulary” (in Romania, “el formulario nacional de medicamentos” used to be called “agenda medicală”, but now it’s called “memorator de farmacologie” or “memomed”, and I used to know what changed between editions). It did help (I wish it didn’t) that I had grandparents and parents who were sick and who died (in my opinion prematurely) “thanks” to doctors. I’m still good with drugs and supplements. But in the 1980s I was also a “walking electronics catalog,” including the knowing of the equivalent code names for Eastern, Western, and Soviet semiconductors.
If Imprint is proprietary, what app isn’t? FairMail is open-source, and I got it from F-Droid, but most apps are proprietary, including your banks’ apps, your mass transit apps, your various membership apps that offer you discounts, coupons, and the like (does Costco have an app? I’m sure it does!), and so on. Hold your paranoia: “they” already know about you more than you yourself know!
And then, some people who know some “pirates” (not personally, but as a matter of trust) use some cracked or patched Android apps to save hundreds of euros… because being paranoid and fully honest is expensive! (At some point, I was patching a few Android apps for myself, but life is too short for that. I’m not a hacker.)
Sorry about your parents… we are similar age and mine, thankfully, kicking it! The expert of the family is highly anti-medical establishment… but, of course, this is the US.
In phone, only essential apps. Browser(s), Weather, OsmAND+ and Organic Maps (proprietary but trusted), Catima, VPN, Aegis, AntennaPod, some notes one, Phonograph Plus, Signal, Tuta, Proton and K-9 and no much more. No store apps, or banks or anything else. Not even I access those accounts on the phone through browser. For emergencies, I do have sanboxed Google Play Services in a different profile with Uber, garage door and security cameras, but haven access that profile in a year.
Costco of course has an App, and since 2 yrs heavily promoted. Since we don’t need diapers anymore, not a member.
I did test on cracked apps many, many years ago… more interested for curiosity than usage. I just need the above mentioned, nothing else. This week I am moving my significant other from iPhone to GrapheneOS… so proud of her!
I’m sorry to say, but this is paranoia — there is no other word for it.
You’re extremely frugal when it comes to apps, but willing to spend more on hardware, just for the sake of “privacy.” I, on the other hand, have tried 2,500 to 3,000 Android apps alone (is this ADHD, or mere curiosity?), and generally I’m much more demanding, except that regarding the high-tech devices (PCs, laptops, smartphones, HDDs, SSDs, etc. etc.), I’ve always spent much, much LESS than the average citizen of “civilized” countries. Stingy? Dunno. Luddite? Only partially so.
I’d never buy a Pixel device, the same way I’d never buy any Apple device of any kind, even if I win the lottery. For many years, I decided that a decent smartphone should cost €200 and nothing more. Now, I set the bar at €329, because everything is crappy, starting with the OS. MacBooks and iPhones? This is literally prostitution in my book. And don’t get me started on what cars are people buying!
It’s not that “if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you fear that the letter-salad-agencies read your mail?” and so on. This is definitely the wrong approach. But still, every time I encounter (virtually) someone who only uses secure mail, and who also takes some absurd measures to protect their privacy, I ask them: Why the fuck are you doing this if you’re neither a terrorist nor a pedophile?
How can you live in this world, the real world, as long as:
— You’re only reachable on an e-mail that very few people use and on a messaging service that is not used by almost anyone I know? When I had Signal installed on my phone, I had about 3 or 4 contacts. EVERYBODY is on WhatsApp! It’s like saying in the 1970s and in the 1980s, “I’m not using phones because they can be intercepted.” But how were you to contact people? Using pigeons?
— You don’t have any banking app. If you’re not using Google Play Services, you’re not even able to install them! (A few banks here also accept Huawei’s AppGallery, but they’re a minority.) Most banking apps won’t accept a rooted phone or one with an unlocked bootloader. This is highly abusive, but until we really screw them all, what can we do? (Most banks should simply die, and their executives too. Under torture. Whoever served in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision should also be killed, in an ideal world.) I’m not sure how you can live without banking apps in America, but even in Romania, you cannot (in Germany, you usually still can). If I need to pay a bill or to make an online purchase, in most cases I need to authorize the payment via my app. There’s no other way.
— You’re really using your smartphone for very few things. I need to purchase bus tickets in an app, as all the other solutions are less convenient. You might encounter similar situations in some South American countries, too. For the sake of “privacy,” you’re rejecting technology. In many countries, unless you have the proper app installed, you cannot pay for parking your car on the street!
— You even waive the right to use tons of useful innocuous apps that are not available outside Google’s ecosystem (and by this, I mean Google Play) because, hey, “privacy.”
Apparently, you’re mostly happy this way, but don’t expect me to understand you. If I want to live offline at any given time, I want it to be my choice. If I want to use an app, I just use it. I’m frugal on spending on hardware, but I’m not frugal on software.
The 2016 laptop cost €830, if I remember correctly (launching price €1260, VAT-included). Despite the name (Acer TravelMate P), it’s solid, and with aluminum-magnesium alloy body (black, as I can’t stand anything silver).
The 2023 Acer cost €400, including the upgrade from 8GB RAM to 16GB RAM and the adding of a secondary 1TB NVMe Gen.4 to supplement the original 256GB NVMe Gen.3 SSD. And a mouse. It’s plasticky, but this is how it is. When I’ll really want to handpick my hardware for optimal compatibility with Linux or FreeBSD, I’ll just do that, but not right now.
YES, I AM THAT CHEAP.
Of course, a round-trip from Germany to Romania and back costs more than €400, so it doesn’t quite make sense, does it?
There’s one thing I learned in those years of “communism”: the most genuine pleasures are the simpler ones. Also, as an electronics engineer whose passion was analog electronics, not digital, I appreciate simplicity and elegance. I don’t have orgasms on seeing unwarranted complexity or people using a missile to kill a fly. This is one of the reasons I’m so desperate when I see how atrocious are today’s cars: 99.999% of them are butt ugly, too big (huge!) or too crappy, with atrocious design flaws (no rear visibility using the internal mirror, can’t stand a 5mph impact without ruining you financially because they don’t have real bumpers anymore, just plastic shit, and they “absorb the crash energy” even if you punch them hard), and obviously unnecessarily expensive. We’re fucking doomed.
So many things here…
I had never bought the most expensive phone, just middle of the road really. Usually a year after release and occasionally even 2nd hand. The problem is that since 4 years I had become aware of phones becoming obsolete and not updated any longer. You can have a 15 years old PC but, if you are up to date with the software you are good to go, slow, but relatively safe. Not with phones, specially Android. You are lucky if the phone gets security updates 2 or 3 years after being released first. So if I bought one first released in 2021 and I bought it in 2022, if I am lucky, I may have security updates till this year, many already without updates! That is ludicrous and, as much I am against much regulations, this should be one should have been enforced, minimum updates of 10 years! Or, just force open-up the drivers of all phone components after those 2-3 years (same if a company goes bust). Apple, at least, does support long term.
So my Pixel 8, is because is the only Android device that will be supported for 7 yrs. The Pixel 5 I bought 2 yrs ago is already unmaintained.
By the way, due to frequencies, in the US you pretty much only have iPhones and Samsungs. In a lesser level, Pixels and maybe a couple of Motos. No Xiaomis, OPPOs, Xperia, etc at all.
I don’t have a problem “letter salad agencies” read my emails, these, and most people are not even conscious of that, unless PGP encrypted or circulates within same provider, they are all in the open (those with Tuta and Proton accounts, certainly have some 90% of their emails in the open web). We go mostly ¾ for Privacy and ¼ for Security, not so much against agencies, but scammer and hackers.
Few people here uses WhatsApp, your high fees of messaging in the 90s made people adopt it early. Americans never had much need and then, Apple came with its own version.
You really need to authorize a payment with an App?? No here!! Just the fact you need an ID for a SIM card gives me the creeps!! How you feel (and the security agencies) that the millions of visitors we go there with our phones are not IDed!
How the heck you go Romania for 400€!? I flight to Portugal constantly with $600 (540€)!!
Finally, I am with you on the cheap. I remodel most of the house myself, electrical, plumbing, painting, flooring, you name it. Now, I did get a decent 1000€ bicycle, a $3000 boat (many lakes here) and a $1000 laptop (that I am considering trading for a $200 worth one!)
Cars… well, this is the US… unless you want to be rolled over (or leave half of the car in a puddle), you need something decent. So, a Subaru station-wagon loyal since there were almost none here… mid 90s! With that I carry everything, from drywall to bricks, yet I get half of the gas and maintenance of most people here. And my wife and I are thinking on the impossible… getting rid of one car… a family of four, should only have one car, as God intended!
The lack of updates on Android is indeed outrageous.
No, this is not due to frequencies! The market is oligopolistic. And the stupid Americans usually get a phone from their mobile carrier. Do you purchase your car from Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Texaco, or BP? No, you don’t. So why are most Americans so stupid?
No, they’re not. They travel via TLS/SSL connections. They can only be read by those who are hosting them: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo… So stop spreading this nonsense! You might be using a VPN for all the wrong reasons.
Originally, you didn’t. But for a landline you always needed an ID, or at least they knew your address. So why are you (and not only you!) paranoid about that?
Suppose (God forbid, and He knows I’m an atheist!) someone kidnaps your kids, and that the police (or the FBI in this case) would be hindered in their investigations by not knowing to whom a SIM used in communications belongs. You would wish in this case that a database existed with everyone’s addresses, cell phones, DNA, everything!
What do you mean by “your”?! The cell fees in the US were grotesquely high compared to those in Europe! And Eastern Europe is still way cheaper than Western Europe! Yes, we had something like $0.19 per SMS in the early 1990s, but your fees were not lower!
WhatsApp originally gained momentum in countries like India. But even if we all now have unlimited messaging (as in SMS), other messaging systems are much more practical. Apple’s own system is proprietary crap.
That’s a round trip on routes with poor coverage and zero competition (uninteresting cities, I guess). But regular flights, not holiday charters! When traveling without checked baggage, I could consider 1-stop flights for future, because I always prefer direct flights: fewer risks, and less tiring.
A 1000€ bicycle is 1000€ too much. Or a bicycle too much. I don’t do 2-wheel things.
God had no intentions of any kind, I’m afraid. His intentions didn’t even include the US of A.
The phone market is indeed almost duopolistic and you probably got it right, Americans using carriers to help them get their expensive iPhones distorted the market enough that only Samsung knew how to navigate it. The frequencies is a big thing though, the different frequencies here, the switch of 3G and then the 5G different band implementation just simply make small player here bypass the entire market and focus in the rest of the world.
I know what VPNs are, they provide a layer of privacy and that is it. Again, I am not paranoid, I am ok with using services like Mailbox.org or e.email (that I use pro posting this), I have just got a good deal with Proton and when expires, I would go with the cheapest provider that, at least, does not sell your info.
No spreading nonsense… Google, Yahoo, and the like are “open web”… not only those companies have your info readable by then, but they sell it quite cheap to multiple third parties… that is quite open, don’t you think?
You know when I became “paranoiac”? When after 9-11, I kept reading on “terrorists” arrested and describing how they were found with “multiple passports”, “flight simulator”, “multiple phones”, “electronic sets”… and saw poor myself with my hobbies back then! Thank god, there were not an Amazon database in the early 2000s or I would have been flagged all over. All information is good, but most people (and agencies) don’t know how (or want) to use it correctly. Trust me, I worked with data many years!
The need of IDed SIMs there seems to me like the argument here to owning guns… “what happens if someone come to your house at night and enters in your kids’ room”… Well, of course I would WANT having a gun then!! But, in a macro level, there are far more chances that one of my kids will injure itself with that same gun; accidentally, intentionally or suicide, that that gun ends up protecting them. Not to mention the unattended consequence that criminals here, since most victims have guns at home, if they get caught, don’t think twice pulling the trigger first (same as Police does). Most criminals in Europe are not stupid either, they steal licenses plates from similar vehicles or steal phones, use fake IDs to buy a SIM card or just buy one abroad… In a macro level, things may be different that what it looks in the micro, I am not discounting the micro… both need to be considered.
Phone service fees (and internet) are much higher here than Europe, but since very early on large amount of SMS were always mostly included in the voice plans. We never had much restrictions on SMS. You guys… mostly paid per SMS sent, not much, but psychologically it did hurt and WhatsApp became your savior. We did not have the need, and privacy back then, was not an issue.
In Romania I would have loved exploring those mountains in bike; I don’t do miles for the sake of miles or heavy mountain, just enjoying rides with some friend(s).
And when Huawei navigated through it, it got banned. Previously, LG abandoned the mobile world everywhere because they were stupid.
This reminds me of the “terrorists” caught in December 1989 in Romania, also with “multiple passports” and whatnot. They simply evaporated.
Your data is already sold to everyone. Not your medical records, hopefully. But Nissan and Kia, at least in the US, collected data regarding your sexual activity!
Nobody says that people shouldn’t be able to own a gun! But one cannot drive a car without a proper license, because it could kill other people out of not knowing how to handle it, or because of being mentally incompetent or insane. Same for aircraft. Why should people be able to purchase a gun as if it were a burger?
Some countries (Japan, France, the UK) make it extremely difficult for people to own a concealed weapon, or anything that’s not a hunting gun. In such countries, you also need a strong reason for wanting to own a gun. Are you wealthy, or a public personality, or living in an isolated or shady neighborhood, or is there any particular reason to fear for your personal safety?
While you paid for the RECEIVED calls and texts, which is the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard about America!
ha ha… conceded on paying for receiving calls! Nokia missed a opportunity there to address that and they would have been above Apple.
On the weapon thing, and my gosh are we digressing, no I am not in either of those scenarios. Like I mentioned, many burglars will shoot at you because he will assume you are well armed already (and easy on the trigger), that will depend on his previous experiences. An English or German burglar does not feel the need to carry a fire weapon because, he is not expecting one in return. I am 100% against guns… until everyone has a gun but me! Personally though, still not have one; kids in the house.
By the way, the weapon ownership skyrocket here with Obama first (color of skin scares many here) and COVID (much expected, and ONLY positive thing guns do provide, governments are indeed careful with mandates with the population).
Back to SIMs, like mentioned, criminals know better, at the only benefit is to find a stupid teenager that did a threat call to its school. What those IDs are for, instead, is in the middle of a pandemic, to surveillance if my parents dared to go to feed the cattle in the fields? No thanks. Told them to leave the phone at home… and the cattle still alive today.
Most definitely America, not Japan. But law-abiding citizens should have the proper permit, or license, or whatever it’s called. If people expect you to be armed, then you should be armed. When most people drive SUVs, how could you drive a Fiat 500?
This started to happen in a few European countries: smartphones are forbidden not during classes, but in schools! OK, but if the kids are leaving them at home, this raises a security problem: the parents can’t reach them. Also, teens might actually need some apps, so forbidding the phones altogether sounds to me like something the DPRK would do.