Janel Comeau: "we never used to have all these women in their 30s suddenly getting diagnosed with ADHD" listen, I wouldn't have even noticed I have ADHD if I lived in an era where my doctor could ask if I want to lose 5lbs and then hand me enough amphetamines to see the face of God

"we never used to have all these women in their 30s suddenly getting diagnosed with ADHD" listen, I wouldn't have even noticed I have ADHD if I lived in an era where my doctor could ask if I want to lose 5lbs and then hand me enough amphetamines to see the face of God

and when our ancestors slept in trees I bet having a few ppl who stayed up late and were easily distractible by noises made a huge difference with leopards

And even if they were... it was VERY hard to find a diagnosing psychiatrist who would take your insurance. In the trees.

It's depressingly hard down here out of the trees, too.

soundtrack for this thread www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLZ...

Treeswww.youtube.com Song: TreesAlbum: Marty Casey and Lovehammers Artist: LovehammersMarty Casey, Bobby Kourelis, Billy Sawilchik, Dino KourelisiTunes Link:https://itunes.apple....

Overheard

I read an anthropology article about the !Kung people and their sleeping years ago. Over something like 5 days, there were only 11 minutes when everyone in the village was asleep. We all have our places in the world, just not necessarily in an industrial society

I hadn't seen that, but it fits well with my theory about morning people, night people, and people like me with bifurcated sleep patterns. If you live in an extended family group of 20, including small children, it works better if people are alert at different times.

Yep. It was actually the Hadza people (who live in those sized groups), and it only 18 minutes over 22 days and nights that the adults of whole group were all asleep simultaneously. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Chronotype variation drives night-time sentinel-like behaviour in hunter–gatherers | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciencesroyalsocietypublishing.org Sleep is essential for survival, yet it also represents a time of extreme vulnerability to predation, hostile conspecifics and environmental dangers. To reduce the risks of sleeping, the sentinel hypo...

That's amazing. Also: "Based on injury and infirmed status, three individuals were excluded from analysis; no one was excluded due to insomnia, as no potential subjects reported sleep difficulties." 33 people, and not a single one reports sleep difficulties!

I don't know if it's that paper or another from the same group, but they were talking about the difficulty explaining insomnia to the participants. Neither of the languages they used has a vernacular term for insomnia.

Neither I nor my dad are the type of people who'll willingly get up before about 8am (I *have* to, he doesn't). But when you're a farmer you set your own hours, so what does it matter to him? If he's out working until 9pm instead of 7, there's no petty boss-type yelling at HIM!

Working from home and being able to wake up at a time that suits me has been GAME CHANGING. I sleep so much better.

Listen, you want someone with specific hyper focus for tons of old time jobs like weaving, I probably would’ve done just fine with a job like that lol

the stuff where it’s seasonal and ppl get together and sing songs while doing it? yeah!

I stay up very late now that I can set my own schedule. My attitude is that my genes are why your ancestors weren’t eaten by a sabertooth tiger 20,000 years ago. 🐅😱 👍🏻

An extended period of unemployment taught me that my body's natural sleeping hours are 4:00 a.m. to noon. Guess who gets first night watch to make sure we don't get eaten by leopards?

We have the Ferocious Feline Watch

Related but different—some older societies had roles for people with traits that make them more susceptible to depression, too. 😑

I would like to hear more about that

I still sleep in trees wyd

if you take the amphetamines but still don't see the face of god, that's how you know you have ADHD

"you tried coke and all you did was clean the bathroom?" is one of my favorite assessment questions when I'm talking to friends

"You just sat down and enjoyed a good book for a couple of hours?"

beautiful sequence of thoughts here highly relatable 👏

Oh my god, that was me. I washed the walls.

I didn't take coke, but on my first day with Concerta I sat down and wrote a screen-scraping program to get financial data I'd wanted to write for at least 3 years. Just sat down and DID it.

Concerta did in fact make me see the face of god and man did I hate it. Vyvanse though does it just right.

OMG, that was me too. That, and I wrote a whole book and translated it into Spanish.

Wait, what happens when us ADHD people try cocaine?

It depends on how much you take. At lower doses it will actually make you calm, clearheaded, and and gently focused. Higher doses may or may not cause pressured motivation and euphoria.

See: Aaron Sorkin before rehab vs Aaron Sorkin post-rehab. That classic Sorkin pacing and dialogue? Fueled by coke and shrooms.

It’s a bit different when you have ADHD, at least at therapeutic doses. Revving up the part of the brain that underperforms executive function in a person with ADHD paradoxically increases calmness, self-control, and voluntary focus.

Stimulants in general actually help us calm down and focus at the appropriate dose, this is true for medications tailored for ADHD as well as stuff like coke or even caffeine

Still not recommended though because it's not controllable like a prescription is. Just kind of the ***

I tried one of my roommate's adderall pills once when I had a paper to write, and what actually happened was that I organized my desk and made a nice sandwich.

Crocheted a hat pretty fast* 😅

If you take the amphetamines, we will never know if the inability to stop talking is them or the ADHD or just really good godfase.

I used to take E tabs (tested as meth) and just focus on geek stuff on my laptop for 10 hours or so, like coding.

Love taking my meds and then having a little nap. Waking up extra refreshed ✨️

It’s true

Simple science 🧪

And folks smoked cigarettes all day long and you didn't have to do a months long project to get a job.

That's a good point actually. Nicotine being a stimulant it probably does make a difference

I am fairly certain that’s how my parents coped.

When I was a kid, I thought it was just normal for grown-ups to smoke and drink coffee all day and rarely eat.

My mom drank just POTS of coffee.

Same.

I'm pretty sure it's 100% how I managed to be not useless from 15-29. I didn't really think about it before, but definitely struggled more with every day shit _after_ I quit smoking until I was finally dx & medicated at 36.

Holy shit, now suddenly a lot of stuff makes sense.

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