That tattoo is not at all anatomically correct. The heart is in completely the wrong place and doesn’t have the right shape, furthermore most of the organs are missing. If that was her actual anatomy she’d die on the spot.
Please don’t use sharpie on your skin. Depending on your body chemistry you can end up with chemical burns doing that. Use tattoo pens or something else designed for your skin. */end MUA rant*
In short, “Jim”, you’re clearly managing to put everyone here off the people you are supposedly trying to promote. Or as Willis put it:
why does anybody think this is an effective way to proselytize
I had zero feelings about [Yang] until folks got up in my fries and now I’m counting down the hours until he drops out, just out of spite
Don’t try to argue you’re not being annoying, by the way. We see through that bullshit, and through your attempts of sealioning.
Instead, realizing that the only thing you are managing to do is to antagonizing yourself and your supposed idols, you now have two choices:
1: Continue the same path as you are doing now; contributing nothing positive whatsoever. The only reason you’d be doing this is because you’re not actually trying to promote Yang and Gabbard. No, what you’re hoping to achieve here -is- the negative reaction. That way, you can then go “home” to your flock on whatever 4chan forum you gather in, and talk to them about everyone’s being mean to you; and they will tell their stories, and together you will bond and feel safer together and knowing you are the righteous ones.
This is a common strategy by many religious cults, by the way. To make their members meet hostility outside their own arena; in order to reinforce how much better life is inside it. They do it specifically to ensure that nobody’s going to leave them.
2: You can try and figure out how to promote Tulsi and Yang without being annoying. Admittedly, that’s a pretty tall order; especially with the way Tulsi managed to disgrace herself so much recently (again, don’t bother denying this. It won’t do you any good.). But I’m sure it might be possible. And if you actually want to promote Yang and Gabbard; that’s your only real option.
I mean, I’m sure you can also 3: Just leave this comment field the hell alone forever; but I’m pretty sure the only way you’ll do that is by getting yourself banned (which you’ll use as evidence of Willis being mean, of course)
Re: the tweet thread Lux had posted of Willis’ which you are on within the last hour. Good point on how sarcasm is willfully ignored by some people with an axe to grind.
Dude, if you want to push for your preferred candidates there are much better ways to go about it. You could try making actual arguments with reasons why you think they’re better for one thing. And maybe try posting about them in a political discussion forum instead of the comments section of a webcomic.
Nah, she’d get even less traction in the Republican primary. She only works as an outlet for frustration on the Democratic side. She’s not in position to be an establishment Republican and she’s not nearly extreme enough to pick up the extreme votes on the right.
Hopefully, she’ll do the right thing and concede as the primary race tightens – like the other candidates will. Or she’ll prove that her nay-sayers were right by running a third-party spoiler campaign on a platform of “Democrats were mean to me”, with a backing mostly of Russian troll farms.
I don’t hate the concept of third party, but when a gun is being held to someone’s head, use the tried-and-true disarming, don’t cross your fingers and hope the gun misfires.
Needfuldoer
More parties would be great, problem is our most-votes-wins “first past the post” elections encourage a two-party system at best, or make it a necessity at worst. A third party would have to unite the center against the fringes, which also goes against decades of two-party marketing. As it stands, third parties just siphon votes away from whichever of the big two they agree with more, leaving the other a bigger overall slice of the pie. We’d have to go to some kind of ranked-choice system nationwide to eliminate this problem, but guess whose decision it would be to get that ball rolling…
CGPGrey has some old videos that I think illustrate the problem pretty well.
In which Amber starts up where Dorothy ended. Honestly though neither of them really need to help him with this, he’s a big boy who needs to grow up and learn how to study. Dorothy and Amber cannot MAKE him wanna study, even with perky boobs.
Kinda different if he actually has ADHD and has gone this long undiagnosed. He’ll likely need medication to balance it out and also need someone to support him as he goes forward.
My little brother has ADHD and it makes learning for him difficult sometimes, even with the meds. Not helping matters is that he has anger issues and when people try to help him he ends up lashing out as if we’re pitying him, only for him to then struggle with the work and beg for help later.
ADHD is something that can’t just be handled on his own. Plus, this is Walky. He’s 18 but a lot of the time he acts like he’s 13 on a sugar rush. He needs someone to be able to slap him silly and support him while he adjusts to his new life.
Had his ADHD been known beforehand and Dorothy still left while Amber stayed, I’d have less respect for Dorothy and more for Amber. Being with someone with a mental disability like ADHD can be challenging, and while I wouldn’t fault Dorothy for being unable to handle him on her own, I would fault her if she could handle him and decided she didn’t want to deal with him just so she can advance her political career.
Amber however has a metric fuckton of her own issues to deal with, so for her to actually try and be supportive for Walky during all this with all her own issues, it would actually be worthy of respect. That she’d still do all this, helping out him while worrying about herself. Obviously not the most healthy thing to do since she DOES have a metric fuckton of issues, but still worthy of some respect nonetheless.
The reasons Dorothy left had nothing to do with his adhd. I think it’s a bad idea to stay with someone you don’t want to stay with just because they have some issues.
Then again, I have some issues on my own and I hate unnecessary special treatment because of that. I’m different enough as it is. People don’t need to make me even more different.
Meds? Ugh. None of that helped my brother (despite all of the well-meaning attention), he just had to deal with it.
Joshi
Meds do help lots of people, though, and shouldn’t be thrown out from the start.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of personal issues with ADHD medicines myself. I spent a lot of my childhood on ritalin, and all it ever managed to do was make me feel like I was a robot, a puppet for the chemicals piloting me.
But that doesn’t mean it does that to everyone. While I would 100% advocate for finding other ways to cope first, sometimes, for some people, medication is the best option. Sometimes even when it fucks up your head for 10 of the most important years of your life, the answer isn’t to swear off medicine forever, but to keep looking for one that works. It took me an additional 15 years to begin to accept that for myself.
But also, sometimes, fuck medication. If you don’t want that shit messing with your head you’re under no obligation to let it.
Old Fart
Joshi, did they ever try lowering the dose? Robot/zombie syndrome is a classic ADHD stimulant overdose symptom, so the Internet tells me. The fact that it zombified you rather than stimulated you indicates that stimulants are potentially helpful in the right dose and formulation. It had the opposite effect on me: the higher the dose, the more wired I got. By the time my Dr. and I stopped the trial, I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I also experienced irritability andTourett’s-like motor and vocal tics.
Ellegos
On the other hand, meds helped me a lot. I had always had trouble dealing with homework in a timely fashion since high school. Math was especially bad, since I couldn’t pay attention in class and finishing homework took me literal hours, but I did well overall as a student, pulling A’s in classes I had a greater interest in, and thanks to teachers with VERY flexible deadlines, maintaining C’s in the rest.
When I got to college, I dealt with exactly the kinds of problems Walky is experiencing. But it wasn’t until my eyes regularly kept rolling up into the back of my head involuntarily during an admittedly less than stimulating class that I nonetheless found intensely interesting and wanted to focus on out of interest, that I finally admitted to myself that there might be something more at play than a simple lack of self-discipline.
I contacted a professional, got diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, and was prescribed medication. I have been fortunate in that my experience with medication has so far been an entirely positive one, barring the price when transitioning between insurance situations, which is ridiculous even for generic prescriptions.
Long story, short: medication does help some people.
Mel
I will also be in the “meds seriously helped me”. I was diagnosed without my knowledge at a young age, and because my father didn’t believe in meds, he kept moving me to different therapists who taught me every coping strategy and organizational technique under the sun until finally saying to my parents “I really think medication would help here”. When I finally as an adult went to try to figure out why I couldn’t adult even a little, I was diagnosed with ADD so severe my doctor expressed admiration I graduated high school, let alone college. Both of which I barely managed by putting in 4 times the work everyone else did and also having a very high iq. College the second time around with medication was a life changer. Even now I’m barely able to function as an independent adult with a home and job, and that’s only because of medication.
ischemgeek
I get helped a lot with meds but also I find at least with Ritalin it comes at a cost of creative thinking. My ADHD lack of brain filter is a strength when I am working on problems which need out of the box thinking. I need to not have the inhibition against blurting out stupid ideas and on Ritalin the inhibition is there and it reduces my effectiveness.
Also Ritalin makes me feel like my head is buzzing and that gets super annoying after a while (I wanted to switch to something else but the doctor didn’t want to switch me so I quit it). It’s like a vibration sensation that I know doesn’t exist. Imagine having a set of barber clippers vibrating against your skull all the time. IDK what the name for that would be but holy hell was it annoying.
So now I am trying to manage without meds which is easier said than done. :/ Eventually when I get a family doctor I will see if trying something else is an option. Maybe concerta? My sib has good results with that one
Needfuldoer
Mild ADD here. What used to really set me off was when people tried to help with infantilizing techniques like blocking most of a page off with paper to “take one problem at a time” (in eighth grade), or slowly repeating themselves as though that’s somehow explaining it differently. I didn’t find any of that helpful, it was just condescending and made me feel fucking stupid, compounding the frustration and anxiety I already felt by not ‘getting it’ in the first place. “Explain it differently” doesn’t mean “explain it like I’m five”.
Meds just made me feel like a zombie. This was years ago and I don’t remember what it was, but I was a space cadet on that stuff. It was like my brain was running in slow motion at half its clock speed. “Stick it out, you have to get used to it”, yeah no. I stopped taking it, and suddenly I could finish more than half my assignments before class finished again. (Drug your kid because he can’t concentrate, then punish him for beligerence in school because he’s suddenly not doing anything. Good job, teachers.)
Athedia
Meds let me hold down a full time job and have a hope of going to grad school.
For me until I got proper treatment I internalized a lot of stuff to do with ADHD. I thought I was just lazy or a failure and that all of the issues were because I wasn’t as good as the other people. I was in a similar space to Walky and it took me years after my diagnoses to properly maintain a medication regime and admit that yeah I had ADHD (I was embarrassed for years at the idea of a disability).
Medication without a doubt have let me get as far as I have.
But it was people saying how awful they were that prevented me from actually taking them for years. I am still angry over the fact that I had wasted that much time and caused myself grief for not using the medication.
Needfuldoer
Sorry if I made it sound like meds are bad, because they absolutely aren’t.
The ones I tried just weren’t right for me, and the general misunderstanding of my situation at the time was unhelpful to put it kindly.
My main point here is that neither Amber nor Dorothy are equipped to help Walky with this. And I doubt Amber’s gonna point him towards psychological help. If Amber starts trying to help him study he’s gonna get a complex about his girlfriends/romantic interests/uuuh whatever Amber is, always trying to ‘fix’ his study habits and him feeling like a burden for it.
As someone with ADHD, I don’t think I can overstate how massively insulted I would be to learn that my partner was staying with me because they thought it was their duty to “handle” me despite how “challenging” I was. Please rethink your attitude towards me, your poor brother, and people like us.
ischemgeek
Yes, this.
Your brother is a person, not a virtue badge.
Furthermore, most ADHD people end up with boatloads of trauma caused by NTs trying to literally smack sense into us because our brains don’t work like normal brains.
Your common sense doesn’t work for us. Sometimes it’s actively counter-productive for us.
(If I had a dollar for every bit of NT advice I have since been told by professionals is a bad idea for ADHD brains, I would have no debt)
Zero
Like I said to LauraS, don’t go assuming anything about my brother when you only have a paragraph to go on. Don’t act like my common sense is the same as neurotypical when I’ve got both ADD and Aspergers.
My brother I have to remind myself is a person a lot of times, not because of me seeing him as a virtue badge, but because he acts like a damn monster more often than not. I’m a 21 year old man and I am sometimes AFRAID of my 13 year old brother with how he acts, and his treatment of me gives me PTSD to the bullying I suffered in school.
I was trying to be sympathetic to what Walky and Amber are going through and saying I was proud of Amber, since not everyone can so easily say they’ll deal with their own problems while staying with someone else with problems.
But it seems I can’t even say that without triggering someone.
Zero
Okay, first off, I never said anything about a partner staying only because of a sense of duty. I was saying I felt it was a respectable thing that Amber would stay with Walky in spite of his issues when she has her own metric fuckton of issues. It comes across as her truly loving him, since she’d be accepting him for all the good and the bad.
Second, don’t assume anything about my brother from just a tiny excerpt. I only glossed over what he is and he isn’t but poor. You know that stereotype in media where the older brother is always picking on the younger brother? It’s inverted in my family. My little brother is 13 and I’m 21. He has ADHD and is a complete Narcissist. I have ADD and Asperger’s Syndrome. And he proceeds to act like a complete prick to me, treating me like the bullies I had in school did. Belittling me, hitting me, and acting like he’s my superior in every way. He’s even called me shit to my face before. The kid is nuts.
I try to be sympathetic but its kinda hard to be to the kid who repeatedly mocks you and hit me in the balls so much its a wonder I’m not sterile. So don’t you dare go assuming my brother is the poor one in the family when he treats not just me, but my mother, my grandmother, and anyone he isn’t trying to manipulate like crap.
Speaking as a person with ADHD, wanting to study isn’t the problem.
Attention regulation is.
And the reason attention regulation is the problem is our brains suffer a number of biochemical deficits: 1, we don’t feel as rewarded through routine stimuli. So you know how you can do a load of dishes and feel pleased that you got it done? I do a load of dishes, hate it the whole time, and don’t feel any satisfaction at the end. This lack of satisfaction when you complete something makes it really hard to keep up with stuff that isn’t inherently rewarding (see also why people with depression also tend to let chores etc slide).
2. Our brains aren’t as aroused by routine stimuli. In my case since I am presently unmedicated: I feel almost groggy unless I am in hyperfocus (more on that later) or very stimulating environment. Problem with very stimulating environment is #3. Imagine feeling exhausted and brain fog unless you’re doing something interesting. That’s just scratching the surface.
3. ADHD brains have deficits in executive function (EF). What is EF you ask? EF is a catch-all for the brain functions related to prioritization, attention regulation, and cognitive control of behavior. Meaning, in other words even if you can willpower past having no satisfaction in a job well done and feeling terrible the whole time you do it, our brains can’t prioritize well and filter out impulse. Everyone knows the Wikipedia or TVTropes holes, right? Imagine the TV Tropes hole is your *life*. While studying you feel hungry so you go to grab food and you notice your dishes are dirty so you start carrying them out to the kitchen to wash but on the way you see your roommate who asks what you want for supper and you realize we’re out of milk on the way to the grocery store…. That’s what ADHD is like if you have significant impulsive features. At no point did you decide not to study… You just got sidetracked. A lot.
4. Because of difficulty in attention regulation it’s a common misunderstanding that ADHD people can’t focus at all (think the squirrel stereotype) and that’s actually untrue. We can focus exceptionally well on activities we find inherently rewarding- in other words, fun stuff. The reason why goes back to brain understimulation. Fun stuff stimulates our brains more than not fun stuff – since fun activities are the only time unmedicated people with ADHD even feel normal let alone good (remember, unmedicated people with ADHD usually feel a mix of tired and brain fog unless we’re bored and bored is unbearable – more on that later), we obviously want to do fun stuff way more. This is why people with ADHD are over-represented in addictions – our brains are chemically wired to be vulnerable to that feedback loop. However even if we don’t get addicted to the only things that let us feel not bad, executive function bites us here: our brains when stimulated can’t multitask. We can’t monitor our thirst or hunger or be aware of what’s going on around us. This state is called hyperfocus and as an ADHDer I both love and hate it.
I love it because it feels amazing and I am super productive in it. I hate it because it’s not healthy to work on anything for 36 hours straight without breaks for water or food or sleep or etc. Which is what I will do if uninterrupted.
4, Boredom intolerance. This is a combination of chronic brain underarousal and executive dysfunction, but ADHD people can’t handle boredom without assistance. We just can’t. Boredom is much worse for an ADHD brain than an NT brain. You know how ADHD brains are constantly understimulated and feeling tired or groggy just in normal activities? Now take away even the little bit of stimulation we can get. I can’t really explain to an NT what boredom feels like but let me say this in all seriousness: I would rather experience physical agony than boredom. Boredom is a worse experience for me than dislocating a joint. To a lot of people with ADHD, me included, it isn’t hyperbole to say that boredom is agony. You can’t willpower yourself past agony. Believe me, I have tried.
There’s a whole bunch of ways all of these interact with each other to produce other symptoms (like how executive dysfunction and understimulation can make it hard to make decisions or get stuff started despite the stereotype of the impulsive ADHDer or how those plus the fact that ADHD kids get scolded by adults at a rate about 10x the non ADHD kids leads to rejection sensitive dysphoria and people pleasing) but this is long enough.
TL;dr: ADHD is a real brain disorder. There’s actually more evidence of the physical basis of ADHD than there is for almost any other brain disorder. It’s not a character flaw and not something people can willpower past.
And Walky looks a lot like a twice exceptional ADHDer: gifted so he was able to compensate until he wasn’t at which point he crashes and burns.
It’s amazing how sometimes, people here will make a really long, descriptive post with a ton of information, and it’s basically like looking into an ASCII mirror.
(Diagnosed with either ADHD or ADD, but every time I tried to get clarification, it was met with hostility, so I stopped trying.)
ischemgeek
ADHD *is* ADD nowadays – what used to be called add is now adhd-PI (primarily inattentive type), if that helps!
It does help, yeah. Too bad it’s too late to do much with the information, though. The damage is basically done.
Michael Haneline
It’s not necessarily too late. I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD (type 1) until I 34. The “lost” time can be gained back, but it’s made a lot of things easier moving forward since I started taking adderall
Athedia
My mom just got the diagnosis of ADHD a few months ago. She almost at retirement but having the knowledge and a plan for treatment has made her look forward to that part of her life more now.
Thank you so much! I have a slightly modified dopamine reception due to a GABA malfunction which is common in my area and get some points you describe very well. But more from the depression/maniac viewpoint. Other points I don’t know from myself at all but from two working from my husband. Especially the hyperconcentration, extremely good skills with interesting work and no tolerance for boredom. The last one frustrates my husband quite a bit in meetings. Is there any way to tell a person, that you think they have such a condition? We thought so for a while now, since I was tested before, but your post sort of nailed our suspicion down.
ischemgeek
That you think they have the thing? I would wait till they’re complaining about an ADHD symptom and then drop it in offhand, “Hey yeah my ADHD gets me like that” or “Someone I know has ADHD and you remind me of them.”
That you think you have the thing? Depends if friend or medical pro. If friend, probably just come out and say it. If pro, list the symptoms you’re dealing with and if anyone you know has mentioned it to you say , “My X thinks it might be ADHD?” but otherwise don’t mention ADHD directly because if you say you think you have it they’re probably going to write you off as drug-seeking.
Yeeeeah not getting diagnosed with ADHD, especially when you are smart can be a real cluster fork especially in college. I found coping mechanism in college, but it wasn’t until I was an adult and got on meds and got an official diagnosis (and thank you How to ADHD on youtube) that I was able to regulate better, but it’s still a cluster fork.
249 thoughts on “Technically”
Ana Chronistic
or, ya know, https://www.target.com/p/bodymark-by-bic-8pk-collection-tattoo-marker/-/A-54081956
Doctor_Who
As Tamara from Friday the 13th VIII clearly showed, that works better for biology lessons.
I’m sure Jason found it very informative. Now he knows exactly what he’s stabbing at!
Marsh Maryrose
According to Groucho Marx, body art is also good for teaching both geography and history.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Lydia!
Sunny
That tattoo is not at all anatomically correct. The heart is in completely the wrong place and doesn’t have the right shape, furthermore most of the organs are missing. If that was her actual anatomy she’d die on the spot.
On a side note, tattoos may not be necessary for teaching math. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yay-for-nadette/
ValdVin
Permanent Sharpie? Amber, he’s gonna get new material every week.
Yumi
Well, Sharpie will still come off after a couple washes. She should probably go with washable makers, though.
SuperZero
The marker may be permanent, but your skin isn’t.
AGV
IKR?
Just shed it
Julez
Please don’t use sharpie on your skin. Depending on your body chemistry you can end up with chemical burns doing that. Use tattoo pens or something else designed for your skin. */end MUA rant*
Adept
Not at all sure I’d trust tattoo pens either.
Jim
David, why do you have such disdain for Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang?
Yumi
I didn’t read the comments yesterday and now I’m scared.
But if this is from something on Twitter, maybe discuss it there?
Midnight Jon
to be clear this is the same guy who kept randomly posting comments about Yang last month who’s now including Gabbard because David made an offhand joke yesterday
Lux
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1178511825467531264
I knew that post sounded familiar.
Emperor Norton II
Familiar and boring and annoying.
In short, “Jim”, you’re clearly managing to put everyone here off the people you are supposedly trying to promote. Or as Willis put it:
why does anybody think this is an effective way to proselytize
I had zero feelings about [Yang] until folks got up in my fries and now I’m counting down the hours until he drops out, just out of spite
Don’t try to argue you’re not being annoying, by the way. We see through that bullshit, and through your attempts of sealioning.
Instead, realizing that the only thing you are managing to do is to antagonizing yourself and your supposed idols, you now have two choices:
1: Continue the same path as you are doing now; contributing nothing positive whatsoever. The only reason you’d be doing this is because you’re not actually trying to promote Yang and Gabbard. No, what you’re hoping to achieve here -is- the negative reaction. That way, you can then go “home” to your flock on whatever 4chan forum you gather in, and talk to them about everyone’s being mean to you; and they will tell their stories, and together you will bond and feel safer together and knowing you are the righteous ones.
This is a common strategy by many religious cults, by the way. To make their members meet hostility outside their own arena; in order to reinforce how much better life is inside it. They do it specifically to ensure that nobody’s going to leave them.
2: You can try and figure out how to promote Tulsi and Yang without being annoying. Admittedly, that’s a pretty tall order; especially with the way Tulsi managed to disgrace herself so much recently (again, don’t bother denying this. It won’t do you any good.). But I’m sure it might be possible. And if you actually want to promote Yang and Gabbard; that’s your only real option.
I mean, I’m sure you can also 3: Just leave this comment field the hell alone forever; but I’m pretty sure the only way you’ll do that is by getting yourself banned (which you’ll use as evidence of Willis being mean, of course)
Emperor Norton II
Oh, and by the way, Lux: In case it’s not entirely clear, every “you” is directed at Jim in my post.
ValdVin
Re: the tweet thread Lux had posted of Willis’ which you are on within the last hour. Good point on how sarcasm is willfully ignored by some people with an axe to grind.
Emperor Norton II
I am more proud at how I managed to turn Willis’ bragging about still having it into another butts disease mention.
ValdVin
Heehee. Well done.
Lux
No worries, I figured 🙂
Marsh Maryrose
I’m assuming that “Jim” a Russian trollbot run out of Macedonia.
Wraith_Ferron
Oh, please. It’s clearly run out of Maldova.
Br44n5m
Maybe he’s slipped in and is run from Michigan
He Who Abides
Minnesota, perhaps?
BassBone
Gabbard is angling to be independent by parroting republican talking points. Yang is capitalist garbage.
Keulen
Dude, if you want to push for your preferred candidates there are much better ways to go about it. You could try making actual arguments with reasons why you think they’re better for one thing. And maybe try posting about them in a political discussion forum instead of the comments section of a webcomic.
Needfuldoer
She’s a DINO. If there was an actual Republican primary this year, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her change parties.
thejeff
Nah, she’d get even less traction in the Republican primary. She only works as an outlet for frustration on the Democratic side. She’s not in position to be an establishment Republican and she’s not nearly extreme enough to pick up the extreme votes on the right.
Hopefully, she’ll do the right thing and concede as the primary race tightens – like the other candidates will. Or she’ll prove that her nay-sayers were right by running a third-party spoiler campaign on a platform of “Democrats were mean to me”, with a backing mostly of Russian troll farms.
ValdVin
Russian troll farms confirmed:
https://twitter.com/cbouzy/status/1185332311983869952?
Yeah, I had no idea eight years ago we’d need a full-time site separating trollbot supporters from real people, but here we are.
Needfuldoer
So she’s basically this season’s Jill Stein, except more Libertarian than Green? Sounds about right.
Schpoonman
I don’t hate the concept of third party, but when a gun is being held to someone’s head, use the tried-and-true disarming, don’t cross your fingers and hope the gun misfires.
Needfuldoer
More parties would be great, problem is our most-votes-wins “first past the post” elections encourage a two-party system at best, or make it a necessity at worst. A third party would have to unite the center against the fringes, which also goes against decades of two-party marketing. As it stands, third parties just siphon votes away from whichever of the big two they agree with more, leaving the other a bigger overall slice of the pie. We’d have to go to some kind of ranked-choice system nationwide to eliminate this problem, but guess whose decision it would be to get that ball rolling…
CGPGrey has some old videos that I think illustrate the problem pretty well.
Doopyboop
In which Amber starts up where Dorothy ended. Honestly though neither of them really need to help him with this, he’s a big boy who needs to grow up and learn how to study. Dorothy and Amber cannot MAKE him wanna study, even with perky boobs.
Zero
Kinda different if he actually has ADHD and has gone this long undiagnosed. He’ll likely need medication to balance it out and also need someone to support him as he goes forward.
My little brother has ADHD and it makes learning for him difficult sometimes, even with the meds. Not helping matters is that he has anger issues and when people try to help him he ends up lashing out as if we’re pitying him, only for him to then struggle with the work and beg for help later.
ADHD is something that can’t just be handled on his own. Plus, this is Walky. He’s 18 but a lot of the time he acts like he’s 13 on a sugar rush. He needs someone to be able to slap him silly and support him while he adjusts to his new life.
Had his ADHD been known beforehand and Dorothy still left while Amber stayed, I’d have less respect for Dorothy and more for Amber. Being with someone with a mental disability like ADHD can be challenging, and while I wouldn’t fault Dorothy for being unable to handle him on her own, I would fault her if she could handle him and decided she didn’t want to deal with him just so she can advance her political career.
Amber however has a metric fuckton of her own issues to deal with, so for her to actually try and be supportive for Walky during all this with all her own issues, it would actually be worthy of respect. That she’d still do all this, helping out him while worrying about herself. Obviously not the most healthy thing to do since she DOES have a metric fuckton of issues, but still worthy of some respect nonetheless.
Alanari
The reasons Dorothy left had nothing to do with his adhd. I think it’s a bad idea to stay with someone you don’t want to stay with just because they have some issues.
Then again, I have some issues on my own and I hate unnecessary special treatment because of that. I’m different enough as it is. People don’t need to make me even more different.
Uly
There’s also a lot of psychological stuff going on, on top of whatever learning disability Walky may or may not have.
woobie
Meds? Ugh. None of that helped my brother (despite all of the well-meaning attention), he just had to deal with it.
Joshi
Meds do help lots of people, though, and shouldn’t be thrown out from the start.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of personal issues with ADHD medicines myself. I spent a lot of my childhood on ritalin, and all it ever managed to do was make me feel like I was a robot, a puppet for the chemicals piloting me.
But that doesn’t mean it does that to everyone. While I would 100% advocate for finding other ways to cope first, sometimes, for some people, medication is the best option. Sometimes even when it fucks up your head for 10 of the most important years of your life, the answer isn’t to swear off medicine forever, but to keep looking for one that works. It took me an additional 15 years to begin to accept that for myself.
But also, sometimes, fuck medication. If you don’t want that shit messing with your head you’re under no obligation to let it.
Old Fart
Joshi, did they ever try lowering the dose? Robot/zombie syndrome is a classic ADHD stimulant overdose symptom, so the Internet tells me. The fact that it zombified you rather than stimulated you indicates that stimulants are potentially helpful in the right dose and formulation. It had the opposite effect on me: the higher the dose, the more wired I got. By the time my Dr. and I stopped the trial, I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I also experienced irritability andTourett’s-like motor and vocal tics.
Ellegos
On the other hand, meds helped me a lot. I had always had trouble dealing with homework in a timely fashion since high school. Math was especially bad, since I couldn’t pay attention in class and finishing homework took me literal hours, but I did well overall as a student, pulling A’s in classes I had a greater interest in, and thanks to teachers with VERY flexible deadlines, maintaining C’s in the rest.
When I got to college, I dealt with exactly the kinds of problems Walky is experiencing. But it wasn’t until my eyes regularly kept rolling up into the back of my head involuntarily during an admittedly less than stimulating class that I nonetheless found intensely interesting and wanted to focus on out of interest, that I finally admitted to myself that there might be something more at play than a simple lack of self-discipline.
I contacted a professional, got diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, and was prescribed medication. I have been fortunate in that my experience with medication has so far been an entirely positive one, barring the price when transitioning between insurance situations, which is ridiculous even for generic prescriptions.
Long story, short: medication does help some people.
Mel
I will also be in the “meds seriously helped me”. I was diagnosed without my knowledge at a young age, and because my father didn’t believe in meds, he kept moving me to different therapists who taught me every coping strategy and organizational technique under the sun until finally saying to my parents “I really think medication would help here”. When I finally as an adult went to try to figure out why I couldn’t adult even a little, I was diagnosed with ADD so severe my doctor expressed admiration I graduated high school, let alone college. Both of which I barely managed by putting in 4 times the work everyone else did and also having a very high iq. College the second time around with medication was a life changer. Even now I’m barely able to function as an independent adult with a home and job, and that’s only because of medication.
ischemgeek
I get helped a lot with meds but also I find at least with Ritalin it comes at a cost of creative thinking. My ADHD lack of brain filter is a strength when I am working on problems which need out of the box thinking. I need to not have the inhibition against blurting out stupid ideas and on Ritalin the inhibition is there and it reduces my effectiveness.
Also Ritalin makes me feel like my head is buzzing and that gets super annoying after a while (I wanted to switch to something else but the doctor didn’t want to switch me so I quit it). It’s like a vibration sensation that I know doesn’t exist. Imagine having a set of barber clippers vibrating against your skull all the time. IDK what the name for that would be but holy hell was it annoying.
So now I am trying to manage without meds which is easier said than done. :/ Eventually when I get a family doctor I will see if trying something else is an option. Maybe concerta? My sib has good results with that one
Needfuldoer
Mild ADD here. What used to really set me off was when people tried to help with infantilizing techniques like blocking most of a page off with paper to “take one problem at a time” (in eighth grade), or slowly repeating themselves as though that’s somehow explaining it differently. I didn’t find any of that helpful, it was just condescending and made me feel fucking stupid, compounding the frustration and anxiety I already felt by not ‘getting it’ in the first place. “Explain it differently” doesn’t mean “explain it like I’m five”.
Meds just made me feel like a zombie. This was years ago and I don’t remember what it was, but I was a space cadet on that stuff. It was like my brain was running in slow motion at half its clock speed. “Stick it out, you have to get used to it”, yeah no. I stopped taking it, and suddenly I could finish more than half my assignments before class finished again. (Drug your kid because he can’t concentrate, then punish him for beligerence in school because he’s suddenly not doing anything. Good job, teachers.)
Athedia
Meds let me hold down a full time job and have a hope of going to grad school.
For me until I got proper treatment I internalized a lot of stuff to do with ADHD. I thought I was just lazy or a failure and that all of the issues were because I wasn’t as good as the other people. I was in a similar space to Walky and it took me years after my diagnoses to properly maintain a medication regime and admit that yeah I had ADHD (I was embarrassed for years at the idea of a disability).
Medication without a doubt have let me get as far as I have.
But it was people saying how awful they were that prevented me from actually taking them for years. I am still angry over the fact that I had wasted that much time and caused myself grief for not using the medication.
Needfuldoer
Sorry if I made it sound like meds are bad, because they absolutely aren’t.
The ones I tried just weren’t right for me, and the general misunderstanding of my situation at the time was unhelpful to put it kindly.
Doopyboop
My main point here is that neither Amber nor Dorothy are equipped to help Walky with this. And I doubt Amber’s gonna point him towards psychological help. If Amber starts trying to help him study he’s gonna get a complex about his girlfriends/romantic interests/uuuh whatever Amber is, always trying to ‘fix’ his study habits and him feeling like a burden for it.
LauraS
As someone with ADHD, I don’t think I can overstate how massively insulted I would be to learn that my partner was staying with me because they thought it was their duty to “handle” me despite how “challenging” I was. Please rethink your attitude towards me, your poor brother, and people like us.
ischemgeek
Yes, this.
Your brother is a person, not a virtue badge.
Furthermore, most ADHD people end up with boatloads of trauma caused by NTs trying to literally smack sense into us because our brains don’t work like normal brains.
Your common sense doesn’t work for us. Sometimes it’s actively counter-productive for us.
(If I had a dollar for every bit of NT advice I have since been told by professionals is a bad idea for ADHD brains, I would have no debt)
Zero
Like I said to LauraS, don’t go assuming anything about my brother when you only have a paragraph to go on. Don’t act like my common sense is the same as neurotypical when I’ve got both ADD and Aspergers.
My brother I have to remind myself is a person a lot of times, not because of me seeing him as a virtue badge, but because he acts like a damn monster more often than not. I’m a 21 year old man and I am sometimes AFRAID of my 13 year old brother with how he acts, and his treatment of me gives me PTSD to the bullying I suffered in school.
I was trying to be sympathetic to what Walky and Amber are going through and saying I was proud of Amber, since not everyone can so easily say they’ll deal with their own problems while staying with someone else with problems.
But it seems I can’t even say that without triggering someone.
Zero
Okay, first off, I never said anything about a partner staying only because of a sense of duty. I was saying I felt it was a respectable thing that Amber would stay with Walky in spite of his issues when she has her own metric fuckton of issues. It comes across as her truly loving him, since she’d be accepting him for all the good and the bad.
Second, don’t assume anything about my brother from just a tiny excerpt. I only glossed over what he is and he isn’t but poor. You know that stereotype in media where the older brother is always picking on the younger brother? It’s inverted in my family. My little brother is 13 and I’m 21. He has ADHD and is a complete Narcissist. I have ADD and Asperger’s Syndrome. And he proceeds to act like a complete prick to me, treating me like the bullies I had in school did. Belittling me, hitting me, and acting like he’s my superior in every way. He’s even called me shit to my face before. The kid is nuts.
I try to be sympathetic but its kinda hard to be to the kid who repeatedly mocks you and hit me in the balls so much its a wonder I’m not sterile. So don’t you dare go assuming my brother is the poor one in the family when he treats not just me, but my mother, my grandmother, and anyone he isn’t trying to manipulate like crap.
ischemgeek
Speaking as a person with ADHD, wanting to study isn’t the problem.
Attention regulation is.
And the reason attention regulation is the problem is our brains suffer a number of biochemical deficits: 1, we don’t feel as rewarded through routine stimuli. So you know how you can do a load of dishes and feel pleased that you got it done? I do a load of dishes, hate it the whole time, and don’t feel any satisfaction at the end. This lack of satisfaction when you complete something makes it really hard to keep up with stuff that isn’t inherently rewarding (see also why people with depression also tend to let chores etc slide).
2. Our brains aren’t as aroused by routine stimuli. In my case since I am presently unmedicated: I feel almost groggy unless I am in hyperfocus (more on that later) or very stimulating environment. Problem with very stimulating environment is #3. Imagine feeling exhausted and brain fog unless you’re doing something interesting. That’s just scratching the surface.
3. ADHD brains have deficits in executive function (EF). What is EF you ask? EF is a catch-all for the brain functions related to prioritization, attention regulation, and cognitive control of behavior. Meaning, in other words even if you can willpower past having no satisfaction in a job well done and feeling terrible the whole time you do it, our brains can’t prioritize well and filter out impulse. Everyone knows the Wikipedia or TVTropes holes, right? Imagine the TV Tropes hole is your *life*. While studying you feel hungry so you go to grab food and you notice your dishes are dirty so you start carrying them out to the kitchen to wash but on the way you see your roommate who asks what you want for supper and you realize we’re out of milk on the way to the grocery store…. That’s what ADHD is like if you have significant impulsive features. At no point did you decide not to study… You just got sidetracked. A lot.
4. Because of difficulty in attention regulation it’s a common misunderstanding that ADHD people can’t focus at all (think the squirrel stereotype) and that’s actually untrue. We can focus exceptionally well on activities we find inherently rewarding- in other words, fun stuff. The reason why goes back to brain understimulation. Fun stuff stimulates our brains more than not fun stuff – since fun activities are the only time unmedicated people with ADHD even feel normal let alone good (remember, unmedicated people with ADHD usually feel a mix of tired and brain fog unless we’re bored and bored is unbearable – more on that later), we obviously want to do fun stuff way more. This is why people with ADHD are over-represented in addictions – our brains are chemically wired to be vulnerable to that feedback loop. However even if we don’t get addicted to the only things that let us feel not bad, executive function bites us here: our brains when stimulated can’t multitask. We can’t monitor our thirst or hunger or be aware of what’s going on around us. This state is called hyperfocus and as an ADHDer I both love and hate it.
I love it because it feels amazing and I am super productive in it. I hate it because it’s not healthy to work on anything for 36 hours straight without breaks for water or food or sleep or etc. Which is what I will do if uninterrupted.
4, Boredom intolerance. This is a combination of chronic brain underarousal and executive dysfunction, but ADHD people can’t handle boredom without assistance. We just can’t. Boredom is much worse for an ADHD brain than an NT brain. You know how ADHD brains are constantly understimulated and feeling tired or groggy just in normal activities? Now take away even the little bit of stimulation we can get. I can’t really explain to an NT what boredom feels like but let me say this in all seriousness: I would rather experience physical agony than boredom. Boredom is a worse experience for me than dislocating a joint. To a lot of people with ADHD, me included, it isn’t hyperbole to say that boredom is agony. You can’t willpower yourself past agony. Believe me, I have tried.
There’s a whole bunch of ways all of these interact with each other to produce other symptoms (like how executive dysfunction and understimulation can make it hard to make decisions or get stuff started despite the stereotype of the impulsive ADHDer or how those plus the fact that ADHD kids get scolded by adults at a rate about 10x the non ADHD kids leads to rejection sensitive dysphoria and people pleasing) but this is long enough.
TL;dr: ADHD is a real brain disorder. There’s actually more evidence of the physical basis of ADHD than there is for almost any other brain disorder. It’s not a character flaw and not something people can willpower past.
And Walky looks a lot like a twice exceptional ADHDer: gifted so he was able to compensate until he wasn’t at which point he crashes and burns.
Delicious Taffy
It’s amazing how sometimes, people here will make a really long, descriptive post with a ton of information, and it’s basically like looking into an ASCII mirror.
(Diagnosed with either ADHD or ADD, but every time I tried to get clarification, it was met with hostility, so I stopped trying.)
ischemgeek
ADHD *is* ADD nowadays – what used to be called add is now adhd-PI (primarily inattentive type), if that helps!
Delicious Taffy
It does help, yeah. Too bad it’s too late to do much with the information, though. The damage is basically done.
Michael Haneline
It’s not necessarily too late. I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD (type 1) until I 34. The “lost” time can be gained back, but it’s made a lot of things easier moving forward since I started taking adderall
Athedia
My mom just got the diagnosis of ADHD a few months ago. She almost at retirement but having the knowledge and a plan for treatment has made her look forward to that part of her life more now.
Lensipensi
Thank you so much! I have a slightly modified dopamine reception due to a GABA malfunction which is common in my area and get some points you describe very well. But more from the depression/maniac viewpoint. Other points I don’t know from myself at all but from two working from my husband. Especially the hyperconcentration, extremely good skills with interesting work and no tolerance for boredom. The last one frustrates my husband quite a bit in meetings. Is there any way to tell a person, that you think they have such a condition? We thought so for a while now, since I was tested before, but your post sort of nailed our suspicion down.
ischemgeek
That you think they have the thing? I would wait till they’re complaining about an ADHD symptom and then drop it in offhand, “Hey yeah my ADHD gets me like that” or “Someone I know has ADHD and you remind me of them.”
That you think you have the thing? Depends if friend or medical pro. If friend, probably just come out and say it. If pro, list the symptoms you’re dealing with and if anyone you know has mentioned it to you say , “My X thinks it might be ADHD?” but otherwise don’t mention ADHD directly because if you say you think you have it they’re probably going to write you off as drug-seeking.
He Who Abides
Thank you for using TVTropes as a metaphor for ADHD. It makes it so much easier to understand.
Banzo
Yeeeeah not getting diagnosed with ADHD, especially when you are smart can be a real cluster fork especially in college. I found coping mechanism in college, but it wasn’t until I was an adult and got on meds and got an official diagnosis (and thank you How to ADHD on youtube) that I was able to regulate better, but it’s still a cluster fork.
Schpoonman
I’ve already got a name for the Slipshine: Study Date.
Huehuetotl
Text on a contoured, non-rigid surface should be super easy. 😉
Reltzik
Also, written by someone looking into the mirror.
Bagge
aw come one! That slipshine name MUST include Dorothy.
Yotomoe
Oh wow. I’ve got a new thing to draw.
Hoboturtle
I don’t know if there’s a god, but if you’re not doing his work then I’m starting a new religion.
Yotomoe
The cult of Yoto doesn’t accept money or gifts. We just ask for +1s, thumbs up and praise.
Clif
Praise be + 1 thumbs up!
Bagge
I kinda hope you would!
Rabisch
Yep! Probably this will require more that one draw.
Pocky
Tattoo of a full college curriculum. . . sounds like a real show of love.