ADHD

THESE ARE ROUGH NOTES WAITING FOR ME TO DO A PROPER WRITEUP

Before continuing, there a few things everyone should know about ADHD :

• It is real (see below)
• It is not an illness or disability in itself
• What most people think they know about it, including a lot of medical professionals, is just plain wrong (in no small part due to the acronym being misleading)
• It affects different people in different ways

My Bits

A thing I have right now that is entertainingly neuro-atypical, a streak on Duolingo.

I had two years of French & German at secondary school (13-14 yrs old?) where I didn't learn anything. Out of the 4 times I was caned (hit hard with a stick on the backside) at that school, 2 were for not doing French homework. I didn't see the point at the time. Since, I've found myself pretty hopeless at learning languages. I've lived in Italy for about 25 years, my Italian is shite.

But the other day I was set up for a blindish date with a Japanese woman (not remotely a match as it happened), thought I'd at least learn enough to be polite. Duolingo. I found it really satisfying. So it immediately became my new thing.

I'm on my 9th day of doing a lesson a day of Japanese, Italian, French, German, Spanish & Arabic. When I need a flop on the couch, alternative to doomscrolling. Only takes about 30 mins. According to Duolingo I'm making good progress.

I had my ~quarterly visit to my psychiatrist this morning. Told her about this. "You couldn't do that, unless you were a genius". Well that's where you are wrong. I have at best average intelligence. But certain things in certain conditions , I can excel at¹. For whatever reason I'm engaged with Duolingo. It's given me a little surprise about my cognitives. I am slow-witted (ameliorated by compensation mechanisms), but I'm ok at switching context. I've literally only once been hit by the language changes, I nearly spelled 'aeroporto' as 'aeropuerto' (but even then I caught myself in time).

I've not figured it out yet, but the teaching approach done by the Duolingo app does appear to fit my brain wiring (fast dopamine?). I might actually learn something.

But I'd better do it quick, almost certainly I'll drift off from it in a week or two, like it never happened. Like my catapult (slingshot) or lock-picking fads. Except these things don't go away. Way more than a year after I last played with a catapult, but it crossed my mind again the other day, I've bought some fresh rubber bands from the Chinese shop.

I don't know how common this trait is amongst people that tick the neurodivergent boxes, but despite the flitty attention, I generally come back to things, it's a very serious persistence over very extended time periods. I'm still working on many things I started when I was 10, 20, 30... Very gappy and shuffled. Booted about a bit by new things that attach. Parasitic memes maybe, facehuggers that spring out when you are busy doing something else. I'm still building the same synth I started in the attic at Blackwell around 1975. Memory can be a pain though, steps do get retraced too often. I'll have to remind myself of how to tie constrictor knots again, to attach the rubber bands (and make that rope ladder useful). How to fall off a bicycle.

Time Blindness

I intend to do a proper write-up of this sometime soon FOOTNOTE. But due to my mother's ill health I'm likely to have to spend some time in the UK in the near future, with interactions with people that don't know me that well, so I'll get key points down now to save wasting everyone's time on in-person explanations.

I FN was recently formally diagnosed with adult ADHD. It explains a lot. My life has been strongly impacted by traits that were generally put down to personality (even by me). In the past I have been diagnosed with well-known mental health conditions : anxiety (major), depression (minor) and alcoholism (chronic). Several times I've tried various standard treatments to alleviate these, without significant results. In recent years, more through luck than judgement, through a combination of environmental changes LINK and largely informal help, the negative effects have been reduced. It's become increasingly apparent that the primary root cause of these problems was the ADHD. The bad bits are common comorbidities.

Inside My Head (get to the point!)

My Environment

What is know about ADHD