I need to know from someone who is like me. I've started considering that I have ADHD or AuDHD after nearly 17 years of anhedonia starting in my mid teen years. I haven't enjoyed much outside of novelty in this time, my threshold for dopamine just completely flatlined. I feel like everything I do, even if it's "fun", requires willpower and focus. Watching a TV series requires willpower. Playing a video game requires willpower. Going out requires willpower. Most of my life now has felt like existing until I die.I used to have incredible difficulty with even starting homework, and my grades fell hard when this started. Just minor tasks felt overwhelming and impossible to focus on, like this massive hurdle I had to overcome. When I'm constantly met with novelty, it becomes easier, and I managed to develop a degree of tolerance for getting stuff done, but it's tough. I don't just START something, I think about it for a while and procrastinate. My self-esteem and life are just so damaged from years of this and I've started the steps to get medicated.I've seen people here talk about getting medication for this before, and I want to know what your experiences are. I've heard someone people describe it as a cheat code for their life and it made everything until that point feel unfair. If this does the same for me, I'll surely feel powerful grief from all the wasted years where I could have been doing this. But I also wonder if having to learn to adapt through sheer willpower could now become like one insanely worked out muscle and that I might be able to push far beyond what normal people do. And did you also need therapy on top of this?
>>34585625>anhedonia starting in my mid teen yearsWhy only then? Why wasn't it present since you were born?>I've heard someone people describe it as a cheat code for their lifeMore like "this pill is the only thing preventing homelessness" for me
>>34585631I think back to growing up and how I used to play video games or want to go out and do things. I didn't think about it, of course I would like to. Playing a video game before school could get me in trouble, but I'd have that urge.I've also always loved making and reading lists all the way back to when I was a kid. Whether it was writing stuff out or printing off sheets from websites, just having that information freely at my disposal and being able to notice patterns use that info was a good feeling. It was like checking off a box, completing something, and it gave me a sense of dopamine. I still enjoy making lists. But I remember in my teen years, I started to focus more on that completion. I saw a Pokémon game I played when I was 13, and I beat the story in 20 hours. I saw a Pokémon game I played when I was 15 when this started, and that became 200 hours, and everything started to be like that. At first I thought it was some kind of OCD, but AI actually gave me insight that I had never considered before: I was using this list-making and completion habit to try and scrounge up what little dopamine I could in response to the anhedonia. I feel excitement when I hear about some new games, but an overwhelming sense of exhaustion when I imagine starting and playing them.The anhedonia started around the time I was 15. I specifically remember everything feeling greyer the winter of 2009, of just losing energy, coming home from school just to sleep, my grades falling. It felt like I couldn't enjoy or start anything, and it led to a very empty life. I think it was probably hormonal, because I remember really loving the year of school before that and looking forward to coming back after the summer.I've since accomplished things, but it's required intense focus for long periods of time and usually leads to just as intense burnout after because I go without any reward from my brain for achieving anything.
>>34585649Some of those are ADHD and autistic traits, some of those are also typical human traits, and when you add adolescent-onset depression to the mix it's hard to say with certainty. They diagnosed me with ADHD when I was 12, because I was just that out of control. I denied it for years, but now it seems like the only way to explain any of this without using the word "autism". I wouldn't be too concerned with labels in your situation, even thought it does feel convenient to have a simple answer to all this. If you can reasonably get diagnosed with ADHD, prescribed stimulants, and it genuinely improves your daily functioning, then that's all that really matters.
Also when I procrastinated with homework, I didn't even do fun things. I would browse the internet and kill time. Fapping 5-6 times a day on particularly low days as I struggled to get some dopamine, and this is the same now. I find it really hard to focus on videos. I had a 30 minute video in my tabs open for over 3 months, and I only just finished it yesterday, very occasionally watching up to 90 seconds at a time before I would lose focus. I keep going to YouTube and refreshing just to find SOMETHING vaguely interesting to watch, and then I struggle to maintain interest.I used to be a big reader as a kid, it was hard to keep my nose out of a book during class, but my mind would eventually start wandering while reading and I'd go an entire page on a different train of thought before realizing I wasn't paying attention and had to backtrack. This began happening all the time.>>34585660I also used to "fidget" a lot with my hands when I was a kid, I remember my mom taking me to a doctor. I did it when I got excited over something, and I now understand that it was stimming. I really, really don't want to be seen as autistic, even if I am a bit socially awkward, but my life is utterly unbearable right now and I need to put it back on track. I just know that I can't maintain the kind of intense multi year grind necessary if I'm not on something though. The idea of doing more school after high school in my mental state back then was unfathomable, and attempting it at that time was a bad idea, a waste of time and money.I'm willing to sacrifice whatever pride I have if it means I'm not going to blow my brains out in 5 years for being in the same place.
>>34585660>>34585665I should also add that I wasn't out of control or anything. I was always really well-behaved, I didn't have the hyperactivity or acting out that the H in ADHD would imply. I was considered really smart, it was easy for me to get awards, and the only thing holding me back was my terrible regular procrastination. And I apparently have a powerful charisma to me that draws others to me (at least when I'm not stuck where I have been for the past couple years). Even my burned out self has been known to randomly achieve shocking feats in short timeframes through sheer willpower.That is to say, if I remove this one bottleneck that's been holding me back for so long, I think I can be someone of notoriety.
>>34585665The main differentiation boils down to frequency and intensity. That's how diagnostic criteria work in the first place. That's why many people technically can't be diagnosed with autism or ADHD, even if ostensibly they experience many real, debilitating traits of it. Considering the overlap with PTSD, personality disorders, or simply depression and anxiety, it makes this process of discerning and disentanglement even more difficult.It's pretty obvious I don't have autism, yet I have the social skills of a toddler. ADHD is stereotyped as an extroverted, constantly chatty, social butterfly, meanwhile many autistic people are more 'socially successful' than me. Diagnostic labels are a double-edged sword.
>>34585687At that point, you might as well just go get a stimulant prescription. It's still fairly easy to do. If it genuinely makes you feel "high" then you know you can quit while you're still ahead. If it feels more like unlocking something that most people already have access to, then there's no real reason to discontinue. Adderall never felt "life changing" to me, but I get the feeling I wouldn't have been able to hold a job nearly this long without it.
>>34585625I second getting a stimulant prescription. Vyvanse and Adderall both changed my life. I could not have graduated college without hem and my salary would probably be half what it is, if I could hold a job at all. I’m AuDHD and much of what you typed sounds familiar.
>>34585700I think it's a cluster of interconnected things. Something in particular set me off back in April which hit every single problem I had. But it was something an online friend asked me last year when he had been diagnosed with AuDHD that had me wondering. He asked me how frequently I fapped, and that he was the same, because it's a dopamine fix.Self-esteem and anxiety are interconnected, and exacerbated by the mediocre life I've led.Obsessive-compulsive tendencies are used as a substitute for dopamine.Focus is a major problem. I've had periods of hyperfocus on specific topics I'm interested in, but it's extremely selective.If Adderall or whatever I need allows me to just DO the things I think about, if my dopamine threshold is reactivated and I get enjoyment and joy out of things that aren't pure novelty, and if I can weaponize newfound focus into productive habits, I think I can fix multiple issues at once and turn my life around.>>34585715I've always wondered how people can be so addicted to video games that they just spend endless hours playing them and ignoring real life problems. And I've known people who have told me that they've been through that and they wondered why I react with envy, like I'm making light of a part of their life that they're ashamed of. I spent the exact same time they did just staring at a wall and feeling empty, not even getting the enjoyment they did. If two people both ended up in the same dead end position at age 30 because of procrastination but one spent 15 years having a blast and the other spent it feeling nothing while staring at a wall, I would think anyone would rather be the first person.
>>34585723Can you tell me about your experience before and after?
>>34585744Before: failing out of college because couldn’t studyAfter: passing classes and keeping my scholarship because I could study That’s pretty much it.
Finally got a call from the psychiatry office for a conference chat this FridayI hope there's no more suffering
>>34588127Good luck anon. With what you told us here you won't even need to play it up to get a prescription.
