If they already have a non-revoked 3rd class from before, though, having used one not on this list may not prevent getting BasicMed. Even if you’re technically eligible for an SI you should just do BasicMed and not risk it if you don’t have to. Disclaimer: not an AME, YMMV.
This is clearly false. The limitations on BasicMed are different from those of a standard medical certificate [0], and have to do with your physician's medical opinion about your ability to operate a plane. There are a few conditions that specifically require a new SI [1] but this is not some pseudo-legal/badfaith game.
My friend it's a false dichotomy: you can keep your talents and maybe ease your struggle too.
Most stimulant medication is something you can try for a day, see immediately if it's effective or not, then never take again in your life if it isn't for you. Don't suffer needlessly because of misguided bigots like the one above.
I have tried ritalin, vyanse, and adderall in college before. Those drugs scare me because they are in my opinion the greatest drugs in the world. When I am on them I literally become the movie limitless in real life. I feel more amazing than ever and I want to take them all the time. I would like to solve my issues without becoming reliant on medication. It feels like a patch rather than a solution. Lately I have been trying meditation. If it cures my 'adhd' I will let you know
Were you prescribed those drugs, or did you take them recreationally? It's important to work with a doctor to find the dosage that works for you, and it may be much lower than what you would take recreationally. There are also non-amphetamine medications that can help if you aren't comfortable with adderall and friends. There are also behavioral approaches to ADHD that you could explore with a medical professional.
Since your username contains "420," I will add that marijuana is a bad idea if you are struggling with ADHD symptoms. It may make you feel more productive, but it will greatly exasperate your ADHD tendencies.
I am not a doctor, but can I suggest a non-medical intervention that probably doesn't have any adverse effects, but may help?
Under capitalism, the social networks compete for your attention, by sending you notifications. It's a "tragedy of the commons" where the commons is human attention: if Facebook doesn't get you to click during dinner, then Twitter will, and then it'll grow through those tactics. Thus the market forces these corporations to give you addictive newsfeeds, tell you when someone replied to your comment, etc. There are analyses comparing the brain to pavlov's dogs and the addiction to a slot machine.
1) Realize you are NOT alone or atypical. The human attention span has declined because of the system we live in. We now have shorter attention spans than goldfish. https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span/
2) Notice how much of your ADHD is connected to anxiety and investigate the causes of that anxiety, maybe with a psychotherapist or other counsellor. Map out what kind of things you are afraid could happen if you don't react to them quickly. See if you can rearrange your life to diminish the need for quick responses (such as Slack or real-time chats). Consider worst-case scenarios and if you also have OCD, consider ERP therapy.
3) Learn to use "Focus" on your phone, to turn off distractions for long periods of "Flow". Set expectations with people (this may be hard if you work in capitalism for an employer) to schedule times to talk to you, and only allow calls for emergencies from friends and family. It will take you AT LEAST A WEEK after you remove your anxiety of missing something important, to start fully relaxing and not expecting a notification to jump out at you.
4) Watch the movie "the social dilemma" and try out its recommendations (taking 1 day a week off from all electronics completely -- live how people have lived throughout history) and spend it socializing with people, eating dinner, reading a book, etc.
5) Look at your sleep, diet, are you taking walks or exercising? What is your job? Anyway, there is so much you can investigate holistically and take control in your life, before you ever have to consider that ritalin is your only hope. (And if you do want to try a nootropic, you can try modafinil perhaps... it's not an amphetamine... but again, I think medications take away our agency and should be tried only if all else fails)
None of that requires medication, so try that first.
I would definitely appreciate it if at some point in the future (a month, 6 months, or whenever) you emailed me and told me whether what I said made any difference -- positive or negative. You can find my contact info in my profile.
Bigot [definition] a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
I do not recall being antagonistic towards people with ADHD. On the contrary, the resources I have linked to (such as the book https://www.amazon.es/ADHD-Hunter-Farmers-Thom-Hartmann/dp/1...) are by people whose kids have ADHD and they opted to embrace them and accept them, rather than saying they have effectively a neurological disorder. You can make similar cases for autism spectrum, gender dysphoria and so on being zealously overdiagnosed and medicated (https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/10/theres-no-autism-epidemi...)
Medication is often a band-aid and the default way systems handle a cog in a machine. One in four middle-aged women is on antidepressants. Do you think they are ALL clinically depressed? And the opiates that men started to take have reached epidemic proportions too... surely, you wouldn't call everyone a bigot who wants to address the underlying societal reasons for this? Or you'd be the guy prescribing vodka to every USSR citizen as a way to deal with issues?
You are redefining the word "bigot" to mean its opposite, it seems. A system that systematically ignores meeting the basic needs of humans, and then dismisses their resulting behavior as "irrational" or "needing medication" is far worse than a bigot. It's like systemic racism or sexism, but directed against non-neurotypical kids, or adults or elderly.
Were people bigots who said "women have real needs that need to be addressed, stop delegitimizing their real issues by labeling them all as Hysterical Women (TM) and sending them to the doctor to get tittilated"? Because today, we agree with all those people, but in the past, we didn't. To borrow another politically loaded term, you could be on the "wrong side of history", just like people who defended lobotomies and medicating hysterical women.
Maybe you should look into the profit motive of doctors and pharma who stand to gain from more medications. And the school administrators who need to cover their own ass before actually caring about the kids and speaking to their parents. I happen to know about such school administrators and cases personally. The SYSTEM doesn't care about the parents, nor the kids, nor the grandparents which they also stick into nursing homes and medicate -- because again, they need to work 10 hour days to pay the rent. Just like under socialism, the capitalist system externalizes costs onto individuals, you should open your eyes. Try looking at some links I posted above. What you call bigotry, I call basic concern that society should have for human beings.
People who have ADHD are used to being told they just need to stop being lazy. They already have to overcome a huge stigma to seek diagnosis and accept treatment. So, yes you are being "antagonistic towards...people on the basis of their membership of a particular group." Your solution seems to be that instead of seeking scientifically validated treatment that has already helped millions of people, they change the socioeconomic system they exist in, in which they have to work a 9 to 5 to provide for themseleves and their families. This is not practical advice. So not only are you peddling medical quackery, but you don't even offer a snake oil alternative to the audience you're demoralizing.
You also create a false dichotomy in which either modern society fails in certain ways to meet all of our needs to the detriment of people diagnosed with ADHD, or ADHD is a legitimate mental illness that benefits from pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatments. Both things are true.
> Whether self-pleasuring with a hand, or with a vibrating device, the societal factors (of hookup culture, or of cost of rent in cities to own your own place and delay marriage, or everyone getting married later because women now want to focus on their career, while gender age gaps remain similar) matter and should be systematically explored. This article or the nofap movement or women's tacit use of vibrating devices, are all quiet ways to cope with many societal structural changes.
I am raising my eyebrow at this. You want to look upstream at hookups, declining marriage, women's financial independence and their use of vibrators? When that conversation turns to "traditional" gender roles in religion, I win a prize for calling it early.
Anyway, even if there is some tractable upstream problem we can eventually solve, we still have to deal with the people who are already downstream. For them, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases is valuable, even if we deal with the root cause so future generations don't suffer.
I think if you're looking for some cookie-cutter viewpoint, you'll be disappointed, and no you won't win a prize.
If you look at the rest of my comments on this branch of the tree, you'll find that I am identifying a pattern... whenever X vs Y start fighting (women vs men, vaxxers vs antivaxxers, vegans vs meat eaters, ) there is a bigger issue that involves government and corporations working together, while individuals are distracted and blaming each other.
(2021) https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 Super-processed Foods and obesity, Factory farms and veganism, Plastic containers and recycling, Fossil fuels and climate change, Vaccines and mask mandates
Both Greta Thurnberg and George Carlin are right. The people in charge have not just failed us, but the entire system is pushing the individual around. What you perceive as a medication you have to take is a symptom of an underlying systemic issue.
Just in the last few decades we have had:
an opioid epidemic for men
one in four middle aged women uses antidepressants
elderly in nursing homes are medicated more than ever
a huge rise in diagnosis of ADHD, autism, gender dysphoria for kids
did I miss any demographic? adult men, women, elderly and children are given medication, and somehow people are more depressed than before. (Sometimes even more than countries with seasonal affective disorder.)
There are many societal reasons I could get into, but let's look at a few other ones:
attention spans of adults have steadily fallen
(not just ADD for kids) to that of a goldfish
stress levels are higher than they used to be
obesity and diabetes has risen tremendously in USA
(including in children)
Perhaps we should really look at upstream issues, like technology, economic system, social institutions, cultural influences / celebrities / TikTok / notifications / incentives.
Yes in some ways I am a social conservative. But it seems to me, just like "postmodernism", my views are more progressive than "progressives" LOL. I want the government and industry to stop dominating our lives, our time, making us work and telling us that "having no time" is a badge of honor. You're right that I want most women not to "lean in" at work, but I also say that exact thing to the men... if we had a UBI, we could all "lean out", and spend more time with our kids an elderly parents who took care of us, instead of sticking them in nursing homes, that would be a start.
> When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
That is only one possible explanation.
For example an underdeveloped country might appear to have lower prevalence of dementia than a more developed country. Perhaps because the former lacks effective nationwide medical diagnostic abilities, or perhaps because fewer in their population make it to old age where the disease shows up, or perhaps because they have a religious belief that conflates it with devilry so it goes unreported. In all of those situations the ground truth prevalence could be exactly the same in both countries, yet the developed country would report higher rates of the disease than the underdeveloped country.
If your society has you working on a small farm as a child instead of going to school and doing knowledge work, of course ADHD will be underreported. That doesn't mean it's not present.
There may be some causation from ADHD to obesity, I can't say, but otherwise they are categorically different issues.
Well, there can be various explanations, but France is not an underdeveloped country, neither is Finland. Their medical systems do report ADHD, although they might not so zealously overdiagnose it. French parents are more involved with their children, have far lower divorce rates, and work shorter hours than USA. Having "no time" is a point of national pride in the USA and there are even crass commercials that dial up the capitalism memes to an 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
Here are possible reasons why kids have ADHD:
1) The world is far more fast-paced. ADULTS haven't fared much better, and you'd hardly argue that everyone is genetically predisposed to having the attention span of a goldfish... it's clearly a societal thing: https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span
2) Technology affects society. Corporations are incentivized to put ever more ads in front of you, and now we all have cell phones in our pocket, connected to the internet at all times. Being distracted at dinner, notifications you have to check to make sure it's not important, etc.
3) Now that people can be reached anytime by their phone, any SMS or email causes anxiety that maybe it's from your boss, etc.
4) Even the tools that HN loves so much are often detrimental. Real-time is a gimmick, and studies show that Slack, etc. is actually worse for mental well-being and productivity overall. Here is a recent NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/23/magazine/cal-...
Again, ALL THESE THINGS are related to how capitalism and technology affects society and all of us. The very things that we are Hacker News are involved in, and we can do something to make a better world. Instead of saying that people deserve to be medicated. 1 in 4 middle aged women is on antidepressants ... what's more compassionate -- finding out the underlying reasons and building a better dating site for instance, or just assuming that's the new norm and selling as many pills as they will buy?
Your position is both medically disproved and demeaning. Correct it please before you do more harm.
I made it to middle age without any ADHD diagnosis or stimulants, including coffee. My symptoms were present from early childhood and remain to this day, I expect I'll carry them to my grave. The entire time it's been an agonizing struggle, in ways I learned over decades were not normal compared to my friends and family.
I avoided diagnosis and medication due in part to stigma perpetuated by attitudes like yours. I suffered in silence for years that could have been avoided if only my condition were better understood and supported.
When I finally got a professional diagnosis, the stimulant didn't make me high the way it would do for you, it just made my brain act more like your brain on a normal day. My stresses and struggles became simply normal challenges, with the smothering layer of ADHD failings on top removed.
So at least in my adult experience, properly dosed stimulant medication given to people who need it can be life-alteringly effective, as close to a cure as a neurodivergent brain thinking today can hope for.
Yikes! You can't break the site guidelines like you did in this thread, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. I know other commenters in this thread were also breaking the site guidelines, but you went way beyond them.
You've unfortunately been doing this in other places too:
These are unquestionably bannable offenses on HN. I'm not going to ban you because you've also posted good comments and it doesn't look like we've warned you before. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on—that means making your substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, and using HN for curious conversation, not battle—we'd be grateful.
Having ever been diagnosed with ADHD is disqualifying, as is taking any ADHD/psychotropic medication to mitigate the condition. All you can do is take a day-long battery of psych tests to demonstrate that you never had ADHD in the first place.
> When I was around seventeen I took a Real Analysis class at Columbia University.
How typical.
> When my first-year hallmates were “studying” they were looking out the window, playing with their pencils, talking to their roommates, all sorts of stuff that wasn't studying. When I needed to study I would hide somewhere and study. I think the ability to focus on just one thing for a few hours at a time is a great gift that ADD has given me.
That's the opposite of executive disfunction. (To be fair, the author does describe other hallmarks of executive disfunction elsewhere.)
I didn't want to for decades, despite obvious symptoms, for fear of dependency or being labeled a drug seeker and because of the stigma implied by comments like this. Could be I was the only person those drug education programs worked on.
I'm glad I finally did. That one little pill makes me a better and happier person.
Same. I was diagnosed with ADHD at eight and was put on stimulants then. Took them for 8 years and stopped. Now at 30, I'm on them again and all the anxiety and depression that I was caused by or masking my issues with functioning just dissolved. I'm glad I finally let myself take them, but I still feel stigma around it.
Even still, the stigma is reinforced by arbitrary rules that presume I am an addict: "You can only have a 30 day supply," "we can't fill the pending 'script until 31 days after you last picked it up," "no, you can't get it early even if you're traveling for over a month. You'll need to find a pharmacy there to fill it."
It is not normal. I still have not bought christmas gifts for my family, who I love dearly and who I do not want to disappoint, even though I have their wish lists in a different tab and it will only take a few clicks to be done. Instead I have fought my ADHD brain for weeks trying to get myself to do it and failing.
That is different from a neurotypical person who feels gift giving is difficult. Happy christmas.
Update: I got it done. Printer ran out of ink at the last minute but I found a spare. When there's no margin for error, little things like that can bring the whole thing down.
I've bought all of my stuff in the past two and a half days, and was only able to do it because I had family around to help me out. You're not alone brother/sister.
