there are freakout posts every hour or so on r/adhd. desperate plans to amass a huge petition of signatures, or challenge it legally with a class act. lawsuit, but mostly a lot of despair and disbelief. also some blaming of the so-called undeserved adderall users that are allegedly the official reason for the shortage...and something about tiktok users.

it's bad and capitalism is certainly the reason why. i'd like to understand the nuance of it more though if anyone had some good leftist takes on it.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Idk what the causes are but people with adhd react to stimulants in a completely different way than people who don't have adhd. It's easy to measure, it's consistent. There are tons of funny annecdotes of people doing coke at parties and getting really calm and focused and thinking "oh i guess i have adhd"

    It's not just "difficulty concentrating". It's a whole constellation of symptoms related to motivation, task initiation, executive function. Adhd doesn't make people " distracted" in some abstract way. Our brains aren't producing the right chemical responses to stimulus that allow normal people to sustain interest in a task.

    • Cottryofidia [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      ok, thanks for explaining. I said 'difficulty concentrating' because its another way of saying attention deficit. Isn't it to be expected that difficulty concentrating, or attention deficit, will necessarily involve issues with motivation, task initiation, and executive function since those things are all required for attention?

      Personally, interacting with various people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, I find it very difficult to notice a difference between them and any other person except in that they're more socially expressive of how (understandably) bored they are by what I'm saying or what they're/we're doing. Of course I'm no expert in the criteria for such a diagnosis, this is just my subjective perception of these people.