On You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!

I picked this up hoping for a deeper dive into ADHD, and I don’t feel that’s what I got. I’d previously read Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, a reasonable, science-backed primer — not deep, but a crash course with special attention to medical treatment. This book also recommends medication, but it’s much more about everyday life beyond or alongside it. That’s fine in principle, but it goes into each topic in far more detail than necessary, to the point where it’s hard to see it as being about ADHD at all. Going by this book, I’d imagine ADHD is a form of neurodivergence that simply intensifies things everyone experiences; it’s a primer on how to live, which is great, but isn’t what I was after. Worse, I’m not sure it even gets ADHD right. I could be off base, but it seems to me ADHD isn’t a mere intensification of what everyone feels — it’s a qualitatively different experience, stemming from issues with neurotransmitters (dopamine most of all, but also norepinephrine and serotonin), with the frontal lobe especially affected and somehow running out of step with the rest of the brain.

One thing the book does really well is its extensive coverage of meditation. For many people with ADHD, meditation is a lifesaver, and I suspect it’s because of the way it gets different parts of the brain working in concert — Richard Jones, in An Introduction to the Study of Mysticism, argues that the mystical experiences produced by both meditation and psychedelics involve different lobes coordinating in ways they normally don’t, which is exactly the sort of thing someone with ADHD would find useful. I’ve also found SSRIs helpful for managing my own. I have the triple-whammy of ADHD, depression, and no thyroid, so my tendencies run really intense, and hitting the depression and the thyroid problem with medication lightens much of the load that exacerbates the ADHD. I apologize for the digression — these were the things I found myself thinking about as I read. The book might be worth reading if it’s your first encounter with ADHD, but there are other books out there.