Comment on The Things You Say

  1. fullofwoe on Chapter 1 Sun 19 Aug 2012 05:08AM UTC

    I have ADHD, or rather, ADD, which is all the fun without the outward physical restlessness, and the way people have been handling Stiles's ADHD has been bugging me for WEEKS. I cannot thank you and Sami enough for this, honestly.

    (And yeah, calming down from taking a stimulant will probably never stop confusing me. I mean, WHAT?)

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    1. sami on Chapter 1 Wed 22 Aug 2012 08:14AM UTC

      Ooh, I can give you the approximate explanation for this!

      So, drugs tend to work on a curve, right? Like, visualise a sine wave. (If you're not mathy at all, if you google "sine wave" you'll get the image, and hopefully the rest will make sense?)

      The hypothetical Entirely Normal person starts at zero. If they take a depressant, like alcohol, they get more relaxed, and chill, etc, until eventually it becomes poison and they die. If they take a stimulant, they get more "up", and energetic, etc, and if they take *more*, they hit "it becomes a poison, and they die", as a rule, but if they took more and that didn't happen and they didn't have an aneurysm (it depends on the drug, really), it would become a depressant, and then it would become a poison anyway, and then they'd die.

      Now, a person with ADHD starts out pushed out along the curve so that we're already at "up". So instead, if we take a stimulant, it pushes us onward, but it goes straight to depressant, so it chills out all the over-up-ness of us. (However, if we took too much, it would still become poison, and we'd die.)

      Man, this is easier when I can draw a diagram and give better examples and stuff. But the basic idea is: effect curve.

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      1. fullofwoe on Chapter 1 Wed 22 Aug 2012 07:05PM UTC

        Nope, nope, I'm with ya. I'm mathier than the average individual, although beyond calculus is when my mind goes, "Okay, I quit." Okay, so we're shifted right or left on a sine wave graph. That makes sense. (I literally have a picture of a sine wave in my head right now.) So that explains it. It's still a funny feeling, you know? Taking something that is supposed to make people wired and it makes me feel calm. Just. So weird. XD

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        1. Trai on Chapter 1 Thu 13 Feb 2014 01:55PM UTC

          My understanding of why ADHD and ADD folk (which includes my mom, brother, my son, and me), is that our dopamine system is sluggish. The creation of "reward chemicals" and reception of them within our reward system doesn't trigger correctly. The stimulants bring us closer to "normal".

          Needless to say, there are variants within the spectrum. My family is "lucky" in that removing wheat (is broken down into chemicals that act like opiates) from our diet helps remove a lot of impulsive/control issues.

          Last Edited Thu 13 Feb 2014 01:57PM UTC

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