Ask HN: Ways to deal with ADHD?
I am going to come out here strongly in favor of medication.<p>All of the natural stuff you&#x27;ve been trying, the meditation, the emotional stuff, it&#x27;s good and I appreciate it, but it just doesn&#x27;t work significantly.<p>As a society we have lots of &quot;medication guilt&quot; I&#x27;ve noticed. I don&#x27;t know where this comes from, but it would be interesting to have a sociologist explore.<p>Western Society is a very cognitively demanding society. It places lots of strain on our brain and mental capacities. The idea that most people can do very well using their limited cognitive resources is to me as unrealistic as the idea that most people can just fight &quot;regular diseases&quot; using their body and no vaccines, antibiotics, or other treatments.<p>I see a lot of guilt too around &quot;being dependent&quot; on medicine. I&#x27;ve never gotten this either. We&#x27;re incredibly dependent on food. We take it everyday. Personality changes dramatically as well. That to me is an argument that while interesting and having good points, doesn&#x27;t really help anyone at the end of the day.<p>Medication does have bad parts. A good example would be people increasing dosage of a medicine when in reality they need to get their diet in order. Also, as I write below, you&#x27;ll probably get a non-effective &#x2F; bad medicine your first go around since you have to find the right one and work at it.<p>So what approaches helped me?
- Anticonvulsant medication. This medicine is an alternative to typical antidepressants. I&#x27;ve seen very little written about it, but seizure reducing medicines have been showing some very positive results in treating depression. This is very good for nervousness and social anxiety as well.
- All-cash psychiatrist. Find a psychiatrist in your city who doesn&#x27;t take insurance. I really believe in insurance, but in this case, those who don&#x27;t take it will be the best. You are looking at $400ish for the first appointment.
- Better diet. The book &quot;How Not To Die&quot; is very simply written. Ugh so many medicine people have elaborate programs and actually make their books hard to understand so you have to buy more materials. Dr. Greger is very good. Yeah I realize 15 other people are saying something different but just trust me on this.