adhd - how to unlock your superpower
by apollo
this document is personal advice. i am not a doctor. i am not bound by the hippocratic oath. by following my advice, you are responsible for your actions, not me. be responsible. be safe. put others first. do not put anything in your body you do not understand, even if a doctor is recommending it. hurt yourself to grow, not to feel. this won't be easy. be patient. but don't be a patient. be a participant in the experiment you're running to get you out of this hellscape. your medical team can only do so much. if you yourself have a hard time understanding your brain, why do you think an entirely separate human would have better luck with it? ultimately, if you want out, you need to unplug yourself. no one else can do it for you. sound good? okay, let's start.
# intro
hey. welcome. let's see if we're on the same page. if this doesn't resonate with you, this document isn't for you. on the other hand, if you start reading and keep reading, this document is 100% for you.
at a general level, you're tired. not just in the physical sense... in the existential sense. the world doesn't make much sense. it feels like it's actively antagonistic to your existence. maybe you've tried pharmaceuticals whether or not you actually had a prescription for them. maybe you've tried other kinds of drugs. you're probably a smoker of tobacco or weed, maybe both. maybe a doctor's put a big ol gel cap on your head and ran an electric current through your brain. maybe you've tried so many three letter acronyms the Works Progress Administration would be asking you for advice if they still existed today. you're angry and sad. so much so that you're currently being treated for some form of depression, anxiety, or other mood disorder. maybe you've had a psych ward visit. if you have, i am genuinely sorry you had to experience that.
maybe you were lucky enough as a kid to have the good kind of parents that helped you. but i think it's far more likely your experience was like mine: you could tell your parents weren't like other parents. they get randomly angry at small things. maybe you supported them more than they supported you. they are upstanding citizens around friends and in public. in private you were yelled at for simply being a child. what's most frustrating? despite being clearly anti-establishment and free thinking in some big or small way, when it comes to you, it's their way or the fucking highway.
that yelling... never really stopped. now its just the rest of the world doing it for the most part. it's loud and obnoxious, and it never stops. it makes you cry some nights. you often feel like this is just not your universe. you want to tear it down. you want to dismantle it from the inside out. you want it to scream as loud as everyone and everything else does 24/7.
you often forget to eat. you often forget to sleep. you often forget. where things are. what you had to do today. what their name is. you forget so often it hurts. you forget so often it becomes an expectation. calendars. writing on your hand. tying strings on fingers. you have rituals like putting things in front of doors so that you can't leave a room without them. every time you leave the house, anxiety strikes. you forgot something. you know it. you can't fucking remember what, but you forgot something. fuck. fuck. what was it? sometimes it even happens just moving from room to room in your own home. it's a god damn nightmare. what the fuck man?
you cant sleep. you've never been able to. head just goes too fast. the night becomes your day. and honestly? it's kinda fucking awesome. the night is quiet. it's private. night is the time shit gets done. you can hear yourself think. you don't feel like you're around a bunch of strangers. at night you run experiments, or you tell stories. so many wonderful stories. you learn about yourself. you learn about the world, or you learn about other worlds. it's usually something different every night. at night you feel more comfortable with yourself. you become a creature of the night. you identify with it. oh yeah, and there's a fan you never shut off in your room, even when the weather is cold. the room doesn't feel right unless the fan is going.
you do everything. like literally everything. things get boring too quickly not to. you aren't particularly good at any of it, but you're usually good enough to get a passing grade. somehow it takes less effort sometimes for you to do something than it does your peers. that's something you wish you had all the time. you either have really good grades, or really bad grades. it's kind of a toss up as to which. i was lucky enough to get good grades, and that helped a lot.
dry books are impossible. some books, confusingly, aren't. they're almost always fiction. comics and manga usually work for you. maybe if you're a freak like me, they're highly technical guides on how to do something. you try to find the patterns in the ones that work but you just don't see what it is. if you can read the same book for more than 30 seconds without doubling back, it's a god damn miracle. note-taking is essential. maybe you're so good at note-taking, others have asked you for your notes.
you always need to be listening to something. radio, music, podcast, audiobooks. chores don't get done otherwise. neither did homework. nor does workwork. being in a scenario without music where you have to do something boring sounds like a fucking nightmare. maybe you know from personal experience that it's a nightmare. so you start humming to yourself. you tap a pencil. you drum on things. you make your own music. or you make tiny games. tiny deals with yourself. it's the only way things get done.
your taste in media is... weird. people don't want the same shit you do. your heart has been broken over and over again because of how many times you've asked someone if they knew about a piece of media and they said "no". what you do watch you often feel scared to share with others. it's usually subversive, anti-establishment, artistic, feeling-based. it has some message for the world you know the world needs to hear, but doesn't. it shows rather then tells. horror speaks really strongly to you. the mainstream doesn't. you don't find yourself excited about star wars. star trek probably speaks more loudly to you. but firefly? cowboy bebop? 2001 a space odyssey? gundam? those are the real space operas. star wars couldn't hold a fucking candle to those works. you love the twilight zone. black mirror. perfect blue. paranoia agent. the matrix. pan's labrynth. parasite. the lighthouse. the shining. everything, everywhere, all at once. the nightmare before christmas is your christmas movie (though A Christmas Story is fine if you need something more family friendly). you like stuff that makes you think. and so much media, especially mainstream media... is just fucking artistically bankrupt and mind-numbingly boring.
rarely, you find people you're able to instantly connect with. they're troublemakers. the kind of people who just..... fix things because they're wrong. maybe they're good, maybe they're evil. but one thing is for sure: they see the world differently. they get it. they also probably have weird quirks. they don't look or behave like other people in the room. they're fidgeting, or playing with something, or looking around at stuff. yet somehow, despite looking like they're miles away from you, their insights are somehow always not only correct, but deep and insightful.
when you talk with them, as if by magic, things that you'd never talk about with other people are just... another normal conversation topic. they probably cuss a lot. they probably laugh a lot, often nervously. you had an instant kinship with them barely an hour into talking with them. it felt like you've somehow known them all your life. these people are few and far between in your life. when you have to inevitably leave them, they're the people it hurts the most to say goodbye to. not family or friends. those people you ended up at a bar with and discussed life, the meaning of the universe with, and everything all at once as though it were the weather. it was fucking beautiful. that's why it hurts to say good-bye. you have no idea when that will happen again.
how'd i do? nail on the head? did it feel like i read your psych's notes? that's how it felt the first time someone taught me what adhd is. i know i got some details wrong. you aren't me after all. but i'm guessing that i got more of them right than you expected, didn't i? and hey, you were able to read it the whole way through without getting distracted, weren't you? do you believe that i know what's up? if not, feel free to dip. if you do, let's get started for real this time.
oh, one more thing before we begin: since you're here, you've accepted you have adhd. that's a great first step!! <3 seriously! i'm really proud of you, and you should be too. i have no idea where you're at in your journey. personally, i had to put all these pieces together at the beautiful young age of 31. i'm glad i got it before other people did, but god do i wish that i had this guide sooner. i hope it helps, i really do!!
# stage 1: this world was not made for you
* we live in a world created for people not like us
* this is the primary reason why we feel so bad all the time - we feel like the world hates us because it does. it makes everything harder for us.
* that is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to make things better for ourselves. we're the only ones who can.
# stage 2: cheat codes
* life is unfair.
* life is just a game we're all playing together.
* if you're struggling, you're behind the ball. it's okay to cheat.
* cheat. do whatever you need to do to work in this system that hates us.
* forms of cheating:
* brain augmentation: calendars, lists, pen and paper. your brain can't hold everything, so stop trying to make it do so.
* drugs: coffee, tobacco, weed, stimmies, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety. our brains don't work like others from a chemical standpoint. drugs even the playing field.
* food: eat as much as you need to. you can work on your weight when you're feeling better. it's a lot easier to do then. our brains need sugar. i don't know why. my guess is that our brains fire more frequently. don't eat too much of it, but we probably need more than the average person. i almost always have something sweet at hand.
* rule bending: nearly all systems involve humans. humans are squishy. you can bend their rules with enough charisma or empathy. therefore, all systems are bendable. you need them to be. your brain doesn't operate by the same rules.
* interrupts: do something unexpected in front of others. give a stranger money. pick up trash off the ground. pay for dinner. stop and look at something. use your actions to make people think and get off autopilot. show them it's easy to make the world a better place.
* cheating should not come at the cost of other people. find ways to cheat that do not hurt others. ideally your cheating benefits others as well as yourself.
# stage 3: meditation
* if you can't think about how you think, you will be stuck forever
* meditation is debugging for the brain
* meditation lets you listen to yourself in situations where you could not before
* meditation is also direct training for fighting adhd impulses.
* it will be extremely difficult at first, and frustrating
* you will have to sit with uncomfortable feelings for long periods of time and just learn to be with them.
* once mastered, meditation lets you ride the waves of emotion instead of drowning under them.
# stage 4: braindiving
* now that you can think about yourself, you can work on yourself
* the goal of braindiving is to identify your internal systems and fix the ones that are broken
* question everything. gender. value systems. motivations. how did they get there? what purpose do they serve? are they helping you or harming you?
* this is literally what psychologists/therapists do. they're professional braindivers you pay to help you! isn't that fucking cool?
* the reason people take psychodelic drugs is that seeing some of this shit is really hard while sober.
* your ego is a creature with self-preservation. it does not want to change.
* psychodelic drugs let you bypass your ego temporarily and really feel things instead of just thinking about how you feel about them.
# stage 5: friends
* a huge reason you've struggled with friends is because of everything we've covered so far. your brain doesn't work like other peoples' do and there's a lot of things you do that naturally put people off.
* human relation is healing.
* having people you can relate to is a necessary part of the human experience.
* good friends are the way to make sure your braindiving experiments worked and that the changes are correct.
* people with adhd are your friends!!
# stage 6: how to play your class.
* you now know how to cheat, know how to listen to yourself, know how to change yourself, and have people to make sure the changes are correct.
* this is the framework we needed to begin developing your superpowers.
* should note that all of these "superpowers" are things all humans can do. but adhd people are better at some of them, so they often appear to be superpowers to someone without adhd.
* the thing that fuels all of our super powers is hyper-charged pattern recognition. our brains are more intuitive than logical
* hunter-gatherer theory: a theory about how adhd developed and why it's so prevalent is that it was an essential skill for hunters. high octane pattern recognition saves lives when fighting predators or navigating new places. once agriculture began, hunters didn't disappear. we just.... got pulled into a society not made for
* superpowers:
* deep focus: you can work on something for hours on end without stopping. you will keep seeing new things to work on, new problems to solve. it's hard to put something down because you are always seeing the next thing that needs doing.
* high quality crafting: you pick up on details in masterworks and integrate them into your work without realizing it. you can articulate why something was done a particular way intuitively where others struggle to.
* translation: you are uncannily good at communicating ideas to other people. you can always find some way to get people to understand you and each other. you find yourself able to communicate ideas in entirely different "languages" (e.g.: explaining a technical problem with a program to an artist using their medium). people will feel like you're a good listener because you can restate things in a different way than they did very easily, which makes them feel heard.
* clear communication: you can say things in a substantially more efficient way than others. you need less words to communicate an idea, and people appreciate that because it takes less energy to understand you.
* precognition: you figure out things about the world before others do and, in extreme scenarios, before they happen.
* telepathy: you can read other people's minds and plant ideas in them inception style.
* ex: handing a person the right tool. you can complete other peoples sentences, sometimes literally as they're saying them. handing a person your phone and getting them to put on their favorite music without ever asking them.
* telepathy works really well between adhd people because you're using each others' hyper-charged pattern recognition. i'm convinced two adhd people that know each other well enough could have an entire conversation without speaking a word.
* uncanny luck: you're always in the right place at the right time. coincidences happen far more often to you than other people. you appreciate them far more often. this happens so much other people take notice.
* again, this just stems from recognizing the patterns that flow through the natural world. the feeling of luck stems in part from recognizing what the world is pushing you towards and then following it. it's like good design in any artistic medium.
* efficient stomach: your body knows how to extract the nutrients from food. you find yourself eating less. you'll also start losing weight. when you do get hungry or thirsty, it tends to happen very rapidly.
# stage 8: mania
* once you begin to believe in the superpowers, your brain will begin to rewire itself very rapidly
* this state is called mania.
* you will start making connections between everything.
* it can be extremely unpleasant. be ready.
* it can last for days, weeks, or even months.
* for me, it took place in the space of a week and was very intense.
* mania scares people.
* best case your powers look like very cool magic tricks.
* worst case, people are scared of what you can do and you will be able to tell
* the symptoms of mania are:
* having high level of activity or energy
* feeling extremely happy or excited/euphoric
* not sleeping, and somehow feeling rested
* having a lot of self-esteem. thinking you're invincible
* being more talkative than usual
* having racing thoughts - having lots of thoughts on a lot of topics (a "flight of ideas")
* being easily distracted
* being obsessed with and absorbed in activities. you may suddenly solve puzzles you struggled with for years, or create art for the first time
* pacing or fidgeting
* impulsive and reckless behavior - buying sprees, reckless sex, bad investments
* delusions - false beliefs or ideas that are incorrect interpretations.
* super commmon one is paranoia, the feeling that everyone is watching you or following you
* hallucinations - hearing or seeing someone that isn't there. maybe talking to them
* to cope with mania, your main goal is to
bring yourself back to reality <3. we're here for you. we got you!!! <3
* get some food and water together, at least two weeks worth. you need nutrients to deal with mania.
* avoid things that are overly exciting - driving, arcades, raves, etc.
* this can turn into a positive feedback loop that can destroy you
* create routines and stick to them.
* eat at the same time.
* go to sleep at the same time.
* keep taking your meds.
* talk to friends that support you and will not offer you drugs or take advantage of you
* mania places you in a highly suggestable state. be wary of anybody that seems too friendly, and don't be afraid to leave situations that don't feel right to you.
* avoid making any sort of dangerous or life changing situations.
* get someone to help keep an eye on how much money you're spending
* write things down so you don't obsess over them
* take sick days from work. working is a big risk.
* don't be afraid to talk to yourself and think about your thoughts. you are your own friend.
* focus on good, relaxed vibes.
* take a shower.
* take a bath.
* sleep.
* listen to calming music.
* read a non-fiction book.
* breathe
* listen to your body and mind. if you need to eat, eat. if you need water, get water. if you need to sleep, sleep.
* if you don't know what these feelings feel like, run experiments to figure that out. it will be very easy to tell during a manic episode
if you become suicidal
call someone immediately. Do not gamble on your life. Talk to literally anyone who cares about you.
* tell them you are experiencing a manic episode so they know how to help you
* be honest with them.
* Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
* National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or chat online
# stage 7: starting the fire
* to begin the process of learning your class, you need a triggering event.
* this takes the form of something that gives you a very intense shot of emotion very quickly. here are a few examples:
* beating a hard video game
* standing up for something you believe in
* dancing sober in a group of people who are clearly having a great time
* falling in love
* singing a song you love in front of a crowd
* once you do enough of these, mania will begin. remember everything you just read.
* don't be afraid to come back here if you need it
* we are here for you!
* a pretty easy signal for mania is "you look different???"
* i call this "the glow". somehow people know that mania is happening. it's weird!!
# stage 9: apotheosis
* once you get past your mania, you will have ascended.
* your will have access to your powers.
* your brain will work a different way that is hard to explain
* welcome to the future! c:
* the way to test whether or not you've hit apotheosis is via koans. here's 3 of them:
* what is the sound of one hand clapping?
* if humans are logical creatures, why do we still make stories?
* are you good enough at dancing to do the hokey pokey? that's what it's all about.
* koans should make you laugh or experience awe!
* koans are tests of intuitive strength. if the answer does not come to you right away, you've failed.
* just say the first thing that comes to mind. do not overthink it.
thank you for reading! good luck! i believe in you!! - apollo