Lack of motivation and focus is pretty easy to imagine for anybody, as it's a common sentiment; the only difference, medically, is whether it happens often enough to cause issues in your day-to-day life. You can easily replicate this yourself, neurodivergent or not, with bad sleep, junk sugary food, doomscrolling on TikTok/YouTube for the entire day and see whether you have the motivation or focus to do anything. Unmedicated ADHD feels a bit like having that most days.
Source: I am diagnosed ADHD. I don't take dexamfetamine any more because it's far too "synthetic" for my tastes and it feels like being a cart pulled around by a horse. For the past year I've been using nicotine patches and in my experience they work and feel better than any amfetamine treatment. I am also starting to believe the so-called "ADHD craze" is just a widespread epidemic of dopamine depletion caused by social media and modern technology in general.
I'm also diagnosed with ADHD. Unfortunately, there are no ADHD meds available in my country at all. :(
I'm not exactly sure what ADHD feels like for me, but there’s one thing I’ve noticed. I used to take methylphenidate, but the effect was pretty small. In order to get it, I had to fly to another country, which was expensive. So I eventually gave up on that idea.
Now it’s been a year without stimulants, and I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but for the first time in my life I’ve ended up in debt, with almost zero productivity, no finished projects, and so on.
It doesn’t matter whether I sleep well or not — over the past 12 months I’ve had different conditions (good sleep, bad sleep, good diet, bad diet, etc.), but overall, my focus has stayed close to zero.
By the way, I’ve never tried nicotine patches. I’m pretty sure I won’t find them here, but at least I can probably order them.
What I also require to function is a low carb diet, and pretty much no added sugars. Carbs destroy my mood, sugar is powdered ADHD, whereas protein and fats keep my brain silent. Lately I’ve been experimenting with tyrosine (a supplement of natural aminoacid found in many foods such as cheese) which gives me a bit the laser like focus of AMPH, and a minor crash in the evening. I use it sparingly but it’s good to have and very cheap.
Hope some of this helps. Email in the profile if you have more questions.
