Comment by hinkley
4 hours ago
ADHD results in a dopamine imbalance which results in the sort of novelty seeking behaviors they tend to exhibit.
Part of pubescence is incrementally transferring your reliance on your parents to reliance on your peers. Which is why teenagers test boundaries constantly. They have to divorce from their parents incrementally, and on their own timeline, not the parents’. Your brain has reward systems to encourage that, but can also be hijacked by substances, which is why we pay special attention to substance abuse in children. But there are many reasons for children to fail to socialize, some of them environmental, and a biological drive to fill that with something (including The Internet and “engagement” in particular) if it can’t be filled with social safety. And once it has begun it can be a feedback loop of intentionally choosing one over the other.
There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
> Part of pubescence is incrementally transferring your reliance on your parents to reliance on your peers.
Is it? That’s a theory, but for the vast majority of human history there was a very different pattern and I don’t think we’ve changed enough since then evolution-wise to have instincts for a completely different life pattern.
Like, in hunter gatherer bands, there aren’t really “parents” in the modern sense through a child’s development. And then they don’t start relying on their peers, they’ve been with a mixed age group of siblings and cousins since the age of 3 or so. And then they slowly transition into being a member of the adult male or female group.
I don’t really know how what you’re describing would map into instincts from that ancestral life pattern.
> There are some models of addiction medicine that say that people with hope and connection have a much easier time giving up physical addictions than people who don’t. There isn’t enough stick in the consequences of addiction to get you out of the cycle. You need carrot to transition, and the bigger the carrots the easier the journey.
I totally agree with this. And I think this is the part that's easy to miss in the narrative around how trauma and ADHD connect. Wherever ADHD traits originate, someone's desire to change matters.
If you love your job, but inability to concentrate is hampering performance, you're much more likely to WANT to change than if your job is merely a nuisance required for economic sustenance.