Impulsively buying stuff, hyperfixating on it for some time, losing that fixation and then having problems with keeping it in your routine as a habit is very much ADHD. ADHD is not 1s ans 0s, how people experience it varies from person to person and the severity of their ADHD. If you didn't have much problems with that in your life then I'm happy for you but I for example wasn't lucky enough with dna and stuff.
I very much understand hyperfixation and then moving on but that's not the example given. Buying a new toy, playing with it for two weeks then moving on is basic human behavior, not hyperfixation. Buying a blender then becoming so obsessed with it that you become fixated with it to the point where you think about it constantly, read, research and basically know more about it than could possibly be necessary then poof...gone, is hyperfixation.
Over diagnosing can lead to over correction. This is how we end up with basically normal people getting pumped full of meds that were not designed for them. Someone reads examples like the one posted, talks to a doctor and the next thing you know are on a cocktail of Adderall and antidepressants, which in turn destroys their ability to sleep, so then they also end up taking Ambien. So on, and so forth.
I am not minimizing the disruptive effects of ADHD, obviously. I am suggesting that EVERYONE take posts like this with a big grain of salt
If it's a pattern, this is absolutely found in a lot of people diagnosed with ADHD. But this Twitter user is clearly making a joke because they're using a silly reference.
Would you like them to go through all the nuances of ADHD for you so you don't need to do an "um, actually" like a professional online forum debater?
And I'm also tired of people constantly downplaying my patterns, and always saying it's not "really" ADHD, then wondering why I'm acting so odd and different. Or why I'm struggling with stuff even though "everybody does that". This sort of mentality has hurt me massively.
Maybe it's more nuanced than "this is adhd" and "this is not". Maybe it had to do with the intensity and rate of occurrence as well? But do you feel that a tweet needs to include all the goddamn nuances that come with a disorder that is primarily diagnosed by the intensity and disruptiveness of its symptoms just to make a joke?
But the good news is you just kinda learn quite a bit about every hobby you pick up, so people are always impressed with how much random stuff you know.
With that I relate. I don't have knowledge, but only surface information about a variety of topics, because I fricking jump from one thing and the other, and this maddens me.
My memory is really, really good. It's my recall that's crap. Feels more like my brain works like RAM and not a hard drive in that my memories are randomly accessed.
Not necessarily in a way where I can effectively demonstrate everything I've learned, but sure, a lot goes somewhere in the back of my memory bank. It's created job opportunities for me in disruptive tech fields because I'm just able to absorb so much in that initial hyperfocus phase, and come across like a subject matter expert on something I just heard about a couple of weeks ago. Sucks when you land in what seems to be a great position and just lose interest in the field though. Good recipe for imposter syndrome
This is true, though sometimes one may unintentionally come across as a "know it all" (I know this from experience). Having an unending number of hobbies and the philosophy of "there is no such thing as useless knowledge", just leads to accruing knowledge on a wide breadth of topics and surprising depth on some of the more esoteric.
I can tell you about some of the practical efforts required to safely raise chickens in the PNW (free-range, in a yard, or chicken tractors), several forms of metal casting, basic garment construction, luthiery, gardening, archery, industrial microbiology, and a number of other things. My former boss would often ask if I knew anything about a given unusual topic that came up in conversation, just to see if he could find something that I didn't have any knowledge or experience with (really old programming languages like COBOL were among the winners). Now, I'm currently really into digital electronics, so, I'm shopping around for an oscilloscope and other equipment that would allow me to reverse engineer some of the newer protocols.
Sounds like normal human behavior to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember an episode of The Simpsons where they showed a closet full of abandoned hobbies.
ADHD is in big part quirky human behavior turned up to 11.
Edit: ngl, I'm tired of people just coming here, saying that everyone's like that, getting lots of upvotes and downvoting people when they clarify stuff. :/
The problem is that a lot of examples people use are not the ones turned up to 11. I have ADHD but I don't tell people I lock my door walk 4 steps and realize I was thinking about other things and therefore have no idea if I did and have to fix it. Because lots of people do that
Stuff like re-arranging your room every 2 months due to flashes of inspiration, sure. Getting frustrated because you had the brilliant idea to do two things last night and now you can't decide which takes priority, sure. Endlessly scrolling on Netflix? Nah
Sure, I haven't brewed beer in 3 years but I still have my equipment, so that when I get sick of building guitars, I can go back to brewing beer. But wait, what about the transition from guitar building to tabletop gaming? I guess I can store the brewing stuff and the guitar-building stuff for a year while I go down the TT gaming rabbit-hole. And then there was that quick detour into making kombucha...and then pickling stuff...
Oh, I'm pretty sure I have ADHD, but I'm certain my wife doesn't, and she has done this with smoothies and several other things. She doesn't do it as frequently as me, but she definitely does it.
If buying shit, using it incessantly for a brief time and then forgetting about it is a sign of ADHD we've all got it.
I don't think I know a single person who doesn't have some crap around their house that fits that exact pattern.
If you get bananas and frozen blueberries, you can use that as a base for any kind of smoothie, really. Unless you just don't feel like smoothies, which, valid.
I think blenders are in a category where you don't have to be ADHD to end up with a unused one in the closet. It's easy to get tired of blending and cleaning, and then they are noisy.
Glances nervously between 3 dusty RC cars, 5 dusty RC planes and a dusty RC heli. Also quickly hides browser tab with a selection of RC crawlers to buy
I bought a 1/6 scale pos off a friend years ago, just for shits and giggles to see how much power I could dump into it before it blew up. After a bit it got shelved, and sat in the garage for a couple of years. This spring I dumped another couple hundred dollars into it to get it running again.. new esc, brushless motor, batteries, some lights, and a new steering servo. Used it twice and now it's been sitting again collecting dust for the last 5 months.
I have a cheap Arrma Voltage I did this with. It was my first RC car and I had a blast with it. Then I got curious about improving it and pushing it to its limits. I put better wheels on it, some lights, and dropped a Spektrum Firma Motor in it with the Smart ESC. The thing wheelies everywhere and basically becomes a missile lmao. If you turn it upside down and go full speed, the wheels balloon like crazy.
I'm so sick of normal human behavior being attributed to ADHD or autism in social media. It's not awesome and it trivializes the plight of those who do have these issues.
It's completely normal to take interest in something and eventually lose that interest over time. Some things stick, and some things don't.
If you're going to be policing this community for "normal human behavior" you've certainly got a lot of work cut out for yourself. Almost everything about ADHD is an exaggeration of normal human behavior, we don't randomly tweet like birds or wear silly hats, it's the exaggeration that makes it a disorder. It's also really invalidating.
If you that stuff rarely then there's not that high chance for it but if most of the stuff that's posted here happens to you way too often then you probably do have ADHD. The self-diagnosis is a first step in the direction of the official diagnosis so I recommend you checking out this 3-part video to see how much you relate to stuff: https://youtu.be/GyZtYzFq4WY?si=ALTuerkvM9fWC1et