Pay attention! Drugs aren't the only answer

ADHD stands for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that just under 10 percent of American children aged two to 17 suffer from ADHD. That’s one hell of a lot of children…
According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. was home to 74.2 million two to 17-year-olds during the CDC’s 2016 - 2018 study. Simple math tells us that some seven-and-a-half million kids have been diagnosed with ADHD.
If we consider that astounding stat from an evolutionary perspective, there can be only one conclusion: ADHD confers some kind of advantage to individuals with the condition. Otherwise, it wouldn’t exist. Think of it this way….
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, from 2016 - 2018, 1,085 infants were born blind or severely vision impaired. You can round that number down to zero. Why so few? Natural selection. Blindness confers no advantage to individuals, society or the species. If it did, there would be more blind people.
Many child advocates see ADHD in entirely different terms. They see it as a social construct. Kids can’t concentrate or lose focus because society is asking them to focus in ways that aren’t “natural.”
It’s not “natural” to expect a young child to sit still in a class for more than, say, an hour.
The CDC has ammunition for those who agree with this analysis. They report that around 13.9 percent of boys aged two to 17-years-old are diagnosed with ADHD, compared to 5.6 percent of girls in the same age range.
One word there: testosterone. It’s not PC to say so, but boys have a natural desire to be outside running around, fighting each other and breaking things. Girls not so much.
Alternatively, we could point a finger at big pharm for the ADHD “epidemic.” Between 2016 - 2018, doctors wrote approximately 66 million prescriptions for Ritalin (methylphenidate), Adderall (amphetamine), Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) and Strattera (atomoxetine). A 30-day supply of Ritalin costs around $80, around $960 per year. Using those numbers, the ADHD biz is worth more than $60b per year.
Let’s set those considerations aside and contemplate ADHD as an advantage to its “victims.” To do that, we need to define the condition.
Medically, ADHD is a “neurodevelopmental disorder” that limits a sufferer’s ability to focus, control impulses and regulate behavior. Typically, children with ADHD have difficulty paying attention, organizing tasks, completing assignments and following instructions. They may also suffer from impulsive behavior and hyperactivity/restlessness.
In short, children with ADHD can’t concentrate, behave and/or get shit done. They can’t pay attention. Or can they? When I was a full-time hypnotist, I treated children with ADHD.
One of my first questions: do you play video games? Yup. How long can you focus on a game? Hours.
So my young clients didn’t have trouble concentrating. They had trouble concentrating on what people asked them to concentrate on. Not Call of Duty or other activities providing constant stimulus. (Notice the word “hyper-concentration” in the learningspy.co.uk graphic at the top of this post.)
The next thing I noticed: all the kids presenting with ADHD were highly hypnotic (as measured by the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales). They could access the trance state - characterized by a state of profound abstraction and absorption - in seconds. Put another way, they were capable of extreme focus. Of, if you will, concentration.
Bottom line: kids with ADHD kids don’t lack concentration. They have too much of it. When they’re bored (i.e., understimulated) they drift into trance. When they enter trance their mind wanders. I mean really wanders, focusing like a laser on… something else. Or many something elses.
Children with ADHD focus to the point where they can’t hear what the teacher is saying, or continue reading a boring (to them) book. If a teacher upbraids the ADHD child for their lack of focus, if they’re severely criticized for failing to “do their job,” depression and behavior problems are a logical result.
This puts us back in social construct-land. Be that as it may, it’s important to understand that this “problem” is actually something of a superpower. Not only can ADHD kids play video games, they can play them really well. They process incoming data at a furious clip and they don’t give up.
The world is not a video game. But the world is a place that rewards people with ADHD – or as I prefer to call it hyper-focus. Artists, musicians, fighter pilots, mechanics, athletes – there are dozens of highly-skilled jobs where the most successful workers address a complex task with single-minded focus. They bank on their ability to get into a “flow state.” A trance.
Ask anyone who answers to that description if they had – or have – a hard time concentrating on tasks which don’t “fire their imagination.” Moving on to treatment, why does speed (i.e., ADHD drugs) have a positive effect on ADHD, the lack of socially appropriate focus?
I’m no psychopharmacologist. As a hypnotist I know that depressants such as alcohol and marijuana are the worst drugs for hypnosis; caffeine and amphetamines are the best. I don’t know how it works, but speeding up the body/brain somehow slows down time perception. So there’s less time – or ability – for an ADHD sufferer to get distracted.
In terms of my own non-pharmacological ADHD treatment, I hypnotized children with the condition (parents present) to switch-on and switch-off their trance state with an earlobe tug. I “re-programmed” them so that once the trance was “on,” they focused on whatever they were doing – to complete and total exclusion of everything else.
I tested this treatment by having them bring a book. I asked them to read the text silently before the hypnosis, timed them and asked them comprehension questions. I repeated the process after the hypnosis. Reading time and comprehension improved dramatically.
I can explain the hypnotic process, why it works and who can and can not be hypnotised to a medium trance state (necessary for altering stimulus - response patterns). Suffice it to say, hypnotizability is a genetic variable.
The truth about that? Human society couldn’t function if everyone was constantly slipping into a trance state. By the same token, society couldn’t function as well without individuals with ADHD.
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