Reviews: several books probably about me

Dale Archer — The ADHD Advantage

June 28

It's junk. Skip it.

My therapist recommended this but I found it unusable. It's poorly written (it has this very particular cadence of self-help-anecdote-ese, and guess what, I hate it), obnoxiously capitalist (so much fawning over CEOs! Doesn't it trigger his gag reflex, eventually?), and I estimate a full quarter of the space is devoted to axe-grinding about over-medication.

There was some useful info in here, maybe even a kernel or two of genuine insight, but the nutritional density was infuriatingly low. In terms of what I wanted from it, it counted as maybe a sixteenth of a proper book.

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D. — Driven to Distraction

Skimmed parts, July 2

Skip this one too: it's actually a good book, but even the revised edition is completely superseded by Delivered from Distraction, a vastly superior follow-up by the same authors.

This was the other one recommended by my therapist, but in a fortunate coincidence, I ended up reading Delivered first. (The library's copies of this one were all checked out, but there was one available e-copy of the later book.) I went ahead and skimmed some parts once my hold came through, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The case studies didn't seem to be repeats, and some of them were interesting and touching. And I ran across an interesting note about "hyperreactivity" that I don't think came up in Delivered. That was about it, though, and Delivered does a better job of cutting to the chase if you need some practical info.

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D. — Delivered from Distraction

July 1

OKAY. This is the ADHD book to read. It's excellent.

It has two main foci:

• Explaining and illustrating what ADD is (what its components are, how to recognize it, what we know about its physical basis, etc.). Much of this was entirely new to me, even though I thought I was familiar with ADHD — it's a much bigger collection of traits than I thought.
• Practical advice for getting help and improving your life if you've got it.

I was in great need of both of those.

The writing is good; Hallowell is likable and clever and empathetic, and does a really good job of organizing information and providing context and depth at exactly the right spots. He's even-handed and candid about meds, and I also respect his cautious but openminded approach to weird or alternative treatments.

I should probably wait a while before calling this book "life-changing," but I already feel less depressed and anxious, and that literally is a notable change to my life, sooooooo. 🤷🏽‍♀️ (ADHD seems to be one of those things where knowing its True Name gives you a certain amount of power over it. Hallowell covers this in the book, naturally.)

---

Context here is that my therapist has a strong suspicion of ADHD re: yrs truly. I think she's right, and I've got a psychiatrist appointment in *looks at watch* over two weeks from now?? UGH. 😫 (You're not supposed to diagnose yourself, but guess what, one of the notable traits of ADHD is making an intuitive leap and then wanting to skip the "show your work" part and cut to the fucking chase, so, *constant antsy vibration intensifies* uh, *intensified vibration intensifies* 😬)

Before I got some outside perspective, I was looking at things the other way around, figuring that anxiety and depression/despair were giving me symptoms that looked like ADD (aka the "2016 drove me literally crazy" theory). After all, I was fine before, right? But the alternative theory — that I've always been ADHD with highly functional coping mechanisms, and I plunge predictably into prolonged anxiety/depression/ineffective thrashing whenever major life changes smash enough of my structures and coping mechanisms at once — has, uh, a lot going for it.

Anyway, we'll see what the psych says, and then we'll see what happens after that. Wish me luck.

Epictetus (compl. Arrian of Nicomedia; tr. Elizabeth Carter, 1758) — The Enchiridion

July 1

Public domain ebook.

I started reading this ages ago, because I ran across it around the time I was first looking into mindfulness meditation. Actually, I think Dan Harris's book might have introduced me to it; I feel like I remember him saying something to the effect of "Epictetus made the diagnosis, the Buddhists wrote the prescription." Or something. Then Hallowell brought it up again when he was talking about managing pessimism, so I went back and finished reading it.

Anyway, there's definitely something here. Epictetus can be glib at times, and he's an extremist at war against nuance, and he's pretty invested in mind/body dualism, but he's not actually wrong.

Since he doesn't treat the mind as part of the body, this book isn't good at teaching you how to stop giving so many fucks. He presents it as a matter of will, but I think it requires gradual mental strength training, and a less obstructed view of the bodily machinery of consciousness at work. But. There's a certain ice-water clarity to his proclamations, isn't there? He makes the case for WHY to give less of a fuck. It's aspirational, but a good aspiration has value even if it doesn't come with a recipe.