This is the hardest essay I’ve ever written. Not only is it a huge topic, and one that practically everyone has really strong feelings about, but I’m also committed to making a case that directly contradicts an increasingly popular narrative, somehow without offending the very people I hope most to empower with a new perspective.
So I’m going to ask you a favor. Read what follows with an open mind, and trust that my intentions are rooted in sympathy and solidarity, even if my delivery occasionally misses that mark.
Deep breath.
Here we go.
It started, like most things, at school
We moved a lot when I was a kid. By ninth grade, I had been to nine different schools in three different states on two different sides of the country. While all the places I lived ranged widely in terms of climate and culture, my scholastic experiences were, as you'd expect from industrialized public education, remarkably consistent.
Including the fact that almost every single one of my teachers told my mother I should get tested for ADD.
Why?
Because weirdly I had trouble sitting at a desk and staring at worksheets for eight hours a day. Or something.
To Mom’s everlasting credit, she countered each and every one of these people by telling them that they could take their professional opinion and kindly shove it.
And wouldn’t you know it, I somehow muddled through.
I will say, in defense of all those longsuffering educators, that my career path may have followed a less dizzying trajectory if I had taken some kind of drug to help me focus. I might even have more money by now, and a resume that would slot more snugly into my LinkedIn profile.1
Anyway, the point is that regardless of any other now-unknowable potentiality, I am doing pretty good. I married fantastically, I’ve got a couple of terrific kids, and I’m starting to think the business I started last year will keep us all from starving.2
Am I then saying that, based on a sample size of exactly one (me), that all my teachers were wrong, and everyone who does get diagnosed with ADD got scammed?
Whoops, I just walked myself into a loaded question. Let’s take a step back.
What even is AD(H)D?
I’ve never gotten an ADD diagnosis, but if I wanted one, I’m sure I could go get it.
But I don’t want it.
You might well wonder why not. What with all the people (many of my close friends among them) taking to the feeds with ecstatic revelations that they finally know what's wrong with them.
"I have ADD! That's why I can't get anything done! That's why I feel overwhelmed all the time! That's why I constantly take on too many projects! That's why that's why that's why—"
Breathless, hopeful, euphoric acceptance of a label that says…
You have a disorder.
You are not normal.
If you were normal, you would be OK, like all the other normal people, but you're not normal, which is why you are not OK.
But it's OK that you're not OK, because we have the solution.
Talk to your doctor about whether a prescription to Ritalin/Dexedrine/Adderall can help you be who you were meant to be.
HANG ON ONE SECOND HERE
I'm certainly not the first to make the claim that AD(H)D is a bullshit diagnosis invented by big pharma to sell pills.3 A lot of us take this for granted by now.
But the best lies are always wrapped around something that is true.
Because right now, you, tender ADD-haver, or you, sympathetic non-ADD-haver, you're thinking, "But wait, sir, you are denying my experience!" (or "But wait, sir, you are denying the experience of my loved one!")
No I am not. I share many of those experiences.
What I am denying is that those who have been diagnosed with ADD have…
Attention. Deficit. Disorder.
Let’s break it down.
Attention -- you've got it, I've got it, that guy over there has it. Everybody has it who isn't dead or in a vegetative coma, and probably, in some deep and mysterious way, them too. So we're not talking about haves versus have-nots. We are instead, and according to the semantics of this diagnosis, comparing have-mores vs have-less...es. Hence the first “D”:
Deficit -- you don't have enough of it. Normal people have this much (unspecified), but you are not normal, evidenced by the unassailable truth that you only have this much (unspecified). And this, dear friend, is why we have decided to diagnose you with the second “D”:
Disorder -- because, again, you are not normal. You are disordered. There is an order in this perfectly articulated universe, one that we (wait, who??) take great pains to care for and maintain, and your condition disrupts that order.
However, there is no need to be alarmed, because for every named and defined disorder, there is also a solution to restore order, by which every abnormal person can be made normal.
A team of dedicated scientists have formulated a medication that is just chemically differentiated enough from meth4 to make it legal. Never have trouble working on your taxes for six straight hours again.
Super fun thought experiment
I think you're really going to like this.
For a long time now, we have become comfortable with the distinction between so-called extroverts, and so-called introverts.
Mercifully, the fever of listicles and blog posts with titles like "The proper care and handling of an introvert" and "I'm not an asshole, I'm just an introvert" has cooled somewhat. We get it: introverts don't love big parties and small talk, and that's OK. It's normal. Lots of people are introverted -- probably something like half of them.5
But how about if, instead of using the words "introvert" and "extrovert," we go ahead and just call “extroverts” normal, then diagnose people who formerly identified as "introverts” with Social Atrophic Disorder.
Sounds scary, I know, but have no fear! All it means is that human beings have a natural baseline of social skills, and SAD people are simply, for some reason, atrophied.
So, if you're a person who tends to feel tired out by Saturday night ragers, or awkward during booze-fueled networking soirées, it might just be because you're SAD.
But you don't have to be SAD forever! If you want to reach your full potential as someone who feels recharged by small talk with strangers in the elevator, and has no trouble making friends at the grocery store, we have the perfect solution...
Our team of dedicated scientists have discovered a medication that is just chemically differentiated enough from MDMA to make it legal. Never feel out of place at a Taylor Swift concert again.
A quick aside about pills
I think drugs are fine. I’m basically in favor of legalizing everything, and I will go to the mat for body autonomy. Some drugs are really good, some are really bad, and almost all of them are fiercely context dependent.
A good rule of thumb is that anytime you take a pill for something, you should be doing a serious cost/benefit analysis. There’s no such thing as a silver bullet, especially not one you can swallow.
Also, like most people, I am disgusted by the straightforwardly evil practices of many drug companies. But when it comes to ADD medications, I care a lot less about the profit margins of big pharma than I do about the toxic culture that drives demand for them.
“Toxic culture? You're going to need to be more specific.”
Yes, that's fair. There are so very many things about our culture that are toxic, aren’t there? What I'm specifically referring to right now is the way we've labeled a bucket of personality traits shared by probably at least half the population as a “disorder.”
ADD is a term of abuse
As with introversion and extroversion, there is a spectrum along which people find themselves that has to do with their baseline preference of attention allocation.
In other words, some people can zero in on a spreadsheet for nine hours without getting up to take a piss, and some people can't seem to help working on nine different creative projects before lunch.
Both of them could use a little behavioral moderation, probably, but my argument is that neither of them has a “disorder.”
It's the same deal with the introversion/extroversion spectrum. The further to one side or the other you are, the more likely it is that you’ll need to self-correct a bit to live a healthy and fulfilling life. Extreme introverts become agoraphobic. Extreme extroverts die of alcohol poisoning, or become Donald Trump.
But we get that. It makes sense to us. Introversion and extroversion are terms we use to describe certain buckets of personality traits.
Meanwhile, we don't have tidy little terms like that to describe "people who have ADD" versus "people who don't have ADD."
Because even if we allow, for the sake of argument, that ADD is not a scam perpetuated by evil pharmaceutical companies, it still wouldn’t qualify as a useful spectrum. More or less disordered is not a way of classifying common personality traits, it's a way of stigmatizing the ones that aren't convenient (in this case) to an industrialized culture built on top of educational assembly lines to worship the gods of consumerism.
You know who has convenient personality traits? The spreadsheet guy. I realize these may be fighting words, but whatever -- that guy's doing just fine. Nobody's diagnosing him with Attention Monomania Disorder.
That’s because people who like to focus on one task for a long time without interruption are useful and easy to manage.
Meanwhile, people who have high curiosity quotients and have a hard time not noticing ALL THE CANDY EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME are much harder to manage.
And so: anyone who happens to be holding a bucket of personality traits that predisposes them to deal with numbers and code all day gets buy-a-house-in-a-big-city salary, while everyone else gets a stigmatizing label and an unlimited supply of not-quite-meth.
What are we going to do about it?
We need new words.6
Here’s a tidy pair that could do the trick:
Polyfocal - The tendency to divide one's attention between multiple interests at a time.
Monofocal - The tendency to focus one's attention on one interest at a time.
In the great tradition of creating arbitrary lists of personality traits to cram all human beings onto a single linear spectrum, lets enumerate some common attributes of polyfocal and monofocal people.
Polyfocal people:
May have been clinically diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.
Have many competing passions.
Easily and frequently become intensely curious about a new subject.
Are comfortable with cognitive shifting.
Often start new projects at the expense of finishing others.
Possess many "natural talents" but tend to abandon things that don't come easily.
Gain competency with new skills very quickly, but struggle to achieve mastery.
Are highly imaginative and creative.
Can be unreliable and inefficient.
Often feel stressed that there isn't enough time to do and experience everything.
Monofocal people, on the other hand:
Never worry about having ADD or ADHD.
Have one or two primary driving passions.
Are endlessly interested in things related to their core passions.
Avoid cognitive shifting whenever possible.
Are very good at finishing projects, usually one at a time.
Practice rigorously and consistently to improve in ways they deem important.
Double down on one skillset to achieve mastery.
Are exceptional at problem-solving within a chosen, narrow domain.
Can be stubborn and inflexible.
Become stressed when plans are changed or compromised.
These lists are obviously not comprehensive.7 But they can get us started. If we stop thinking about our attention as something that is either normal or disordered, and instead think in terms that represent common groupings of personality traits, then we can start to feel empowered by what is natural to us, rather than handicapped by it.
I am not someone with undiagnosed ADD, I am polyfocal.
Quick, someone make a viral quiz or something
I’m serious.
To the degree that we can spread these terms around, maybe we can undo some of the stupid and destructive consequences of the ADD scam.
Let’s start with you.
Some FUQs
If you made it all the way here to the end without getting bored or offended, then I invite you to consider the following FUQs.
The advantages of monofocalism seem obvious and plentiful. I’ve read a lot of personal development books, and it’s safe to say most of them were written with an aim of helping the reader become more monofocal. But what are the unique advantages of polyfocalism?
Related: how can a polyfocal person take advantage of the advantages of polyfocalism? BECAUSE IT IS NOT OBVIOUS.
What are your opinions on drugs? Specifically, drugs designed to…uh…make people more monofocal.
Does the term “polyfocal” feel empowering, or stupid? Both?
[insert way smarter question here]
I know I said earlier that there’s no such thing as a silver bullet, but 95% of doctors agree that this button will definitely fix whatever is wrong with you:
Obviously the highest aspiration of any modern human.
Yet to be seen tbh but prospects are good!
This article from Scientific American was published SEVEN YEARS AGO. And yet, here we are, with ADHD diagnoses trending like Pete Davidson. (That’s a funnier joke than you realize.)
Chemically, the difference between Adderall and meth is both smaller than big pharma would like you to believe, and larger than scammy addiction recovery centers claim.
Though you wouldn't know it by how the fragile, introverted snowflakes talk about themselves. I’m allowed to say stuff like that because I am an introvert. I need me my me-time. I get drained in big groups. I tend to overthink social interactions. Sometimes people think I'm mad when really I'm just quiet. That said, I've got a strong performance streak, and if there's a subject of interest at hand, it's hard to get me to shut up. Like most human people, I contain multitudes.
Not least because most of what I've been yelling about is semantics. But it turns out semantics are really, really important. Words are at the base layer of culture, which is why, incidentally, the culture wars will always be waged on the terrain of language.
What would you change? What would you add?
I was diagnosed as a child and medicated for years. I honestly think it helped me but I don't think its right for everyone.
I prefer to say reorder instead of disorder for the same reasons you highlight - there isn't something wrong with me, i just operate differently.
I never held on to the label and I don't use it to excuse my behavior. What it does, however, is help me identify and understand my inner workings and how to manage better.
A lot of the deficits that i experienced in my youth do not affect me (as much) as an adult and i have worked hard to learn and grow. I definitely struggle but i also know that i can learn and grow.
The label serves people when it helps them learn and grow but it hinders if it becomes a limitation and justification. Such as "i can't do that, I'm on the spectrum..." instead should be "this is challenging for me, how can i approach it differently"
Just like you could take someone not particularly inclined to get cancer and pump them full of unfiltered sunlight and cigarettes and probably give them cancer, I think you can get AD(H)D from just about anyone with the right kind of stimulus, and there's no better attention-unsettling stimulus than modern media.
But whatever the era of media (modern or say 1980s) you're talking about the thing that's setting the pace, that's deciding what's the "normal" rate of speech and the "normal" length of an attention span, what's a "normal" amount of time to spend sitting and focused on a single story, and so on. So normal is always a moving target.
If you're not happy with the pace at which your brain moves, then by all means take steps to change it. But pharma is probably not the best solution. Again, I could take someone not particularly inclined towards obesity and with a high-calorie diet make them obese; if I did that, the best "solution" to that obesity wouldn't be SPEED, although doctors have prescribed amphetamines for weight loss for most of the past century. The best "solution" would be to give them control over their diet so they could make the choices that make them feel good.
People I know who are diagnosed with ADHD are happy to have the diagnosis because they don't feel good. They want a change, and having a label feels like the start of a change. I'm all about change, but I hate labels. I think the changes are habits of mind, life, routine, and the degree to which we internalize the "social metronome" that's always clicking way too fast.
If you can resist the beat, if you are arrogant, bull-headed, and self-directed, being "polyfocal" doesn't feel bad. It feels awesome. It means your mind is always making new connections and seeing new possibilities. It means you can see the details and the universe at once. It means you jump on ideas when you have them and you discover old ideas you half-finished just lying around. Life is a garden of wonder and delight.
Wonder and delight, IF you're a resistant, arrogant, bull-headed, self-directed polyfocal -- if you're more conformist, if your self-esteem is wobbly, if you like to go with the flow, if you prefer to follow rather than lead, then it looks to me like it must be hell. And I can completely understand why someone would complain.
But I'd still recommend resisting the external forces, following your own mind, believing in your genius, and cutting against the tide. It's more fun.