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In my experience,Watch Fast Five Online living with ADHD means actual, real personal difficulty.

I buy five pairs of eyeglasses per year because I keep losing them. It drives me insane when I lose my last set of duplicate keys. Again.

So whenever someone tells me they are, "so ADHD,” asks questions about my medication or feels comfortable enough to give unsolicited medical advice, I find these remarks bizarrely inconsiderate.

It's possible these comments are rooted in the belief that some don't consider ADHD a real disorder. This stigma leads to varying, incorrect opinions, such as the assumption that ADHD is an excuse to medicate children that have trouble focusing or is caused by bad parenting. And, apparently, it leads to people not knowing how to talk about it.

I spoke with NYU Langone’s director of the Adult ADHD Program, Dr. Lenard Adler about the attitudes circulating ADHD, its effect on those who are living with it and how to educate people on how to be sensitive while talking about it.

"I don’t think we’ve done enough to really document how people with ADHD feel when someone speaks about it casually," Adler said. "I think it tends to be glossed over and in some ways it trivializes your life experiences."

Of the many thoughtless comments I’ve received over the years as a result of living with ADHD, here are the most prevalent questions that I've heard along with some of Adler's advice on how to respond.

“Do you take meds? Can I have some?”

One of the most common initial reactions I’ve received is this intrusive question. Because ADHD medication was commonly misused as a study aid, friends, partners and even family members have asked what kind of medication I took in the hopes that I would share it. Not only is sharing medication illegal, Dr. Adler pointed out the dangers of prescribed medication misuse.

"There is never a time that we want a patient to share their medication with anyone else," he said. "That is misuse and it puts a burden on anyone with ADHD. When they’re prescribed, they’re meant to be taken carefully, cautiously and in a moderate way."

"Would you sell it to me? I use it to concentrate.”

This question usually comes after I decline to share my medication. In response to being turned down, I get offered compensation and those who ask this of me usually try to justify their request. Next to actually managing ADHD, being treated like a drug dealer has been particularly aggravating especially when I knew that the kind of medication I was taking wasn’t a fast-acting stimulant. In college, however, this information fell on deaf ears and I wondered if current college students still face this kind of questioning.

I asked Dr. Adler if people with ADHD should anticipate this behavior from their peers.

"It may happen," he said. That doesn’t mean that people will not ask you for your medication hoping to get the benefit of study aid, and we know that this happens... It happens more commonly in highly competitive colleges. The other thing we know is that the types of medicines that get diverted more commonly, to people when they don’t have a diagnosis, is that they are the short-acting medication."

Dr. Adler addressed "short-acting medications" because those meds were typically sought after and used as study aids, while adolescents and adults with ADHD typically take longer-acting meds which are less useful as a study aid. I asked him if patients should speak with their doctors when they’re faced with questions like these.

"Sure, I think this is how to handle this," Adler said. "This is part of the conversation that should be occurring, between the young adult patients and their physicians."

“ADHD is just lazy parenting.”

Comments like these usually come from other parents who fear medicating children is a parental tactic used as a way to avoid actually speaking to them. In a New York Times blog post that was published in March 2016, it appeared this belief was still prevalent.

The article contained damaging assumptions that people still have, such as an ADHD diagnosis is brief and medication is prescribed readily.

"There are no short-cuts to making the diagnosis." Adler said. Children and adults require a careful, thoughtful, comprehensive interview looking at lifelong symptomatology, both at home and either in school or work or social settings... The point here is to not jump in with a prescription but to make a diagnosis with a careful and thoughtful comprehensive interview gathering as much information as possible."

"Sorry, I’m having an ADHD moment."

Having an ADHD “moment” implies that anyone living with ADHD is either in a constant state of daydreaming, or that 'spacing out' was a conscious decision. These comments compartmentalize ADHD and trivialize our experiences.

I asked Dr. Adler if these kinds of remarks had any merit.

"ADHD is a very real disorder and if you have it, you know that it’s a very real thing," he said. "I know that when my patients tell me, you live the experiences, and it’s not something to take casually. If you don’t diagnose it and treat it, the consequences are really significant."

He said leaving the symptoms untreated can have drastic impacts on one's life.

"We know that for adults that don’t treat their ADHD, they are more likely to get divorced than separated, they’re less likely to graduate college, they’re more likely to smoke cigarettes and quit-rates are about half, they’re more likely to use substances if they don’t get their ADHD diagnosed, and they’re more likely to have motor vehicle accidents," Adler said. "So this is not a benign thing that should be mentioned casually."

“I like you better when you do/don’t take your medication. ”

In relationships and with close friends, others sometimes feel comfortable enough to discuss whether or not they preferred I take medication or or abstain from them. While I knew these comments are kind and well intentioned, they're still bizarre.

I asked Dr. Adler if ADHD patients taking medication behave differently if they opt to forgo their meds. He said that inattentiveness often grows and it can lead to other issues as well.

"We know that the symptoms change [when patients stop taking medication]. Inattentive symptoms tend to be more prominent," he said. "The literature shows that they’re about 50 percent more common in adulthood, as compared to childhood so the burden of inattention goes up which makes sense given the higher cognitive load of adulthood... Different medications affect people differently."

While youmay want a person to stop taking their ADHD medication, listen to them and remember that their medication is most likely helping control symptoms that very much affect their life.

So, if you know someone with ADHD, please don't make these comments unless you want them to whip out this list.

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