I was a regular kid as well. I rode my bike everywhere. I climbed trees. I played soccer at recess and tag. The 16 hours on top of it is 4 solid hours, 4 days a week doing athletic conditioning, stretching, giant swings on the high-bar. Power tumbling. Vaulting. Running two miles straight. We're talking about an 8 year old child at a competing level in all around gymnastics. This isn't playing and chasing eachother and playing backyard soccer. This is conditioning the body and mind to be able to perform feats that would seem super human to others. I doubt you were doing double back flips off the high bar and doing back handsprings for 20 minutes straight. Nor did you have 8 pack abs at the age of 11. 16 hours of competitive gymnastics training is not the same as the twice a week gymnastics class you put your son into where they play games and practice hand stands. Lifestyle has become more sedentary but every night I worked at the gym I went home with aching muscles and was completely physically and mentally exhausted. You just assume that after 16 hours of training I went home and played video games. I had a childhood as well asshole. My martial arts training has kept me in shape as well, when I am 90 I will still be training god willing.

Fucking thank you.

Here we go again, More people who know exactly what the problem is. There was no lack of discipline. A full time gymnast can't win medals without the discipline it takes to focus on and visualize their routines. Furthermore my career in martial arts afterwards couldn't have been accomplished without discipline. You all think you're so clever and have all the answers. But you never saw the world from behind my eyes. It's always the same with you people, it's as if you believe every human being experiences the world around them exactly the same as yourself and because you can't share MY subjective experience you can only assume that it's an issue of 'a lack of discipline.'

Open your mind and try to imagine for half a second that the subjective experiences of every human being are not identical to yours.

Also, I know the article is about prescription drugs which I didn't talk about at all. I'm not sharing my opinion on that, only trying to explain. If I hadn't been treated with medication though, it would have been much worse. I don't think for a second though that it should be the first line solution to the 'problem.'

I find it even more ridiculous that both you and the anonymous reply below both seem to know exactly what my diagnosis is from reading only a couple of paragraphs. Though I don't remember either of you giving your credentials as doctors of behavioral psychology.

You sir are full of shit.

Lack of physical activity? Are you serious? I was training in gymnastics for sixteen hours a week when I was diagnosed. I was winning state and regional medals until I was fifteen.

It's always fucked up to me how all the people who have never had ADD are always first to know exactly everything about it. You've never had to struggle with academics and social skills because the only things you could focus on were the ones that were rewarding to you. It's not a cut and dry case of being 'fidgety' and rarely is it a case of discipline on part of the parents.

ADD made my elementary school days hell for me. It was almost impossible to get along in regular social situations with exception to times I was with other kids that had ADD. It was hard for me to pay attention to what I was reading when all I could focus on were INTRUSIONS into my focus from say, the sound of the kid behind me wheezing. The ticking of someone's watch. Hearing the hum of a fan turning on and off at regular intervals and noticing it always happens every 4 minutes. The way a cute girl across the room wore her hair differently today or maybe she got her ear pierced and I'm distracted by how red it's made her earlobe and how she's scratching it often. Maybe today I've noticed the teacher got a new watch and it's super shiny. He asks if there are any questions and I raise my hand and ask about the watch. Everyone laughs at me since the question had nothing to do with the lecture but I can't understand why no one else was so interested in the cool looking timepiece.

ADD is not an inability to focus. It is a deficit with the ability to filter out the intrusions into your senses that make focusing on what others seem to find important nearly impossible at times. Let's face it, it's hard to have perspective about how important it is to know about the revolutionary war when you're 10 years old.

Don't be so quick to have all the answers when your understanding of the issue is clearly incomplete.

ADD is STILL affecting my life. I struggle with it every day. This morning is a perfect example. I WAS trying to sleep. I woke up to pee and decided to read slashdot in bed while I let sleep take over again. But I read your retarded comment and it has made it impossible for me to go to sleep. Why? Because I can't seem to filter out your bullshit. Your asinine opinion on the matter has intruded into my focus on getting a healthy night's sleep. I tried to let it go and just lie down but I couldn't stop focusing on your stupidity and I won't be able to until I post this. Hell, even after I hit submit I'm still going to toss and turn for a half hour while I try to divert my attention to happy butterflies and fluffy sheep to count.

It does fall to the floor. The holodeck Janitor cleans it up: http://www.somethingawful.com/news/blue-stripe-life-4/

...Lead researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also determined that water is occasionally wet.

If it's anything like the last xps 13 then it will be fucking awesome. I love everything about this laptop. It's incredibly thin and light. The screen is vivid. It runs everything I want it too and never hesitates on me. Plus with the solid state Hard drive it wakes up from sleep in about 2 - 3 seconds.

Mr. Universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Firefly_characters#Mr._Universe

Thank you for posting this. It sucks that the general population doesn't understand what it's like to have this. I used to play warhammer 40K and I would stay up for hours into the night painting miniatures and meticulously crafting terrain to display them on. Many kids with ADD do well in individual sports too, I was a good enough gymnast to take state. I loved tumbling and doing giant swings on the high bar. These things were rewarding to me.

Put a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in front of me at the age of 14 and ask me to read it and think about the underlying messages. Fuck that. I couldn't see any satisfaction in doing that and I had no motivation to WANT to do it so of course my attention is going to wander easily to something more interesting.

This has been going on for almost 20 years now. I had ADD as a kid and when I was 11 my parents sent me to a biofeedback clinic where I would sit in a dentist chair and concentrate on a pac-man. If my brain waves were in the ideal range the pac man would move through the maze and I would gain points. The speed at which he moved accelerated so the longer I was able to 'focus' the faster he would go through the maze and I'd get a higher score.

I'm sure the technology must be much more precise these days and the games have probably gotten a lot more interesting to look at but they all essentially are based on the same principle.

The problem is that most kids that age don't care about wanting to learn how to focus better. They just have fun being who they are naturally. These kinds of programs work really well for adults and younger people with a great deal of motivation to change / practice their 'focusing' ability but as an 11 year old, I got really bored doing this and eventually I started falling asleep in the chair half way through every session. Program was a wasted on me but I applaud my parents for wanting to try to help me without medication.

Interesting how this journalist figured out that 'one thousand percent' sounds a hell of a lot bigger than 'tenfold' or 'ten times as many.' Hope he's getting paid the big bucks.

Thank you for this. It puts things into correct perspective. The safeway in the town I grew up in used to have 7 check-out stands. Between 3 PM and 6 PM every one of those check-out stands had an unskilled laborer working behind it. 3 years ago they tore out 3 check stands to put in the 'self checkout' terminals which only require one person on duty to make sure kids arn't buying alcohol and people arn't neglecting to scan things they may think they don't need to pay for. I don't know if the the two people who used to work 2 of those registers actually lost their jobs. But the management would never have implemented a self checkout system if they didn't think it would save them money in the long run. So I would assume they felt they could save one 8 hours of labor (2 people doing 4 hours of labor each at rush hour every day of the week). Not to mention that during the slow hours they only need to have one active checker and one person to watch the self checkout. The whole purpose of it is to spend less money on paying people to do the work when you can have a machine that never calls in sick (breaks down less often) and only needs a one time payment to get started which will save a hundred thousand dollars for the store in 5 years (based on a $20,000 income for 8 hours of labor every day for one year) Plus you never have to pay machines overtime. They sure as hell don't need medical benefits and the company doesn't have to help contribute to their 401K for the day the machine is retired. Technology may create more skilled jobs. But I see unskilled labor getting more competitive every day.

First someone will have to sue chevron for NOT putting a warning label on it. Hot McDonalds coffee anyone? anyone?

No, desomorphine does not rot flesh. It's the impurities that are left when people simply throw the ingredients together and "cook it down" and inject the left over crap.

Something needs to be made clear. Desomorphine itself does not rot flesh. With a little extra work the solution can be purified and there are users that DO take the time to do this. It's when the solution is simply thrown together and 'cooked down' that health problems occur. Street level users making it on their own don't take the time to purify it.