I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was thirteen. It made sense: I was an active, hyper-present person, who I can now imagine, was annoying my teachers sometimes. However, I have experienced that to be one of the many difficulties and side-effects that comes with the horrors of being in puberty. A lot of people face difficulties in concentrating, but it is not a ‘disorder’ as long as you can function in society. That was never the case in my life.
As a result of my diagnosis, I got the corresponding medication where I, unfortunately, had to learn the astonishingly productive effect it had on me, which leaves me with two different versions of myself. The one on medication, who is highly focused but emotionally numb. On the other side, the one with natural emotions, knowing she can be more productive using prescribed amphetamine.
The (side-)effects of the medications are nonetheless not as pleasant for everyone, and thus I started speculating about alternative ways to ‘treat’ these ‘disorders’ with a classmate who got the same diagnosis as I did. We discovered that ADHD was diagnosed significantly less in places with higher altitudes since the slight oxygen deficit in your blood makes it so that extra dopamine is produced in the brain.
We have made this hormonal process into a speculative bio-hack project named AD high D. It consists of an accessory that pumps around the blood in your body, and is connected to an app that measures your current altitude, enabling the device to subtract the amount of oxygen from your blood that is necessary for people to concentrate better.
