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    Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD
    Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD
    Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD
    Ebook347 pages5 hours

    Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD

    By Timothy Denevi

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The first book of its kind about what it’s like to be a child with ADHD, Hyper is a “haunting narrative that explores the world’s most scrutinized childhood condition from the inside out” (Nature) that also illuminates the history of how we came to medicate more than four million children today.

    Among the first generation of boys prescribed medication for ADHD in the 1980s, Timothy Denevi took Ritalin at the age of six and suffered a psychotic reaction. Thus began his long odyssey through a variety of treatments. In Hyper, Denevi describes how he made his way to adulthood, knowing he was a problem for those who loved him, longing to be able to be good and fit in, and finally realizing he had to come to grips with his disorder before his life spun out of control. Using these experiences as a springboard, Denevi also traces our understanding and treatment of ADHD from the nineteenth century, when bad parenting and even government conspiracies were blamed, through the twentieth century and drug treatments like Benzedrine, Ritalin, and antidepressants. His insightful history shows how drugs became the treatment of choice for ADHD, rather than individually crafted treatments like the one that saved his life.

    Thought provoking and deeply intelligent, this is a remarkable book both for its sensitive portrait of a child’s experience as well as for its thorough exploration of a remarkably complex and controversial mental condition and its treatment. “There’s much to be learned in Hyper, about pushing boundaries and respecting them, about parenting, and about the special kind of triumph that can come as a result of hard-earned self-knowledge. Denevi has written a book about a condition that has been studied for a long time, but, truly, it hasn’t been talked about like this” (BookPage).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9781476702599
    Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD
    Author

    Timothy Denevi

    Timothy Denevi received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa. His writing has appeared in various magazines including The Atlantic, Time, Gulf Coast, and Arts & Letters, and he’s been awarded fellowships by The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. He lives near Washington, DC and teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University. Hyper is his first book.

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    Reviews for Hyper

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      This book was a great look at a personal experience with ADHD mixed in with the study of of ADHD throughout the years. At the same time I am reading this I am listening to a more clinical book about ADHD and found the person story made this book much more interesting and I made it through it much more quickly. Overall if you are curious to learn about ADHD in any facet I think this is a great place to start
    • 4/5
      There is a stigma to ADHD, so I was surprised to find HYPER, A Personal History of ADHD by Timothy Denevi. It took courage to tackle the subject and determination to cover it in depth. When growing up, Timothy Denevi wanted to be a good boy, to fit in and not get into fights, and to not interrupt class. Just getting through preschool, kindergarten, elementary and secondary school was a major struggle for him. Outside of the classes, he was put on medicine which sometimes backfired on him. He was in counseling or therapy much of the time. He had to go through a sleep deprived EEG. I can feel for him as I had a 48 hour EEG once for different reasons and it was an experience that I never want to repeat. At the same time, Timothy Denevi traces the beginnings of the identifying ADHD in medical history and the strange ideas held back then and the evolution of different treatments. But the best part is still his expression of his own torturous experience of wanting to fit in when he was dealing with ADHD. When I read about what he went through at school, with his parents and teachers, I cannot help but think that a support group would have helped him not feel so alone with ADHD.I highly recommend this book to parents and adults who have ADHD.Even though I received this book as a win from FirstReads that in no way effected my thoughts or feelings in this review.

    Book preview

    Hyper - Timothy Denevi

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