> "It's the classic situation of someone without ADHD telling us "just focus!" or "you just need to write things down!" or "you're just lazy".
Of course, this advice was never helpful and did not work. However, I was properly diagnosed, went to medication route, coupled it with therapy, and I'm still not better. Now, the medication and all that is definitely better than nothing, and I still rely on the relief I get. But the benefit of modern medicine for me is like taking a low dosage of painkillers for 3rd degree burns.
I swear you are on to something. I have been on them for 9 years, and I am basically fried and useless. It's as if I had never been treated at all, if not worse than that. I feel like I am in a constant state of burnout, without actually being burned out, so to speak.
You will find that a lot of negative ADHD med discussion is censored. Even on HN if you question the science or legitimacy of an ADHD diagnosis you will have posts removed. It's a pretty deep rabbit hole to go down if you are game, and there are massive financial incentives to increasing diagnosis rates.
If you drink too much coffee it loses its effect. This is the same but with a much stronger and extremely addictive drug.
ADHD is sold as a neurodevelopmental disorder which means you had it since birth, where they hypothesize that your brain doesn't make enough dopamine so you can't focus, so they simply return it to "normal" levels with meds. This is used to justify why normal people can't have it, and also why ADHD people won't simply develop tolerance and get addicted. But there is no "normal" across people. Your brain ships with a system that does everything it can to maintain its levels of dopamine, aka homeostasis.
There is no conclusive brain imaging evidence of it being a result of a brain defect. It could just as well be environmental or masquerading as social media addiction, or any other afflictions caused by rapid societal change. So you potentially mess up everyone's brains and get them hooked on pills for a lifetime. It would take a long time to re-adjust back to normal dopamine levels, so most people won't go through this process because it will be years of finding it harder than it originally was to focus.
I mean ADHD medication is essentially meth. At first it works, and then you need a little bit more to get the same effect.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 19 years of age (quite a while ago) and it took me 9 months to realize the medication was a net-negative for me.
I encourage you to seek other forms of treatment that aren't medication-based. What works for me is a lot of exercise, good sleep, healthy diet and limiting "easy" dopaminergic activities like scrolling random content or watching random YouTube videos.
Like you said
> "It's the classic situation of someone without ADHD telling us "just focus!" or "you just need to write things down!" or "you're just lazy".
Of course, this advice was never helpful and did not work. However, I was properly diagnosed, went to medication route, coupled it with therapy, and I'm still not better. Now, the medication and all that is definitely better than nothing, and I still rely on the relief I get. But the benefit of modern medicine for me is like taking a low dosage of painkillers for 3rd degree burns.