I don’t doubt that ADHD exists and that your experience is valid. But I also think we need to be really careful about our expectations. I know I don’t have ADHD. I can focus plenty when I try. Social media has shortened my attention span and made me prone to procrastination, but it’s definitely not something I am actively incapable of. Yet so many people have self-diagnosed me with ADHD.
I have at least one friend who in college landed a prescription for Adderall because he wanted to be able to get extra focus even though he knew he didn’t have ADHD. Later on he went off of it and managed to become a lawyer and made it look easy. This is someone who never struggled with focus. I knew him since grade school. His use of the drug was clearly abusive.
I get angry at people like my friend because I know ADHD is real. And I know his abuse of Adderall only makes more people out there minimize the existenxe of real ADHD. But just as you’re saying my rhetoric makes it difficult for people with ADHD, I think overdiagnosing hurts people without it. Like I said in my first comment, if I’m in a really competitive environment like a school and I’m going against people that are using a “performance enhancing drug” for focus, then our societal expectations for what I should be capable of are out of whack and I start to be expected to perform and focus like someone on Adderall.
There has to be a compromise between handing it out to everyone and refusing to give it to people who genuinely need it. I have no idea what that compromise looks like and I’m truly happy that people like you and another friend I have who genuinely has it are able to get their medication. But outside of the very real world of ADHD, I see it becoming a problem. My wife who has been able to write an entire PhD dissertation in a very normal amount of time and experiences far less distractability than most people I know regularly questions whether she has ADHD. It’s that state of mind where everybody thinks they have it that I worry about. We don’t need to all be on Adderall.
I don’t doubt that ADHD exists and that your experience is valid. But I also think we need to be really careful about our expectations. I know I don’t have ADHD. I can focus plenty when I try. Social media has shortened my attention span and made me prone to procrastination, but it’s definitely not something I am actively incapable of. Yet so many people have self-diagnosed me with ADHD.
I have at least one friend who in college landed a prescription for Adderall because he wanted to be able to get extra focus even though he knew he didn’t have ADHD. Later on he went off of it and managed to become a lawyer and made it look easy. This is someone who never struggled with focus. I knew him since grade school. His use of the drug was clearly abusive.
I get angry at people like my friend because I know ADHD is real. And I know his abuse of Adderall only makes more people out there minimize the existenxe of real ADHD. But just as you’re saying my rhetoric makes it difficult for people with ADHD, I think overdiagnosing hurts people without it. Like I said in my first comment, if I’m in a really competitive environment like a school and I’m going against people that are using a “performance enhancing drug” for focus, then our societal expectations for what I should be capable of are out of whack and I start to be expected to perform and focus like someone on Adderall.
There has to be a compromise between handing it out to everyone and refusing to give it to people who genuinely need it. I have no idea what that compromise looks like and I’m truly happy that people like you and another friend I have who genuinely has it are able to get their medication. But outside of the very real world of ADHD, I see it becoming a problem. My wife who has been able to write an entire PhD dissertation in a very normal amount of time and experiences far less distractability than most people I know regularly questions whether she has ADHD. It’s that state of mind where everybody thinks they have it that I worry about. We don’t need to all be on Adderall.