Edit: fair enough. I do realize people who are seriously affected benefit from these medications. I did not mean to trivialize their struggle. However, i do think the sheer number of people currently receiving these relatively heavy medications is alarming. I think overdiagnosis is a serious problem with adhd.
The biopsychosocial model [1] is ignored more and more. That is, social and psychological factors are given less and less weight. For example, someone who is working an unfulfilling job in a big city is too easily prescribed some SSRI instead of promoting a career change and heavily increased social interaction to form deeper relationships.
The trend even just among biological factors is frightening. Classic example being bad diet. Promoting improved eating habbits and exercise is increasingly looked at as body-shaming. Because this removes personal responsibility. It's easier to tell someone that they just have bad luck with their brain chemistry than to point out that their life choices suck.
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Being diagnosed with ADHD takes years. During these years you are given a number of tools to suppress the symptoms, including dieting, exercise and forming strict routines to live by. The medication helps you to stick to those routines, to help you back when things in $life becomes unpredictable, for reasons outside of your own control. Either one of them alone won't be very helpful, and that is something anyone with ADHD can tell you.
Furthermore, most medication used to treat ADHD has a very short half life, and is typically out of your system anywhere between 1-2 hours to 8 hours. People are not medicated at all times, and most people prefer to be medicated as little as possible, because yes, there are side-effects. And nobody diagnosed with it takes them lightly.
You know what is easy? To sit on the Internet and make statements that have no ground in science and general practice. And some people do have bad luck with their brain chemistry. I hope you never get a chronic depression or something similar and have to meet your own arguments about life choices in the door way.
She was diagnosed with ADHD and ADD a few years ago, got medication for it which cleared up most of the above symptoms. She has now held a steady job, although at a reduced workload, for a few years.
Funny, I was just talking to a psychiatrist who lamented that the problem is more about under-diagnosis. In part because of people with attitudes similar to yours who refuse their children or themselves the ability to get a diagnosis which would help improve their lives.
Of course medications may work if the diagnosis is correct, but medicatons are as well broad-reaching, i.e. I believe they work nonetheless in a number of cases even if the affection is not properly ADHD.
You have no idea the mental anguish from having to rewind a movie that you are watching alone (because other people won't put up with this) for the 3rd time because you still missed an important plot point a few minutes ago. It makes enjoyable things feel like work, and then you don't want to even try. The things that are supposed to help me relax just end up causing frustration. Or even the irony of not being able to fall asleep because I keep getting distracted thinking about stuff that I forgot to do today...
Medication and therapy literally saved my life.
Asking genuinely out of curiousity, what do you experience during this periods of 'blackout'? Is it the mind wandering onto other thoughts or focusing on one specific item?
Have you ever tried to read a sentence and listen to someone talk at the exact same time? You are only going to be able to "focus" on one or the other, or you'll fail and understand neither of them.
Without medication (and on bad days) my entire life is like there is a second part of my brain that is vying for my attention. Either focusing on something not important (hey i never noticed his hat, did he always have that? I think he did in the beginning... Oh shit I missed what's happening again), or in many cases focusing on the act of trying to focus that I forget what I'm actually supposed to be focusing on (and then the pity party in my head starts about how pointless it is to even try here right now, and that then is a 3rd distraction).
There's also times that I can hear and understand what is happening, but everything from about 3 seconds ago is just... gone... So I can read and fully comprehend a sentence, but I'm trying so hard to focus on that sentence that I don't commit the previous one to memory, and any references back to it get confusing because I don't remember what happened there.
Interestingly that last one happens most with the 6 digit 2-factor authentication codes. I break them up into 2 sets of 3, but when i've said the second set of 3 to myself to try and remember the whole string long enough to switch apps and enter it, I've forgotten the first 3...
Like most things, it's not as bad at some days and times, and worse on others.
When your focus shifts so often you can't develop basic cognitive functions(especially executive function). The part of your brain that is suppose to regulate focus is really funky. But I bet when you find something your really interested in your brain won't stop focusing and it feels like you have blacked out and are doing everything in "automatic" mode. This is called hyperfocus and it can be incredibly useful if you can "control" it.
You might cycle through various medications over the years, some might even cause you anxiety and other horrible side effects. But it won't actually fix the underlying problem which are structures in your brain that aren't developed properly.
Luckily there are solutions; treatments to improve your mind ability focus like Neurofeedback. Once you can focus you need to find a physically/mentally stimulating task that requires serious cognitive functions like memory, task execution, focus switching and the many other functions. I like to dance and play music. I've done a lot of work reverse engineering the brain and made incredible progress improving its ability to operate.
Don't ever that listen to that pity party in your brain. Once you cross a certain point(after A LOT OF WORK) your ADHD becomes a gift and you will never want to give it up not matter how much failure and loss you have experienced. ALWAYS remember you are different, everything about you is different from the normal population and trying to conform to their systems, ways to of thinking and working will rarely work for you.
EDIT: I will add I understand that medication works for some people and that's great. But it was largely a waste of time for me and seriously affected my liver.
ADHD has made me much better at many things than most of my peers. Learning to deal with it has given me tools that are applicable to most parts of life, and have made me a very productive and useful person. My own personal "law" of "anything you can forget you will forget" has taught me to externalize everything. I'm a software developer, and I'm militant about testing and automation because of it, and that has benefited me greatly in my life. And hyperfocus is amazing when it happens (and it happens to the right thing! It sucks when you hyperfocus on getting your font sizes right...)
But like most things it's different for everyone, and for me the medication is a large part of my treatment of the (bad) symptoms. I'm still not convinced that neurofeedback techniques are effective, and I am quite happy with where I am right now, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. That's why I want to revisit my medication when my life calms down a bit in a few months and see how it goes. Generally things get worse before they get better, and in this case I get to choose when they get worse, so I'm going to plan that choice out well!
For me, it's basically that my mind wonders if I'm not very interested. It's my mind's default mode of operation that I think about everything related to the thing I just thought about. Comes in very handy when programming, but is kind of annoying when trying to get through some mediocre material.
Something worth noting is that my focusability seems directly based on how interested I am, not how action-packed something is. For example I have no problems watching the 1981 German classic Das Boot, where people just sit in a submarine for 3 hours. However something that is popularly belived to be made for ADHD people like The Transformers is excruciating for me even though there's so much going on visually every second.
Stimulants like Adderall make me even more focused on things I could focus on already sober, but also make me even less focused on things I don't care about. So basically just intensifying my natural tendendices, as opposed to changing them.
It does help when I can get it to, but the biggest helps have been from following a VERY structured consistent schedule that I follow militantly, and some other small lifestyle changes like making sure I eat right and exercise helps quite a lot.
But at the end of the day, the medication just helps so much more, and the side effects are manageable, so I'm pretty happy with it. I do take amphetamines and I do worry about possible neurotoxicity issues that it may have, but I'm planning on working with my doctor in 3-ish months to start trying out other medications again (as right now I'm moving and don't want to mess with anything).
I'm still working on this, and it's one of the major reasons why I want to talk to my doctor and try different medications again, but I have heard some say that low-carb high-fat diets are beneficial to ADHD, and I know that many agree that having "enough" fat in your diet is crucial. I also really need any extra calories I can get right now, so cutting carbs isn't the best idea until I have a handle on my weight.