Like most things, we celebrate the high functioning folks and denigrate those who aren’t. Kids are also expected to fall in line and be easy to manage, and those that aren’t get medicated.
That's cocaine. You're thinking of cocaine.
It’s quite striking when you see it happen with someone you know (all while wondering if they’re high on cocaine or something), then they get treated and are able to calm down and focus - and still can be hyperactive if pushed that way environmentally - but are functional, calmer, have more empathy, are able to talk and be more social, etc. All while getting large doses of Adderall or the like that would make your average non-ADHD’er impossible to be around.
This is true but I should point out that "normal people" taking stimulants won't necessarily get hyper. You might get more calm and focused too. Claiming that Adderall works differently on ADHD people is a sort of marketing technique to stop it from getting banned entirely (like it is in Asia), because otherwise even more people would be trying to use it as a study drug.
Somehow modafinil has a reputation as a wonder drug that works on everyone, even though the way it works is not very different.
[1] I think it was on this forum that there was a comment about people finding out they had ADD after landing in prison for drug-related crimes.
I'm not even talking about 'not being able to concentrate' because that's easily fixed with medicine. nowadays But ADHD is so much more involved on the emotional and psychological level.
My childhood was mostly 'driven by impulsivity', so having medicine available to me back then doesn't sound bad.
That's the definition of being a child.
Do you think that a child is driven by long term planning or wisdom?
But for example, I picked my next school based on where my elementary school friends went and insisted to my parents that this is where I wanted to be, despite it being a worse choice for my then-grades. And then a few years later again, I picked for my school path to be economics over math (what I actually wanted to do), because my friends picked it.
Or, I was convinced for a while I wanted to work in a hotel post-school for no reason, despite learning programming by myself and being a computer kid writing my own programs and websites. I even applied to hotel-related jobs constantly until my parents pushed me to go to software engineering instead.
So what I mean with 'driven by impulsivity' is that often important decisions aren't handled with reason, but with pure emotion and impulses. Most of the time that's fine when you're young, but there are still times when you want to use logic over impulses.
When the mood strikes me, I make GRAND long term plans. Then, when I'm gripped by impulsively, I try and keep it honed into the plans I made.