However, my doctors treated me with medication _and_ had me go to a therapist for cognitive behavioral therapy. The medication helped me learn to slow down my mind, be able to focus when I normally couldn't, and develop the coping skills that allowed me to function that I was learning in therapy.
My doctors also had never planned for the medication to be long term for me. It was a tool to help the therapy take hold. I was on it for about five or six years, slowly weaning me off in 7th grade once I'd developed the proper skills. I haven't taken any of that medication since then.
I don't think many paired it with therapy back then. Maybe they still don't. But I use those tools I developed in Therapist Bob's office all those years ago on a daily basis. I never could've paid attention to what that man was saying had I not been on medication. Saved my life.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like saying a guy isn't a great runner because he tore his ACL and surgeons fixed it but it's still messed up, and saying he should've just never gotten the surgery.
You're blaming the medication when people with ADHD are already predisposed to not being able to complete things, have normal careers, and are at high risk for anxiety, depression and other things. You're just seeing what ADHD looks like.
Stimulant medications are not a cure, but they do improve quality of life in ADHD patients compared to baseline.
Relative to the outcome for those same people had they remained untreated, or a "control group" of people with ADHD who were untreated, or just relative to neurotypical/non-ADHD people in general? Maybe ADHD has a negative impact even when treated.
> I believe those drugs are poison, especially when given to teenagers and younger.
You're making a dangerously uninformed claim. Actual, non-anecdotal, peer-reviewed studies strongly suggest the opposite of your observation. Untreated ADHD can have profoundly negative consequences.
They are noticeably spacey as an adult to the point where I am not super comfortable driving with them. Running stop signs and red lights is a frequent occurrence.
Or - hear me out - maybe severe ADHD, the kind that leads to diagnosis and treatment with stimulant medication at a very young age, is correlated with negative outcomes in general. You know, like a disability.
The number of people willing to believe - contrary to actual peer reviewed studies - that stimulant medication is harmful to people with ADHD, based on nothing more than a gut feeling, is astounding. People don't assume they can just intuit the proper treatment for other medical conditions, why do they think they can do that with mental health related issues?
I am asserting that decades and decades of peer-reviewed medical literature indicates that stimulant medications are a net benefit for people with ADHD.
This is not a controversial perspective among informed researchers or clinicians.
You're almost certainly right about that. Accidents in general [1] and car accidents in particular [2] are more common for people with ADHD.
The part you're missing is that the stimulant medication _improves_ the situation.
Quoting from the results of the second study referenced above:
> Compared with individuals without ADHD, male ADHD patients [...] had increased risk of serious transport accidents. In male ADHD patients, ADHD medication was associated with a 58% risk reduction [....] Estimates of the population attributable fractions suggested that 41% – 49% of the accidents in male patients with ADHD could have been avoided if they had been on treatment the entire follow-up.
In fact, data suggest that the problems you observed probably would have been worse absent the stimulant medication. A treatment can be beneficial even if it doesn't completely eliminate the associated issues.
Medicine can help, but they're not a silver bullet.
So it could just be that the people you've noticed are just people who are more likely to develop these problems.
And if you want an anecdatum, I have ADHD, unmedicated during most of my childhood, and I went to develop all of the above except for psychosis.
Absolutely, you are correct. To be clear, that's 100% a hunch I just posted, based on no data or experience other than the people I have known that long who are now adults. Funny thing, a lot of them are deciding not to medicate their children.
Moreover, delayed diagnosis ADHD is even _more_ correlated with issues like anxiety than the ADHD population in general. If you think about it, that outcome is predicable: a lifetime of experiencing the kinds of problems created by executive dysfunction (especially with little or no understanding or explanation of the phenomenon) is a perfect breeding ground for anxiety or depression or both.
I'm not sure if the same statement is true for diagnosed but untreated ADHD, but certainly seems plausible.