ADHD: Breaking the Red-to-Blue Loop

I also have ADHD which was fortunately diagnosed when I was in third grade. Meds helped greatly but I still struggled academically. Unfortunately, I stupidly noped out of taking meds starting my senior year of high school, then flamed out of college and went through a "lost decade" in terms of life, career and even relationship progress until I kinda hit bottom and got back on meds. Since then, with a combo of meds and accepting I need to consistently apply basic tools (lists, systems, processes), I've had pretty constant upward progress on all dimensions and have overall been doing really well.

One small suggestion regarding your posts... in a few places you mention "(Tool XYZ) works just as well as meds." I think it's great that they've worked well for you! Based on my understanding of the literature, I think it's the case that those things can work as well as, or even better than, meds for some people. Personally, I've tried exercise, meditation, talk therapy and pretty much everything else which has shown a modicum of real potential in the literature. Despite multiple serious attempts in multiple ways over significant periods, for me, they all turned out "helped a little, but not enough." I think the reality is that the effectiveness of treatments can vary widely across ADHD individuals (and also across life phrases within individuals, especially adolescence to adulthood).

I think the literature mostly supports the idea that meds are still the most likely treatment to be "sufficiently effective" to enable a meaningful difference in life outcomes. However, as you mention, meds won't "do it for you", don't work for everyone and it's certainly the case that med effectiveness requires finding the right med or combo of meds, the right dosing and an effective, sustainable usage pattern. Which, for many, can require patience, perseverance and a lot of difficult-to-sustain experimentation while tracking changes that can be hard to self-assess.

The reason I'm careful to mention this whenever I discuss treatments is that there's still a pretty common bias in the general populace against meds. Some people who don't have ADHD just think "smart pills" are a crutch for slackers or dummies. Some people who have ADHD hate thinking of themselves as someone who "needs" meds to "fix themselves" or even to be "normal." This is definitely why and how I ended up with that lost decade, which I still deeply regret. This is all made harder by the fact that, ADHD IS somewhat over-diagnosed and mis-diagnosed, especially self-diagnosis, and some people do abuse the same meds. Yet, despite all this, some ADHDers still remain undiagnosed or are struggling without effective treatment.

Now, sure, its useless for convincing the speaker (though not others who may be witnessing the debate) to bring out research evidence if the argument is “the medical community is wrong, and my source for that is my own unsupported belief bolstered by a conspiracy theory that the truth is actively suppressed from publication.”