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It’s cool and I get why people who don’t need stimulants to function can be uncomfortable with them. It’s a really weird phenomenon. I don’t know of any other medication that does one thing for most people and the opposite for another group, much less when it primarily acts as a recreational and addictive drug for the first group and for the second it functions as a drug that we can forget we took until we notice that our symptoms are back in full force.

I won’t claim that I’ve never gotten withdrawal after having to go off my stimulants but I will say that I’ve never noticed it when compared to my adhd being back in full force.

Is it still a drug withdrawal if that’s how someone was before they started the drug? Because people with severe adhd are just like that.

I'm saying this out of a place of wanting to encourage better understanding. Your statement comes across as extremely insensitive and judgemental towards people who are impacted by mental illnesses. ADHD is a very real condition that impacts people of all ages and is one of the most studied and neurobiologically understood forms of mental illness that there is. But despite this, people afflicted by it are regularly dismissed or treated like drug addicts for simply trying to fill a prescription for a medication scientifically proven as effective in treating their condition. As someone diagnosed in my 30s, I have experienced this first hand and it only got worse with this shortage.

Getting therapy and medication was life-changing and life-saving.

The non stimulants aren't going to put you in what it sounds suspiciously like an addict going through a drug withdrawal, as you described it.

To someone who lived most of their childhood and adult life struggling to do things that should be easy like turning in homework, not overlooking minor details on important tests that one knows the answers to, losing jobs and relationships, being incapable of readily quantifying or describing one's emotions, and being consumed by anxiety, shame, and depression because of this and having no idea why it's all so hard until being diagnosed and receiving treatment, this statement comes across like Immortan Joe warning of the dangers of becoming addicted to water.

The non-stimulant meds are significantly worse for most in terms of efficacy. Just to be clear we're talking about over 80% efficacy rate in stimulants vs closer to 60% or lower for non-stimulants. Pushing people off of effective medications and all but outright calling them junkies is pretty offensive. It's certainly neither kind nor helpful, nor is it coming from a place that is supported by data.

If you didn't mean to come across that way, I might suggest taking a step back and considering it. Would you feel good about telling a cancer patient that they need to use a medication that is less effective and might not improve their chances of survival because some well-off college students might abuse the medication that works to get high?

The reason you're getting pushback is because people diagnosed with ADHD who take a prescribed dose of stimulant medication are not capable of addiction to stimulant medication.

And the reason that this language is harmful is because my doctor had to spend two years convincing me to please, just try the medication, because my mother is a drug addict and a gambling addict and I refused to try anything that might be at all addictive.

That set my treatment back. I had accepted that I had ADHD but refused extremely valuable medication because of the stigma of precisely what you're underlining. You seem like you have good intentions so the best distinction, when talking about addiction with regards to these meds, has nothing to do with predisposition to genetic addiction and everything to do with underscoring the difference between talking to your doctor and actually determining if you have ADHD. An example;

If you're worried about the shortage, and you're currently prescribed stimulant medication, please be aware that there are non-stimulant medications that may work for you.

...and one of the reasons people are so downvote happy over that is because you're right. It's a crapshoot. The ritalin side of stimulant medication doesn't work for me and neither do nonstimulant medications. It's either the adderall family or nothing. And it's terrifying, because without that medication I can't function at all. I was trying to find an alternative for a few months and in those few months I was demoted at work, I left my long-term relationship, and about a billion other things went wrong because I couldn't focus.

It's scary out here. People are afraid. It shouldn't be this way.