I’m not sure where this idea in the NYT article (and now this article) that the purpose of ADHD medications was to improve learning. My own experiences (and the experiences of other people I know) was never that ADHD was significantly hindering our ability to learn. In fact most of us were pretty good at learning things. The problems in school came from the inability to do that learning in a way that conformed to the expectations of the system. Being unable to sit quietly and study for an hour at a time. Being unable to sit through a class without at least doodling in a notebook. Being unable to remember to pack or turn in assignments, even when they were already packed. The need to wait until the last moment to get the motivation to work on an assignment. The inability to intentionally write a rough draft for editing as opposed to just writing the final paper at once.

Those things aren’t going to change how much you learn or how much you retain, but they will absolutely tank your grades, get you into conflicts with your teachers and cause massive amounts of stress, anxiety and depression for you.

I wasn’t given medication as a child, and my experiences with it as an adult do nothing to suggest to me it would have made me better at learning. What it might have done though was eliminate the need to pull all nighters and late night mad dashes to complete assignments. It might have made it so I didn’t dread having to start each year and get a new set of teachers used to the idea that I really am paying attention (for the most part) even if it doesn’t look like it. My adult experiences back up the idea that the effects of the medication do wane with time, and I have been weighing the trade offs of taking vs not taking these medications (a trade off which would have been more difficult to weigh as a kid for sure, but not impossible with appropriate support). I am concerned at the tone of these recent articles that seem to be toeing very close to the “ADHD isn’t real” line again and that medication isn’t appropriate just because we don’t know the mechanism of action or because you build up a tolerance over time. We don’t know the mechanism of action for a lot of medications, and you build up tolerances to a lot of medications. It’s never been about no trade offs. It’s always with any medication a question of whether the trade offs are worth it?

Do I worry that the system itself is built and geared to chose medicating kids instead of maybe adjusting the system to accommodate, sure I do. But the answer to that issue is to advocate that the system change such that medicating to fit into the system better isn’t needed, not to just argue the medications don’t really do anything. And I feel like this and the NYT article mostly have made the argument not that the system needs to change (except to the extent that it needs to stop using medication), but that the system is fine actually and we just need to make the kids conform better. This may be sensitivity on my part to fighting the battles that ADHD has brought into my life, but if it is, then this is a plea for writers to be more explicit about what they’re advocating for, and to maybe tone down the “pill poppers” rhetoric.