>I'm of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with that. I lean more towards the acceptance side of things. Humans are diverse in many ways. I don't believe we should be attempting to stifle that with drugs.

For the first time in my life, with decades of experience dealing with and managing ADHD with soft skills and sheer stubbornness I started medications for ADHD last year. The significant changes and disruptions to society and daily life of the COVID 19 pandemic left me in a position where my skills were no longer adequate to deal with my condition. A loss of focus helpers (like a dedicated working environment, commute times, access to fellow co-workers etc), added stresses caused by dealing with other medical issues in the new paradigm, easy access to other distractions and more added up to a crippling depression and self loathing as I became less and less capable of performing to the standards that I knew I was capable of and had performed at even just a couple years before.

I tried anti-depressants because I was depressed, so of course that seems the right way to go. But no amount of anti-depressant or counseling will fix self disappointment and frustration at being unable to bring yourself to perform to your known potential. There was no "value" in my inability to do my job, to do the things I'm good at and the things I enjoy. I wasn't doing something else that was more fulfilling. I wasn't learning something new about myself, or finding an alternative path to success. I was spinning in circles trying ot do what I wanted to do and failing at it over and over again for no other reason than decades of skills and practice were no longer effective in the world I found myself in.

Maybe, on a long enough time scale, I could have learned new strategies. I could have spent large enough sums of money to build a new and different environment around me to support those new skills. And in the mean time I would have spent years spiraling further and further into depression for failing to be the person I wanted to be and was capable of being.

Taking ADHD medications helped. The struggle to deal with the way life is no longer the same is still there, but I'm not having to fight my own head at the struggles at the same time. The week I started it, for the first time in my entire life I thought to myself "I need to do task A" and then just got up and did that thing to its completion, and then I did it again for task B, and again for task C. No minutes to hours prepping myself, working up the energy and mental gumption to do the thing. No mental dance to shift between tasks. No fight to stay on task A instead of jumping between A, B and C. I don't think it's possible for me to explain how incredible it felt to be able to just "decide" to do a task, or how it feels now to know I've never actually been able to do something that way before.

Skills are useful, and knowing the ones I do make it easier to deal with the days where even with the medications I still struggle. But a key component to diagnosing a disorder is "does it negatively impact your ability to conduct your life". Diversity is one thing, but no one should have to fight their own head to live the life they want just for the sake of "diversity".