I strongly believe your fear is unfounded, the following perspective is from someone with an ADHD diagnosis who takes Adderall daily and has for the last 10+ years. In real life, I don't think I would be comfortable sharing that information to someone with your fear. People with your fear tend to have a very specific shared misunderstanding of how stimulant medications work and whether they are necessary.

The only time I have heard of "rampant" abuse of stimulants for work, it's been in online forums. To me, these stories sound as real as the ones about micro dosing LSD. I know people that have abused stimulants as college students to pull all-nighters in the week before finals. I haven't heard of anyone abusing stimulants after graduating, I imagine most people realize no job is worth abusing medications and taxing their body in that way.

I absolutely hate how I am made to feel guilty for needing stimulant medication, it feels like a version of imposter syndrome where I constantly question my own diagnosis. There genuinely are no good representation of the struggles of ADHD or the benefits of stimulant medication in media. The stigma that Adderall is "meth for kids" shows a severe lack in empathy or understanding of what ADHD is and how medication/chemical groups work.

The people I know, even diagnosed, in NYC finance and FAANG tier companies told me they don't want to use anything stronger than coffee for crunch time. With every stimulants redose used to push away tiredness, the side effects like blunted emotions become exponentially worse. Some of my diagnosed friends choose to avoid stimulants completely because of emotional blunting and other side effects that happens to them at therapeutic doses. Sleep deprivation makes all stimulant medication a lot less effective. No drug can help you recover the way sleep does. There have been morning where I fell asleep after taking my daily dose of Adderall.

People are more comfortable now sharing their diagnosis and if they are medicated. The stigma around adult ADHD is starting to improve but isn't great. Many experts in the field used to think that people outgrew ADHD as they grew up but studies have shown that's completely untrue.[1] There is still a very strong stigma regarding ADHD and being medicated. ADHD isn't visible and in the last year there have been people that have told me I don't look like I need to be medicated or I am "smart enough" unmedicated. To those people, me taking my prescribed dose is the same as me abusing stimulants. There have always fears and stigma around people requiring medication for mental health conditions. Unless you know examples personally, I would take anecdotes with a huge grain of salt.

Stimulants make things easier to do but they don't give you momentum or energy to start something new, that's still something you have to do for yourself. Adderall feels close to a strong coffee taken together with ephedrine or Sudafed, not meth.[2] In movies and TV, a character starting stimulants is used as a plot device to help them overcome and obstacle or as a source of comedy, sometimes a deux ex machina.

There's a shared theory among me and my friends. The field of CS is naturally more attractive to people with ADHD. Software engineering work is structured in a way that would make it easier to manage symptoms for someone with ADHD. Things like hyperfocus, a symptom of ADHD, can even make things easier to learn. I don't know if the field itself is generally more accepting of individual differences. I am sure there's selection bias happening, but it seems reasonable to me. It would explain why there's a larger subset of software engineers have an ADHD diagnosis compared to some other professions.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/well/family/is-it-possibl...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9738532/