I have ADHD, but unlike the author I was 30 before it was diagnosed, so I stayed my medication late and I was a rather well function adult at the time. What led to me getting the diagnosis was having children, which destroyed my “coping mechanisms” which were basically going to bed early on stressful weeks and having a few more sick days a year than your average but not enough to trigger the HR alarms.<p>Anyway, because I stayed my “journey” late and very much in charge of it unlike what you do when you’re a child. It took me around a year to pick the medicine that worked the best for me. I tried a lot of things, even something which isn’t considered ADHD medicine here in Denmark called zymbalta or something like it. I eventually ended up settling with Lisdexamfetamine, which is in no way a “cure” or perfect solution, but it’s the type of ADHD meds I gain the most value from. At first I was on 30mg in the mornings and then 20mg in the afternoons, and now it’s 30mg in the mornings. Anyway, what I learned through this year long “journey” of being on various types of speed was that they aren’t really that helpful in terms of your real issue. They let you focus on boring things, which is a big issue for us with ADHD and they give you a “burst of energy”. What the medicine doesn’t do, is give you enough, you still spend more than other people, and you still won’t have enough of it to easily function in large parts of modern society.<p>I think the only reason in high functional is because software developers have so much freedom in how we work. I’m fortunate enough to find most programming and most technical issues interesting, so I can hyperfocus on them, and since we can work from home, on flexible hours and so on, it’s manageable for me to get a week to work, most weeks. It does include working maybe 30 hours during the “office hours” and then working 4 hours on a Saturday night when the crave of problem solving strikes me, and so on, and it works. The meds though, they don’t help me that much. I mean they absolutely do, but not in the way meds typically work. If you have an infection you get antibiotics and it’ll go away. For many people if you have a depression, you’ll eventually get cured. The meds don’t work like that, at least not for me or anyone I know, what they do is to help you function in modern society even though you have ADHD, but unless you’re lucky enough to have the rest of your life align along your ADHD as well, then the meds likely aren’t going to help you that much.<p>I haven’t experienced the different brain thing the author describes. I did on some of the other types of meds, which is part of why they didn’t work out for me, but for the most part it’s mostly my mood that has been affected and not my way of thinking. Like, I can endure a meeting now, I’ll often be much more cheerful, but my way of thinking hasn’t changed because of the meds and I’m still working on putting actual cheer behind my mood.