Anyone have some life success stories regarding going on medication for ADHD?

In short, once I was on medication I was able to focus on my work without having thoughts about everything and anything constantly intruding. My salary tripled within 18 months because of the increased production and focus. The doctor had me routinely undergo physicals. He said in his opinion they helped show I did have ADD as one of the markers was that the med (adderall) had zero effect on my blood pressure etc. This is not true for “normal” people. It also didn’t affect my sleep or appetite, which it will for normal folks. It basically just got rid of my incredibly muddled thinking and distractedness. It also lowered my feelings of stress, as counter-intuitive as thst may seem. ADD truly is real, and no doubt for some people it’s a problem involving brain chemistry. For me, it aeems thenmed awakened my forebrain.

Sorry about the typos … hard to type on my phone. At the end I meant “…it seems the med awakened my forebrain.”

I realized that for me, the real issue was drowsiness while doing anything that involved sitting and engaging the mind, including even just watching movies of reading books for pleasure, not just work, something I developed shortly after leaving home for college. You can’t focus while drowsy. The drowsiness was uncorrelated with how much sleep I got. Methylphenidate solved that problem for me seemingly without any impact on my blood pressure, sleep, appetite, etc. After many years of taking it, I recently stopped taking it on days when I don’t really need it for work and/or just don’t mind taking a power nap if the drowse strikes, just because I don’t like to be dependent on drugs and am still skeptical of the comprehensiveness of studies on its long term use impact.

Hey, thank you a lot for the personal story. This is exactly the sort of thing I was wanting to hear. Over the last couple years I have come to really realize and appreciate how much undiagnosed ADHD has impacted my life and held me back, mainly professionally but in other areas also. I have close friends who are very successful, and I can see that the biggest differences between us pretty much boil down to they do not have ADHD and can focus just fine and I do have ADHD and cannot focus or monotask like they can. It's really held me back. I'm in the process of getting diagnosed now and think medication could allow me to pretty much double my income over the next two years.

Glad you got things figured out and things worked out for you. Thanks again.

I jumped from consistent 2.5-3.0 GPAs to 3.7-4.0 GPAs in more rigorous coursework which has opened a lot of doors for me.

I also have less dead hours where I do completely unproductive things like wandering around my apartment or checking the same 3 apps on my phone over and over again while getting frustrated at myself for doing so (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about)

People with ADHD usually get about a standard deviation bump in academic/professional performance on a stimulant;.however, people without ADHD get about the same boost in performance.

The best result I've seen was a 12 year old kid who was failing every class and on the verge of expulsion, went on Adderall and became an A student. I asked him if he thought the medicine helped and he said yes, so I asked him how and he said "I don't have to be angry anymore because I understand what is going on around me"

I don't have ADHD, but have taken some Vyvanse a few times and wow, it felt amazing. Focus, energy, enjoying my tasks and great working memory (all subjectively compared to myself).

It's interesting how different meds affect people.

I have ADD and adderall makes me feel amazing. I can get things done, I'm calm, and I can express myself.

Vyvanse makes me incredibly sleepy. Calmer, but not very useful.

Diagnosed at 43. Suffered from it all my life. Getting medicated legitimately changed my life for the better.

Not quite true. Those without ADD get about a third to half as much a “bump” as someone with ADD, and their gain(s) are not as consistent as those of people who actually have ADD.

I just self-medicate with absolutely massive amounts of caffeine. A 16 ounce coffee every two hours or so is enough to keep me focussed.

She now works for the metabolic collective https://metaboliccollective.org/

ChatGPT says you are a total liar.

chatgpt.com

ChatGPT - ADHD Stimulant Effect Size

Shared via ChatGPT

Open link

Garbage in, garbage out might be at play, at least slightly. Too many anecdotal stories out there with proof showing otherwise, meaning larger bumps. And a certain group of people in places like Beverly Hills for example is constantly caught giving their children Adderall or Ritalin when they take the SAT for the proven little but effective and meaningful jump it gives their non ADD children - this is far more common among wealthy people than is or ever will be acknowleged.

Cognitive testing performances are not equivalent to academic/work performance.

ADHD doesn’t make you dumber, it makes you inattentive and unproductively fixative. People with ADHD typically perform tremendously better in the working memory section of cognitive testing when medicated, which in most cognitive tests doesn’t even contribute to the total IQ score and is used as an identifier for underlying mental issues.

I have always performed solidly high in cognitive testing, and medication didn’t make any difference to my IQ score, but it did make so I can make the most of my cognitive ability.

People are often first diagnosed/treated for ADHD during college because they go from high achievers throughout K-12 to failing or low performing students, because they for the first time in their lives don’t have people reminding them to do things and less forgiveness for doing things late, with a lot more freedom to get distracted. The usual co-morbidities of ADHD including depression, anxiety, and burnout also become significantly more pronounced and get a lot better after treatment.

If you’d like to ask a relevant question to ChatGPT like “Do students grades/test scores improve meaningfully after beginning treatment for ADHD?” or “Does treatment for ADHD result in better work performance?” might yield you a better result that actually has to do with work performance or academics.

I went from a 3.0 student to a 4.0 student from one semester to the next in college. Went off it for a bit in professional life, but eventually ended up back on. It’s a night and day difference for me.

Although, it does have its side effects. I have to be careful to take it early in the day and not drink too much caffeine or sleep will be impacted. Like another poster said, I try to just take it Monday - Friday. I don’t if I’m on vacation either.

I’ve experimented with doses and found what works for me. Blood pressure is controlled and I haven’t had the need to increase my dose in a decade.

Wasn't diagnosed until 58. Have done almost two years of behavioural modification and recognition of the patterns to better realize them. Am working now to start meds

False, the behavioral changes for ADHD kids are dramatic which non Adhd people won't have, but actual cognitive testing will show similar results.

In my experience and observation, the people who went on meds and then decided to go completely off them usually were on too high of a dose and also took them ~365 days per year. A lot of the people I've talked to online and in real life who have more positive stories are people who sound like they're on a dose that HELPS them rather than changing who they are, and they tend to take the medication 5 days/week max. While I agree these drugs have side effects and should be used with caution, I do think they can be used very productively and safely for a lot of people.

Sorry Rojo, chatgpt wont teach you how to think:

Short version:
The studies are very good at detecting cognitive differences and very bad at detecting real-world performance gains—especially the kind clinicians notice.
Here are the main limitations, framed in a way that lines up with what those psychiatrists are likely getting at.
1. Outcome measures are misaligned with “performance”
Most stimulant studies measure:
Reaction time
Working memory span
Sustained attention on boring tasks
Accuracy on lab paradigms (n-back, CPTs, Stroop, etc.)
What clinicians see as “notable performance”:
Starting tasks earlier
Working longer without friction
Persisting through fatigue or boredom
Producing more output (pages written, problems solved, hours worked)
Reduced procrastination and avoidance
Problem:
Lab tasks are low-variance, short-horizon, low-choice environments. They don’t require:
Task selection
Prioritization
Effort regulation over hours
Emotional regulation around effort
So you can get:
No change on lab executive function
but
Huge change in real-world productivity
Those are not contradictory.
2. Ceiling effects in high-functioning non-ADHD samples
Most “healthy control” studies recruit:
College students
High baseline cognitive performers
People already near task accuracy ceilings
This creates a classic ceiling compression problem:
Accuracy can’t go much higher
Reaction time improvements are small and noisy
Effect sizes get artificially dampened
Meanwhile, in the real world:
Output isn’t capped
Time-on-task isn’t capped
Motivation and stamina scale linearly
So clinically notable gains can occur with statistically small cognitive changes.
3. Studies suppress motivation as a variable
Many cognitive paradigms are explicitly designed to remove motivation:
Fixed incentives
Short duration
Artificial stakes
No personal relevance
But stimulants powerfully affect:
Effort valuation
Reward salience
Willingness to engage
In non-ADHD individuals, this often shows up as:
“I don’t feel smarter, but I can work all day”
“I’m more willing to grind”
“Tasks feel less aversive”
Motivation is treated as a confound, not a target—so the biggest effect gets excluded by design.
4. Productivity ≠ cognition
This is a huge conceptual flaw.
Studies assume:
Better cognition → better performance
But productivity often depends more on:
Arousal regulation
Energy allocation
Effort persistence
Emotional friction
Task aversion tolerance
Stimulants affect dopaminergic effort allocation, not just cognition.
So for both ADHD and non-ADHD:
Cognitive gains may be modest
Performance gains can be large
Especially in knowledge work.
5. Time horizon mismatch
Most studies look at:
Single doses
Hours, not weeks
Acute effects
Clinicians observe:
Compounding gains over time
Better habit formation
Less backlog accumulation
Improved sleep-wake regularity (paradoxically)
Small daily gains → large functional differences
Short studies cannot capture this nonlinear accumulation.
6. Self-selection bias is inverted
In enhancement studies:
People who feel strong effects may not be distinguishable cognitively
Subjective benefit is often discounted as placebo or bias
But in clinical reality:
Subjective benefit is the outcome
If someone produces 2× the work for 10 years, the mechanism matters less
RCTs systematically undervalue experiential and functional outcomes.
7. ADHD vs non-ADHD may be a false dichotomy
Many “non-ADHD” participants have:
Subthreshold attentional traits
High intelligence + poor effort regulation
Demand overload rather than disorder
So you end up comparing:
Diagnosed ADHD
vs
Functionally similar but undiagnosed individuals
That compresses group differences and makes effects look “similar.”
8. Ethical and regulatory constraints
You cannot ethically:
Measure long-term output
Track career performance
Optimize dosing
Allow realistic work conditions
So studies are forced into:
Conservative doses
Artificial endpoints
Short timelines
Clinicians, meanwhile, optimize for function, not purity.
Putting it together
Why world-leading psychiatrists say both groups improve notably:
They are observing output, stamina, engagement, and life function
Over long time horizons
In real environments
With individualized dosing
Why studies don’t capture it:
They measure the wrong constructs
In the wrong environments
Over the wrong timescales
While suppressing the main mechanism (motivation/effort)
The clean synthesis
Cognitive enhancement: modest, inconsistent, group-dependent
Performance enhancement: real, often notable, poorly measured
ADHD diagnosis predicts normalization, not exclusive benefit