It can be truly stark with ADD. I’ve seen people have miraculous improvements to their lives from ADD drugs.

With ADHD I was unable to get out of bed properly, unable to shower more frequently than every 6 months, unable to perform any other basic hygiene, unable to do any of the hundreds of hobbies I've enjoyed over the years but spontaneously lost the ability to actually do, unable to do any of my chores until weeks after they got really bad, etc.

I'd let things like toothache or fucking organ failure go unnoticed for weeks while I was too lazy to tell anyone because I was hoping it would just go away. Ended up needing a root canal because I waited too long, and an IV to stop my pancreas from failing (!!) because I waited a week before telling anyone about the very obvious pain in my side.

I had to drop out of school because I literally couldn't leave the house after some winter break. Just out of nowhere, my brain was like "nah, no more school". I proceeded to lose three jobs because either I became so unable to do them that I had to quit, or I loved the job far too much to quit, so I got fired when I tried for weeks and failed to overcome my brain just completely refusing to function at all.

I was so depressed that I would sleep for 12 hours every time and I sometimes wouldn't even be able to stay up that long before falling asleep again. There was no 24 hour schedule. I could not stay up long enough to make it through a 24 hour day even if I slept for over half of it. I slept because I was so bored, I was so unmotivated, so starved and unable to do anything that I would just be trapped in bed wishing I could get up but unable to think of any possible reason why that would ever even help. It's the classic depressive mantra of "what is even the point" except the mantra came first and the depression followed.

It's even worse than just glasses. You could be completely blind and still not be as dysfunctional as my case of ADHD. I wasn't in control of my own body or my own brain. I felt so isolated and dysphoric that I developed a fucking dissociative disorder because I was unable to identify with my own body. It's baaad, it's baaaaad, it's really really bad. Even people who know what ADHD is just don't believe my case of it because it's so bad.

But some dextroamphetamine just... fixed it. Literally. It's just gone. No more dysphoria. No more struggling to get out of bed. No more struggling to take showers, or wash my stuff, or do chores, or eat food, or do any hobby I want. No more depression, no more intrusive thoughts, no more excessive sleep, no more inability to fulfill promises or jobs or obligations or expectations or desires... the difference is so great that I could cry. I could cry because of how good my life is now. I could cry because of how long it took me to realize that I had ADHD and it could be treated. I could cry because of everything I lost in order to get to this point. Or I could cry because the only reason I found out is because of a single kind Redditor who just so happened to change my entire life... could cry because of how nobody else ever noticed...

To be fair, nowhere did they say pills shouldn't exist... just that not everyone in the entire world should be taking a big pile of them. Reminds me of that episode of Rick and Morty where nobody eats food anymore, they just have something like 30 pills shoveled into their mouth.

But... something about saying that feels wrong to me. Sure, I feel like doctors should not be offering pills to people who do not need them, especially stupid overprescribed shit like antidepressants, especially SSRIs. But some people need pills... some people really, really need pills...