High school teacher (grade 9) one of my best students got diagnosed with "muh ADHD" this week. Here's what he told me.
The doctor (a GP) gave him a list of ten questions. It went something like this:
-
Do you sometimes struggle to finish tasks?
-
Do you sometimes have problems paying attention in class?
-
Do you sometimes get bored?
Who the F is going to say no to any of this? Anyway, he got diagnosed with muh ADHD and now he's on pills, probably for life. The pills he gets are amphetamines by the way. Yes, really.
I'm a fucking teacher and I get bored by my class sometimes. Guess I need speed too.
This is 90%+ student by the way. Imagine diagnosing a complex mental condition (if it even exists) in five minutes, tops, and then being put on pills for life.
Absolutely disgusting.
Not very likely. Stimulants like that don't exactly stay in your system for very long and they don't have many lasting effects after they've worn off. They don't have the kind of pharmacological action like SSRI's and some other kinds of medications that can potentially tinker with a lot of different receptors throughout the brain and other nerves throughout the body. And even that's something I consider an unlikely risk, but comparatively, I think the risk is far less pronounced with most ADHD medications.
The biggest risk with stimulants would be if you took a really massive dose (or a lot of multiple doses) at once and if you caused some mini strokes or something. Mind you, this would have to be like 1/4-1/2 of a full bottle or something.
Edit: Also of course there's maybe some potential risk if you've been consistently taking heavy stimulants for 10-15+ years. But I was guessing that you probably hadn't taken them for quite that long, based on your wording.
Good to know. That had been bugging me for a long time.
No problem. I know what it's like to have those kinds of concerns. Concerns about whether or not I screwed up my brain up by doing xyz years ago and things like that, especially where medication is concerned.
Sometimes you have to break away from what you're worrying about and take a fresh perspective by focusing on what's logically probable based on the variables involved.
And another thing to keep in mind is that the human body and the brain are usually pretty adaptable and can do a pretty good job of undoing or repairing things, returning things back to their former state or by forming workarounds, so long as the damage isn't particularly severe.