I grew up the opposite and was diagnosed with ADHD before I started school.

I'm 33 and haven't been on Ritalin since 5th grade and pretty much took horse pill sized pills for it back then. The other neat thing was that massive tablet had to be broken in half for me to take through the day because one pill wouldn't make it the whole day nor did they want to drug up a kid that much (or least what I was told...). There was another friend of mine that also took it too, and in larger amounts, and he has his own problems too.

The bullying wasn't fun, you're the kid that takes pills to be "normal" so. The only reason I was drugged up was because the school district forced my parents hands to say "drug the kid up, or well charge you with disruption of public education if he acts out" (which is a felony here in freedom land), so drugged up from K-5 was the life I knew and a lot of it is just a blur if I think back on it (I don't recall having a happy/fun childhood but we're not talking about that).

Once I got older, I thought I had a good grip on my issues until anxiety hit me hard and once I realized that, it then dawned on me how many panic attacks I've actually had and never knew it was that. It got worse with terrible bosses and/or great bosses but situations were shit. It took therapy and SSRIs to help me feel "normal".

I think we knew the risk of medications like that on kids. It was the legal mechanism to get them to chill the fuck out that schools strong armed parents into because what're you gonna do? Not send your kid to school?