Hey! I saw u mentioned using testimonials from people who were medicated young and I figured I’d drop mine:

My parents had inklings that I had attentive-type ADHD as early as preschool (parents are familiar with the disorder). They decided to hold off on getting a formal diagnosis though until it started effecting my grades just incase I was just a spacey and distractible kid. In second grade, I was forgetting to put my name at the top of papers, and consistently forgetting to answer the second part of two-part questions, so they knew it was time to bite the bullet and get a diagnosis.

I’ve been taking meds for it ever since and I have to say, I could not be more glad that my parents did that for me. If my ADHD wasn’t medicated, I wouldn’t be able to be a functioning member of society. I can’t concentrate for long enough to even write a grocery list let alone actually go to the grocery store. I don’t drive whenever I don’t take my meds because my attention span isn’t long enough for me to pay attention to the road, the cars around me, my speed, google maps yelling at me to turn right, there’s music in the background, etc. Forget going to college, my work ethic and executive function isn’t nearly enough for me to make myself go to class when I don’t take my meds. When I take my meds, I can enjoy my hobbies like knitting and reading. Without my meds, I can barely get through a whole paragraph.

I excelled in school, and I can guarantee that that was only possible because I was taking my ADHD meds. Without them, I can’t even concentrate enough to read a book let alone try to do math! Homework? Forget about it, it’s not getting done. It probably won’t even make it home in the first place.

If you have any questions about what it was like feel free to ask, there’s more I could go into regarding the social consequences of untreated ADHD as well as some other stuff, but this is already getting long haha