Thank you for writing this. As someone who has recently been weighing the pros/cons of seeking treatment for ADHD, this has been one of the best points I've read on the potential downsides to it. Currently, in my career (software dev) I've been feeling increasingly burnt out and like it's impossible to focus on anything. I have to sit back and ask myself, is the problem that I can't focus, or is the problem that I'm doing something that I feel is meaningless?
If I got treatment for ADHD, maybe then I would be able to finally churn through all of my tasks and be a top performer in terms of closing stories. If I didn't pursue treatment, then maybe I continue to be unable to focus and completely burn out, resulting in the loss of my job. Maybe after that I pivot my career to where I'm doing something that I find to be more fulfilling. What's the better outcome?
If anything ADHD medications (ritalin) make me _more_ prone to burning out, not less. Just FYI.
It does help with "boring" tasks a little bit, in a sense, but they're still boring an uninteresting. It's not like I get a dopamine hit every time I do a piece of paperwork.
I usually describe it like this: for me ADHD sometimes makes things that are necessary for human life _really_ hard. Things like taking a shower in the morning or having breakfast, getting up to get water while working etc.
All these things take a toll on my day, I still do them but I feel like I'm doing something that I _absolutely_ don't want to do and at the end of the day I don't have any patient left for stuff that actually require my effort (e.g. listening to my wife when she's frustrated with me).
With medication I feel better about doing these necessary things so I can get to the end of the day without hating myself. That doesn't mean I'm gonna eat all the bullshit that gets thrown to me at work!
It's also not all roses, Ritalin is hard to manage, at least for me. I need to make a conscious effort to not devote too much of my attention to uninteresting details, etc. But it's not like it takes away your free will!
If I got treatment for ADHD, maybe then I would be able to finally churn through all of my tasks and be a top performer in terms of closing stories. If I didn't pursue treatment, then maybe I continue to be unable to focus and completely burn out, resulting in the loss of my job. Maybe after that I pivot my career to where I'm doing something that I find to be more fulfilling. What's the better outcome?