After reading a recent opinion column arguing that if you do not have ADHD you have no right to use ADHD medicine, I pondered the implications of this assertion. Ultimately I recognize where the author comes from, but disagree with the conclusion.

If you don’t have ADHD, you have no business using ADHD medication

I, like the author, suffer from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, better know as ADHD. I would go as far as to classify myself as an extreme case — I struggle to sit still for more than a few minutes, and friends love to tease me about how I can’t help but pace when I get intellectually excited.

For me, the difficulties of school never came from the coursework. Instead, I struggle with tasks many students found simple such as simply sitting without making distracting movements, keeping quiet in class and avoiding getting myself dismissed from class for disruptive behavior.

Luckily, school itself always came easy to me. Even as I constantly failed to meet the behavioral and focus standards set by my classmates, I excelled when asked to demonstrate my comprehension of the material.

This makes me one of the lucky kids with ADHD. My condition doesn’t impede my conglomeration of knowledge. Unfortunately, many kids who suffer ADHD can’t say the same. For those kids, their struggles as a student have placed them at a disadvantage compared to their peers, including myself.

The fortunate ones will have their condition identified in time and receive help to mitigate the negative impacts of ADHD. They will receive a prescription for an ADHD medication and will hopefully return to a level standing with their peers.

An argument for only allowing ADHD patients to use Adderall or other medication centers on the idea that the medication places them on level ground with their peers. I find that this argument willfully ignores the fact that along with the negative impacts I’ve already discussed, ADHD also provides substantial benefits.

While I respect that I may be alone in this, I personally reject the conceptualization of ADHD as a solely negative condition. I once had a doctor I met with about ADHD tell me, “ADHD isn’t the inability to focus, it’s the inability to make oneself focus on things one finds uninteresting — however, when kids with ADHD find something stimulating, they have the ability to enter into a state of hyper-focus.”

This positive side of ADHD often finds itself ignored when the condition comes up in discussion.

From my perspective, now that I have escaped the constraints of primary education, I believe that having ADHD gives me an advantage in life. I’m not ignorant, however, of the fact that my ADHD medication allows me to function properly in society and reach the apex of my abilities.

This brings me back to the use of ADHD medication by students without ADHD. If the use of the medication allows others to function at their highest level, then I would deem myself a hypocrite for rejecting their use of the medication.

I would even take this one step further. There is evidence that ADHD medication can provide a helpful boost for individuals trying to lose weight, and I think full clinical trials should examine this use of ADHD medication. If these trials demonstrated that there is indeed a path to weight loss via Adderall, without unintended consequence, I would fully support the use of ADHD medication as a prescribed weight loss drug.

But for all these ancillary uses of ADHD medication, I believe further medical examination needs to precede the additional use. I have no issue with the expansion of the prescribed uses of ADHD medicine, but I do think people should refrain from these additional uses without consulting a doctor.

My ADHD medication allows me to function within society and reach my highest level. If research showed that the medication allowed others to function at a higher level, I would fully support expanding its use. I’m not worried about ADHD medicine giving “normal” people an advantage over me. Everyone should have the opportunity to be the best, most productive version of themselves they can be.