Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering
As someone diagnosed with ADHD later in life, a lot of these ADHD superpowers are just the result of taking dopaminergic stimulants. Especially the hyper focus and feeling superior to people staring out the window or failing to heads-down work for several hours straight. Yes you can hyperfocus even without stimulants, but the real superpower is having access to them so you can channel that consistently.<p>I personally believe everybody should be allowed to take these stimulants if they want to, because many people would benefit from it. The propaganda around stimulants working radically differently on those with ADHD vs those without is just that (I can go on about why I think that in much more detail). Ask anybody you’re close with how taking their friend’s adderall to study worked out. Look into people like Paul Erdos.<p>Anyway, I think you can definitely argue that there is a lot more nuance to psychiatry than you see in clinical settings (probably many disorders should be broken up into multiple others, others are just symptoms rather than a problem itself, others are not even disorders but just a different way of being). But really all that matters is that psychiatrists can match symptoms to treatments that work. Matching poor&#x2F;misdirected executive function to medication that “boosts” dopamine and norepinephrine works pretty well, so why worry about the name of the condition?