My experience with ADHD in school was getting diagnosed with it. Being told to take my medicine because it really works. So I spent a week not taking the medi

My experience with ADHD in school was getting diagnosed with it. Being told to take my medicine because it really works. So I spent a week not taking the medication and then saying I did. Got positive feedback and praise. Spent a week taking the medication and saying I didn't, got criticism and a disappointed condescending tone. The medication cost was high and a burden my family could not really afford, and since the teacher couldn't seem to tell the difference, I stopped taking the medication and received much criticism. Directly before my ADHD diagnosis I was transferred out of a class due to extreme neglect and abuse, and the schools just chalked up my subsequent struggles to my brain being fucked up due to bad genes. When I did present an actual chronic health issue and several symptoms around the same time, given the school had the hypothesis "this child is doing badly in school because they have a health condition" you might think they would pay attention to this new evidence, but they already had their excuse so they just accused me of malingering. I've been VERY cynical about the paediatric mental health system for a long time because there's strong conflicts of interest, I don't think the system is open to the idea of falsifying its own theories, and people aren't meaningfully measuring student outcomes after they experiment with their theories. I specifically detest how amphetamine and methylphenidate access is gate-kept until a doctor calls you "disordered", and it's treated as common ethical sense to force people to adopt an insulting label if they want access to certain medications.