Originally Posted by
Rater202
That's going a bit to far. ADHD is a real thing, and if you have it and have it bad then these medications in the proper dosage will help.
The problem is that there is a bad habit of teachers wanting to dismiss any child that won't sit still or has trouble paying attention as merely having something "wrong with them" and wanting them medicated to make their jobs easier when honestly they're probably just being a kid. which is a problem, because Ritalin is almost identical in makeup and effect to cocaine, most other ADHD medications are literally amphetamines, and one called Desoxyn is literally just straight-up meth. Now there's a world of difference between taking this stuff as directed in pill format and shooting or smoking the hard stuff you bought from a shady dude behind the hardware store but it's still not the kind of stuff you want to be taking if you don't need it, ya know?
...Granted, there's an argument to be made that ADHD isn't so much a disorder so much as a natural variation. I saw a thing recently that extrapolated that 1 in 4 kids has at least some ADHD symptoms while the percentage is much lower for teens and adults resulting in debate on whether or not it is a result of overdiagnosis or people with more mild symptoms figuring out how to compensate on their own as they get older.
(it's almost certainly both.)
Though if we're being completely honest I'm not sure oppositional defiance disorder is a real thing. The symptoms are all motly some variation of not automatically deferring to authority(which there are a million and one valid reasons not and is also um, the default for a toddler) and I've seen it said that a significant number of people diagnosed with it are diagnosed with it because you can't legally diagnose someone with antisocial personality disorder until they're 18.