I requested an ADHD diagnosis while serving in the US military. Specifically, my last year of service after submitting my request for retirement. I figured, “What are they gonna do, force me to retire?”

At first, the military was resistant. You can’t join the US military if you have an ADHD diagnosis, so their response was that I don’t have it, since I had already served successfully for 19+ years. (For the record, if you’re already serving and get a diagnosis, they’ll let you continue to serve)

But I refused to take no for an answer, so they finally agreed to get me diagnosed. But of course, they don’t have anyone at the military hospital who can diagnose me, because they don’t deal with ADHD people. So I was referred to a civilian specialist in the area. A lady who got her doctorate in ADHD studies and had been in the field for 11 years.

She told me I was the worst case of ADHD she’d ever seen.

She immediately wanted to get me on a regimen of pills. She claimed that ADHD wasn’t an exact science and everyone responded completely differently to medication, so it would likely take months of trial and error to find the exact type and dosage of meds to help me.

The military immediately shut it down. They said I was only authorized for the diagnosis and they weren’t going to cover any medication at this point. The specialist did give me some meds as part of her initial consultation and recommended I try them to help identify a baseline for meds in the future.

Since then, I’ve retired and tried a few different medications. Thanks to a 100% disability rating with the VA, I’m covered for literally all medical and dental for life, so I asked them about being prescribed ADHD medications and they were more than willing to help.

After testing several different types though, I’ve realized that I’m just not myself on any meds. Despite having a bad case of ADHD, I’ve inadvertently built my life around it and have learned how to use it to my benefit.

Knowing I have ADHD makes it easier to identify when I’m getting lost in the details and helps me to pull myself back to reality. But in the long run, my specific type of ADHD means I can hyperfocus on mind-numbing projects for hours and never be bored. So I’m actually extremely productive.

Medications just made my brain all fuzzy and killed my hyperfocus. I could silence all the noise in my brain, but it wouldn’t necessarily focus me. It would just give me the space to pick a direction to focus, but then I’d start missing details and making mistakes because I didn’t have the nagging voices telling me I need to double- and triple-check my work.

In the end, I much prefer to be unmedicated. But like I said, everyone responds differently. My wife also has ADHD, but she’s unable to do anything unless she takes her meds. She’s way too distracted and basically shuts down without her meds.

So if you’re happy with who you are, you can just refuse to get medicated. A diagnosis doesn’t mean you need to take meds. The diagnosis just helps you to understand more about how you operate, and you can do whatever you want with that information.