Even for people with legit ADHD, like myself, medication isn't always a home run. I think something like 10%-20% of people do not respond well to any medications. I personally am only a 'partial responder' in that I only really get an improvement in focus/concentration -- not really anything else. But hell, that is still better than life without medication.

Definitely didn’t mean to imply it’s a home run. I’m just saying it clearly and legitimately helps a ton of people.

My point is if you include more and more people who don’t need it because of over-prescription it’s going to appear as lower overall efficacy while still helping a lot of people in the pool.

Making up numbers: If only 20 out of 100 people actually have ADHD then out the gate you’ve ruled out helping 80% of the people. So if 15 of the remaining 20 see improvement in their daily lives that means 75% suddenly looks like 15%.

Diagnosing and treatment is never that clean, there will always be some people who don’t necessarily need a certain medication yet get it prescribed (or don’t when they need it! Especially women with ADHD) because doctors are fallible like anybody else, systemic issues, etc. But with a commonly prescribed medication like Adderall the problem is definitely more pronounced.

Anyway I’m curious enough to look more closely at the study, this is a very interesting topic. If Xanax is really not helping people that’s pretty serious.