If you are 6 foot tall and a building has 5 foot ceilings and you keep hitting you head and some doctor says you have a height disorder and prescribes a foam helmet and pain killers, this is what it's like to be ADHD.
You are being diagnosed as not fitting into a malformed environment, that's all it is. Oh, you aren't super into being stuffed into a deck for 8 hours a day for 12 years? Here are some amphetamines, this will help you conform to your role as an input in an industrial process.
As someone with ADHD, this is horrible advice. Being unmedicated certainly derailed my academic career, and very nearly destroyed my marriage. It is a seriously debilitating condition, and stimulants work very well to treat it.
An “academic career” is an unnatural environment. You weren’t build for it, you were built for fasting days at a time, covering 25-50 miles a day in often harsh wilderness environments.
Your oldest ancestors had the physique of professional athletes and the default was not eating and spending time in packs coordinating for survival. All of them. That is the environment we are adapted to.
So again, ADHD is to a very large degree a by product of modernity.
This is true of a wide swath of our so called mental health issues.
Amphetamines may help people cope with a suboptimal environment, but you can also dramatically change your environment and the way you approach your life.
Even if what you say is true (it doesn’t line up with what I have read), it doesn’t change the fact that anti-stimulant advice is bad for the patient. I WANT to be a better husband, and a better father. Of course I could just lower my standards and accept a divorce, because my brain isn’t wired up for being a responsible adult in our society. Or I can take my prescribed stimulant medication and be a better person with literally no downsides.
It’s your choice if you’d like to publicly discuss your marriage issues, and no obligation to respond, but I’d be curious what about so called ADHD was going to result in a divorce.
I imagine there was some behaviors, communication issues, emotional disconnection, etc. that lead to your wife not feeling supported or understood?
In other words, how does it make you a “better person.”
Also, I’ve yet to encounter any medications that aren’t without risks or long term issues.
And again, no obligation to reply. But I would be curious about:
How much time do you spend in actual nature / wilderness each week?
How often do you fast and for how long?
Are you part of a men’s group?
Do you meditate daily?
Do you do HIIT daily?
Do you have training in somatic and emotional awareness and conflict communication with your wife?
Do you avoid overly processed foods, sugar and eat all or mostly plant based foods?
I’m not going to go into fine details because it is obvious personal and this is a public forum. But basically the issues came down to being inattentive, lack of follow through, communication failures, dropping responsibilities, etc. that are all downstream of my primarily inattentive ADHD diagnosis.
Basically failures in everyday life and the relationship due to my own actions (or more typically, lack of action aka bad priorities) where if you had pointed it out to me at the time I totally would have told you I should be Doing The Thing and I absolutely want to Do The Thing but… hey look at that other shiny thing!
She got tired of the disappointment and broken promises, and I sought help. After being told by someone I confided in that I might have ADHD, I spoke to a psychiatrist and was prescribed stimulants. Now I have a magic pill I take every morning that makes me 100% able to choose to Do The Thing when I want to Do The Thing. It gave me that choice, which I never had.
It makes me a better person because it allows me, for the first time ever in my 40 years on this planet, to make that conscious choice about what kind of person I show myself as in my actions. Previously, I was just along for the ride. Now I’m in the pilot’s seat.
I have tried most of the other things you mention. There are great health benefits to eating right, for example, and even mental/mood improvements as well. But no effect whatsoever on this issue. ADHD intention is a brain chemistry problem and requires a chemical solution, plain and simple.
You are being diagnosed as not fitting into a malformed environment, that's all it is. Oh, you aren't super into being stuffed into a deck for 8 hours a day for 12 years? Here are some amphetamines, this will help you conform to your role as an input in an industrial process.
Get into nature, run wild, follow your bliss!