Short answer?

It depends.

The long answer isn’t any more enlightening.

I can only speak for myself, for starters, but for me it was 100% worth it, however I’m in a position where I can afford the medication and the constant doctors appointments required to maintain said medication (because if you are on a stimulant medication, they make you jump through a lot of hoops to make sure you’re not just turning your adderall into an illegal side hustle), and I am also in a place where I can consitently remember to take said medication.

If you’re not in that place, would it still be worth it? I couldn’t say, but it might be a financial strain.

I was 42 when I was diagnosed, and I can say it has changed my life in only the best ways. I was lucky regarding my meds, as I didn’t have any side effects other than the end of day crash (which lessened in severity over time). It doesn’t affect my appetite or make me excessively sleepy (most days). It makes it so much easier for me to do my job, interact with people, parent my children, and run my household, and for that my only regret is that I didn’t get on medication twenty or more years ago. I can’t do anything about that, though, I can only look forward.

I wasn’t ever in the dark about probably having ADHD, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when I was diagnosed. What prevented me from pursuing a diagnosis? Lots of things. The stigma of mental illness. The fear I would be gaslit by doctors, as women so frequently are. But the main concern I voiced to people for years was that I didn’t want to go on medication because I knew I would be on it for life. Now that reason sounds super silly, and I wish I would have gotten over myself and at least tried. How different would my life have been had I had adderall in college, or later when I was first learning to adult, or to parent? No, we aren’t going to do that. We’re going to look forward.

All I can do is control what I do right now and what I plan to do in the future, not dwell on what I should have done. But one of the things I am going to do right now is tell you, reader, that I regret waiting. Do it. If you hate it you can, in fact, stop taking the meds, but what if it actually helps? What if what you actually fear is that it won’t help?

What do you think? If you were diagnosed late do you regret it?