|
If a person in a house with a working thermostat is comfortable in a room that is at 21 degrees, then they should, obviously, keep their thermostat at 21 degrees. They don't need to touch the dial; the default is sensible for them, and most humans. If a person in a house with a broken thermostat is comfortable in a room that is at 21 degrees, however, they might have to set their thermostat to 25 degrees to make the room 21 degrees—because when their thermostat is set to 21, the room ends up 17 degrees. That is the point of stimulants, and most other such neuro-active drugs: they move the dial on your (complex, multi-dimensional) neurochemical thermostat. If you don't have a chemical imbalance—if you're neurotypical—you shouldn't "move the dial"; you'd just be moving it out of the comfortable human reference range. If you have a chemical imbalance, then your "thermostat" is mis-calibrated, and so its default dial position is out of the comfortable human reference range. You definitely do want to "move the dial"—to move it into that range. The point of stimulants is like the point of glasses: to shift everything by precisely the right amount so that they cancel out the problem, leaving you "normal." A person who has ADHD and is on the right dose of the right drug, shouldn't be able to be differentiated from a neurotypical person. If they can be, then, by definition, they're not on the right dose of the right drug—just like someone who still can't read the letters in the optometrist's office obviously has not yet found the correct diopter rating for their eyes. |