Thank you for adding your experience. I’d also give it two upvotes if I could.
One thing I would like to add - the medication can be the least bad option, if or when the situation is not actually addressable in a useful way otherwise.
When someone has bad pain, unless it meaningfully is helping them to have it, it’s cruel to not give them pain medication. It just makes everything else harder.
Same for ADHD meds.
Untreated ADHD is worse than treated ADHD in every significant metric, at least for any given moment, as fighting an already lost battle against circumstances outside of your control isn’t going to be better than finding a way to somehow tolerate or cope with them.
The challenge comes when the circumstances can actually be addressed in some other way that can actually make things better - leaving, fighting back (successfully!), having an authority figure with the actual strength and resources to actually help instead of making it worse, counter manipulating/lying, finding a way to take ownership of the shit and somehow make it work, etc.
Which, knowing the actual right course of action is nearly impossible for the person being victimized, and is rarely in the list of options being considered by said authority figure when it’s a kid involved. But, kids are resourceful and while we may not be happy with how they do it, for all of human history they’ve been figuring it out - or dying trying.
Without that, the medication just leaves someone stuck in a broken situation, albeit better functioning. Which is better than being stuck and not! But less than ideal.
ADHD treatment has so much better long term outcomes when it’s medication + therapy, rather than either just on its own, and I think that is why.
The medication can give someone the strength (chemical or not, it still helps) to actually do the other work and see it through. Even when it’s really hard and scary.