Are you under the impression that everyone was required to be functioning at 100% at all times in order to survive or be a meaningfully-contributing member of a society? Because that is so very very far from the truth. The actual labor involved in hunter gather societies amounts to a few hours a day for each individual on average, but that doesn’t mean every individual had something that needed to be done every day in order to be a valued member of their society. Most tasks didn’t happen every day, and those that did didn’t require all hands to do.

Even after the agricultural revolution, many months of the year were much slower, allowing recuperation to prepare for the labor intensive period, a schedule I’ve liked in the modern era similarly; 3-6 mth contracts followed by 6-9 mths of vibing and living off what I saved up during the working phase, supplemented by a variety of projects I find compelling to keep my spending very low or sometimes earn a bit of side money. I find it works very well to keep my adhd symptoms from being crippling during the active work phase, and I’ve been unmedicated. Then I take a month or so to ooze into the ground to recover from the burnout, and I become productive in my personal life again. It’s a decent compromise if money has to be involved, but it’s sometimes a financial struggle because we don’t value paying people properly right now, an entirely late-stage capitalism problem.

Beyond that, knowing a lot of things about a variety of specialties and being curious enough to learn, something ADHD people tend to excel at, makes for a variable worker who can be slotted in to fill different needs for others who were unable, or simply when the labor demanded more bodies. Jack of all trades were also incredibly valuable back before modern transportation, especially for smaller communities. Couldn’t really get an actual expert without months of travel if one didn’t just happen to be around. So they got to feel valuable, like they were actively contributing to the social fabric, because they were, and got to do things that were actively interesting them, and just stop doing those things if they stopped being interesting. Having that sort of self image as well as flexibility would be intensely motivating, at least for me, and help overcome a lot of the inertia and sensitivity.

I genuinely do think a lot of the dysfunction we face from adhd has to do with how we structure our modern societies to optimize for efficiency and shareholder value over the wellbeing of the people. I mean when even non-adhd people are facing extreme burnout and excessive levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, what chance do we really have without meds?