S.,
I can relate to what you are saying in some ways. I have a 12 year old son who has adhd and was diagnosed years ago. He is currently not on any mediation because we haven't found any that has really helped him; the meds either didn't work or he had negative side effects. The doctor says that he might be a non-responder since he is not responding to any of the meds we've tried so we are getting ready to take him to a specialist to see what he can come up with. Meanwhile, what we have found to work wonderfully, at least academically, is for him to be placed in a small classroom with less than 10 children and the only way the district could accomodate him in that way was to put him in the special ed class even though he doesn't have any delays in learning; when he focuses properly, he actually does quite well in school. When this happened for him in the 3rd grade, things changed overnight. He stopped getting sent to the office, I stopped receiving calls from the school regarding his behaviors, his grades shot up (honor roll), and his self-esteem improved all without medicine. The only downside was the social aspect because he says he got teased alot for being in the special ed class and kids automatically assumed that he was doing work different from everyone else in that grade. Once that he got to middle school, we tried putting him back into the regular classroom with the rest of the kids, and there's 25 to 30 kids in the class, he started doing horribly again. He just has such a hard time focusing with that many kids in the classroom environment for subjects that require alot of focus. So, now we are going to create a hybrid schedule for him that will have him the small class for high-focus subjects for him like math, science, etc. and then have him with the larger classes for the other half of his classes. He's not too happy about it, but we all feel its best for him overall. You might try asking your school admin about such options. Best wishes.