I'm not sure what they mean about the abuse, but it kind of makes sense to me that if your brain is used to stims Straterra won't work. I never abused stims for recreation, but I took stims at various points for ADHD (Ritalin as a kid briefly - made me quiet and less impulsive but made me zombie girl so we stopped - but then Adderall as a teen after it came out, and Adderall was my savior in HS, but I needed a relatively high dose for my size/weight to feel the benefits for whatever reason - docs upped it 3x till we got the sweet spot).

Straterra doesn't do shit for me except make my mouth dry and hurt my stomach. I tried for awhile as an adult (since I wanted to be off stims but still needed meds). No dice. Everyone is different, but stims are all that works for me. Still worth a try! I tried for 6 months and I'm glad I did. (I'm non-medicated now and deal with exercise, diet, lifestyle, etc. My job and life doesn't require me have a medicated brain, luckily.) Different things work for different people.

That said, I would definitely recommend limiting other drugs (weed, even alcohol, hell even caffeine) while acclimating to whatever medicine because you want to get the best possible sense of what works and doesn't.

Also, meds are great but get some ADHD coaching/therapy or you won't really be benefiting the way you need to. I had this in middle and high school, and I swear it has helped me SO MUCH MORE than medication (and there were points I vitally needed meds, like HS, college, and rough career patches in my early 20s so I'm not dissing meds) and made me appreciate and know how to work with my ADHD brain, medicated or not.