I think the compelling question is why people feel so compelled to take a pill to sell their souls to a rat race? Seems like an almost Huxleyan Prisoner's Dilemma to me.
Things like not being able to watch a movie, or even play some video games without missing huge parts of the story, or sitting through a conversation with a group of friends trying to constantly "catch up" to a topic that I missed a few minutes ago, or trying to be self aware enough to not change the subject on people too quickly because my mind has already changed topics twice during their conversation.
I love reading, and it's almost 100% out of the question when I'm not taking my medication. Somewhere around the 5th time of re-reading a paragraph trying to remember where I trailed off only to realize that I just did it again makes it really not a great experience.
Even the worst case scenario of the medication severely increasing my chance of heart attack, stroke, or Parkinson's wouldn't make me stop taking it, because it's given me a life. And I would rather live a shorter happier more fulfilling life than a potentially longer one.
I still remember the first day I took the medication, it was like somebody finally turned off a white noise machine in my brain and I could finally do all the things I've wanted to do.
I texted my wife after my first dose that I heard someone having a conversation near me and that I could hear them, but I didn't know what they were saying and I didn't care.
This was a revelation for me.
I recently chatted with a shrink who said that ADD patients typically _can_ focus on the things they want to do but struggle with the things they don't want to do. I strongly suspect he's mistaken - I don't know a soul who finds it easy to focus on filing their taxes (except sadistic accountant-type friends).
Nothing is more frustrating than having all the "motivation" and desire and curiosity for a task but none of the "ability" to make it happen.
I think people just want to be their best selves. They want to accomplish their goals and they use tools to accomplish those goals. I mean everyone carries a cell phone and I feel like those modify your life and thinking patterns a lot more than taking adderall does.
Cell phones: Possibility to carry a calendar - with alarm.
Stimulants: Lowers the threshold for "interesting" so you don't fall asleep/have to do "something"/etc. (Yep, multiple alternatives exist here.)
This seems pejorative. The reason why many take "a pill" isn't to sell their soul, it's to do the work they want to do but are otherwise incapable of doing. You may consider this work that they want to do to be "rat race" work, but that's just your judgment of their desires.
There seems to be an implicit assumption in your question that refers to adults. What about the growing number of people, diagnosed and treated as children or young adults before they really have an agency in the matter?
Some U.S. based statistics on diagnoses for different <18 year old groups: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/radical-increase-in-kids-prescrib... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/slaits/nsch.htm
When I’m not on medication, I have a lot of short term memory loss and sudden changes in train of thought. The impact of this was that I would sometimes “wake up” and have no recollection of how I got to where I currently was, I continuously lost everything, and had trouble with math word problems that were described over long paragraphs.
My parents actually originally went to the doctor because of the stress caused by always losing things.