How L.A. Got Hooked on Adderall
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I’ve been curious about it since I’ve never tried it but many people I know have. I’d be curious how much better I would be able to focus/think with it.
It’s not just the addiction that is problematic. It’s the long-term consequences of the chronic side effects. We all know you need to sleep and to eat. This medication makes it harder to do both of those activities if not managed properly and thoroughly. Combine a failure to do that with long-term usage (abuse) and you've got a recipe for permanent damage on your hands that can cyclically reinforce that dependence.
Here’s an anecdote. I did a group project with a guy in college who I got to talking with about it. He had one of these nightmare stories. He said he had to stop taking it because he was absolutely strung out. I asked him about his dosage and he told me he had been taking 80mg XR/day. I was unaware they even made dosages that high. He said that he didn’t realize it at the time but he just kept chasing the initial feeling (seems he didn’t understand the concept of tolerance), and his doctor responded by repeatedly titrating up his dosage. He was at that max dosage for about a year and a half. He said when he stopped he went through a months long phase of extreme depression and physical discomfort like he has never experienced in his life before. He shared some pretty brutal stuff with me. He said that it had been a year and he still didn’t feel like his old self. He said it was like his attention span was even shorter than before the medication and at this point he wasn’t sure if it would ever be the same.
The pitfalls are real but personally, being 3-4 months in, it’s been such a game changer in my temperament and quality of life.
I suspect many people are in this category and people just have a bad classification for 'normal'.
The explanation of how stimulants affect the brain, by increasing the amount of norepinephrine and dopamine and inhibiting re-uptake, is something I feel I understand now.
When I read the experiences of those with and without ADHD taking stimulants they’re pretty consistent. Those without take some, are in a ”high” get a load of stuff done, then crash hard. If they take it for too long, their normal starts to sound closer to the normal I experienced before taking medication.
I kind of agree with you in the sense of having a bad classification of normal, I did. The cause and treatment are some of the most well studied areas of psychology, and stimulant treatment is one of the most effective in all of psychology.
ADHD, aside from being incredibly poorly named, is looking more and more like something we will come to know as a collection of related but different conditions, that happen to all respond well to stimulant medication.
I’d also add, stimulants don’t solve ADHD. They’re not a cure, they’re at best a pair of glasses, a crutch for someone with a broken leg, or a wheelchair for someone with mobility issues. They can help a lot, but they’re only one part of living with ADHD.
Not all ADHD responds well to stimulant medication, so not even that.
My skepticism is that I suspect everyone shares the benefits you describe when they take the meds. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I haven't really seen compelling evidence otherwise (people will just state it affects non-adhd people differently, but that doesn't seem to be the case imo).
I have an easier time not taking my amphetamine pill than I ever did skipping my morning coffee.
I've found supplementing w/lions mane largely mitigates caffeine withdrawal symptoms. It also takes the edge off when taking high caffeine doses. It's kind of like a caffeine antidote. I used to abstain from it for decades because of these negatives. Now it's a quite useful, legal, and cheap stimulant I'll go on /heavily/ and off at will.
But damn the first time in college I took a 20mg and it was like a whole new world opened up for me: I felt super-human and the amount of work I was able to churn out was incredible. But like all things, it eventually catches up to you and you turn into a cracked out zombie whos muscles hurt and can't sleep.
I take it so I have the mental strength to pick the trash up off the floor.
And from what I can see in the research, therapeutic doses of amphetamines do not damage the body by any meaningful level, while untreated ADHD may shorten life expectancy by 10 to 20 years.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/psychologist-barkley-says-life-exp...
I got an ADHD diagnosis as an adult, albeit before the pandemic. The diagnosis itself has been a huge revelation about many aspects of my life, my mind, several things I would never have understood as connected… and it saved my life.
I’m not “hooked” on adderall—at least not in the sense of a drug seeking addict. Nor am I “crazy”. I’m fucking chemically imbalanced. And no one who isn’t is going to feel calmed or feel their anxiety relieved by amphetamines.
This is false. Pretty much all people will experience a higher level of focus, calmer(less racing thoughts) on amphetamines.
First of all, I did not mean ‘no one who isn’t(crazy)’, I meant no one who is not chemically imbalanced such that they will benefit from an amphetamine prescription.
Second of all, none of my comment had anything to do with the benefits for focus or racing thoughts. When I mentioned feeling calmed and anxiety relief, those were speaking to the same benefit for ADHD patients. Amphetamines are stimulants. Heightened energy and anxiety are generally their most common side effects, just as with caffeine. People with ADHD typically (but not always) experience the opposite effect, at least up to their optimal dosage.
More to the point, and I hope this will help clarify the overall scope of my comment: ADHD—despite the name, reputation, and many diagnostic criteria—is far more than either a deficit of attention or hyperactivity. When I say my diagnosis and treatment saved my life, I mean from the effects of traumatically crippling anxiety.
I had never even wondered if I had the stereotypical ADHD symptoms. I had to work with my psychiatrists to translate the diagnostic criteria into relevant experiences with intense sensory overload, hyperfocus/hyperfixation, anxiety and depression, social problems. If it weren’t for me making the connection to sensory overload, I never would have even had the conversation with a doctor in the first place. I’d be trying—and likely failing—to find the right combination of SSRI and benzo.
This is a very common story for a lot of people diagnosed with ADHD as adults, mine just happened to be fairly extreme because I was drinking myself to death to self medicate the anxiety. Which… self medicating is another common outcome for undiagnosed adults.
Anyway. All of that is to say, you’re not wrong that amphetamines tend to have a similar effect on focus for most people, at least to a point. But lacking “focus” in that productivity sense is really more of a clue than a primary symptom of ADHD.
This misunderstanding is mostly rooted in the diagnostic criteria being oriented around adult descriptions of children’s behavior. Not the actual patient’s experience in their own words.
If you ask people diagnosed as adults, or even children who haven’t internally stigmatized their own experiences, what ADHD is like… it often more closely lines up with a lot of experiences expressed by a lot of people with autism. And it’s not that trouble focusing is a complete red herring, it’s that why we have trouble focusing isn’t a part of the discussion.
So yeah. People abuse Adderall to focus. Common trope, no argument here. Those people abusing it, unless they’re unaware they’re undiagnosed, generally feel like they’ve taken an upper. Because they have! People with ADHD often feel the opposite even at an optimal dose, and generally should expect to be able to sleep while it’s still active and noticeably effective. Many of us even get sleepy especially on lower doses. I spent months while I was stepping up in dosage where I would need a nap about an hour after taking my morning meds. That is not how people react without the chemical imbalance Adderall treats.
There is no clean, black and white line demarcating ADHD from normal. A huge percentage of the population, if not a majority, experiences increased focus and motivation when taking stimulants.
We’re all just trying to make the best of what we’ve got. If the benefits outweigh the risks, there’s not much sense in trying formalize a “fair/not fair” level of focus and motivation.
> [...] the Drug Enforcement Administration decides how much can be sold for the entire country. And the DEA has dropped its allowed quotas. In 2016, it allowed 50,000 kilograms to be sold; but for 2022, it has lowered the amount to 41,200 kilograms. [...] All of which is leading some people to buy illegal Adderall, which goes by the street name of “Adderall.” [...] Some wind up with fentanyl-laced Adderall.
This is unconscionable. These shortages inflict tremendous anxiety upon those who rely on amphetamines to treat their ADHD. As anyone who is prescribed amphetamines can confirm: effective treatment is very sensitive to dosage, and unplanned pauses in treatment Really Suck.
A few months ago, my local CVS told me to either transfer my prescription, or come back the following month — they had reached their procurement quota. Last month, it took me two weeks to get to the front of their wait-list and get my prescription filled.
What choices does this leave patients who are unable to easily get to other pharmacies? At best, they're compelled to override the judgement of their care providers and either ration or entirely skip doses. At worst (or so this article claims) it pushes patients onto the black market.
A quick google search suggests that amphetamine shortages stretch back years. I feel immensely lucky to have lived in unaffected locales up until recently, and I feel immense anxiety to discover that my present locale is plagued by shortages with no end in sight.
So it was high before, but now even became higher? Something tells me when 1 country accounts for more than 80%, there is already something going very, very wrong. This has nothing to do with ADHD, this is a culture problem.
Incidentally, coffee and cigarettes is how I managed before getting a prescription.
I can spot someone on adderal from miles, it's not much different from people on speed.
That sounds like quite the superpower. How exactly can you tell?
By improving the executive function of an ADHD person, it helps them be less impulsive and can definitely help sort out any comorbid anxiety they experience.
What I'm saying is if this is your experience on Adderall and you don't have an ADHD diagnosis, you may be self medicating without realizing it.
America runs on stimulants.
Big fan of easing access to pharma without standard gatekeeping.
Like we don’t make some guy prove that their ED is debilitating and get psychologists notes and make them get blood tests constantly to make sure they’re taking it to get viagra, the only standard is “can you take it without messing up your health.”
If you made this stuff accessible to anyone who wants it there would suddenly be no reason to worry that ADHD patients are selling it on the side.
Stimulants, especially crack cocaine, caused loads of crime in the 80s. I mean, it even does today - addicts crush and snort Adderall all the time for the high.
It's the 5% of the population with addictive personalities that ruins it for everyone else.
This is just more false reasoning pulled directly from the war on drugs
The difference with drugs today is that a lot of them can easily kill you or create a physical dependency after the first use. Alcohol won't do that unless you're just chugging Everclear and trying to hurt yourself.
It makes no sense to have a ban on marijuana or magic mushrooms, but crap like Fentanyl and NBOMe should be illegal. They have zero potential to help and are almost certain to harm.
Fentanyl, a commonly prescribed pain-killer, has zero potential to help?
Just because misuse often overdoses the powerful drug, doesn't make it useless.
The issue is not just overdoses. It's long term physical and psychological dependencies that drive people there to begin with. A lot of addicts become addicted through prescriptions, and then they doctor shop. And in some cases it has even come out that doctors received kickbacks from the pharma companies.
I'm 100% in favor of banning synthetic heroin pills. They shouldn't exist.
We could conclude that a lot of people are self-medicating without realizing it.
[1](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/27/adhd-prisons-ment...) [2](https://adultaddstrengths.com/2011/01/12/adhd-and-crime-igno...)
I’ve been taking it for the better part of 20 years - dabbling in various dosages of XR and Ritalin in an attempt to nail down an optimal therapeutic dose - and my conclusion has been that (for me) nothing works nearly as well as frequent microdosing of IR.
As an aside: One aspect of Adderall that doesn’t get nearly enough attention outside forums/subreddits is that the generics seem to have wildly different effects/potency depending on the manufacturer. I highly recommend others with ADHD that are prescribed to Adderall IR try to experiment switching around generics if possible.
-Recreational use of prescription meds makes it vastly more difficult for people who actually need them. Especially when their condition causes an inability to schedule and coordinate.
-Psychiatrically, recent studies are showing that neurotypical brains don't actually benefit much from stimulant medications (but the illusion of productivity can be a good placebo)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03768...
I put it off for ages but when I finally got around to it there was no shortage or whatever.
This drug is easy to make; there’s lots of quantities; and we could make it less scarce really easily.
There is no inherent law making it hard like there is one making colonizing another planet hard. It’s literally just regulation.
Right, this drug is perfect for high output coding obviously.
I've never tried it, have adhd, and always wondered about Pandora's box.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
Probably because benzos are schedule IV, where as adderall is schedule II -- it's much more tightly controlled.
> “Kids were staying home without a routine. It was easier to call a pediatrician and say, ‘Joey can’t focus on the computer with remote learning. Can you help?’ ”
And the pediatrician would refer to a clinical psychologist to do a thorough evaluation, including looking at things like report cards, statements from parents about behavior, and quasi-empirical tests to gauge attention span.
> Adderall is prescribed for ADHD, which was once diagnosed only in the prepubescent. Now adults are discovering they have ADHD. Or occasional ADHD. Or work-at-home ADHD.
...No, people are getting diagnosed with adhd. as far as I'm aware, diagnosis as an adult still requires that there was a manifestation before age 12, but adults need fewer criteria to meet a diagnosis.
They're not discovering that they have adhd, they're being diagnosed with adhd by qualified professionals.
This is drivel.
> “If you were normally going to an office in a structured environment and now you’re working from home and have to focus, you’ve got a reason to be taking it,” says Lotano-Saba
Lotano-Saba, a "vice president of pharmacy solutions at the global management consulting firm AArete", which is not a position granted with the trust to determine who meets diagnostic critera.
> And if you’re also dealing with bored kids interrupting your Slack chats and Zoom meetings, you’ve got even more reason to seek a potion to help you focus.
Yes, medicate the children so that you can focus. Don't think about their well being at all. (/s)
> The only reason Ginsberg doesn’t have pills in her medicine cabinet anymore is that it got too expensive. Adderall, especially in this new shortage, is the Domaine du Romanée-Conti of prescription medication. Not only do you have to shell out for whatever your insurance doesn’t cover, but you also have to pay for a session with a psychiatrist every three months to get a new prescription
Yes, healthcare in America is too expensive, and the cost of adderall is prohibitive to some people that might clinically benefit from it. It's quite unfortunate. And no, you don't need to see a psychiatrist every three months. Some GPs will prescribe after having a diagnosis by a clinical phsycologist.
A psychiatrist specializing in adhd will better be able to help determine the best dosage, which specific medications might be beneficial based on observed side effects -- people react to focalin, ritalin, adderall, vyvanse, and others quite differently. The drugs also all vary in cost and how they'll be covered by insurance.
> So Adderall has become a privilege of the L.A. elite.
Yes, people abuse adderall, and it's made it more difficult for people that need it to live a healthy life.
> Also, maybe, like inflation or something.
This is surely a well researched article...
> When I told a psychiatrist that I was late with this article and was thinking about trying Adderall to help me finish, he said incredulously, “You’ve never done Adderall?!” When I asked if I should lose my Adderall virginity, the respected psychiatrist paused and said, “Off the record? Definitely.”
So the author saw an unprofessional psychiatrist?
--- end of reading ---
Look...It's just a drug. How many people are on antidepressants? You can't just stop taking those at the drop of a hat without a major depressive episode. Yes, taking too much adderall is bad. Taking too many antidepressants is also bad. Drinking too much alcohol is bad.
Stigmatizing the drug, and the people that are impacted by a neuro-developmental disorder isn't doing any good for anyone.
Aaand my executive functioning capacity has been used up, fuck this noise.
That is not what ADHD is... ADHD is not lack of focus, it's lack of control over focus. It's issues with regulating emotion. Issues with impulsiveness. etc.
I personally don't feel a need to take dangerous performance enhancing drugs, but I respect the rights of adults to make their choices. Legalize everything for those 21 or older.
Literally the worst strategy. There is one successful drug deregulation strategy in America: publish nonsense studies pointing at good healthcare outcomes then use that to wedge the drug into legality.
“Just admitting it” would lead to a ban on it. Literally would be the dumbest thing to do.
>New research finds ADHD medications like Adderall don’t improve cognition in healthy college students and may even impair the memory of those who abuse the drugs.
...
>But how do these drugs respond differently to the brains of people with and without ADHD? Weyandt said that she believes the human brain might need to be at a deficit of some kind for drugs like these to work. If not, they could have a detrimental effect.
>She said that neuroimaging research with people who have ADHD has found reduced activity — think blood flow — in parts of the brain associated with the condition’s symptoms when off medication.
>Once given the proper medication, the activity increases in these regions of the brain, and ADHD symptoms go down. So a person with ADHD has an improved ability to pay attention, and shows improved memory, planning, and response inhibition, she said.
>“Since we found the drug did not improve neurocognition and may negatively influence working memory, this may suggest a deficit is needed to benefit from the medication,” she added. “Furthermore, we have found in other studies that students who report significant ADHD symptoms are more likely to misuse stimulants.”
The test for ADHD, at least in Uk, is figuring out how much your life has been impacted by your executive function disorder. Whether your anxiety and depression are a result of being chronically unable to direct your mind to your goals. If that's the case, you might have ADHD.
It's not a productivity test. It's a disability test.
As long as you're at least 21, you should have a right to put whatever you want in your body. The current system locks these performance enhancing drugs behind extremely expensive medical appointments.
Slap a warning label on it, like we slap a warning label on cigarettes and alcohol, and let adults do what they want.
Of course you can still have a doctor suggest you take these dangerous stimulants, like you can have a doctor suggest you get more exercise, or suggest that you cut back down on your alcohol consumption.
I routinely take weeks long breaks from Adderall and while I am a bit more tired and definitely less productive, it’s not like you get physically ill.
There really isn’t much in the way of withdrawal and anecdotally, what symptoms there may be don’t last longer than two weeks.
Our family life was and is as normal and balanced as it gets. He turned out to be a decorated scientist. He is in his 80s now and has no known health issues related to meth.
Just an anecdote, but there it is. I suspect much of the harm caused by meth is not by the meth itself but the impurities and contaminants that result from synthesizing them at under-equipped (both in terms of know-how and physical equipment) home labs.