Research on _13_ people, that's a very important caveat when evaluating something like adderal.
It seems like that with such small groups and effects you could run the same “study” again and again until you get the result that you initially desired.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3489818/table/tbl1/
If legitimate research had found it to be drastically better, that study would definitely have been published in a big way.
Unscientifically, I personally know quite a number of folks that sincerely believed that they couldn’t function without it, but have since learned that they do far better on their own. I haven’t met a single one that actually had their productivity decline (after an adjustment period, of course), after giving up Adderall. In fact, I know several, that have had their careers really take off, after giving it up.
"Antibiotics don't improve your life, but can damage your health" would likely be the outcome on 13 randomly selected healthy individuals. But do the same study on 13 people with a bacterial infection susceptible to antibiotics and your results will be vastly different.
They'll need to learn, the same way I see lots of people learn.
It's been around long enough, though, that all the Adderall-eating people should have established a Gattaca-like "elite," with all us "undermen," scrabbling around at their feet.
Not sure why that never happened...
It's not that they make you superhuman - I don't think I'm any "smarter" on them. It's just that without them, my "productive" bursts would be at really random times (11PM or 2AM), and make it very hard to fit into a "normal" schedule with the rest of society (I would frequently fall asleep in classes or meetings).
So it's more that it allows you to "rearrange" the same (or slightly larger) amount of work but into a more reasonable, traditional schedule. And for certain things, helps more than that. But it's not a miracle drug by any means.