ADHD medication abuse, the OTHER side of the argument

[ana futura]

Great post Drew. I would go a step further and say I don't even care if they abuse the stuff- it's their funeral. I don't really mean to sound so callous, but again I think of alcohol, and how it has the potential to be this INCREDIBLY destructive thing. Alcohol can be a life ruiner, and I have personally seen it ruin a great many lives.

Still, despite it's destructive potential, the great majority of users can be responsible with it. Used responsibly, alcohol can be a pretty wonderful thing.

[tudorose]

Originally Posted by ana futura

The point I'm trying to get across is that the US military does not give its pilots dex to prevent death caused by unpreventable fatigue. We give our pilots dex to squeeze more working hours out of them-




From- http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/02/57434

Our military does indeed have a "staffing problem". When soldiers are called back after extreme episodes of PTSD, and the national guard is deployed overseas, it is because we don't have enough man power to get the job done without them. Dexedrine useage is part of this equation.

In my view, it is very hypocritical of the government to hand out dex to a select number of its employees to get more work out of them, while deciding that it is unacceptable for a stockbroker to make the same decision for himself.

I'm not suggesting that amphetamines should be handed out to whomever. I'm only saying that the line between acceptable use and abuse is thinner than we think.

This is a really good article on the subject-

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr...ation-20120408

Regards the military issue:

Firstly: I don't want to breach the no politics rule so I'm not going to give an opinion on this. I'm not saying I agree and not saying I disagree.

Secondly: I'm an Aussie. The US are our allies and I would not dare say anything about how their military is run. I have my opinions about the Australian military but I also will not comment on them here because of the no politics rule.

If everyone here really thinks ADHD meds should be available to everyone regardless of whether they have ADHD then I guess I need to rethink how much time I spend here coz I don't want to be associated with that collective viewpoint.

[Drewbacca]

Originally Posted by ana futura

Great post Drew. I would go a step further and say I don't even care if they abuse the stuff- it's their funeral. I don't really mean to sound so callous, but again I think of alcohol, and how it has the potential to be this INCREDIBLY destructive thing. Alcohol can be a life ruiner, and I have personally seen it ruin a great many lives.

Still, despite it's destructive potential, the great majority of users can be responsible with it. Used responsibly, alcohol can be a pretty wonderful thing.

Well, I'm biased. I lost my college room mate, one of my best friends in this life, due to an overdose.

An additional problem with addicts, is that it often becomes a sort of ponzi scheme. They need to have customers in order to generate the money to support their own habits. Those on the bottom need help, not easier access.

[ana futura]

Originally Posted by Drewbacca

Well, I'm biased. I lost my college room mate, one of my best friends in this life, due to an overdose.

An additional problem with addicts, is that it often becomes a sort of ponzi scheme. They need to have customers in order to generate the money to support their own habits. Those on the bottom need help, not easier access.

I lost my ex to alcohol, but it wasn't really alcohol that killed her, it was the untreated mental illness that drove her to it. We need more realistic drug abuse education, and better resources for addicts. There is always an underlying reason for addiction. If you try to treat the addiction without first treating the underlying issue, the problem will keep coming back. It doesn't matter if something's illegal, people who want to hurt themselves with drugs will find some way to hurt themselves with drugs. The drugs aren't the problem, the lack of mental health resources is.

[ana futura]

Originally Posted by K-Funk

Thoughts? Comments?

I'm very interested in this idea-

It might actually be that in one way the test-takers, not the psychiatric profession, have the right idea about these medicines: maybe they do work best for short-term use, not as a daily pill given over a lifetime.

The research that is linked to in the article found that ADHD meds aren't effective after 24 months of use.

In my own personal experience with meds, I think it might be wiser for me to use them on a short term, as needed basis- for a few months while I'm learning new skills through therapy, and then to take them on occassion after that when it's really important for me to focus.

I don't think stimulants are a good long term solution for me. Even in very small doses, they make me feel unhealthy. However I do get exceptional short term benefit from them.

[ana futura]

Originally Posted by tudorose

If everyone here really thinks ADHD meds should be available to everyone regardless of whether they have ADHD then I guess I need to rethink how much time I spend here coz I don't want to be associated with that collective viewpoint.

The thing is, people who want drugs will get drugs. American high schools and colleges are filled with kids taking adderall illegally. What is the solution?

I'm not very worried about a kid taking 20mg of adderall to study. I'm extremely worried about that kid 2 years down the road, taking 300mg.

Rather than focus on telling people what not to do, I think it's wiser to realistically educate kids about the dangerous of drugs. Right now, drug education is "drugs=bad". Most high schoolers don't have any idea that drugs vary in potency and danger. They also think that prescription stimulants are not dangerous because they are prescription meds.

I believe that kids can handle knowing that if they choose to use drugs, there is a smart way and a stupid way to use them. They can handle knowing that marijuana will in fact not kill them, or even do anything that terrible to them. They can also handle knowing that buying black tar heroin from a street dealer is a death sentence. They need to know that there is a huge difference between taking taking 20 mgs of adderall, and 200. Most of them really have no freaking clue about drugs, and that is why they get themselves into so much trouble.

If we want people to stop abusing drugs, we have to examine why they are abusing drugs in the first place. Perhaps something is wrong with our academic model if so many kids feel the need to abuse stimulants to compete. Maybe the solution lies in developing new means of assessing academic performance.

[sarahsweets]

Originally Posted by ana futura

The thing is, people who want drugs will get drugs. American high schools and colleges are filled with kids taking adderall illegally. What is the solution?

I'm not very worried about a kid taking 20mg of adderall to study. I'm extremely worried about that kid 2 years down the road, taking 300mg.

Rather than focus on telling people what not to do, I think it's wiser to realistically educate kids about the dangerous of drugs. Right now, drug education is "drugs=bad". Most high schoolers don't have any idea that drugs vary in potency and danger. They also think that prescription stimulants are not dangerous because they are prescription meds.

I believe that kids can handle knowing that if they choose to use drugs, there is a smart way and a stupid way to use them. They can handle knowing that marijuana will in fact not kill them, or even do anything that terrible to them. They can also handle knowing that buying black tar heroin from a street dealer is a death sentence. They need to know that there is a huge difference between taking taking 20 mgs of adderall, and 200. Most of them really have no freaking clue about drugs, and that is why they get themselves into so much trouble.

If we want people to stop abusing drugs, we have to examine why they are abusing drugs in the first place. Perhaps something is wrong with our academic model if so many kids feel the need to abuse stimulants to compete. Maybe the solution lies in developing new means of assessing academic performance.

i agree. The disease of addiction can cross over from drugs to alcohol to sex, work etc. It might be better suited to find out the whys of someone abusing or using drugs illegally rather than worry about what they are abusing illegally. That said, I am not in support of making stimulants available to anyone who needs them because IMO, someone who takes say, adderall to cram and write 50 papers will have an unfair advantage over their non-doped peers and a really big advantage over the unmedicated and medicated person with adhd. Someone with adhd who takes these medicines gets to play on a level field and does not necessarily gain an advantage. Kind of like someone with eye glasses sees the same way someone with 20/20 vision. It doesnt make them see better than their non-glasses wearing peers.

[tudorose]

Originally Posted by sarahsweets

That said, I am not in support of making stimulants available to anyone who needs them because IMO, someone who takes say, adderall to cram and write 50 papers will have an unfair advantage over their non-doped peers and a really big advantage over the unmedicated and medicated person with adhd. Someone with adhd who takes these medicines gets to play on a level field and does not necessarily gain an advantage. Kind of like someone with eye glasses sees the same way someone with 20/20 vision. It doesnt make them see better than their non-glasses wearing peers.

Exactly!!

To say anything other than this is like saying it's ok for Contador to take EPO so he can beat Cadel.

[ana futura]

Originally Posted by tudorose

Exactly!!

To say anything other than this is like saying it's ok for Contador to take EPO so he can beat Cadel.

Two different issues are being raised here-

One is that some of us support the decriminalization of drug use, another is the debate over whether stimulants provide an unfair academic advantage, and assuming they do, how do we put a stop to it. I think all drugs should be legalized and regulated by the government, because it is the only way I see to stop the horrific violence happening in countries like Mexico. This belief shapes my view a bit in regards to the more relevant topic of stimulant abuse.

One very important thing to bring up here is that there have been studies that show that stimulant use DOES NOT IMPROVE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. It will permit a student to write longer, and perhaps study more effectively, but it's very much up for debate if it provides any real benefit beyond that. Stimulants do not make people smarter, and they don't make them better authors.

It is so interesting that you mentioned cycling, because I have long thought, why not just make doping legal, if every year the tour is going to be ruined by this nonsense? If Lance doped, every person he beat likely doped as well, so in the end Lance still won. Is modern EPO usage that much different from the early days of the tour, when every cyclist smoked marijuana or did cocaine to manage the pain? The early tour was filled with drugs. Eddy Merckx doped throughout his career, but that does not change the fact that he is the greatest cyclist who has ever lived.

The TDF is an impossible thing. We expect superhuman effort from its participants. Is the out of control drug use that results any surprise? It's a very difficult question- I have no problem with watching a tour with everyone on EPO, and I have no problem watching a baseball game with everyone on steroids. The problem of course, is that EPO and steroids are extremely unhealthy, and I have no desire to see athletes die because they feel they must take them to compete.

The solution lies with extremely rigorous testing. Even then, drug use will still happen. I have no doubt in my mind that Lance doped, and he is "the most tested athlete in the world". With what happened to Contador and Landis, I'm sure doping at the top will finally start to go away, but it will never disappear completely. In the end the only thing that suffers is professional cycling. It's a sport I love, and I'm sick of people trash talking it because of EPO usage. Even with doping, cycling is a wonderful sport, and the athletes who compete in it are amazing, EPO users included.

So, to bring it back to the topic at hand, what is the solution? The only way to clean up the cycling has been to rigorously test the top performers. Just because Cadel doesn't dope doesn't mean his domestiques aren't doping- which would still give him a great advantage. But testing at the top level does send a strong message. Assuming that stimulants really do provide an unfair advantage, perhaps Ivy league universities then should start testing their top applicants? I can only imagine what a furor something like that would create, it's not really a practical solution. But it would work.

Clamping down on ADHD diagnoses might mean that some people who legitimately need treatment will go undiagnosed.

This issue is nothing new, stimulant use has been in academia for a very long time. Honestly I see no problem with a PHD student using adderall to get them through their dissertation. Graduate students have been openly using stimulants for decades. At the high school and undergrad level, I feel very differently about it. I think that the rampant usage of adderall by teenagers is a huge problem, and really needs to be stopped.

[tudorose]

@ana you've made so many arguments in the last post. Some I agree with, some I disagree with. But I don't have it in me to respond so I'm gonna bow out of this one and say lets agree to disagree.

[ana futura]

Originally Posted by tudorose

@ana you've made so many arguments in the last post. Some I agree with, some I disagree with. But I don't have it in me to respond so I'm gonna bow out of this one and say lets agree to disagree.

I think we agree on your main concern- I don't want high school kids or undergraduates to have access to amphetamines, or for cyclists to take EPO. But wanting people to not do things, and actually getting them to stop doing those things are two different discussions.

If you have the time I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on doping in cycling, because I think it's a great parallel for academic amphetamine use.

[SwampFox56]

Hello, My name is Zeke, I am 16, and I was prescribed Adderall XR almost 2 months ago. I figured that since both of you have different opinions about the use of amphetamines, my opinion might be valuable to both sides since I am in high school, I do take it on a weekly basis (I try not to take it during the weekends), and I don't abuse it.

Many kids at my school call Adderall "addie" so I might refer to it as that through out this post (probably not, but that's just what most high school student call it). I was originally prescribed 10MG XR's, my doctor then bumped it up to 20MG's, and we decided to let it sit at 30MG's.

Well before I was prescribed Adderall, I had no motivation to do anything in life. I was in a horrible depression, and I could barley get myself out of bed in the morning. This got so bad that for the past two years I have missed SOO much school that I have only gotten a fraction of the credits that I should have by now. The majority of people just thought I was being lazy, and that I could get out of bed if I had really tried. That isn't even remotely true, and it took me a long to convince people that I wasn't just being lazy. I knew that I would never graduate from school if I didn't get my credits. I knew that I would be a loser if I didn't get any schooling. Every night before I went to bed I would say to myself "Tomorrow I'm going to do it. Tomorrow I am GOING to get up for school in the morning." but no matter how much I tried to convince myself to get up, I just couldn't. Something was holding me back mentally. The things I used to like to do no longer interested me. I used to love music, I no longer cared for any of it. Everything little thing that anyone did made me extremely angry to the point where I might even get violent, and the only happiness that I really got out of life was playing video games.

I went to a therapist and he diagnosed me with clinical depression, and two different types of anxiety. I DID NOT want to take any medication. I tried desperately to find natural ways of trying to treat depression, and anxiety. I tried many different things, but since I had no motivation to do anything I couldn't stick with them. After around a month of trying to find other ways to cure my unhappiness, I reluctantly decided to try medication. He prescribed me Zoloft for depression and anxiety, and Trazodone as a sleeping aid since I would always stay awake worrying about things.

Those drugs really didn't do much. The Zoloft did eliminate my feelings of sadness, and some anxiety, but I still had no motivation to do anything. And the Trazodone did make me fall asleep almost instantly, but it leaves you feeling very groggy in the morning, and feels not unlike a blow to the head.

Also let me put something into perspective for you. My lack of motivation was to do anything was SO bad that. It would literally take me a couple hours of motivating myself to do something as simple as taking out the trash. And most of the time the only reason I did it anyways was because would stand over me and make me do it. My lack of motivation has also stopped me from doing good in school. It stops me from getting up in the morning. I was very close to earning my Eagle Scout, and my lack of motivation has made it so I am no longer able to do any of my Boy Scout work.

Well after a while I told my therapist that even though the Zoloft helped with my depression and anxiety. Those were obviously not the cause of my lack of motivation.

He decided that we needed to add another drug on top of my existing one. He said that he was going to put me on Adderall even though I hadn't been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. But he told me and my parents that he could justify doing it without testing me for ADD or ADHD because of my lack of ability to get up in the morning, and the fact that I am always tired. And he also said that from what I described he thought I had a very severe forum of ADD.

Now let me explain something else. My parents are VERY anti-drug people. They thing that any drug, no matter what its use is, is unnecessary, and if take any sort of medication for more than a very short time that it will mess with your brain chemistry and turn you into a zombie. I like to thing of my parents as smart people, but they are very uneducated when it comes to drugs (in my opinion) In fact, they are so anti-drug that they won't even let me or my younger sister take Aspirin! If they ever give us any medicine at all, they give us a toddler's amount of Tylenol! They act like every medicine contains a large amount of oxycoden inside of it.

Anyways my point of telling you this was; its not like my parents rushed into taking the prescription. They had serious reservations about giving it to me. And my therapist actually had to meet with them privately to discuss how it could benefit me. And especially with a drug that can potentially be very addicting, and have very negative effects on the body. It really took alot of time convincing them that it could help me.

And, to be honest, I really didn't want to take it either. I don't really like taking medication either. But I really didn't see any other drug that MIGHT help my motivation and my ability to wake up.

Adderall has exceeded all expectation that I could have ever had for any drug. Adderall has made me 1000 times more motivated, I can actually DO things again! It's still hard for me to get up in the morning, but I am able to wake up just long enough to take my Adderall in the morning, I fall back asleep for around 30 min, and then I wake up, I do not feel tired, I don't feel hopeless in the morning, and I actually WANT to go to summer school.

Since I wasn't unable to get up at all last year or this year, I failed a lot of my classes. And I am way behind in my credits. While I have been taking Adderall. I love getting my work done. Its actually makes getting things done fun!

Throughout my whole school career I have never done well in school. I am now extremely ahead of schedule in my summer school classes, and it looks like I will be able to earn twice the amount of credits I thought I was going to this summer! You have no idea how that feels.

Anti-drug activists, and fanatics (like my parents) will argue that these drugs do nothing good for you. Well if it wasn't for my Adderall prescription.......well I don't want to think about that.