What's wrong with my Adderall?

Great Debates
1

There seems to be so much debate about ADHD and Adderall (or Ritalin)… that’s what people say. But in reality, it’s not debate from what I’ve seen, just a lot of people agreeing that kids are getting way over-diagnosed with ADHD and the psychology field handing out Adderall/Ritalin way too happily.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD at age 20, and have been taking Adderall for about 4 months, with amazing results. I also had to write a paper about ADHD last semester, in which I argued ADHD isn’t nearly as harmful or dangerous as everyone claims. So I’m here to see what you guys have to say.

So what I’m getting at, is that I seem to be taking a drug which makes me feel awake and interested, provides my mind with more organizational control, and helps make the things that I say smarter and more coherent. I’m not at risk of developing tolerance, or withdrawal symptoms, and taking it for extended periods of time doesn’t lead to any lasting negative effects. And best of all, YOU can do the same thing and it’ll help you equally as much, even if you show no signs of ADHD.*

Compare that to alcohol. Rather than making you awake, it makes you an idiot for a while, and then puts you to sleep. Instead of providing intelligence and organization boosts, alcohol screws with your judgment and makes you incapable of doing basic motor and cognitive things. You can easily get tolerance, and can easily get withdrawal. Taking alcohol for extended periods of time is terrible for you. Pretty much the only similarity is that you can overdose on both if you take enough.

Sure, there are a few side effects. Most seem to stop happening after you take the drug for a while which is weird, because why am I still getting the same positive effects but no longer losing my appetite when I take it?
As to it getting banned in Canada a few years back due to a dozen cases of death among people taking Adderall over a 5 year period, 4 had pre-existing cardiac conditions, 1 was exercising in 120 degree weather, and 2 overdosed…

So help me figure this out guys. Where’s the flaw? Where’s the end-all? Why is this drug in so much demand on the black market for college students, yet get such stigma? Is it warranted do you feel? What’s your stance on it?

*All the claims I made in that paragraph are backed by psychological studies, but I don’t feel like digging around to find them again, but I will if anyone strongly doubts one of the claims.

PS: I’m not trying to make this an argument about over-medicating youth, that’s a separate discussion. This is specifically about the merits and problems with Adderall, and why it shouldn’t just be available for normal adults.

2

There is nothing wrong with your Adderall. I take it when I know I need to focus or get a lot done; so I don’t take it every day. I think knowing you have ADHD is half the cure. You know why you act like you do and you try to control it as a result. But the Adderall definitely helps me get things done. Big time.

By the way, if I skip taking it a couple of days, when I do take it I get the same side effects… which I kind of enjoy. :slight_smile:

3

I’m not sure if this thread will stay in great debates though… It’ll probably be moved.

4

That’s fine, I was just wondering if this would get controversial.
I’ve been looking at some other discussions on it, and I seem to have found 3 types of protests.

  1. I took it and I didn’t like the side effects. It made me depressed, or my chest tight, or made me lose control, or act like a zombie, or whatever.
    -Fine, don’t take it. Not everyone likes the effects of caffeine or alcohol, no one is forcing you.
  2. It’s bad for you in the long-run, there’ve been no long-term studies to show otherwise
    -That’s a lie, there have been studies and it’s not harmful.
  3. It’s cheating
    -…so what? To be truthful, the only reason to get pissed off that I found a cheat code is because you didn’t get it too. It’s cheating in the same sense that taking multivitamins fights off scurvy and that’s bullshit because I should suck down oranges like the rest of you. No, if it makes me perform better, I should take it.
5

Second semester enginineering physics has not gotten any easier over the years, yet college students can no longer go to the local “diet clinic” and have the doctor there write them a scrip for amphetamine salts. As a consequence, they must get it elsewhere.

6

The manufacturers of Adderall seem to disagree with you there. Here’s the prescribing information:

http://www.adderallxr.com/assets/pdf/prescribing_information.pdf

Along with the warning (caps in the original):

It also seems to put you at higher risk for stomachache, loss of appetite, insomnia, and weight loss (which is why amphetimines used to be used as diet drugs and still are used to keep people awake)

None of this means you shouldn’t take it, of course, and if it helps your ADHD, that’s great. And, of course you can argue that amphetimines should be more widely available, but you’re exaggerating when you say it’s harmless.

7

Well, an even more interesting finding is that the more prestigious a university, the more demand and usage there is of adderall on the black market.
so kids at harvard and princeton have higher academic demands and therefore even the smart kids need it to get to that super-smart level that these universities demand.

8

That’s not particularly surprising. The more prestigious the university, the more competitive it is, and the more academic pressure it puts on its students, so the more likely a student will push himself and do things he thinks will give him an edge.

9

It’s funny how the exact same substance (amphetamines) when sold by a pharmaceutical corporation is a miracle drug, but when obtained on a street corner is suddenly the most demonized evil around. :rolleyes:

10

Just curious, but what is the inherent difference between methamphetimines and your standard amphetemine?

11

I’m not entirely sure, but I believe it has an extra methyl group. C10H15N (for meth) vs C9H13N.

12

Methamphetamine vs amphetamine.

Sometimes a methyl group makes all the difference. Especially when it’s heroin.

13

Look, you, I get smarter, more attractive, and better at anything involving fine motor control when I drink. Don’t inflate your drug’s positives and then denounce mine’s. :wink:

(I’m only half-joking)

14

They have to put a lot of those labels on for liability reasons – to break it down.

AMPHETAMINES HAVE A HIGH POTENTIAL FOR ABUSE.
-Truth. If you take 5 adderalls, you have a very similar to methamphetamine – which is an illegal drug, therefore, abuse.

ADMINISTRATION OF AMPHETAMINES FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME MAY LEAD TO DRUG DEPENDENCE.
-As I said (or thought I did, cant check now), dependence (and therefore withdrawal) is very uncommon. There are a ridiculous ton of people using this drug on a long-term basis, right? 30+ years, studies have been done following them. If they were gaining tolerance to it, they’d be up to ridiculous doses after a fairly short period of time. People who experience such a problem have to stop taking the drug as no one is going to prescribe you 150mg+.
The other kind of ‘dependence’ they may mean is mental addiction, which just means ‘this is something you want, so if you dont have it, youll want it’. Im mentally addicted to sex :frowning: And air :frowning:

PARTICULAR ATTENTION SHOULD BE PAID TO THE POSSIBILITY OF SUBJECTS OBTAINING AMPHETAMINES FOR NONTHERAPEUTIC USE OR DISTRIBUTION TO OTHERS AND THE DRUGS SHOULD BE PRESCRIBED OR DISPENSED SPARINGLY.
-It’s sold black market pretty often, obviously a label you have to add.

MISUSE OF AMPHETAMINE MAY CAUSE SUDDEN DEATH AND SERIOUS CARDIOVASCULAR ADVERSE EVENTS.
-Again, take 5, have speed. Take 5 and have a cardiovascular problem, have death.
I understand there are certain side-effects associated with Adderall, but things like ‘insomnia’ qualify under ‘abuse’ becauses you’re specifically told not to take it after 5pm so that the effects wear off by bed time. If you take it at 11pm, you’ll be up until 5am, it’s not insomnia, it’s stupid.

So realistically, I still don’t see it as more harmful than alcohol by even a long shot, just offering a lot more uses, further enhanced by the fact that it’s used for improving oneself like a multivitamin rather than recreation like alcohol.

15

The perception is that ADD is used as an excuse for misbehavior, and that parents medicate their kids instead of teaching them discipline. That’s largely the complaint against drugs like Adderall. I think that’s mostly bullcrap, but some people do think that. (It’s possible ADD is being overdiagnosed, but I’m more concerned by those reports we read sometimes where schools pressure parents to get the drugs prescribed for their misbehaving kids.)

Warning labels on drugs are not, in my experience, for liability reasons. They are there because of clinical trial results and are agreed upon by the drug makers and the FDA. Some of those warnings may be required for all amphetamines.

And I don’t know how prevalent it is, but there have also been many reports of people using Adderall to get high by smoking it (certainly it’s not being used as a study aid there). Newer ADD drugs are designed to be ineffective when smoked.

16

You mean because a methyl group on heroin would probably keep it from entering the brain at all?

17

Let’s say 1 in every 5 million people who have a specific cardiovascular disorder have negative side effects from taking Adderall. They -will- put a label saying that taking Adderall when you have a cardiovascular disorder can be dangerous. This is somewhat useful for us, the consumer. If you have some cardiovascular disorder, it’s prolly a good idea to hear about this. It’s very useful for the company to place it, because if someone died due to the co-effect of the drug and disease and they -knew- it was a possibility, they’d be in deep deep shit.
However, when we’re discussing something like how dangerous the drug really is, there are more informative methods than a 5 sentence warning label on the side.

As to smoking Adderall…are you sure you don’t mean snorting it? You -can- abuse Adderall, as I already stated, by just taking 5 at once, or snorting them at once, or whatever floats your boat. But it’s equally as easy to find 10 other kinds of highs on 10 other kinds of products, so I don’t see why this one is particularly evil. Go sniff glue or whipped cream or something instead.

18

That’s not really how it works. It’s more like this: the companies will run a clinical trial, and if it turns out that Adderall causes some side effect more often than a currently-approved drug or a placebo, they may be required to put a warning on the label.

True.

Warning labels are sort of a minimum requirement, that’s true.

I’ll check if you like. The point is that it is sometimes abused not as a study aid, but just as a drug to get high from.

I didn’t say it was.

19

Crap, heroin is diacetylmorphine, not dimethylmorphine. I am not quite sure what I was thinking there.

20

Heh heh … I wondered if you meant an acetyl group, or if you were actually making the point that adding a methyl group would probably prevent the molecule from crossing the blood-brain barrier, thus turning heroin into herowaste-of-time. (I don’t know if you can attach a methyl group to heroin – can you fit two acetyls AND a methyl onto morphine? – but I know methylmorphine doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier.)