February 3, 2013

"Stimulants will help anyone focus better. And a lot of young people like or value that feeling..."

"... especially those who are driven and have ambitions. We have to realize that these are potential addicts — drug addicts don’t look like they used to."

What's going on with prescriptions for Adderal?

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

These kids today. Complete amatuers. Stimulants? Hahahaha...Xanies to get me through my day of constant vile word usage (Nigga' [and permutations] muther-fucka, etc.), violence and bullying as common denominators and complete halllway lawlessness. I judge my day the number I have to take. A half xanie day is a chill day. But then I've had serious decades long experience with drugs. Xanies are silly compared to disco biscuits (qualudes) or the Owsley 4 way peace tabs. The 60's were educational and have provided me with a rubric to survive my employment (6 more report cards before exit stage left). Drug usage is still alive and well just depends on which end of the spectrum you start at.

Martha said...

Young adults looking for an edge ending up with a serious psychiatric illness. Adderall is handed out like aspirin in campus health centers--little follow-up.

In my day we had No Doze, not addictive.

Martha said...

Young adults looking for an edge ending up with a serious psychiatric illness. Adderall is handed out like aspirin in campus health centers--little follow-up.

In my day we had No Doze, not addictive.

TerriW said...

Funny to see this come up after the Lance Armstrong interview: Hey, kids, this is your competition on the SAT. Get used to it.

virgil xenophon said...

In my college days (62-66) we had "dexamills"--dexidrine w. miltown to prevent nervous stomach, etc.--uppers & downers all in one pill. As a poli-sci major all departmental finals were 90% of the grade (blue-book essays) The dept only gave mid-terms because the Univ said they had to. So.....it made good sense to cram all the reading toward the end while it was still fresh in one's mind..
Best LOL description of speed I've ever heard? The then HS brother of one of my best friends visiting campus kept talking about "those LA turn-arounds." "What in the H is that?" I asked.
"You know," came the reply, "those are the kind of pills that, when you take 'em, you can drive all the way to LA, turn around, and come back w.o. sleeping." He was from Chatanooga. LOL!!!

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

I have a friend, a thirtysomething with an office job and two kids, who uses ADD drugs (she rotates through them, plays with the dosage, etc) every day, and both of her kids do too. I wonder about that, but I'm not inside her head, so who knows.

SGT Ted said...

It's the Doctors doing this.

I went in for my initial visit with a new primary care doctor. I told him of my PTSD and past military stuff. I didn't have any proof of it at all. He immedialtely asked if I wanted some SSRI drugs. I turned him down, as I had been on Zoloft and it made me dangerously immune to fear. Plus it was not fun to ween myself off of it when I quit.

I told him I used cannabis to achieve the same effect that Zoloft did, without the dangerous side effects or addiction. He wouldn't prescribe that.

It's the Doctors pushing these chemicals. They should be locked up for prescribing it to teenagers that merely want to boost studying and the requesting folks should be put through rehab, both parents and kids.

"My kid can't concentrate."

yea well he is going through puberty. So thats normal, no drugs needed, just patience and paying attention and guidance.

Drug pushers.

SGT Ted said...

If your kid needs a drug to get through college, he doesn't really belong there.

southcentralpa said...

Pull up Tom Wolfe's book Hooking Up in Amazon Reader and search for "Ritalin". You're welcome.

Anonymous said...

The xanies definitely help with PTSD. You know, the kind you get when you run unarmed to gunfire in the classrooms and tap dance to large caliber rounds spattering around.

Michael said...

I learned all of German one night on three packs of Pall Malls a couple of pots of coffee and some dex. Forgot most by the exam because I sailed into the next semester's material which created issues.

Ann Althouse said...

"Young adults looking for an edge ending up with a serious psychiatric illness. Adderall is handed out like aspirin in campus health centers--little follow-up. In my day we had No Doze, not addictive."

Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try “No-Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows


Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your...
Don’t try Adderall
Better stay away from...
That carry around a...
Keep a clean...
Watch the plain...
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the...

Too hard!

Danno said...

If you think doctors don't monitor their patients very well now, just wait until Obamacare kicks in next year. The only patients that will have a reliable doctor-patient care relationship will be people with a concierge doctor.

Danno said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...

The ancient Greek myth about Adderalicus comes to mind.

HT said...

As I say, stay away from the pharmacy counter at the beginning of the school year.

(Not sure I get it why a snake is featured. Focus?)

Yes, who knows how many do not really need these drugs? The majority?

As with many psych drugs, the disease followed the drug. Yea!

I just finished reading the NYT article. Very depressing. The parents are quite restrained, considering.

edutcher said...

Have to agree with those who say anyone who needs to stimulate themselves to get through is a breakdown looking to happen.

Surfed said...

The xanies definitely help with PTSD.

Are we talking Xanax?

HT said...

"I have children in school, and I am intrigued by the faith parents now invest--the craze began about 1990--in psychologists who diagnose their children as suffering from a defect known as attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this "disorder" is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. The symptoms of this supposed malady are always the same. The child, or, rather, the boy--forty-nine out of fifty cases are boys--fidgets around in school, slides off his chair, doesn't pay attention, distracts his classmates during class, and performs poorly. In an earlier era he would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self-discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy's problem is... he's wired wrong! The poor little tyke --the fix has been in since birth! Invariably the parents complain, "All he wants to do is sit in front of the television set and watch cartoons and play Sega Genesis." For how long? "How long? For hours at a time." Hours at a time; as even any young neuroscientist will tell you, that boy may have a problem, but it is not an attention deficit."

Tom Wolfe

Wince said...

I'm not getting the connection with the picture of the snake.

edutcher said...

I assume it's an adder.

Get it?

Adderall?

;)

Rabel said...

It's an adder.

Michael Haz said...

Dear young peoples of America:

I write this as an elder, an elder who was a full time student and concurrently a full-time worker in order to get through college without loans or depending on my parents.

Stop with the Adderall, Ritalin and other such drugs that give you what you think is an 'edge' of some sort. They don't.

Here's a better formula for getting and keeping an edge. You probably won't like it, but tough stuff, it's free. And it works.

Stop drinking. Get to bed at a reasonable hour. If lights out at eleven PM works for students at the US military academies, it will work for you. Get up early and exercise. Even if it's only squats, pushups and crunches in your room, exercise to get your adrenalin boosted. A few pushups at mid-day will do the same.

Lay off the coffee and Red Bull. Caffeine fatigue will nail you later in the day. Take vitamins and eat good food in moderation. Vitamin B12 tabs dissolved beneath your tongue are better than coffee any time. Pray or meditate for rejuvenation every day. Drink plenty of water, don't drink or eat anything that contains refined sugar or corn syrup.

Last, if you need a little boost, legally, use Nicorette gum. Non-addictive, non-prescription, not harmful in moderate quantities.

paulmichiel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DADvocate said...

Whether you're a mother wanting to control a child via drugs or a student wanting drugs, it's ridiculously easy to find a psychiatrist who will do your bidding. Often they're more than happy to prescribe drugs against the recommendations of the FDA.

DADvocate said...

SGT Ted is right except it's not just the doctors, teachers and parents too.

ken in tx said...

In the early 60s, a girl I dated was prescribed smoking by her doctor. It was to help her concentrate and combat what was then called 'bad nerves'. Since then I have read that nicotine does have a positive result for ADD patients.

Sydney said...

This has gotten to be very much a problem. I am now starting to see adults in their late 20's and early 30's who are convinced they need these drugs to do well in their jobs because they were on them as school children.

Peter said...

'virgil xenophon' said In my college days (62-66) we had "dexamills"--dexidrine w. miltown to prevent nervous stomach, etc.--uppers & downers all in one pill."

'Xexophon's' memory is close, but not quite right.

The drug in question was "Dexamyl," and it contained dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine- the dexter isomer of amphetamine) and amobarbital (a barbiturate)- not Miltown.

Smith, Kline and French sold this lethal concoction as an antidepressant- which it no doubt was, at least until the user crashed when it wore off. It was also frequently used for weight loss.

The drug was once widely prescribed, and huge amounts of it were diverted; street prices for this by-prescription-only drug were, by today's standards, quite low.

Use of something like this as an antidepressant seems criminally irresponsible, but perhaps physicians then didn't know any better.

In any case, legal restriction of amphetamines has given us the horrors of exploding meth labs and brutal gang wars over control of the markets for it. And, apparently, diveersion of similar (but easier to obtain) drugs such as Adderall.

Tari said...

I sat waiting for my 13 year old at the orthodondist last week, listening to a high school boy describe to the person sitting next to him (a girl his age) how "if you train your body, you can get all the sleep you need in 4 hours a night" - and then go on to talk about how, at his IB high school, he routinely needs to stay up until 2 or 3am to get everything done. "Everyone does it", he says. And then I read things like this, and I beg my husband to quit his job, move with me to the country and home school the boys.

Does it seem like we have 1 of 2 kinds of students in the US these days? We hear about those whose schools are failing them, who can't make it through their first year of college (assuming they can get in, or don't just drop out of HS), and then we have the other end of the spectrum: 16 year olds taking speed to get better grades. What happened to working hard without killing yourself? Ye gods: some days being a parent is just too hard.

Tari said...

Oh, and we were at the allergist recently, and he tells me he gets a 15-16 year old girl or 2 a week who can't breathe. "Asthma" says mommy. "Panic attacks" says the doctor. "Go home, take her out of a few activities, and leave her the hell alone once in a while." God help us all.