Yet Another Harrowing Story of White Collar Addiction

The other day, Alan Schwarz, reporting for the Sunday edition of The New York Times, wrote an alarmist report about buy adderall online abuse. The article chronicles the brief story of Richard Fee, a popular pre-med student who, after trying a few stimulants that acted quickly in college, flinched his way to an ADHD diagnosis. Then, within months of filling out his first prescription, he began using the drug, which led to a severe addiction and psychosis, which eventually led to his suicide two years ago at the age of 24.

Ring the Alarm

Richard Fee’s story is sad and emphasizes the risks of prescribing ADHD medications to neurotypical adults and some of the issues associated with psychiatric diagnosis. Unfortunately, the journalist seems to think these issues are only amphetamine-related, indicating “widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for ADHD.” The harrowing incident, though certainly not uncommon, “underscores aspects of ADHD treatment that are mishandled daily with countless patients.”

Schwarz is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, well-known for exposing the dangers of head injuries caused by concussive force in football. Recently, he’s focused the same eye on how attention deficit disorder is identified. But to what extent? In the context of this case – to increase the limits on how amphetamines are administered for adults and to prevent the kind of naivety and lack of supervision that led to Richard’s story. However, a fine line needs to be achieved here between satisfying the requirements of the ADHD population who greatly benefit from controlled stimulants and those who may be addicts, such as Richard. It’s also not evident in light of how psychiatric disorders are formulated in noology that there are certain ways to stop con artists and addicts from playing the system.

Let me offer an illustration. For The Big Ten school I attend in the Midwest, the regulations are in full force, and it’s notoriously difficult to get an attention deficit diagnosis, irrespective of the diagnostic medical history. To be referred for an intake session with psychiatrists, students must first take a half-hour routine battery that tests for various ailments. If the results suggest ADD, the patient is evaluated by a psychologist who reviews a case. Suppose the psychologist is also concerned about ADD. In that case, the student should request her grade school records from K 12 to be included with their current academic transcripts, the findings of previous psychiatric tests, and a thorough questionnaire for parents. All of this is to be scheduled for an initial psychiatric consultation. Due to the limited number of appointments available, this process could take a long time. The funny thing is that children who can complete the doctor’s office wouldn’t be suffering from the issue in the first place.

ADHD This is (Probably) not what you think it is. This raises a different issue: Who do these kids slip into the gaps? In elementary and high school, ADHD is a catch-all for children who aren’t good sports in class or get along with other kids. The kind of “kids who drop their pants in the schoolyard instead of playing hopscotch” (or as goes the stereotype that has been around for a long time). However, in clinical terms, the real disorder is not what you think it is.

I’ll spare you the laundry list of symptoms being tossed around. However, there’s no single method of displaying the disorder; there must be a universally applicable model. Due to the complicated interplay of neural development, personal characteristics, and the environment, Humans are incredibly diverse, including celebrities, prominent artists, charismatic entrepreneurs, and many criminals in their ranks. When ADD is understood as an issue of controlling and managing attention, not as a deficit, the cause of this asymmetry becomes apparent. The ‘affliction’ creates an individual’s mind that is unique in how it responds to the world around it, not bound by norms set by society or pressures from parents. How this unbridled focus is spent ultimately varies depending on the person. Many teenagers who have ADHD are addicted to video games for up to ten hours every day. Others, like my high school friend, can focus on learning various languages or frantically tracing the music collection. The ability and brilliance of a person do not mean that you have ADHD or the reverse. Someone who cannot attend classes, track schedules and dates, and conform to routine social interactions can be incredibly inventive and creative in other areas. But it could be a different story based on the conditions and sources.

Whatever the stigma surrounding ADHD, however, it’s hard to ignore its prevalence and prevalence, which is estimated as between 5 and 10 percent of the people in the US. This is a significant signification for genetic selection that the genes responsible for ADHD may have conferred some benefits to our adaptive abilities in recent evolutionary history. There is speculation that ADHD is only an ‘involuntary’ type of existence in modern living.

That’s not to suggest that medications aren’t necessary for people faced with a world that was, perhaps, not made to be a part of it.

What can stimulants do to help ADHD?

Perhaps you have a friend like me who used buying adderall online hoping to finish their work but fell asleep. This is typical ADD, similar to having frequent ear infections at five. Most of the twentysomethings I know who take stimulants say they can reduce their capacity for focused concentration. What they can do is more routine and more mundane:

1. Get to work within the timeframe they have set.
2. Complete three different tasks within a single day.
3. Pay your water bill before it is shut off.

To take Jonah Lehrer’s analogy, “The drugs haven’t suddenly turned on the spotlight of attention. The spotlight was always there. Instead, they have made it easier [to] point the spotlight in the right direction.” Of course, this is the opposite of the common notion of the purpose these drugs are being used to treat. Unfortunately, the popular view might influence the medical view.