<p>There is probably a group survival advantage to having some people with ADD around. The guy with ADD was the one who noticed the saber tooth tiger stalking the group, while everyone else was focused on the mammoth they were hunting. Tangential, distractible thinking is an advantage in general, whenever the “plow straight ahead” plan won’t work.</p>
<p>In my opinion, ADD became a “disorder” largely due to quite recent societal changes (and not the extinction of the wooly mammoth ). For one, I observe much less disorganized sports activity and just plain running around among elementary-age children now than when I was young. So even though the elementary schools permit the students to move around much more than they used to, it’s not nearly enough to compensate. Then throw in the academic acceleration and the pressure for students to do well on the annual state tests–it’s a prescription for a problem.</p>
<p>I am convinced that no one knows enough about brain chemistry to warrant altering it, in an attempt to “solve” moderate “problems.” (I exempt medication for serious psychiatric disorders from this statement.) The long-term effects of the neuroenhancers are unknown.</p>
<p>Even if everyone around me were taking neuroenhancers–and I am pretty certain that some in my circle of acquaintances internationally are doing so, though probably no one in my department–you would still find me muddling through with the unenhanced brain that I have. And probably losing out in the short run (since I really should be writing a paper now, not posting this–I hear ya, toneranger), but quite possibly coming out ahead in the long run. It would be too easy to apply one’s laser-like focus to a succession of small problems, and miss out on the more important ones.</p>
<p>I really feel for students whose friends take Adderall or Ritalin just to help deal with the massive workload that is undergrad education in some places. The peer pressure and the immediate competitive disadvantage must be hard to take. Also, college students have less accumulated life experience of physicians suddenly “discovering” the role of major organs (the spleen) or the unfortunate consequences of giving premature infants too much oxygen, to assess whether the medication–which on the surface seems to work–is really worth the risk.</p>
<p>unfortunately- when you do have a brain that isn’t functioning normally- the choice isn’t between taking a drug and being able to function normally or even superiorly, but taking a drug and being able to scrape by or not taking the drug and not being able to function in everyday life.</p>
<p>You could always retreat from the world and devise an existence where schedules/clocks/deadlines didn’t matter of course-</p>
<p>I was an Adderall “user” for a couple of months. Won’t go into the dx that led to my getting a prescription from my doctor, about 3 years ago. Then I had a “drug interaction” after drinking a glass of white wine. I don’t think it was the alcohol; probably something in the wine interacted with the Adderall.</p>
<p>So I stopped using Adderall altogether. I wasn’t about to give up wine.</p>
<p>During my days in college (a few decades ago), taking a “diet pill” (dexedrine – “Dex”) in order to do an all-nighter finishing a paper or prepping for an exam was not unusual, but I can’t say it was common. I tried it once. It helped me to stay awake. (Of course, there was a culture that was addicted to using “speed” for recreational purposes, but I never fell into that.)</p>
<p>I doubt any of these pills make anybody “smarter.” They may help some people to complete their work on a deadline. Regular use is probably not indicated for anything that isn’t truly medically certified.</p>
<p>I don’t think students today have any more “massive” a workload than students of yesteryear – nor that this era is somehow massively more competitive than earlier ones. I don’t buy the idea that this provides a justification for widespread excessive use of stimulants. As always, students need good planning skills. Still, occasionally some students may feel the need for an “energy” boost when working on deadline. I wouldn’t get all that worked up about this as long as it’s occasional and if there is no dependency or untoward side-effect.</p>
<p>emeraldkity4, I agree with you about serious psychiatric disorders, and said so.
ADD as I have encountered it does not mean “not being able to function in everyday life,” though. Could you give an example, so that I know what you mean? I can’t tell whether we agree or disagree.</p>
<p>@mackinaw, well I don’t know about your workloads in college, but I read a post from someone at the University of Chicago who had 11,000 pages of assigned reading for one course (that is not a typo). But maybe it was always like that at the University of Chicago?</p>
<p>ek…I hear you and I know a number of folks who have been saved by prescription drugs…anti-depressants, anxiety drugs and ritalin/adderall.<br>
But sometimes, i think it gets to be a challenge to define what normal functioning is. The New Yorker article was interesting. Here’s a guy who is clearly over-scheduled but wants to maintain his weekend party habits, and does it through drugs. When I was in school, I remember lots of kids sacrificing one or both weekend nights in the interest of keeping up their grades. So I guess these kids had an impact on their social lives, but is that a reason to take potentially dangerous drugs?</p>
<p>@mackinaw, again, and let me add the rumored 50-hour each week problem sets in Math 55 at Harvard. I sincerely do not believe that any first-year course had problem sets that ran 50 hours when I was a student, and relatively few of the higher-level courses did.</p>
<p>QM: I went to Reed. A brother went to Caltech. My son went to UChicago. My daughter went to RISD. The workloads today at these colleges are no greater than they were in yesteryear. All were and are rather intensive programs. Basically, the students’ best “solution” for the workload in these programs was and is to spend a large proportion of their time on their schoolwork.</p>
<p>Some students work more efficiently than others. Some figure out that there’s only so much they’re willing to do for a given course. (My son avoided being obsessive about his schoolwork; he had other priorities as well. He probably works harder now that he’s out in the economy earning a living than he did at Chicago.)</p>
<p>Oh! Reed and Caltech . . . probably not too much more intense now than they used to be, since workloads cannot exceed 168 hours per week and be accomplishable. I’ll throw in UChicago, and Swarthmore, for good measure (not dissing RISD, just not familiar enough with it). Still, I do think the “grades, sleep, friends, choose two,” situation is much more widespread than it used to be.</p>
<p>ADD and ADHD are real disorders. They have been noted for a long time- my brother needed meds in the 1960’s. With every medicine there are risk-cost/benefit ratios to consider. All medications can cause problems- read the warnings on your OTC ones. People do die from a Tylenol (or any acetaminophen) overdose (liver failure is a nasty way to die, btw). Herbal and other nontraditional remedies also have dangers. Every generation has had and will have some medication or other people use to try to improve their abilities/coping, etc. There is always a tradeoff.</p>
<p>Ever notice how minor problems are put up with and more serious ones can sometimes be treated to leave that person better off than the person with the mild version? Developing cataracts and waiting for them to worsen to get surgery and a lens implant, for example (I’m waiting for mine to start then get bad enough so I can get rid of my nearsightedness!).</p>
<p>I really must disagree with the view that ADD/ADHD meds are “cheating” or anything of the sort. When I don’t take my ADD medication, I find that my social behavior, attention span, and rehearsals (i’m a musician) suffer: I don’t watch what I say, I’m much more impulsive than is right, and I just can’t quite listen to what people are saying. Same way with rehearsals, I tend to zone out and can’t focus on what I’m supposed to be doing. However, I wouldn’t say the medication in ANY way increases my test scores - on days I haven’t taken it, I do just as well as far as knowledge goes. The medication just allows me to actually be able to think about my work. I find it horrible that people would abuse these drugs, and I understand the concern, but I don’t believe that EVERYONE who takes ADD/ADHD meds is “cheating” and “doesn’t need to take them.” Some people really do have attention problems, and it is unfair for others to assume that taking medication is unnecessary for everyone, just because it is unnecessary for some.</p>
<p>This is not new at all. And I think this is the key: "So in summary, it sounds like the drug may give one a false sense of well being but doesn’t necessarily improve performance! "</p>
<p>It gives you a heightened ability to focus, naturally. For someone with ADD, they are smart and have been doing the work, but their attention is screwing them up-- so removing that barrier lets them perform. For someone who does NOT have ADD who is just abusing the drug, being able to focus better (or feeling like you can even if you CAN’T just because you know you took something) isn’t going to save you if you weren’t ready for the test anyway. It really annoys me because a lot of non-ADD students will abuse the medications and then be like OH LOL IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER SO I MUST HAVE ADD, or my personal favorite IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER SO ADD MUST NOT BE REAL!!</p>
<p>ADD is a constant, massive strain on me when I am not able to treat it. It just seems like the more crap that people who don’t have ADD (and their parents) do, the less people are willing to believe that.</p>
<p>ETA:</p>
<p>“My question is this. When does a diagnosis of ADD make sense? Everyone, it seems, can have issues with distraction and lack of focus…when it it a disease? I thought it was an issue if there was a CLEAR impact on your grades or social life. But it seems to me that I see some kids getting diagnosed because they take a bit longer than usual on homework! Seems like a pretty drastic step to me.”</p>
<p>Just because it is overdiagnosed does not mean it is not a real, serious problem for many people. “A bit longer on my homework” for me means being up until 4:30am every morning and waking up at 8:30, having not even finished my work or learned the material. I can sit in a lecture and think I am listening only to realize I’ve zoned out. I can put something down and INSTANTLY forget about it, never to be found again, because yet again I wasn’t really paying attention. And the harder I attempt to force myself to focus, the more impossible it becomes. I could make myself sit in a desk for 12 hours straight and STILL not be able to really focus on what I am doing, it’s not a matter of discipline. Without medication, except under very specific and rare circumstances, I am UNABLE to actually pay full attention to a single thing I am doing. I don’t hear half the words that are said to me without asking to repeat, I never get ANYTHING done in a timely fashion, and I can try so hard to stop it that it physically hurts and it makes no difference in the end. I can’t even read, I get through a sentence and it’s immediately gone before I get to the next sentence. I was on a medication recently and found that I was even better at things I hadn’t noticed before-- like suddenly driving was ten times easier, suddenly I was actually be able to be aware of what all the cars around me were doing at once, which I hadn’t even realized was possible before. I live my life in an inescapable fog. That is when it is a disease.</p>
<p>DS has ADD and is medicated. We began when he was in fifth grade and a straight A student because he was up until past midnight every night crying and trying to do his homework.</p>
<p>The meds did not increase his performance in terms of grades, however we stopped having crying scenes at midnight.</p>
<p>He does not give or sell his meds to anyone else, so I know the issue of cheating isn’t involved here.</p>
<p>But it’s my understanding that if one doesn’t have ADD the meds will not have the desired results.</p>
<p>The meds stimulate a part of the brain that is then used for self-discipline and focus. If one can already do this, the meds will not improve performance.</p>
<p>And for people with ADD, caffeine usually calms them down, not speeds them up. That can even be used as a diagnostic test.</p>
<p>Kelsmom: Reading about your bro terrified me, but as someone else said, it’s a risk/benefit calculus. Without the meds, the kiddo can’t really read. Can’t get through college without being able to concentrate on reading.</p>
The ADD medication affects response rate. In animal studies pigeons behaving at very high rates who are administered ADD meds show a marked decline in rate, whereas pigeons behaving at low rates will show an increase in rate. The same pigeon trained to behave at high rates under one set of conditions, and at a low rate under a different set of conditions also shows these effects, so it is not intrinsic to the physiology of the organism, but to its performance. Accordingly, the drug effect is partially determined by the base line rate of performance. One cannot extrapolate the drug effect from person to person without knowing the baseline rate. Kids who are behaving at high rates will typically mellow out, those at low rates will see bursts of performance.</p>
<p>Thanks idad. So, I’m not exactly sure whether that corroborates or questions my point.</p>
<p>More corroborates, I think.</p>
<p>Since I have no ADD, I’m pretty sure the drug would “mellow me out.” For my H and S it does provide a “burst of performance” as you say.</p>
<p>It’s so odd to me that S, but H even more so, get sleepy on coffee. My H will drink a cup of black coffee at 11 pm and sleep like a baby. If I drank a cup of black coffee at 11 pm, I’d be up for three days. No kidding. But I am abnoxiously caffeine sensitive and don’t drink any coffee. Even decaf, which is not 100% decaffeinated, has the regrettable effect.</p>
<p>Since Adderall is a controlled substance–buying it without a prescription–is a serious crime. And selling it is a serious crime. </p>
<p>At least in our state—ADD meds are highly controlled–a MD writes a prescript for only 30 days at a time and each month the parent must physically pick up the prescription and take it to a pharmacey–it is not a “refillable” prescription.</p>
<p>The patient must be checked by the MD every 90 days because these meds decrease appetite and can stunt growth. </p>
<p>This is not to be taken lightly and is far different than taking no-dose kinds of things.</p>
<p>Based on personal experience with my son: He was diagnosed ADD in freshman year of college. This diagnosis was made after about 16 hours of testing. He showed a great discrepancy between IQ and performance plus was “off the charts” on many other scales, including some processing disorders.</p>
<p>What makes me very angry is that some physicians will write a prescription based solely on the patient’s self reported history and request for medication. Somehow this should be controlled! I do know many, many people who waltzed their children into a Dr’s office and left with Rx in hand after no testing of any sort.</p>
<p>Adderall does give anyone a feeling of “I can do anything”. I agree with the posters, that from the research I’ve read, it will help true ADD patients and not “normal” functioning ones. However, the rush with the drug will make them believe they are doing better and of course the pulling all-nighter is more doable with speed onboard.</p>
<p>Word of caution, though my son was prescribed the drug and took it without major incident for 3 years (did have weight loss, insomnia, the “crashes”), he, this spring, had a grand mal seizure that neurologists feel may have been due to a combination of insomnia and Adderall which is known to lower the seizure threshold. So now he is off any ADD med and though it is much more difficult for him to manage school work, it is better than increasing his chance for seizures.</p>
Tangential, distractible thinking is an advantage in general, whenever the “plow straight ahead” plan won’t work.</p>