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There are no difina-tive tests for any psychiatric disorder

Depressives have Prozac, worrywarts have Valium, gym rats have steroids, and overachievers have Adderall. Usually prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactiv-ity Disorder (read Sydney Spiesel in Slate on the risks and benefits), the drug is a cocktail of amphetamines that increases alertness, concentration, and mental-processing speed and decreases fatigue. It’s often called a cognitive steroid because it can make people better at whatever it is they’re doing. When scientists administered amphetamines to college shot-putters, they were able to throw more than 4 percent farther. According to one recent study, as many as one in five college students have taken Adderall or its chemical cousin Ritalin as study buddies.

The drug also has a distinguished literary pedigree. During his most productive two decades, W.H. Auden began every morning with a fix of Benzedrine, an over-the-counter amphetamine similar to Adderall that was used to treat nasal congestion. James Agee, Graham Greene, and Philip K. Dick all took the drug to increase their output. Before the FDA made Benzedrine prescription- only in 1959, Jack Kerouac got hopped up on it and wrote On the Road in a three-week “kick- writing” session. “Amphetamines gave me a quickness of thought and writing that was at least three times my normal rhythm,” another devotee, John-Paul Sartre, once remarked.

If stimulants worked for those writers, why not for me? Who wouldn’t want to think faster, be less distracted, write more pages? I asked half a dozen psychiatrists about the safety of using nonprescribed Adderall for performance-enhanced journalism. Most of them told me the same thing: Theoretically, if used responsibly at a low dosage by someone who isn’t schizophrenic, doesn’t have high blood pressure, isn’t on other medica-tions, and doesn’t have some other medical condition, the occasional use of Adderall is probably harmless. Doctors have been prescribing the drug for long enough to know that, unlike steroids, it has no long-term

health consequences. Provided Adderall isn’t snorted, injected, or taken in excessive the drug is a cocktail of amphetamines that increases alertness, concen-tration, and mental-processing speed and decreases fatigue. It’s often called a cognitive steroid because it can make people better at whatever it is they’re doing. When scientists administered amphetamines to college shot-putters, they were able to throw more than 4 percent farther.* According to one recent study, as many as one in five college students have taken Adderall or its chemical cousin Ritalin as study buddies.

As an experiment, I decided to take Adderall for a week. The results were miraculous. On a recent Tuesday, after whipping my brother in two out of three games of pingpong—a triumph that has occurred exactly once before in the history of our rivalry—I proceeded to best my previous high score by almost 10 percent in the online anagrams game that has been my recent procrastination tool of choice. Then I sat down and read 175 pages of Stephen Jay Gould’s impenetrably dense book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. It was like I’d been bitten by a radioactive spider.

The first hour or so of being on Adderall is mildly eu-phoric. The feeling wears off quickly, giving way to a calming sensation, like a nicotine buzz, that lasts for several hours. When I tried writing on the drug, it was like I had a choir of angels sitting on my shoulders. I became almost mechanical in my ability to pump out sentences. The part of my brain that makes me curi-ous about whether I have new e-mails in my inbox apparently shut down. Normally, I can only stare at my computer screen for about 20 minutes at a time. On Adderall, I was able to work in hourlong chunks. I didn’t feel like I was becoming smarter or even like I was thinking more clearly. I just felt more directed, less distracted by rogue thoughts, less day-dreamy. I felt like I was clearing away underbrush that had been obscuring my true capabilities.

What role do the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies play in the world of ADHD?

. . . There’s a suit going on right now in three states. It alleges that the major pharmaceutical company that makes Ritalin, the Novartis Company, along with the American Psychiatric Association, the main representatives of organized medicine in the ADHD movement, and the self-help group CHADD have conspired to dupe the American public into believing that there’s such a thing as ADHD, and then thrust upon innocent children a potentially dangerous drug. The suit alleges that there’s a conspiracy. Now, there may be some legal definition that meets the conspiracy angle. But I don’t believe that there’s any conspiracy at all. We have what I call the “invis-ible hand” of Adam Smith at work. Adam Smith, as you know, wrote the fundamental textbook on capitalism. And we have market forces at major play here, getting people to think a certain way about medications, and then operating on the doctors and the pa-tients to get them to take them first--often at the expense of other interventions that work.

As a doctor, how do you experience those forces?

. . . I experience them, first of all, by this unbelievable advertising barrage that has hit me first, and now is hitting the consumer directly. . . . I think Novartis has acted quite responsibly, relatively speaking, because I think Ritalin represents a drop in the bucket to them in terms of the kind of money they make. They’re much more worried about their bio-engineered foods these days than they are about Ritalin.On the other hand, the makers of Adderall have presented what I consider to be . . . the most disingenuous, elabo-rate campaign I’ve ever experienced. . . . Adderall has passed Ritalin in terms of trade medication written for ADHD. I’ve been offered $100 if I will sit and listen to someone talk about ADHD, funded by Adderall, for 15 minutes on the telephone, and then fill out a five-minute questionnaire. . . . And now, with the loosening of controls on the pharmaceutical industry by the FDA, there is this direct marketing to families. You see this picture. . . . Well, it doesn’t say that it’s for Concerta. It says, “Learn more about ADHD.” And it’s this picture of this smiling boy who has a pencil in his hand, and on either side of him, his parents are beaming. . . . And underneath, it says something like, “They’re happy, because now they know his ADHD is being treated.” What’s the problem with that? The prob-lem is it pushes people to only one way of thinking about the problem--that this is a biological problem, and that it needs a drug. . . .

Is there an imbalance in how much money goes to studying the efficacy of drugs versus the efficacy of other things?

Yes. That’s the other way that the market forces are operating here, in that virtually every ADHD researcher, now, because of pre-vious cutbacks and because there is money out there, takes money from the pharmaceutical industry to do their research. And whether or not you’re a doctor in the local hospital . . . or you are one of the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, we all know that research gets influenced by the funding source. And this is not impugning these men. It’s just how it works. They don’t publish negative findings. The studies are tilted more toward counting symptoms and pills, rather than looking at the bigger picture. And if you look at a very narrow picture, if you just ask very narrow questions, you will get answers that miss the big picture. . . .Dr. Peter Jensen, a respected authority in this field, says that, in the case of children’s psychiatric medications, that it’s not true; that the research money . . . comes from the government, because the pharmaceutical companies are afraid of litigation, and they don’t want to go there.

They’re not going to sell anything to kids thats going to kill them

Suicides Increased 4% with Patients

Depressives have Prozac, worrywarts have Valium, gym rats have steroids, and overachievers have Ad-derall. Usually prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (read Sydney Spiesel in Slate on the risks and benefits), the drug is a cocktail of amphetamines that increases alertness, concentra-tion, and mental-processing speed and decreases fatigue. It’s often called a cognitive steroid because it can make people better at whatever it is they’re doing. When scientists administered amphetamines to col-lege shot-putters, they were able to throw more than 4 percent farther.* According to one recent study, as many as one in five college students have taken Ad-derall or its chemical cousin Ritalin as study buddies.

The drug also has a distinguished literary pedigree. During his most productive two decades, W.H. Auden began every morning with a fix of Benzedrine, an over-the-counter amphetamine similar to Adderall that was used to treat nasal congestion. James Agee, Graham Greene, and Philip K. Dick all took the drug to increase their output. Before the FDA made Benzedrine pre-scription-only in 1959, Jack Kerouac got hopped up on it and wrote On the Road in a three-week “kick-writ-ing” session. “Amphetamines gave me a quickness of thought and writing that was at least three times my normal rhythm,” another devotee, John-Paul Sartre, once remarked.

If stimulants worked for those writers, why not for me? Who wouldn’t want to think faster, be less distracted, write more pages? I asked half a dozen psychiatrists about the safety of using nonprescribed Adderall for performance-enhanced journalism. Most of them told me the same thing: Theoretically, if used responsibly at a low dosage by someone who isn’t schizophrenic, doesn’t have high blood pressure, isn’t

This generation entering college is the first to be raised from the start on behavioral modifing drugs

1/4 Dextroamphetamine

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1/4 Dextroamphetamine

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1/4 Dextroamphetamine

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1/4 Dextroamphetamine saccharate

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DEXEDRINE (dextroamphetamine sul-fate) is the dextro isomer of the compound d,l-amphetamine sulfate, a sympathomimetic amine of the amphetamine group. Chemi-cally, dextroamphetamine is d-alpha-methyl-phenethylamine, and is present in all forms of DEXEDRINE as the neutral sulfate.

DEXEDRINE (dextroamphetamine sulfate) Dextroamphetamine is a psychostimulant which produces increased wakefulness, energy and self-confidence in association with decreased fatigue and appetite. It is perhaps the arche-typal psycho-stimulant, and drugs with similar psychoactive properties are often referred to as “amphetamine analogues”, or described as having “amphetamine-like”, or even “amphet-aminergic”

1/4 DEXTROAMPHETAMINE SACCHARATE

1/4 DEXTROAMPHETAMINE SULFATE

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ASPARTATE MONOHYDRATE: (DEX-troe-am-FET-uh-meen SACK-uh-rate ) Ac-tivates nonadrenergic neurons, causing CNS and respiratory stimulation. Stimulates satiety center in brain, causing appetite suppression.

SULFATE he sulfate ion is a polyatomic anion with the empirical formula SO42− and a molecular mass of 96.06 daltons; it consists of a central sulfur atom surrounded by four equivalent oxygen atoms in a tetrahedral arrangement. The sulfate ion carries a negative two charge and is the conjugate base of the bisulfate (or hydrogen sulfate) ion, HSO4−, which is the conjugate base of H2SO4, sulfuric acid. Organic sulfates, such as dimethyl sulfate, are cova-lent compounds and esters of sulfuric acid.

1/4 ASPARTATE MONOHYDRATE 1/4 SULFATE

Like steroids for the brain, college students everywhere have discovered a miracle drug that seems to solve all

their study problems. No longer must they waste time sleeping, they can study twice as fast and remember twice as

well. Users feel euphoric and invincible, until the effects wear off.

Adderall is a cocktail of amphetamines that increases focus and mental-processing speed, and decreases fatigue. Appar-

ently, the stimulant drug can make you better at whatever you do. Way back in 1959, government-sponsored researchers

found that Stanford varsity swimmers swam faster and shot-putters threw farther on amphetamines. Even today, the

U.S. Air Force supplies amphetamine “go pills” to its combat pilots. At colleges throughout the country, academic success

now includes a steady flow of psychopharmaceuticals. “I don’t think I could keep a 3.9 average without this stuff,” a col-

lege student told the New York Times in an article entitled, “The Adderall Advantage.”

Adderall sales in the U.S. soared by more than 3,100 percent between 2002 and 2005, according to the Washington

Post. Bootlegged at about $3 to $5 per pill, Adderall is both inexpensive and accessible.

As many as one-in-four college students misused ADHD medications according to a nationwide survey reported in the

journal, Addiction. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that one-in-ten kids of middle and high school age are

using psychiatric drugs such as Adderall or Ritalin without a prescription, reported the Washington Post in an article

entitled, “A Dose of Genius; Smart Pills Are on the Rise; But Is Taking Them Wise?” MSNBC reports that parents now visit

doctors to demand this drug for their children, in the hope of improving their children’s report cards. Although no concrete

statistics are available, the frequency of parents blaming ADD for a child’s poor performance in school is becoming

alarmingly common, according to MSNBC.

on off

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84%

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22%

All amphetamines (amphetamine, dextroamphetamine and methamphetamine)

have essentially the same chemical properties and their actions are so alike

that even experienced users may not feel a difference between them, accord-

ing to a 2005 report by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Health Canada is informing Canadians that it has instructed Shire BioChem Inc., the manufacturer of ADDERALL XR® to withdraw the drug from the Canadian market. Health Canada has suspended the market authorization of the product due to safety information concerning the association of sudden deaths, heart-related deaths, and strokes in children and adults taking usual recommended dos-es of ADDERALL® and ADDERALL XR®. The immediate release form of ADDERALL® has never been marketed in Canada. Health Canada is advising patients who are currently being treated with ADDERALL XR® to consult their physician immediately about use of the drug and selecting treatment alternatives.

Health Canada’s decision comes as a result of a thorough review of safety information provided by the manufacturer, which indicated there were 20 international reports of sudden death in patients taking either ADDERALL® (sold in the United States, not in Canada) or ADDERALL XR® (sold in Canada). These deaths were not associated with overdose, misuse or abuse. Fourteen deaths occurred in children, and six deaths in adults. There were 12 reports of stroke, two of which occurred in children. None of the reported deaths or strokes occurred in Canada.

A preliminary review of safety data for the other related stimulants authorized for use in the treatment of ADHD in Canada has been conducted. In that review, the incidence of serious adverse reactions leading to death was higher in ADDERALL® and ADDERALL RX combined than in the other drugs of this class.

Health Canada has asked manufacturers of other related stimulants approved for the treatment of ADHD to provide a thorough review of their worldwide safety data. Information updates will be provided by Health Canada as they become available. Patients taking drugs of the same class for the management of ADHD should NOT discontinue their medication, and should consult with their physician if they have any concerns or questions. ADDERALL XR®, a Central Nervous System (CNS) stimulant, was approved in Canada on Janu-ary 23, 2004 for the management of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children.

After having consulted with their physician, consumers should not flush unused drugs down the toilet or sink to avoid contaminating ground or municipal water systems but return any unused product to their pharmacy. Health Canada has been in contact with Shire BioChem Inc., and will be monitoring the removal of this product from the Canadian market.