Doctor prescribes, drugstore supplies
There’s no doubt that the main reason students take Adderall is due to the fear created by social pressures from friends and family to get better grades.
However, perhaps the real problem of this “focusing drug” is rooted in the ideology of the medical community, which sells the mental disorder of ADHD to make a profit. This results in the dangerous misdiagnosis and over-prescribed use of Adderall.
In other words, the pharmaceutical community has nominally created their own prognosis for a perceived problem; but in reality, the repercussions not only reveal an institutional problem, but a moral problem as well.
In the previous issue of the Ontarion, we discussed the controversial illegal use of Adderall as a study enhancement drug. This consciousness is rooted in the template of the medical profession that reduces everything to brain biology, and the perception that the inability to study can be solved simply by doling out a $5 concentration pill.
Claimed to be the key to academic success by both doctors and students alike, the demand for this study drug is rooted in the sensationalized demand for profit by the big pharmaceutical companies who put pressure on doctors to sell the product.
Today, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) affects a staggering number of people in North America. The mental disorder first began to be treated by the drug Ritalin in the early 1960s. As of 2012, shocking statistics reveal that the United States produces 88 per cent of the world’s legal amphetamine, Adderall.
The whole concept of the selling of ADHD is ultimately tied in with the research establishment, which has pragmatically created their own prognosis for the perceived problems surrounding ADHD.
Clearly, the business model of the medical community is embedded in capitalism.
Ironically, despite the millions of prescriptions that are written each year for ADHD, the scientific community is not in agreement on how ADHD drugs actually work.
What is revealed, however, is that researchers advise that ADHD is significantly under-diagnosed and undertreated.
In essence, these same scientists who came up with the phenomenon of the ADHD disorder have created a “politics of identity,” which gets filtered through the medical community – the “doctor prescribes, [and] drugstore supplies.”
Yet the outcome of the sloppy misdiagnoses provided by doctors is the misuse of Adderall, which is linked back to the perceived symptoms of ADHD.
According to the CEO of Shire Pharmaceuticals, who manufactures Adderall, the drug is purportedly “a safe and effective treatment for people diagnosed with ADHD.” Yet according to doctors in the medical community, it is difficult to determine if students expressing symptoms of ADHD actually suffer from the disorder at all.
“ADHD is a clinical diagnosis,” one doctor said. “There is no set test that determines if a person has or does not have ADHD.”
Undoubtedly, there is no fine line that determines the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis – which leads many to argue that Adderall is overprescribed and far too easy for students to obtain.
We must not forget that the organization of pharmaceutical companies are capitalistic in nature, one whose interest is neither for you nor your welfare – but for their legal responsibility to make a profit for their shareholders.