"...my lab partner was taking Adderall, and so were some of my friends. And so, you know, I tried it. I got a few. And I took one, and it worked. It worked really well. I could stay up. I could go to sports practice. When I got home, I could study. I could do my homework. I could wake up early, take an Adderall, be right on target, be ready to rock 'n' roll. And so, I took it to get ahead, to get that advantage, to make better grades, to be able to study longer. And as we’ve alluded to a little bit here, it was that competitive nature. You know, I was just trying to keep up. And it’s—it is a performance-enhancement drug."
"We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment—the school environment, parenting—so we have to modify the kid."
- Jameson Monroe
"I know psychiatrists—there’s one a couple blocks from here—where, literally, it will take you longer to fill out the paperwork in the waiting room than it will for him to diagnose you with ADHD and give you a prescription for stimulants."
- Alan Schwarz
Watch from 32:20 (when Amy Goodman turns to John Edwards, whose son Johnny committed suicide):
The Selling of ADHD
1. What is Adderall?
2. ADD stands for Attention D______ Disorder
3. Why does John believe his son was prescribed Adderall?
4. Why did John assume his son was under great care?
Transcript:
John Edwards: Thank you. So, Johnny was a—went into Harvard in 2006. And between his freshman and his sophomore year, I discovered he was on Adderall during the summer, when he was home. And, you know, I kind of questioned. I thought Adderall was—from what I understood, was for attention deficit disorder. And I had some questions. It didn’t seem—Johnny was a class valedictorian at his high school, a top high school in Massachusetts, 4.0, a brilliant kid. He was a—I think he was about a 4.0, a straight-A student at Harvard. And he was also doing stem cell research and working on grants between his freshman and sophomore year. And he was just a brilliant kid, which paled in comparison to what a wonderful human being he was. And it seemed rather odd that he would be on a drug for attention deficit disorder. He seemed like the last person that would be on drugs, how you could achieve what he’s achieved and have that type of issue. But, you know, from what he shared with me and what I understand, that it seemed as though in his particular case it may have—he may have been given it to somehow boost his confidence or for some other reason. And I found it all a bit odd.
And I noticed during the summer, when we were on summer vacation in New Hampshire, he was having these huge effects with—best way I can describe, these woosh effects, where he’d get these [inaudible] bouts of anxiety, and he said it was due to the time-released product he was on, and his doctors were paying attention to it and working it all out. And, you know, the problem is, when your kids go off to college and they turn 18, you’re no longer involved in their care, even though I requested—I made a request. I said, you know, "Would you mind if I spoke with the person who’s treating you?" And then he checked into it, and they said, "No, that’s not really necessary." That’s what he told me. So I assumed he was under great care. I mean, he’s at Harvard, you know, wonderful, leading institution in the country.
And, you know, he then was prescribed a couple of additional medications, as well, which happened to be stimulants, as I learned later. And as part of that, he was feeling—over the coming months, I guess he had significant anxiety or concerns about it, even wrote an email to the person who had—he had been seeing, the nurse practitioner, and, you know, indicated, "Should I continue to take these?" And she said, "Yes, just make an appointment to come in and see me when you have a chance." And, unfortunately, two days after that email, he committed suicide at Harvard Medical School, completely out of the blue. And, you know, I—none of us in the family had any idea that something like this was—he had just been home for Thanksgiving. And it was just—it’s obviously devastated myself, my family, my daughter, in particular, Julia, and been a very, very difficult time for us, the last six years.
What do the phrases in bold italics mean?
