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129 points surprisetalk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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alterom ◴[] No.45958585[source]
This article (and the title alone) is harmful. Adderall is not about increasing mental efficiency.

What Adderall is about is:

- helping with executive dysfunction for people who suffer from it.

- allowing people with ADHD like me to function. To do the things that everyone else does, things that we want to do and need to do, but can't do because of the way our brains are wired.

- increasing the lifespan of ADHD people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].

- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).

Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.

No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.

To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:

https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Medication

If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.

Thank you in advance.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/23/nx...

[2] https://add.org/adhd-and-depression/

[3] https://crownviewpsych.com/blog/adhd-increased-risk-suicide-...

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logicprog ◴[] No.45959622[source]
Thank you so much for this. I'm REALLY tired of anti ADHD medication propaganda, it's anti intellectual nonsense.
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Aeglaecia ◴[] No.45959814[source]
I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made
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1. UniverseHacker ◴[] No.45960140{3}[source]
That is nonsense, it makes perfect sense to treat symptoms when it works and lessens those symptoms. Most of medicine works that way- our understanding of biology is primitive, and we often cannot identify or treat underlining causes.