Unsafe At Any Speed?

Based on his personal experience, Alexander Zaitchhik fears that off-label use of ADHD drugs is a “public health disaster”:

Around 2009, I noticed more friends and acquaintances getting scripts. These people would never in a million years be caught facedown in a caterpillar of street meth, but here they were singing in the rain about Adderall – Kate Miller’s “medicine.” More than one of these people asked me, “Why are you paying $20 a pill?” They suggested doing what they did: take an online quiz, find a friendly [Attention Deficit Disorder Association]-approved doctor who “gets it,” and get sorted in a doctor’s office.

I never considered it. A cheap and limitless supply of pharma-grade amphetamine, signed off by a friendly medical professional, struck me as an incredibly unwise pursuit. That’s how you become a heavy or daily user. The road to tweakdom is paved with Duane Reed co-pay receipts. I’ve since been proved right, sadly, by watching speed hurt people I care about. …

For those who have never taken speed, it’s difficult to convey the seriousness of a public health disaster – and the depths of its underlying corruption – that results in healthy college students taking 90 daily milligrams of amphetamine salts under blasé doctor’s orders. At 90 milligrams a day, the question is not if the person will eventually experience some form of speed psychosis, but what grade and when.

Previous Dish on Adderall here, here, and here.