Okay, so all this rhetoric around ADD and diagnosis and disadvantage is requisite to keep the FDA from interfering like they did back in the 70's , but we should recognize that it also clouds the facts in a dangerous way.
What would the epidemic look like if we stripped away the rhetoric of ADD?
It would look like this: "A whole lot of people at top schools and Wall Street firms use amphetamines to cope with what's expected of them."
This is hardly news. Novelists, journalists, poets, mathematicians, soldiers, and physicists have used/abused them for roughly eighty years. Amphetamines can obviously improve performance, not only when abused, but also when used as prescribed. If you work with your brain, chances are good that amphetamines can (as Everyman enthused in the post linked above) "work wonders" for you... in some ways. Sometimes.
But check out the following from the National Institute of Health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377281/
Long story short, 5-10% of the US population used prescription amphetamines back in the 50's and 60's to combat everything from obesity to depression. But in the 1970's, the FDA outlawed amphetamines for everything except serious narcolepsy and a rare condition called "hyperkinetic disorder of childhood".
Response went kinda like this:
People: "WTF, our kids get speed but we don't?"
Drug companies: "WTF, hang on. We'll go huddle up with the physicians. Give us a couple of years."
.....
Drug companies: "Ahem. The ADHD diagnosis has come to be better understood and more generally accepted within the medical and mental health communities. Talk to your doctor to find out more."
People: "Yaaaay!"
In summary: Do you guys wonder if ADD exists because it has to in order to make the amphetamine market work?
In the 1970's, we had a population with strong inelastic demand on one hand, and on the other hand we had a set of influential pharma companies with big lobbying budgets and strong relationships with the medical community. The only thing standing in the way was the FDA saying "No way, this is getting out of hand." A few years later, some doctors discovered that ADD was actually a big huge problem for the general populace. Problem solved.
And now, if you quoted me a statistic that said that US amphetamine use had returned to the peak levels previously seen during the 1960's, I would not be surprised.
What do you guys think? Did all those people actually have ADD and not know it? Do all these people today have ADD?
Is this stuff going to stay at this level of legality and deregulation? Or is it headed back to a 1970's-era crackdown?
* This is intended as hyperbole. I hope it still is.
Just eat some more Adderall and get back to your pitch-book.
Pharma's too big(i.e. ADD drug market is profitable) to shut down for no real reason, so until people start keeling over the FDA will bless these ADD drugs to flow through the pipeline....
Now onto another question, at what age do people in finance usually stop taking ADDies?
Yes.
Proof: WSO chat room
Obviously nobody actually NEEDS this shit. Half my family has ADHD and whether or not they use the prescription is irrelevant, it's just drugs no matter what you call it. I feel partially biased in making exceptions so I'll try my best not to, but the real question is just who cares? There is no "ADD" the way there is no "depression" I guess. It's just part of who you are, or part of the way of explaining that your brain sucks compared to someone else's. People take drugs to stop them from doing more harmful shit to their bodies. People take Lipitor to combat their awful cholesterol, I take anti-depressants to keep me from killing myself, my little sister takes Ritalin so she can finish her math homework.
The only reason I want to make an exception for certain things (e.g. ADs) is that they legitimately are necessary to help you function. I'll tell you right now I've never met anyone with ADHD that couldn't live without it, but then again if there are serious cases out there I just haven't seen them. Doctors sell this shit to people the same way drug dealers sell to their customers, the only difference is enough people have the problem and have agreed it's a "problem" rather than "normal daily life" and we legalized it. Really nothing to cry out against, just the way of the world, but I definitely think it's just a performance enhancing drug the same way steroids help someone lift more.
But I'll say something: I've never run into a kid in college or on Wall Street that was smarter/better/more successful than me simply because he was on a pill. There hasn't and never will be a drug that makes you smarter. So, to the kid crying about not having ADD in college, man the fuck up.
Well said. I agree that they belong in the same class: the class of "You could take drugs to improve this part of your life, or you could probably man the fuck up and do without them."
To restate what I already said to that particular kid directly: this rhetoric of "My life could have been so much better if only I'd gotten my amphetamine prescription earlier" is supported by the big marketing budgets that spread these stories.
But I'm now going to put myself out there and say that I know what it's like to be in that kid's shoes. I also didn't know about or have any obvious access to those drugs in college. The choice I made, right or wrong, was to do whatever it took (except drugs, obviously) to make straight A's, make it into the right school/program, make more A's, work the internships, get to Wall Street, and so forth. In your words, I manned the fuck up.
But let's not throw that phrase around lightly. "Man the fuck up" in that context can mean a lot more than simply being a little more disciplined. My competition was at least as smart and educated as I was (I started off with some educational gaps), AND they were doping. So in order to beat them I had to put out considerably more effort with far fewer resources. This may be a challenge similar to what that kid was facing.
I have been through some bad shit, but manning the fuck up to that extent was capital-B Bad. The technique I developed was as follows:
1: Understand and list out everything you have to do to beat everybody else. 2: Pretend that someone's pointing a gun at your head and will pull the trigger if you don't do everything on the list. No exceptions or excuses. You gotta behave exactly as you would if you were staring down the barrel of a gun and the clock was ticking. 3: Get it done. If there's any time left over, you can then try to socialize or do something you enjoy. But you'll probably just collapse into bed.
I won't go into it all here, but doping would probably have been much less damaging. I might even have had a fucking college experience.
So yes: you're right that the human mind is a mighty thing. 99.99% of people out there are not competing as if their lives truly depended on it, so you can beat them even if you're not as smart or if your brain's malfunctioning somewhat.
But let's not say that sheer willpower or cojones are always the right choice over the easier path. You can only man up so far (or sacrifice so much) before you start destroying more value for yourself than you create.
I'm glad you mentioned the fear of dying here...
This only works 99.99% of the time. And that .01% is the reason why your statement below holds:
There was a point in my life when I wanted the gun to go off. Sometimes the only solution can't be found internally, but like you said, 99.99% of the time it can.
Okay, fair.
I have a feeling you and I got to somewhat similar points in something like the same way. People like us, our attitude is: "F'ing right I spent most of college staring down the barrel of a gun. I'm nobody; who cares?"
But that points to the real question. Setting aside the high self-expectations and low self-care instincts of many people who've had to claw their way up the ladder, let's say it's not you, it's your kid. Good kid. You love him. But he's far from perfect.
Do you want him to:
1: Spend college staring into the barrel of a metaphorical gun (not to mention years in recovery of some sort) and succeed 2: Take the pills and succeed 3: Hang his hat up and be a schmuck
Me, I don't want any kid of mine going with option #1. So when I get the urge to advise some young monkey to do it, I try to make myself think twice.
I almost 100% agree with everything you just said....
I knew a lot of very smart kids growing up who were misdiagnosed with ADHD. They would act-up in class and blow off their homework (mind you, they still aced the in class exams). In reality, the school system was moving too slowly through the material to keep their minds occupied and the lack of a significant recess period prevented them from blowing off enough energy to make them a little less agitated and slightly more likely to sit still in class for longer periods of time.
Most of these kids ended up doing really well in STEM fields, Comp Sci, and Finance.
America is the pharmaceutical industry's bitch.
The withdrawal symptoms from those meds can be ten times worse than the diagnosed condition, so, as BlackHat said, unless someone needs it to function in their day to day life, its a bad idea.
Everyone has ADD/ADHD by todays standards
Oh, look. I'm bored as fuck in class. Time to go get a script!
What if the FDA were to require ten sessions of conservative talk or other cognitive therapy before the prescription of any long-term mood altering drug? In medicine, you generally try the more conservative option first. Before going in for back surgery for that pain in your C5 vertebrae, maybe you want to see a chiropractor first.
I was about to write some long post completely shitting on ADD and how its a fabricated "disease" that is really just used as an excuse for lack of hustle, etc. However, I can spot from a mile away asinine arguments that never have a winner and just continually go around themselves.
anti-ADD: ADD is horsehit, just fucking pay attention in class. I'm obviously tempted to think about other shit in class too, but I fight it until I get out... and then I do pro-ADD: No, you don't understand. I can't pay attention in class. anti-ADD: No, YOU don't understand... yes you can. Stop making fucking excuses. pro-ADD: Na, I really can't. anti-ADD: Yes, you really can initiate revolving, "winless" debate now
The South Park episode on ADD would be a fantastic reference here...
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