With this wonder drug, you just pop till you drop

Daily Telegraph—UK—September 24, 2012

by Celia Walden

I once went to a barbecue in LA where a group of women in the pool gazebo were swapping recipes – drug recipes. These women were the Nigellas of the prescription drug scene. They knew how to mix their fluoxetine with a nice tasty opioid like hydrocodone. They knew that top-and-tailing their favourite stimulants with a couple of Xanax could produce just the right kind of high. And their recipes had one ingredient in common: Adderall.

Adderall’s the drug of choice in the US – licensed for the treatment of ADHD but misused to treat everything from jet lag and depression to exhaustion and anxiety. It makes you smile like an angel (though you can spot an Adderall smile from the other side of the playground). It’s also – what do you know? – an appetite suppressant, a key factor in the “speed diet” trend in Hollywood and New York high society. Al Gore’s son was arrested for possessing the drug, a well-known actress was said to be taking it before her seizure, and Stephen Elliott’s book, The Adderall Diaries, has been optioned by James Franco for the big screen.

To be honest, I’m finding the whole thing a little worrying. “You should try it,” one New York friend advised, openly popping one halfway through her Subway sandwich. “I can run at a 6.5 incline now, and I swear I wouldn’t have got my promotion without it. But there are side-effects,” she added sagely.

Back at home, I googled the drug to find that these are: depression, sleeping difficulties, nausea, insomnia, a potentially dangerous increase in heart rate, feelings of hostility, suicidal thoughts and nightmares. Other than that, it sounds like a real life-enhancer….Read More

Note from CCHR: Our one-of-a-kind, easy to use psychiatric drug search engine shows numerous international drug warnings and studies on Adderall causing mania, psychosis, stroke, cardiac arrest, hallucinations, death and sudden death. 

Look up international drug regulatory warnings, studies and all adverse reaction reports filed with the US FDA by doctors, health care providers, pharmacists and consumers at CCHR”s psychiatric drug side effects search engine here