Before I begin, I want to give a little bit of background information. For those of you that don't know, adderall is an amphetamine based stimulant prescribed for ADHD and narcolepsy. It is composed of 75% dextroamphetamine and 25% levoamphetamine. Once metabolized, the drug increases levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain giving the user drastically increased energy, focus, euphoria, confidence, and a general sense of well being. Now adderall use is generally considered to be safe and socially exceptable which isn't surprising seeing as how a majority of people prescribed this drug are children. However when we examine this drug on a pharmicutical level, the main ingridient 'dextroamphetamine' is almost identical to 'methamphetamine' which is considered to be one of the most dangerous drugs of all time. When both drugs are taken through the same route of administration and adjusted for potency, they produce nearly identical effects. I would like to add that the crystalized structure of street meth allows it to be taken in fast acting ways that increase its addictive potential. If you want to read a neuroscientist's in depth viewpoint on the two drugs, you can find it here: http://theinfluence.org/neuroscientist-meth-is-virtually-identical-to-adderall-this-is-how-i-found-out/ . Now besides children and adults prescribed this medication, there is a large demand for it in College students. It makes sense, considering that focus, energy, and persistance are the name of the game for getting a competitive edge in any college, thus there is a high demand. The typical peak of this demand is around finals or any other time a large amount if studying is required. However there doesn't seem to any correlation between taking adderall recreationaly in college, and long term health effects/addiction since the supply is limited. Meanwhile, children that started taking adderall early in life show increased rates of cardiovascular disease, drug abuse, depression, and lethargy as they grow older. The problem is that these kids are prescribed to take adderall on a daily basis. At the same time, their bodies adjust to the potency, and they require ever increasing dosages to achieve the same effects. So this begs the question, according to society the abusive, bad, and dangerous way to take adderall, is the college student taking it occasionally without a prescription. While the safe way is for children to take it every single day, as long as they have doctor approval. This is very disturbing to me, especially because from 2003 to 2011, the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has increased 43% (Note* you can find these statistics here, or on the cds's website http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/25/report-43-percent-increase-adhd-diagnosis-u-s-children-2003-2011/ ) and we just don't know how this is going to affect the future generation. Children are too nieve to ever quetion what their parrents or doctors tell them to take and I don't believe they're being fully informed on what they're signing up for. While adderall may very well improve the quality of life for some people, I don't believe its healthy to give young children amphetamines every day just to increase their school performance. Let me know what you think in the comments and thanks for reading.
I have written about this recently.
It is horrible that small children are put on such dangerous drugs. Especially when most of the time they are just being normal children and their is nothing wrong with them anyways.
Here are my recent articles:
https://steemit.com/life/@canadian-coconut/drugs-for-kids-if-your-child-has-a-condition-know-as-being-a-child-the-answer-is-drugs-parody
https://steemit.com/education/@canadian-coconut/children-who-question-authority-at-school-are-drugged-ie-ritalin-or-otherwise-squelched
p.s. Be careful about the tags that you use. You may get flagged for using the tag 'steemit' when the post isn't about steemit. Use 5 tags and make sure that a couple of the catetgories are popular so that you will get more views. 'Science' is good, but I would have added 'health' 'family' 'life'
Thanks for the advice linda!I fixed the tags and will watch that from now on. I'm a little new to steemit and have yet to learn all the tags available. I also liked your posts and ofcourse agree with you its terrible, but I appreciate the support, thanks again.
Great! I know that there is a lot to learn here. Steemit will need to make some sort of instruction/training available before we get out of Beta stage I think. As it is, unless you have a mentor or do lots of searching for articles on how to succeed in Steemit, its easy to make mistakes.
p.s. You may want to space out your sentences and include occasional pics.
Read some other successful posts to see what they do for formatting, etc.
Also interact with other people on their posts and make friends.
All the best!
Ok I will, thanks again for the advice
What is even more dangerous, poverty that results because a child does not take her studies seriously and doesn't sit still enough to allow the child to learn.
Do you we leave medication recommendations up to the doctors or the bloggers?