Take Your Pills

This documentary, while edited well, is a very shoddily written one. Not only is it incredibly repetitive, with the interviewed individuals all saying some iteration of "I don't have ADHD but wanted to perform better so I abused a substance and voila, I became amazing," but it also does its best to downplay the significance and necessity of the drug it fails to demonize. Very few times in the documentary do they acknowledge that they're talking about substance abuse, not the evils of a perfectly helpful medicine, and they keep describing it as some miracle drug that makes literally every person who takes it ever hyper-productive and jittery instead of a drug that has harmful affects if abused, just like any other medication on the market. Fun fact: people with ADHD have trouble sitting still or paying attention because their frontal lobes aren't as active and may even be physically smaller than people who don't have ADHD. Stimulants help "wake up" their frontal lobes so that they can perform basic tasks like homework, hygiene, driving, and even just taking out the trash sometime in the next six months. A lot of folks with ADHD who don't have access to medication often self-medicate by consuming large amounts of caffeine, a less effective but more accessible stimulant, and when they DO have access to medication, INCLUDING Adderall, they behave and perform like "normal" people, not like people on meth or speed. If this documentary had done more to provide a cautionary tale to those who wish to abuse the drug while also highlighting its usefulness to those who actually need it, it would have been a more rounded and less irrelevant documentary. Unfortunately, it failed to provide, and many MANY people who have ADHD will continue to be stigmatized due to scare tacticians like the folks who put this documentary together.

I'm surprised they didn't lump in cold and asthma medicine.

I'm angry; I think because they said so often that ADHD medicine is "performance enhancing" so often it seemed as if all use is illegitimate! It's an interesting question whether stimulant use in college is a symptom of the American competition problem. Maybe so but it creates a false narrative that 1) Amphetamine is used as often, 2) in the same ways & circumstances, 3) that's it's destructive to the body or mind. Notice you never heard doctors utter any of the inflammatory claims about how Adderall destroys everything it touches. Some people who never had ADHD or were *forced* to take meds as a kid decide they don't want it anymore. It's all anecdotal.

Finally, the docs starts by showing wobbly images, as if you're tripping. That's not an effect of stimulant medication -- just the opposite in fact. Nor do you zoom or sprout wings and think you can fly.

I really wish they'd had less lopsided discussion. Maybe show what it's like to experience the memory problems , constant frustration , and utter debilitating blows to one's self-esteem when you try and work very hard and nothing seems to ever go right. For years. They were obviously trying to shock and dissuade people from taking the medicine. I don't know why.. Either they shut their eyes on the facts or they never had them.

This well-meaning documentary mixes old, outdated information with some current data using a template of "just say no" filtered through a dozen other perspectives, leaving a muddied view of ADHD treatment of a neuro-developmental disorder. The focus shifts between abuse of medically-indicated pharmaceuticals and street drugs, while stigmatizing ADHD itself. It contains valuable information but woven in with shame and little distinction between ADHD sufferers and thise without ADHD. Ultimately, it just makes a mess of the issue. For valuable information and resources, try YouTube Creator "How to ADHD."

This documentary supposedly explores the different sides of taking stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin, except it spends most of its 90 minutes with interviews about how Adderall gives you an edge and an advantage. The negative effects are barely explored, so in the end, it felt practically like an Adderall informercial. It was professionally made though and has some interesting info.

This documentary is shameful. Instead of watching this hot garbage fire, Watch "How To ADHD" on YouTube she's amazing insightful and far better at this topic.

Also stop Romanticizing my disorder.