Original subtitles

[Ariana] I take it right when I wake up.

I keep it next to my toothbrush so I remember to take it.

Takes about 40 minutes to kick in and you can feel it.

I start to sweat.

My heart accelerates very rapidly.

[clapping sound]

[Blue] The fives get you through the day a little faster.

But if it's Monday, sometimes you take ten.

[Matthew] From there, this wave of happiness

hit me that was like a warm glow.

[Delaney] Suddenly, I could pay attention and my handwriting got neater.

I thought that was so cool.

[Eben] My mind came alive, my body felt alive.

When it works, it works like a bang.

[man] Suddenly, you are in a room with 10,000 doors

and behind a bunch of the doors is some cool stuff.

You are gonna wanna try and run as fast as possible

and stay awake as long as possible, to look in all the doors.

[interviewer] What did Adderall do for you when you were playing the game?

[Jasper] Laser-like focus, reaction time increased, alert.

[Leigh] The first week I took it, I was like, "I like this. This is good."

[Nathanael] Adderall. Warning,

side effects may include being awesome at everything.

[Blue] It's like the New York Stock Exchange ticker.

That's what my mind looks like all the time.

When I take Adderall, it's like the ticker slows down.

[Jasper] I can zone in on something and completely ignore everything.

[Peter] Every investment banker hears about the heyday of cocaine

and doing it off their desks and doing it off strippers,

and that's not how it is with Adderall.

-Who takes Adderall anymore? -[Carver] Half the kids in Palo Alto.

-[Ariana] You name it, I've tried it. -[Regina] Adderall.

[Ariana] Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, Vyvanse, Focalin.

[Brigid Polk] Amphetamine...

[Fadiman] The idea that children were given amphetamine in the '60s

would have appalled everyone.

From now on, it's nothing but fresh air, lots of hugs

and good old-fashioned Ritalin.

[Delaney] I am Adderall. I'm never not on it.

I would never think of something as me not being on Adderall.

[techno music playing]

This is the most ridiculous bathroom in the entire world.

Everyone has their own starter pack.

It's like a little telling of y'all are.

"Free the nipple."

Jews 'cause I'm Jewish.

"New Jersey" 'cause I tell people I'm from New York, but I'm not.

I'm from New Jersey. So that's a running joke.

And a Jew smoking weed through a menorah.

This is my favorite thing in here.

Every time we go out, we take something home with us.

So, my parents, right before I left to school, were like,

"We need to get you a lockbox."

And I was like, "Why?"

They were like, "For your pills."

I was like, "What do you mean, a lockbox? Who's gonna take my pills?"

It's Rx gold.

People will take it from you if they know you have it.

I don't think I know anyone that is prescribed it

that doesn't sell a little on the side.

That's a big thing here 'cause it's a hard school,

so a lot of people are on Adderall.

Why would anyone wanna put this in their body?

[Ariana] This is trazodone.

This is Ativan, for my panic attacks.

Then when I got here, I was like,

"Holy shit. Everybody takes Adderall. Everyone."

[Jasper] That's an empty one.

[Leigh] I've openly seen people in classes take out their bottle

and hand off pills to someone next to them.

"Anyone have Addie I could buy? Please. Please."

[chuckling]

Sometimes I forget that it's illegal.

There's a public Facebook group, like a classifieds,

buying and selling anything.

And people will post in there that they're selling 20 XR Adderall,

and not think that they are drug dealing in a public forum.

My mom didn't hide it, but I hide it.

Adderall and Instagram are hand in hand in being the perfect student.

[Delaney] You wanna be beautiful and skinny,

and you wanna have amazing grades,

and then you also wanna be able to go out, and Adderall just sews it all up for you.

You've got instant release versus extended release.

People will take it and sit down at the little cubicles in the library.

They lay out everything,

that way you can't be distracted by anything else.

And you have a set playlist,

and people will put in their ear buds, and you're ready to roll.

[Brown] At the simplest level, the norms that I would say

are driving use of performance enhancing drugs

are those that simply tell us, "Your task is to concentrate,

to perform at the highest capacity that you possibly can,

and to do it for as long as it takes."

Whether it's at an investment bank, or whether it's a homework assignment,

the question is, "How can you come out on top?"

[Leigh] Obviously, if you're presented with something

that will maximize the good things in your life,

you'll get everything you can out of it.

Of course you're gonna want it.

I was talking to someone about this and they're like,

"Isn't it the same thing as having a good breakfast before an exam

and drinking a cup of coffee?

Why is medication the thing that's so immoral or unethical

about getting an edge over everyone else?"

Let's see. I'm taking five classes.

So if I get a 90 on the paper, an 82 on the exam today,

I'll get an 89.77.

So that's not gonna fly, unless she rounds up.

So, let's say an 83,

but it's also a pride thing.

I'd like to finish strong, stronger than I started.

Adderall, for me, has always been like when you're desperate and hopeless,

and you're like, "I need this right now

because I need to be my best, smartest, fastest self."

[Brown] The problem today isn't that jobs are scarcer,

or that positions in schools are fewer.

It's that we live in a hypercompetitive order,

where the competition is not just for arriving,

but the competition is never-ending.

Every human being is now required to understand themselves

as a little bit of human capital.

Parents are terribly concerned,

from before the moment that their children are born,

about what that human capital value will be in their child,

and are tending it with everything from Mozart in the womb

to positions in preschools and access to certain kinds of sports

and certain kinds of curriculums.

The anxiety about the human capital value

that their children are able to develop

leads, I think, almost inexorably toward Adderall,

either offered by the parents or offered to peers by one another

once they hit high school and college.

I sometimes joke about how when I was in college,

people did drugs to check out.

And now people do drugs to check in.

And that says something about our culture right now.

[interviewer] What do you think it says? It makes me kind of depressed.

[laughing]

We probably have meds for that.

I had tons of friends in high school that were on Adderall,

and because they were on Adderall or Vyvanse or something like that,

were getting two and a half time on the SATs or something,

and got to take it alone. And I wanted it.

I had three straight days with this psychiatrist.

I remember the testing was so stressful for me

'cause it's made to make you feel dumb

and feel like you can't complete these tasks that other people can.

That was the first time I was like, "I might really need this."

ADD is a condition where people have more trouble focusing with their attention.

People typically are distractible.

Because there aren't clear-cut boundaries,

it becomes fuzzy of what do you treat and what do you not treat.

[Leigh] I got diagnosed by the psychiatrist,

and I was thrilled because I had the SAT in a couple months.

I had never tried it,

but the first week that I took it, I was like,

"I like this. This is good."

I remember I was concerned about not feeling entirely myself,

too zoned and I didn't feel as funny as usual.

I remember saying that.

But you had to pick and choose,

and I wanted to pick getting good grades and doing well on the SAT.

[Schwarz] The desire to do better is pretty universal.

People like succeeding.

People like not letting others down.

So, what you've seen is that every generation has found a different way

to try to enhance their performance.

Now in this case, a lot of the time, it has been what we now call ADHD drugs.

[newscaster] In the high pressure rat race of academic achievement,

there is one fix students are turning to at an alarming rate to get ahead.

[interviewer] And how are you doing that?

[man] Adderall. I've never gotten a B in my life.

[reporter] Some students are calling it college crack.

[Danny Brown sings] ♪ Eating on an Adderall ♪

♪ Wash it down with alcohol ♪

♪ Writing holy mackerel Actual or factual ♪

[Tom Lehrer singing] ♪ To the beer and Benzedrine ♪

[Future singing] ♪ I can't feel my face I'm on Adderall, nauseous ♪

[Tom Lehrer singing] ♪ Golden college days ♪

The first article about college abuse of amphetamine to study

was in Time magazine in 1937.

This ain't new.

[Rasmussen] In the early days, they called it the pep-pill.

Pep is what Americans want.

It's about drive, ambition, being productive and hardworking,

and making the sale, and getting the job done.

[man] Kellogg's Pep sure is a treat to eat.

[Rasmussen] So, Dr. Gordon Alles was a young biochemist

trying to create an allergy medicine.

And that's how, in 1929,

he happened to synthesize the drug we now call amphetamine.

He injected himself with 50 milligrams of the salt,

which is quite a high dose.

And his lab notes are absolutely fascinating.

Within minutes, he's like, "Strong feeling of well-being."

He's like, "I really like this!"

[Rasmussen] After about an hour, Alles noted,

"Feeling of well-being, palpitation, rather sleepless night,

mind seemed to race from one subject to another."

This is the record of the first amphetamine experience,

Alles' self-experiment in June, 1929.

It's very clear that from the beginning, this amphetamine product was a compound,

a chemical that needed a medical use.

[Schwarz] It didn't take long for amphetamine

to become a prescription medication.

In the mid-1930s, Smith Kline & French introduced it as Benzedrine.

And you would snort it and it would clear your sinuses.

The problem is, amphetamine feels really good to a lot of people,

and it gets them jazzed and ready to perform.

[Harry Gibson singing] ♪ Who put the Benzedrine ♪

♪ In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? ♪

♪ Now she wants to swing The Highland Fling ♪

♪ She says that Benzedrine's the thing That makes her spring ♪

[Schwarz] College kids, and other people, started taking the gauze out

and chewing it to get the amphetamine into their system more quickly.

[Fred Astaire singing] ♪ I'm like the B-19 Loaded with Benzedrine ♪

♪ When I come on the scene I bust a hole in the sky ♪

[Rasmussen] When World War II broke out,

military doctors in Germany tried it on some military cadets.

Of course, the students liked it.

The British found these pills in downed German planes.

They seemed to be acting like supermen,

and maybe it was drugs that were making them supermen.

The American military,

when they saw that the British were approving the drug and introducing it,

they hurried along the studies and took it on, too.

Just a cup of coffee.

Really, Mr. Holden,

a hardworking executive like you should have a hot lunch.

Very well. Just scramble me a couple of Benzedrine tablets.

[Rasmussen] Benzedrine took off after the war

as a general practice antidepressant.

So did Dexedrine.

Among its uses was weight control.

Also, painful menstruation, what we'd call PMD, was tested.

This is a funny trial.

The doctor who was running it was working at a factory

where all the assembly line workers were women.

The subjects were requesting more of it,

but it turned out that the demand

had nothing to do with their actual menstrual cycle.

They just liked taking the drugs.

Spot on.

[man] One, two...

[Rasmussen] Amphetamine inhalers became a kind of a staple in jazz culture,

particularly in the bebop circles.

Charlie Parker was certainly a regular user.

Some of the people that are later remembered

as the important beat writers, like Jack Kerouac,

were going to these jazz clubs.

Kerouac really admired the way bebop sounded

and he wanted to model his own writing

after this very spontaneous, free rush of sound.

"Come on, boy, go thou across the ground. Go moan for man. Go moan, go groan."

[Rasmussen] When he discovered the amphetamine inhaler,

he really took to it and used it as an aid for his writing for a long time.

It was normal to have amphetamine when you wanted it.

Most people probably just got it

by asking for a prescription from their family practitioner.

Turn around and drop your pants. This goes in the gluteus.

What is it?

It's an energy serum.

Max Jacobson, who's known as Dr. Feelgood by many of his patients,

was one of these speed doctors.

For a time, he was John F. Kennedy's favorite doctor.

[Don Draper] What does it do?

24 to 72 hours of uninterrupted creative focus, energy and confidence.

Really?

And if you listen to The Beatles, the song "Doctor Robert"

is about a doctor in New York who'd freely prescribe amphetamine

to rock stars and celebrities who wanted it.

[The Beatles singing] ♪ Well, well, well, you're feeling fine ♪

[Rasmussen] The '60s were called the go-go years for a number of reasons.

And that's the way Andy Warhol experienced the early '60s,

up on amphetamine all the time. Not just him, his whole scene.

Whoo!

And let me see, the right side or the left side?

Oh, well, you never...

Doesn't matter if you get the left or the right, or go drop dead.

Ding!

[Schwarz] A lot of women, and men, don't get me wrong,

soldiers in Vietnam, got horribly addicted.

That's why we have the Controlled Substances Act.

[Frank Zappa] Hi, wanna die?

Start today, use a little speed, you've got five years.

Rot your mind, rot your heart, rot your kidneys, cucaracha.

[announcer] A public service announcement of the Do It Now Foundation.

[Rasmussen] By the height of the pharmaceutical speed epidemic,

50 pills per man, woman and child per year

were being manufactured by US pharmaceutical firms.

The ingredients are essentially the same as what's used

for attention deficit today, including Adderall.

[trippy music playing]

Adderall is a performance enhancer, yes.

[laughing]

Um, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

[Nathanael] When you hit the sweet spot with Adderall, it's like a Zen flow.

Everything quiet, you're quiet,

and things are just there, and so are you,

and then you just do what you need to do.

I have an electric unicycle.

I'm riding like I do every day. I think I was going to Home Depot.

Somebody leans out of the car window and goes, "Fuck you, techie."

Only in the Bay Area would that happen.

It was weird 'cause they just assumed

since I was on an electric unicycle that I must be in tech.

There is an archetype in tech of a person who,

in most cases, doesn't exist,

and he works 16 hours a day, every day, and the code just comes out of him.

And just flawlessly from start to finish, it's just Mozart on the screen.

And everybody wants to be that person.

I did, and I'm sure some part of me still does.

We all want to be awesome at the things that we're trying to do.

And then you throw Adderall into the mix,

and that lets you be the person that's there till midnight or 1:00.

[Eben] Let's go!

You guys know the drill. Give me a good base, a good knee bend.

Pull that belly button to your spine, tighten that core up.

The thing with football is you have to love it.

It's way too hard on your body, and your mind, really.

Go! Keep pushing it.

[announcer 1] Eben Britton, right here, a lot people are saying

that may be the best offensive tackle in the country.

[announcer 2] Arizona has won their home opener.

[Eben] There's nothing that can describe that.

That was the biggest win we've had in a long time.

You don't make it to Division I football, period,

if you can't push yourself to superhuman feats.

And then to make it to the NFL,

that's like a 0.1% of every kid that's ever picked up a football.

[Eben] I don't know if there's a way to get to perfect,

but that's what you're always looking for.

[Brit] I miss the rookie season. That was the drama-free, happy season.

[Eben] Yeah.

Man, I was kicking ass. I'm healthy, I'm strong, I'm quick.

I'm just building on the success that I had in my rookie year.

And we're in a workout, and we're doing squats,

and I went down, and I just feel this squirting.

It's like a tube of toothpaste, somebody just went like...

We started doing tests, and it's like, "Shit, it's a herniated disc. Clearly."

Come on, don't step on those.

I come back to training camp and the coaches were like,

"Dude, what the fuck happened to you?"

It doesn't matter if you're hurt or not. Every guy is hurt.

It's, "Can you get out there and play?"

Because there's always somebody coming behind you to take your job.

This Monday night game,

I was at this breaking point of exhaustion and frustration,

and one of our teammates was like, "I got Adderall."

I took them, and I just felt jolted back to life.

I felt this surge of energy rush through me.

My mind came alive. My body felt alive.

I felt like I was able to get a jump on the snap count,

and I was able to react faster than guys were,

and I could see things that were happening,

like, corners blitzing...

A stimulant is a drug that stimulates people.

It makes you feel more up and awake and alert.

And they also increase euphoria.

All of those things are very positive.

That's why people have their caffeine in the morning.

[Diller] So there's two main groups of stimulants.

There's amphetamine and methylphenidate.

Methylphenidate is the major constituent of Ritalin and Concerta,

two drugs that are very, very widely used.

And amphetamine is the major constituent of Adderall.

This whole class of medications that we think of stimulants

work on the catecholamine system in the brain.

And there are two parts of the catecholamine system.

One is called norepinephrine, or colloquially sometimes

people think about that as noradrenaline or adrenaline.

And the other is dopamine.

And what these drugs typically do in the brain is,

they either enhance the release of catecholamines

or they block its reuptake.

[Hinshaw] They increase reaction time,

they probably increase some tolerance to pain

during the intensity of athletic competition.

[Diller] Low doses of amphetamine or amphetamine-like drugs

get anyone who takes it, child or adult,

to become more deliberate and more methodical.

They will tend to stick with things longer

that are not of interest or are boring.

Adderall had this holistic enhancing effect

to my life at that time.

It helped me in the meetings, film study, game review.

It helped me dealing with the pain.

That was really what spurned on this thing,

like, "I just have to get access to this,

and I have to do it the right way because I don't wanna fail a drug test.

I don't wanna do any of that.

But this is something that can really help me."

[Hinshaw] If you are a professional athlete in the United States,

you can't take stimulants unless you have what's called an exemption.

And a doctor must certify that you legitimately have ADHD

and the stimulants aren't just performance enhancers,

but they're part of your medication.

[Eben] I wasn't even that big then.

I was so happy because it was so obvious that he took it one day,

and then that night,

he was doing exactly what I had been wanting him to do.

Right away, I'd take the trash out or I'd do the dishes.

And I organized my DVD collection by director, alphabetically.

And I think I even called my mom and told her,

"This is so great.

Eb's been diagnosed with ADD and he's doing the dishes."

And I was like, "This is really good.

I'm making her happy.

I'm not coming home and just crashing on the couch."

[Nathanael] The very first time I took Adderall,

I had ADHD symptoms and I went to see a military doctor,

and I got a prescription. I really didn't like it.

It made me more focused on my distractions

rather than more focused on what I was supposed to be doing.

And so I didn't take it again until this year.

I was doing a really intensive programming boot camp.

Someone offered it to me, and it was 1:00 in the morning.

I was like, "I've had a prescription, so I don't feel too bad about this."

I took him up on it and it really helped.

It was definitely jet fuel. Yeah.

I didn't need much at all. I'd take five or ten milligrams a day.

Problems that were previously really exhausting,

or maybe seemed insurmountable, were interesting challenges.

I had the discipline to tear myself away from work,

come home at 11:00, and in ten minutes,

just like, protein shake, brush teeth, go to bed.

And then I went, "Adderall.

Warning, side effects may include being awesome at everything."

And that's how it felt.

I'm sure for a lot of people, they would say, or believe,

or it might be true,

that they're just trying to be the best programmers they can be.

But for most people, I think the end goal is money.

[cell phone ringing]

Hello. Thank you. All right, cool. Later.

The best description of the first time I took Adderall

is kind of like somebody pulls back the curtain,

and now you're able to focus on each person in the audience.

Okay, tell her Blue called.

Adderall definitely helps you be a better capitalist.

When I'm on my Adderall, I'm here to solve problems.

What's the problem? Line 'em up, I knock 'em down.

[woman] She said 175.

[Blue] Let me tell 'em.

I've been blessed to work with Outkast and CeeLo Green, Nick Cannon.

As a manager, you deal with so many different people.

I deal with the business managers,

the label, the accountants, the tour agents.

When you're on your Adderall, it is easier to keep track of people

and to call those people back 'cause you don't forget.

Yo, Mario, it's Blue calling you back.

When you're not on it, people, you get to 'em when you get to 'em.

You're just mad 'cause the good managers are from New York.

We're gonna get to work on this PowerPoint slide

for the Wild 'n Out Summer Pool Parties.

The deal I'm cutting is, any sponsorships we bring in,

we can split with the hotel.

[woman] Is there a deadline?

[Blue] It's Monday. Wednesday would be the ideal time.

If this was Puff, he'd want it Wednesday.

Morning, when I get back from Chicago, I want that deck.

-[woman] With his cheesecake. -Thank you.

In high school, the only reason why I really knew Adderall

was because my siblings were prescribed it.

But no one took it to study, no one took it to party.

It's so hard, minus all the ethical implications,

but knowing that it's out there and it's so easy

and you're just ignoring that, you're ignoring.

You'll take the B when you know you could have gotten an A

just by popping a $2 pill, if you're gonna buy.

You also aren't worried about getting in trouble for it

because you're just a kid with a learning disability.

You're not a drug... You didn't purchase drugs illegally.

I can see a lot of people

that are concerned about buying or selling illegal drugs.

Like, that would be just the same as them buying heroin.

They can process that.

But for a ton of people like us,

you would never be scared of getting caught by a campus police,

or your professor would tell someone,

'cause it's really not thought of as a drug in your mind.

[Delaney] I forgot to take my morning meds today.

Not Adderall. Nope. It can be unfair.

I have a weird relationship with the way that I think about it,

because I was surrounded by people that had a lot more money than I did.

I had to work in high school,

and I couldn't afford private tutors for classes.

So, on one hand, I feel like, if you were someone like me,

using Adderall could have been leveling out the playing field.

But on the other hand, if you're someone like some of those kids,

then you're just giving yourself even more of a leg-up.

I'm from the Midwest,

from a place that has a lot of problems with meth.

You see all this stuff on the news, and the juxtaposition between

the meth-head that lives in the trailer park

that we learned about in D.A.R.E.,

versus the kids whose parents make well over six figures a year.

They're both tweaking out, if you think about it.

Just like opiate painkillers are heroin in a pill,

ADHD medicine is a small dose of meth in a pill.

When we think about methamphetamine from a chemical perspective,

and we think about amphetamine, the active ingredient in Adderall,

the only difference between these drugs

is an additional methyl group on the methamphetamine compound.

Methamphetamine is legal in the United States for prescription.

It's a Schedule II drug, just like Adderall is a Schedule II drug.

But people don't prescribe it as much because of the public hysteria

surrounding illicit methamphetamine.

[officer] We got a search warrant.

They said meth would help me get through my exams.

[Hart] So we think about people who have meth labs,

we think about people who are living in rural America,

all within a negative context.

Then, we contrast that with another amphetamine

that has similar effects.

[woman] Girls, time for your Adderall.

What time did you guys get home last night?

Uh, late.

We oftentimes think of that in a different context.

We think about people who have prescriptions for Adderall,

we think about college students,

we think about people in our society who we like.

I just ended up accidentally taking, like, six Adderall.

I stayed up all night,

I did a real deep dive into Ryan Dillon Davidson's Facebook page,

and I found some shit.

Wealthier kids have access to purified pharmaceutical speed,

and other communities have access to meth. You know, cooked meth.

Although the potency is definitely greater in crystal meth, in smoking it, etcetera,

at the neuroreceptor sites, it has the exact same effects.

[Leigh] I'm surrounded by very privileged people.

These are wealthy people in America.

We have the money to get tested,

the resources to afford being medicated every day of your life,

where you can maximize everything.

Even negotiating the healthcare system and finding the right doctors

is also a matter of privilege, right?

Some people know how to do it and a lot of people don't.

If you have the right connections, if you know who to go see,

I think that also becomes easier to do.

Adderall is perfect for finance work and any type of work

where you have to be detail-oriented,

which is what finance work is.

While I was at Goldman,

I never told anybody that wasn't under the age of 25.

You had to feel it out before you would ever reveal you took Adderall.

And I think there is this fear that, if you reveal it,

then, A, they've never heard of it, they don't get it.

And B, they'll view you as weaker, as inferior,

and they may view you as somebody that can't keep up.

When getting it from my friends became expensive,

I decided it was time to find a doctor in New York.

So, all I did was send a text to a few friends.

So I ended up going to Central Park South, and it was a fancy office,

and it was a nice old man.

And I think once he heard I work for Goldman Sachs,

he was like, "Okay, cool.

He's normal, he'll be fine. He's a version of my idea of successful.

I can write him whatever prescription he needs."

I probably have six or seven friends that go to him currently.

There was a great line in a comedy, Silicon Valley,

when one of the tech workers needed Adderall and couldn't find it,

and the line was, "Just go out on the street on a bicycle.

Half the kids in Palo Alto are taking it."

Hey.

Any of you guys currently on Adderall

and, you know, want to make $50?

This is the generation beginning in the mid-'90s

that was widely exposed to the use of Adderall and Ritalin and Concerta,

amongst their peers.

[Danny Brown singing] ♪ Scribbled in my notebook ♪

♪ And never did homework ♪

♪ Low attention span Guess these Adderall worked ♪

I'm not an MD, but it is possible for Ritalin to get you pretty high.

That's probably what it is. It is a new medication.

♪ It is a new medication ♪

-I'm afraid I'll have to expel your son. -[gasps]

Unless you're willing to try a radical, untested, potentially dangerous--

-Candy bar? -No. It's a new drug called Focusyn.

A drug?

[Jasper] I learned about ADD after being on the medication,

so, I didn't know what it was.

All I knew was it was for school.

It was always just about being easier on the teachers

and being easier on my parents and just being not as loud.

And, I guess, focusing.

But I never had interest in school,

and I focused in, always, what I wanted to focus in.

And that was art and, I guess,

reading when I could read, which took some time.

All right. Let's see, man. How's everything? How's the art?

Good. I got to get ready to do my senior show this year show.

So I'm going to be keeping really, really busy.

-How's it going with your medicines? -Good.

Still taking 'em?

Yeah, but not as much. I take them when I need them.

[doctor] Okay. So sporadically, like we've done before?

Yeah. And I kind of think I would like to stop soon.

-Okay. Good. -Just stop altogether.

Remember we talked about this is just developmental in the brain,

and as you get more mature,

your brain grows more mature, those neurons start making connections.

Then you don't need to use them.

[Jasper] Yeah. I would like to be done with it.

[doctor] Let's see.

-I've had enough since third grade. -Yeah.

[Jasper] Should I mash these tomatoes?

[Regina] Yeah, I'll help if you want.

[Jasper] Yes. Do it by hand?

Just get in there, yeah. It says crush them by hand.

You're doing fine.

Go gentle. Gently.

[Jasper] I went to a Montessori school when I was younger,

along with my sister and cousins.

You wanna start slicing that? I'll do this.

Sure.

[Jasper] They did well in those schools, and I didn't.

When he was little, everybody else would know their alphabet and numbers.

And he couldn't necessarily identify a number from a letter.

-Sorry. -That's okay.

So, we had him tested, and they said that he had ADD.

So we moved him to another school that really...

A very good school, very good.

[Regina] His third-grade teacher, halfway through the year,

said something about him being on medication.

I'm like, "Well, he's not on medication."

And she goes, "Everybody in this class is on medication."

And I'm like, "He's not."

She goes, "Well, I think that you might want to try it."

I was only there for two years before being prescribed Adderall.

[Regina] It was definitely a hard decision

because I was afraid it was gonna hurt his creativity.

I mean, even at three, you could just see he had something.

I didn't want to ruin that.

I tried it, and there was a difference in him that

was just able to concentrate more.

I tested it, because I wanted to see what it did.

And apparently, I have ADHD, too, because it worked.

So, it just helps you concentrate.

So do you think I have ADD, or...

We won't know that until the Ritalin helps this concentration problem.

[Hinshaw] Not so many years ago, the medical profession thought,

"Wait a minute. I'm not sure if this kid has ADHD or not.

There's no definitive test. I'll give her a stimulant and see if it works.

If it works, she has ADHD. If it doesn't, she doesn't."

Interesting idea, probably wrong.

Most everybody who takes a stimulant does focus better and longer,

can pull that all-nighter.

[Jasper] I was being forced to take pills.

That's the thing. I'm not doing it 'cause it's fun and stuff.

I'm doing it 'cause I have to.

When I was in 9th grade, I was taking 50 milligrams a day.

I'd get home from school still grinding my teeth, still wired.

I'd be up till 6:00 in the morning,

just painting in my room 'cause I'd still be wired from it.

The only difference between children and adults, as far as I can see,

in the use of these medicines, is children don't like the higher doses.

As they get higher, they say, "I feel nervous, I feel weird."

And something happens in mid adolescence, that the older adolescents

and adults will often say, "I feel powerful, I feel grand."

[Jasper] I was super embarrassed by it.

When I started going to public school,

it was like, "Yeah, I'm on medicine."

I thought it was funny, just being like, "I have to take pills to calm down."

I was always yelling upstairs,

"Did you take your pills?"

Or, if he was not listening to me or behaving badly,

I would also ask that question, which is probably

more of the annoyance of why he picked up on that.

[Jasper] That's when I started writing stuff like "Take your pills."

And trying to force myself

to be proud of the fact that I can zone in on something

and completely ignore everything.

I started to be proud of it.

Getting up was the obsession.

Just going around with people and being, "That's me."

[Regina] They're just beautiful. Everything he does I love.

[Jasper] The paintings don't really go with the idea of being on Adderall,

except for just being super meticulous and super correct,

and repeated over and over again.

That's what I found to be the connection between that and my Adderall,

was just the obsessiveness.

[Ariana] Everyone says this. For some reason, everyone's like,

"Everyone has a little ADD."

No, that's not true. We have distractions in our life,

but not everyone has a brain that functions like somebody's with ADHD.

One of my earliest memories is being diagnosed.

It's pretty detrimental for people to constantly be saying things like that,

because it kind of illegitimizes... Is that a word?

[chuckling] Illegitimizes the struggle

and the actual power that ADHD might have over somebody's life.

And it is a disorder.

It causes a lot of issues, and there's a stigma around it.

And I think that people throw it off

like it's nothing and like everyone has a bit of it, but it's not true.

[Blue] A lot of people out there think they have it because they can't focus.

But they really can't focus because society has just taught you not to focus.

We've become this one-minute society.

Everything is about shortening attention spans anyway.

So, society, overall, now has ADD.

So then, where's the line between those that actually were born with it,

and those that have grown up in an ADD society.

I think that's where we really are right now.

I try and stay out of the pool during photo shoots.

-Nick looks like he's really struggling. -Man, a hard day's work.

[laughing] It's a tough life today.

I didn't have medication in mind when I went to the doctor.

I kind of knew that I had the signs of ADHD,

just looking at peers, Russell Simmons,

and then I placed myself somewhere on that spectrum.

I talked to Russell a couple of times.

His answer was, "I don't take medicine. I do yoga."

And I went to yoga with him.

I was like, "I don't know if this is gonna get it done for me right now."

Here we go.

[Maxine] We never had a discussion about his ADD as a child.

I didn't think he needed to have a label.

I think he needed to understand that he needed coping skills.

She never took me to a doctor to even consider medication.

She wanted me to learn how to function within the confines

of what I was and who I was going to grow up to be.

Shit, am I in the shot again? Am I in the shot again? My bad.

Having been a special ed teacher,

I've watched, to me,

systemic administration of drugs to little black boys.

I know upon viewing that, I really did not want to...

I must say black and Hispanic little boys.

I knew that I did not want that for my child.

So it was not a happy moment when he announced that,

after all those years of not using medication,

that he felt he needed to do that.

As a kid, I thought of Ritalin as what you put the crazy kids on.

Not knowing that I, technically, should I have been on it.

Everyone was to go on Ritalin and that was the instant cure.

I didn't see it as instant cure, so I would never agree to it.

Just ran him outside a lot.

[chuckling]

Ritalin started as a love story.

A scientist in Switzerland was fiddling around with compounds

and things that were close to amphetamine.

He came up with something he thought might help his wife be more peppy,

play better tennis, literally, and maybe keep her weight down.

He was like, "There's really something to this."

Her name, Marguerite. She was actually known as Rita,

and so he named it Ritaline.

And it was only after Ciba, the Swiss company, put it on the market,

that they took off the '"E," and we now know it forever as Ritalin.

[Conners] In the beginning,

we were completely enamored of the short term effect.

There's nothing so gratifying

as to have the parent come the day after you first give a pill

and say, you know, "I can't believe it.

He's actually... He's normal.

He's a likable kid now."

Oh, you're such a good girl.

[Schwarz] Keith Conners was a seminal figure in the history of ADHD.

He developed the primary rating scale

that was used by doctors to help understand

the clinical picture in children.

He worked on behalf of pharmaceutical companies evaluating new drugs.

Nobody knew anything about all this stuff.

These were difference makers in mental health.

What these doctors at Johns Hopkins were doing

was seeing if there was another pill

other than amphetamine, which had a terrible reputation,

that might help these troubled children.

Now, how are you going to get methylphenidate?

The only way to get it is to ask Ciba for it,

the Swiss company that marketed it.

They said, "Hey, Ciba, can we have a gazillion pills?"

And this oil drum sized barrel of Ritalin pills

ends up coming to Johns Hopkins so they can do their trials.

[Conners] In those days it was possible to go to the principal and say,

"You know, we're trying out a new drug."

And he'd say, "Oh, my God,

if you could calm these little bastards down, it would be wonderful."

We arranged a study on the spot

and did a two-week trial.

The children called the pills math pills.

Because, for the first time,

they were able to sit down and do sums and learn.

The hyperactivity and inability to pay attention among children,

has been understood for a long time.

That's the way some kids are.

And one of the first names was Minimal Brain Damage.

They assumed that there was some sort of damage to the brain.

Either in birth or encephalitis.

It became increasingly clear that that really wasn't the case.

They said, "How about minimal brain dysfunction?"

It was only in 1980 that focus began, if you will,

on the concept of inattention in children.

How about attention deficit disorder.

It had been rebranded as something that people were willing to accept.

And people were willing to allow medication for.

[Rasmussen] In 1996, another company reintroduced, effectively, amphetamine,

same old amphetamine, for attention deficit

on the US market as Adderall.

And it's grown to absolutely enormous proportions ever since then.

[psychedelic music playing]

The drug that became Adderall, its original name was Obetrol.

A pharmaceutical businessman heard Obetrol was being used occasionally

to treat what was at the time of course known as ADD.

And he's like, "ADD, all, Adderall."

That's where the name came from.

One of the interesting phenomenas for me is listening to experts

who were on the ground floor of this.

People like Keith Conners,

now having major questions and regrets about the outcomes of what they had done.

The medicalizing of everyday life,

that everybody could potentially have a disorder,

ultimately trivializes the entire process,

and also puts the whole society in the hands of doctors and Big Pharma.

[interviewer] Would you include yourself as being in the ADHD business?

Or having been at one point?

I think I was in the ADHD business,

and I wasn't really cognizant of how much I was in that business.

Uh, there are big bucks waiting for doctors

who file patients through quickly and give them prescriptions

without knowing what the down effects are going to be.

Some of which are good, but some of which are quite bad.

The United States also is one of only two developed nations

that allows the direct to consumer advertising

of controlled substances.

So when it came to ADHD drugs,

it wasn't just for children who are hyperactive,

who can't concentrate in school.

What they wanted to do is make the mothers more comfortable.

"Oh, my goodness, my kid now takes out the garbage!

What a wonderful world, thanks to Adderall XR."

Every mother is going to be seduced by an ad

that appears to promise better grades in a pill

and better grades in a diagnosis.

It was grotesque what these companies did in the pursuit of profit.

[Hebert] Give it up. Hey, man, thank y'all for coming out.

Good to see you. You all right? Good to see you.

My name is Dr. Corey Hebert and I have a lot of stuff going on.

But I am a physician first.

I'm back. It's me, the doctor for the people.

You got to get rid of your stress. It's killing you.

Seeing patient to patient to patient to patient,

at the end of the day, I've changed 30 people's lives

and maybe their family.

But when I'm in the media, I'm talking to a million people at one time.

Dr. Corey Hebert is an ER physician at the LSU Health Sciences Center.

[Hebert] The way a child sees himself

and how a child learns to cope in the world,

along with his self-esteem and confidence,

is just as important to his success as his physical health,

because ADHD is a medical problem.

My brother. Good to see you. How you been?

-Good. -You're looking good.

I'm going to make my patients do well, and they're going to be successful

with all the tools that I have in my arsenal.

And that's the bottom line. I have to do that.

And I know some people say,

"Well, maybe you should not use medicines as much."

Well, come sit in my chair.

What you must do is make the correct diagnosis,

not over diagnose and not over medicate.

-Tell me how school's going. -It's going all right.

"All right"? What does that mean, "All right"?

Are you making A's, you making B's, you making C's?

[Sherry] The part I like, he don't talk to him as if he's his doctor.

He talks to him like he cares.

All the doctors we had, it's go in,

they check everything and write an appointment.

"We'll see you back here in four weeks."

But with Dr. Hebert, it's not like that.

What about side effects from the medicine?

You been feeling tired? Tell me what you've been feeling.

-No. -No.

Stomach ache, headache, anything like that?

-Headaches. Yeah. -You get headaches?

How often are you getting them?

He was diagnosed with ADD when he was six.

And I heard all the stigma,

how the medication make the children feel.

For two years, I went without giving him medication.

We tried therapy and everything, and nothing would work.

He actually had to repeat kindergarten.

Were you taking your medicine and then suddenly stopped taking it?

Yeah.

Come on, man, you're killing me. You're killing me.

When you started taking it again, you started to get headaches.

-Yeah. -Okay, I'm glad.

You got to tell me this stuff.

The first set of meds, I didn't like the way it had him at all.

Wouldn't talk, wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep.

He already don't say much anyways. So we got Adderall.

When he first started school, he was taking it every day

and he had 2.53,

and now his grades are dropping...

'cause he don't take his meds.

But he's at the age where I won't force him to take it,

'cause he knows the difference, and he's in high school.

If those are the consequences he want to deal with, that's on him.

But I don't like the effects of it sometimes, either.

Y'all good to go.

If a child has ADHD,

we'll do whatever it takes to get them to the next level.

Whether it be medicine, therapy or some other intervention.

But something must happen.

[Sherry] I was the first in my family to graduate from high school.

And I always tell my kids, "I don't want you to be like me.

I want you to be better than me.

So because I have a master's degree, then I want you to get a doctorate.

I want to be able to call you Dr. King."

-That's him right there. -[indistinct shouting]

That's my baby. [chuckles]

When he's not on his meds,

he reacts and does things without thinking about the consequences.

He knows that he should take them,

it's that he don't like the side effects to them.

He won't take it Friday and Saturday or Sunday.

If he takes it Monday, it slows him down completely,

almost to zombie state.

A lot of his friends don't have to deal with that.

So it makes him feel like he's not normal.

So he'd just rather not take it.

[whistling]

[interviewer] What was the research you were able to do about Adderall?

[Regina] I went to the doctor, we tried one medicine, it didn't work,

and then we tried this and I saw a difference immediately.

Come into my shop.

[Regina] Did I do research?

Shamefully, no.

[interviewer] But you were acting on the guidance of...

The psychologist, the doctor, I guess, his pediatrician.

I guess, the teachers at school.

My sister, whose kid was on Ritalin.

I don't know if I would have done it. Now, I google how to open a can.

I google everything.

But then, I don't know that I would even have thought to do that.

[blows]

[Jasper] I got to school and I stopped taking it so much.

I only take it when I write, really.

This isn't pot and booze.

This is meth and it's screwing with your liver.

When I was in senior year, I wasn't allowed to drink or anything

because they were worried it was shutting down.

My blood work wasn't looking good. There was too many enzymes or something.

I had to constantly be looking at my poop to see what color it was.

If that's the case, then this isn't worth it.

So what do we know about the safety issues with stimulants?

There are cardiovascular risks.

There's also a risk of a psychotic episode,

even for people who don't have a history of psychosis.

There's a risk of addiction, long-term.

People can become dependent on these drugs,

and that's, you know, a horrible fate.

You wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy.

[Peter] Whether they realize it or not,

they're banking on the fact that we take Adderall.

The perfect employee at an investment bank

or the perfect employee at a tech firm is somebody that doesn't say no.

There is a culture of, "You do stay up 16 hours for seven days straight."

If the kid to your right and the kid to your left are producing these outputs,

then you should be able to produce them.

But if they are taking Adderall,

then you should probably be taking Adderall.

I was coming out of a particularly rough few weeks of work.

I was working with a notorious asshole on Wall Street.

He had another analyst and myself working around the clock.

And we were up for two and a half days doing Adderall.

We present all this work that we'd been doing to the managing director.

And he flips through it and immediately starts saying,

"Wait, this isn't what I asked for. I actually need this, this and this."

I turned to this guy in my impaired state, and I said,

"Fuck you. This is exactly what you asked for."

And so the next day, I go into work, keep my head down low,

and the associate comes over to me.

He goes, "Did you hear what happened last night?

About two or three hours after you left the office,

the other analyst that you'd been working with had a seizure from exhaustion,

and he's in the hospital right now."

I immediately go and call him.

He picks up the phone and I ask him how he is,

and he says, "My parents are trying to make me quit.

My parents think that enough is enough.

But can you send me this file? I'm being asked for it."

[EKG beeping]

[Delaney] When I was in high school, everyone told me,

"You'll love college.

You'll finally be able to take classes that you enjoy."

I like business, but it doesn't feed my soul.

I take it because it's relevant.

Stimulants are generally gonna help people a lot before they hurt them.

They gave them to pilots in World War II.

It will give you something that you want in the short term,

and so then you're primed that a pill is going to give me what I want.

"That medicine helped me study,

and I did much better than I would have without it.

I'm gonna do it again."

And then, "Now I can't sleep. Does anybody have anything for sleep?"

People need to understand that if you abuse the stimulants,

and young people do,

we've had many patients that is their drug of choice.

They tend to pair them with something that's a downer, like alcohol.

It's easy to have an alcohol overdose if you're on stimulants

because you'll be able to drink a lot more,

and then the stimulants wear off and you're in a blackout.

People use it for work, and so they think it's okay.

I have friends that have gotten to the point

where they can't really do work without taking Adderall.

You get used to it, and then you can't do work without it.

You can't be productive. I've seen that happen to people.

Most people can use amphetamine without becoming addicted.

But ultimately, too large a group of people become addicted,

so it becomes unacceptable for the society to put this much speed out there.

And we're absolutely in one of those growing waves right now.

Those of us on the front line have been feeling this for about eight to ten years.

And right at the moment,

the doctor-prescribed opiate abuse epidemic is taking center stage,

but I'm telling you, Adderall is right below

the threshold of the opiates.

[interviewer] Did you start to attribute success to the Adderall?

I really struggled with not, "Am I cheating?"

But, "Is this really me anymore?"

Should I still feel as good about accomplishing something

knowing that I took Adderall and that really helped me

focus on getting it done,

rather than struggling through my pain or exhaustion.

Especially after I started getting these injuries.

Dislocated shoulder, herniated disk in my back,

L5-S1, torn MCL, torn hamstrings, torn quads, had my bell rung.

Adderall helped lift me out of that.

The problem was, that really productive feeling,

and feeling like I'd conquered the world that day,

it would fall off into this black spiral, into a depression, and into...

It was a crash.

I'd start crashing off of it, so then I'd take more.

A 70 milligram time release in the morning

and then supplementing a couple 20 milligrams

in there throughout the day.

That crash doesn't really go away when you take more.

You spike up and then you're dipping back down into the crash.

It would be an exhaustion thing.

Like, you're running, but your body isn't going anywhere.

You start to float away from yourself in a way.

[Blue] If you're feeling depressed and you stop taking Adderall,

it can lead to the depression more.

That might just be me.

Sometimes when you're not on it,

it's easy to get into your head and just get lost in that space.

[Leigh] It bums me out to know I didn't do it myself.

Me and the Adderall did it.

It's definitely a competition with yourself.

[Jasper] It was definitely an identity crisis, coming off of it.

I will say, me being on it and me being off of it

is like two completely different people.

Like, very different people.

[player 1] Red three!

[player 2] Halfway home.

[Eben] Because it's an amphetamine and it speeds up your metabolism,

it dries you out, it dehydrates your muscles and tissue,

so you become more prone to injury.

So that became a real challenge as well,

staying hydrated through the use.

I really believed he had ADD.

It seemed like his was a medical issue that was being treated.

Whereas any time I had used Adderall to study

or anyone I knew had used Adderall to study,

I looked at it as basically, abuse. Substance abuse.

But I didn't look at it that way until later,

when I realized how much he was taking.

And then, when I started to also feel like his sleep was being affected

and he was maybe using other substances to help him sleep,

I started thinking, "That's not a great cycle."

[Eben] My prescription for Adderall and Vyvanse had run out.

And on a day I didn't have it, I took a Ritalin.

They both treat ADD/ADHD.

That's what I have a therapeutic use exemption for Adderall for.

"It'll be the same thing. It should be fine."

So of course the day I took the Ritalin, I took a drug test, failed it.

They viewed it as two different compounds, completely.

And I was hit with a four-game suspension.

[George Stephanopoulos] This morning, America's golden girl targeted.

[announcer] She's just got so much power.

[Stephanopoulos] The leaked documents reveal

19-year-old Biles tested positive for methylphenidate.

[reporter] Simone was upfront about taking the drugs

and was given a therapeutic use exemption for the medication she takes.

[Stephanopoulos] And one other decorated Olympian

has grappled with ADHD, Michael Phelps.

But some people are now asking

if those drugs gave her an unfair leg-up at the Olympics.

[Hinshaw] We've arrived at the land of controversy.

Should everybody get SAT tutors?

That's enhancing performance, but only certain families can afford it.

Should everybody drink coffee?

This goes way beyond psychiatry or clinical psychology.

It goes way beyond mental health.

What's a level playing field?

Stimulants and ADHD are in the middle of that playing field.

If we play our cards right,

we're going to have to bring ADHD, mental health stigma,

the use of medications out in the open, and have a debate

about what kind of performance enhancement we should allow

and what we value and don't value in our society.

[Nathanael] Your experience changes a lot, as you spend time on a medication.

Initially, it was definitely jet fuel. I didn't need much at all.

I'd take five or ten milligrams a day and be fine.

There was a lot of optimism, and a lot of almost obsession with getting things done,

but it was so fun. And that's not really true anymore.

So now I take 40 a day.

I do things to make that stronger, as well.

I get up in the morning,

and I have a milky, like, protein shake, which is a base.

If I were to have a glass of orange juice,

that would be very acidic,

and it would destroy a lot of the Adderall before I absorbed it.

Brain-hacking is a subset of the larger biohacking sphere.

Which is, "I wanna biohack myself and run a mile faster."

Probably the film Limitless

has done more than anything else to make the public think,

"This is a thing. There are drugs that can make a person smarter."

Like, "Information is pouring into my head like Neo in The Matrix."

I know kung fu.

For the last ten years,

there's been a lot of discussion about cognitive enhancement.

A lot of the discussion has been about the ethics of it.

Is it cheating?

Or the safety of it.

But everybody seemed to be assuming that,

of course, it would enhance your cognition.

So we decided to test and find out.

In some very interesting data

from Martha Farah at University of Pennsylvania's lab,

some of the initial trials had been done

of college students without any sign of ADHD

taking either stimulants or placebo

and every week, getting measures, tests of learning.

It was across a huge battery of different tasks.

In the end, we found no significant difference

between Adderall and placebo,

except for one question.

"Do you feel that the pill you took today enhanced your cognition?"

[Hinshaw] So one of the conclusions may be that stimulants are very good at boosting

your false self-confidence and how well you're learning.

People think of amphetamines being smart pills. They're not.

They certainly can help you stay awake when you should be asleep,

can help you endure a boring task a lot longer.

But it doesn't add anything new or cognition.

The single, most universal effect that amphetamine, Adderall,

has on anyone who takes it, is a feeling that they're doing better.

That's not a small effect, because the feeling of doing better at something

improves your motivation and confidence in doing it.

If you feel good about yourself

and you feel more driven to do what you wanna do,

one could argue that that's an enhancement,

even if it's not actually increasing your IQ in a very concrete sense.

[Lawler] Often, Adderall is an entry point for people

into finding out that cognitive enhancers are a thing.

As a millennial male that went to a great college,

worked at private equity funds and hedge funds,

it's impossible to avoid stimulants.

Stimulant abuse.

Because our definition of medication has changed.

It used to be getting over an illness

versus taking advantage of a loophole to acquire a Schedule II drug.

We had some friends who were on Adderall for off-label uses

and they weren't getting good results.

They thought that they needed it to be successful.

We didn't want that,

so we started looking at alternatives that were over the counter,

without needing to go pretend to have ADHD.

I just got this vision of a very simple page.

Just three elements.

A question, a "Yes" button, and "No, thank you, I'm satisfied."

We can ask, "Do you want great sleep?"

"Yes" or "No, thanks, I'm satisfied."

If they hit "No," it moves on to, "Do you want more focus?"

If they hit "Yes," they go straight to the OptiMind LP.

How can I help you today?

[man on speaker] What if your brain could do more? It can.

Sometimes people put us in the same boat as prescription stimulants,

and I hate that because we're not.

We're meant to help healthy people achieve their purpose.

I don't have ADHD.

I'm a healthy person looking for things that can help make me

the optimal and ultimate version of me that I have in my mind.

I think internally,

everybody is looking for that ultimate next version of themselves.

We started AlternaScript taking ingredients that had been studied

by the top neuroscience institutes in the world,

and saying, "Do any of these actually work?"

And then things started to take off.

One day, all of a sudden, we're on the front page of VICE News

about how cognitive enhancement pills are going commercial.

This research is out there.

And now it's just up to entrepreneurs to put it all together into something

that people can take every day.

[man on speaker] The mind is a beautiful thing.

Unleash yours.

Matt, anything you'd add?

You said excited and dedicated.

I'd just do one more take of that first phrase.

And maybe try picking one or the other

just to drive straight through to the point.

-What about excitacated? -"Excitacated"?

[laughing]

-Sounds like a new prescription. -[laughs]

Cognitive enhancement is not going away.

It's the future of the human species.

All of this is inevitable.

The nootropics movement with microdosing,

with using things like modafinil,

people are taking steps to get to that next level,

whether it's physically or cognitively.

In parts of Silicon Valley now, people are very interested in micro doses

of LSD and psilocybin for enhancement purposes.

And in a culture in which innovation is given such a high priority,

I can imagine ways in which that might play into

the idea of having a more expansive view of things

at the same time that you can get some of the benefits of focus.

[Lily] It's not like a glass of wine or a joint,

or any way that people use to decompress.

I really see it as a supplement, as a tool.

So I microdose every four days.

I grind the mushrooms into a powder,

and I put them in capsules

that measure out to 0.2 grams.

Microdose is about a tenth to a twentieth

of a conventional dose of a psychedelic substance.

That includes the classic psychedelics,

LSD, psilocybin, mushrooms, mescaline, peyote.

You can expect zero psychedelic effects.

The rocks don't glitter even a little,

the flowers have no great interest in you personally.

In fact, if you have anything like that, that's too high a dose.

[Lily] In college, I got Adderall from other kids.

I didn't fill my own prescription.

After college, I felt this mounting pressure from work

to start using my prescription again,

and it was 90 milligrams a day.

The mentality around here is it should have been done yesterday,

and move fast, break things.

I hate that phrase, but that's something everybody uses.

You shouldn't be 28 and 29 and talking about

significant burnout and breakdowns.

Are there better, safer, simpler,

less physiologically disruptive substances,

and that have better side effects?

The substance has never any side effects. They're all effects.

It's just which ones you wanna...

If you're selling, you go for one set of effects.

If you're looking at helping people who are being tortured

by their pharmaceutical, you look at other effects.

[Lily] When you take Adderall, there's a sense of urgency

to get through things as quickly as possible,

but this is, you're comfortable with taking your time,

and you realize that you can take your time to execute properly.

The clue came to me some years ago, where I learned that Albert Hofmann,

who was the man who first synthesized LSD

said that this very low dose area was incredibly under-researched.

And he said, had Sandoz, his company, been more active,

there would have not been a market for Ritalin.

[Lily] But instead, we have this really highly addictive substance

that is a moneymaker for companies and doctors.

LSD and mushrooms aren't that.

[Eben whistles]

When I count to four, you do it. One, two, three, four.

[woman on TV] Starts now on Disney Junior.

I got it.

What? What was that face for?

I haven't had any urge to take Adderall since my career ended, really.

My mindset is totally different.

I used to need that energy and that mental chaos. [chuckles]

[woman on speaker] It's easy to forget that on the most basic level,

we are alive and breathing. We may have problems...

[Eben] Now, meditation has helped tremendously

with my focus, my mental clarity.

So, of course, I have days where I'm like, "Fuck, man. I was in the NFL."

As a rookie coming into the League, people are telling you,

"You're not gonna be a football player forever.

The NFL, it stands for 'Not For Long.'"

But you're a 21-year-old kid who's just realized his dream.

All that shit's going right over your fucking head.

I really took it as far as I could.

I gave everything I had

until the day came when I just couldn't do it anymore.

[Brit] The moment Eben was ready to retire,

I said, "What are you going to write? Start writing."

[exhales heavily]

[Eben] Sometime in high school,

I fell in love with the idea of becoming a writer.

I started reading Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero.

I just felt in my gut, I was like, "Creative writing's for me."

So, as my career came to an end,

my wife really encouraged me

to take these stacks of journals I had

of writing from my experience in the league.

"Riding lightning, that's the best way I can describe taking Adderall.

I took two that Monday night before kickoff."

It's really exciting to be able to be on the verge of figuring out

who am I gonna be in this life after football.

[cell phone ringing]

-Hey, my baby. -[Rahiem] Yes, Mother.

Don't text me, "I'm at the game, Ma." You answer the phone when I call you.

I show him this picture all the time.

I'm like, "See, this is what happens when you don't take your medication."

He kept getting into physical altercations with another student at the school,

and Rahiem's nose got broken.

I actually had to press charges against the other kid.

And I felt like I could no longer handle him,

so I allowed him to go live with his father in New Jersey.

That's his oldest brother. He's 18.

There was plenty of incidents. And the day he turned 15, he stole my car.

[interviewer] To do what?

He just stole my car.

I went to go look for my car, and it was gone.

Parents are crying. By the time they get to the doctor,

they're crying, they're hurting.

They don't know what to do

with these little people when they act like that.

[Sherry] There's so much negativity going around,

saying that if a kid does this too much, if a kid does that too much,

a doctor automatically wants to say that they're ADD or ADHD

to just give them medication.

Me being a parent that actually has a child with it,

and I can tell the difference between Rahiem and my oldest son.

And as a parent, sometimes it's disheartening because...

you feel like you're not doing everything that you can do for your kids.

I still try and encourage him from here.

I ask him every day I talk to him,

"Did you take you take your meds?" And he goes, "Yes, Mom, I took my meds."

But... I'm hoping this is a good move.

'Cause I'm missing him like crazy. [chuckles]

[Regina] I don't think he'd have gotten through high school without Adderall.

He would have gotten through,

but I can't say that he would be where he is,

to be honest, if he wasn't on it.

As much as I think he's very angry at me for putting him on the Adderall,

I think that he appreciates me being the heavy,

because if I wasn't, you know...

where would we all be?

[Nathanael] I was very fortunate.

I started this process on New Year's, 2016, and said,

"Erin," my girlfriend, "I think I'm going to do a boot camp."

And then I did all of the things that I had to do

to make that happen.

One of those things was getting on Adderall.

I pretty much got everything I wanted.

The pay's great, and a recruiter from Google approached me.

And that's crazy. For me, that's crazy.

There's no way any of that would have been possible

without the medication.

That might be because I have really severe ADHD,

and have a hard time performing in the ways needed.

It might be because it was jet fuel and it got me where I needed to go.

I don't try to draw a line between those.

[interviewer] Have you tried any of the stimulants yourself?

One time, in that first Ritalin study.

It was sort of late afternoon.

I felt like it was such an enhancement of my day.

So, yes, you know, it was a good experience,

and thank goodness I did not decide to dip into that barrel ever again.

[interviewer] Did you get your grades back already?

I got one grade back from the exam I took this morning at 10:00.

And I got an A.

The stress really doesn't ever leave entirely.

But I'm excited, once I graduate, to be able to leave that at work.

I have a pretty good feeling

that this will be the end of my relationship with Adderall.

Hopefully, in the adult world, I'll manage my time well enough

that there won't be a time where I need to take prescription drugs,

to get my work done.

Hopefully, it's the end.

I don't know where I will be, but when I picture it,

I don't picture myself taking Adderall.

[Blue] The purpose of Adderall for me is to focus on work.

If I can get to a place where work is running itself

and things are okay, then I don't need it.

If I hit for $200 million dollars tomorrow,

I'd never take Adderall again.

But then I need my Adderall to remember to play,

'cause I keep forgetting to play the lottery. [chuckles]

[Ariana] I'm just so much more boring when I'm on my medication.

Also angrier.

But yesterday, I had to study all day, so I was on Vyvanse,

and I took an Adderall, and I was wired the whole time.

[chuckles] Felt like shit, but I got my work done.

So, it's just this balance you have to figure out.

[Delaney] I'm just getting a little disillusioned

with this higher education thing.

You need a bachelor's degree to be anybody.

And we're all high on ADD meds as a group of 20-something-year-olds

just fighting each other for...

For what? To set the curve in a class?

[Schwarz] What you have here is a dynamic

of not only people using what is a dangerous drug,

particularly when used improperly.

But you also find a bit of an arms race building up

where if enough people see that their competition is doing it,

they feel like they kind of have to do it, too.

[Chatterjee] I think focusing on the use, or abuse,

depending on how people feel about this,

is symptomatic of something broader.

This highly competitive environment

in which people feel compelled

to compete beyond their possibilities to get ahead.

This kind of focus

on material progress and productivity...

What's the cost of that?

And is that a cost we're willing to live with?

[Sherry] I wouldn't say that I'm happy to have Adderall,

but I'm happy that Adderall is an option for him.

[Jasper] After not being on it all the time,

I feel more comfortable with who I am, with my body and stuff.

I would never put my kid on Adderall, ever,

'cause I know what it does to you,

and it's not fun being on it.

I feel like it was too easy to put

a kid on something close to meth and not question it.

There's other things you can do. Just teach him how to focus.

It was about being the best.

The NFL is a symbol of that level, really.

[interviewer] Do you wish that you had not taken that Ritalin?

[inhales deeply]

No. I mean, I was doing what I had to do,

and I'm happy to be on this next chapter of my life.

It's never so bad that you can't climb out of the hole.

[Brown] Adderall, the drug of our time.

I suppose the question of what's lost if we all were in an Adderall world,

is the question, "What is it all for?"

I just lost my thought. Hang on one second.

I had it. I had an example.

What we also might say is lost is what human beings do

when they muse and when they reflect

and when their thoughts wander.

I know what I'll do. Okay.

And out of that comes, what?

Creativity, art,

extraordinary moments of human connection.

Of course, also moments of intense human pain and grief,

but I would describe them as the experience of being human itself.

[synth music playing]