In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a very important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841]. Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.
What is wrong with a psychiatric industry that is financed by drug companies? Well isn’t that very obvious: they will try and try to classify more and more mental conditions as ‘diseases’ simply because their financers want them to do so. Nowadays children can’t behave like children anymore or they are ‘hyperactive’ or diagnosed as ‘ADHD’ and pumped full of drugs of which no one knows what the long term consequences of their use are.
Adderall is abused mostly by college students and young adults. Estimates are that somewhere between 20-30 percent of college students regularly abuse Adderall. Adderall has the dubious distinction of being the latest addition to the rogue’s gallery of lawful drugs that have made the transition to the black market. In recent years, abuse of Adderall and its imitators has increased by nearly 200 percent.
You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them. This effort is known as “disease mongering,” a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick.
It turns out you don’t need to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in order to get the prescription drugs that treat it – you just have to know how to fake it.