#blatant and very basic misunderstandings about what ADHD even is or how it functions

[lastoneout]

I know you meant well, and I understand the sentiment. But addiction is legitimately an issue with ADHD meds, and it is very very possible to become addicted to Adderall or other stimulants even with ADHD. I do agree that it is too tightly regulated, but I do think regulation is important, at least until there are more social changes and social programs that provide enough of a safety net to help with addiction. Thanks for listening, and I hope you're doing well ❤️

I appreciate it, but out of curiosity do you have a source? I've been researching this as best I can and I have not found anything backing up the claim that people with ADHD are at risk for addiction to their ADHD mediation. Lots of stuff saying people with ADHD are more prone to other kinds of substance abuse, especially when under-medicated or just not medicated at all, as well as lots of people with ADHD saying they used to have substance abuse problems before they knew they had ADHD and stimulant medication is what helped them recover. There are also loads of studies showing that being medicated from a young age actually drastically reduces your risk of developing a substance abuse disorder later in life.

When it comes to abusing stimulant medications it seems like the main issue there is people taking more than they were prescribed or taking it incorrectly, which is a problem obviously but is true of most prescription meds? I have been taking my methocarbomol wrong for like a month beause I misread the bottle, and I have to have a lot of pill organizers for my meds because my ADHD makes me forget I've taken them and if I forget I will take too much, but tbh at that point I'd figure they just need a higher dose and aren't getting it or need to pay more attention to the labels on the bottle, but I'd love to hear from those people and learn what their motivation was and what happened.

Looking at all my sources the general consensus continues to be that people with ADHD are at a such a low risk of becoming addicted to their stimulant medication it's barely worth talking about. To contrast that, the only sources I've found that do insist you can get addicted are private, for-profit addiction help centers(and randos on Quora) and I'm sorry, they have a very high incentive to convince people they have addiction issues and are very prone to lying(one page I found claims that a sign you're addicted to your ADHD meds is "not feeling alert when you don't take them" as if that's not just...what ADHD is?? and another says trying to refill them early is a sign of abuse when in reality not being able to refill them before you're completely out means we go days or even weeks without the medication due to pharmacies being slow or not having it on hand, it's not a sign of addiction to not want to have to go off the meds that make it possible for you to live your life), so I do not trust them as reliable sources. Not even kidding, no matter how I word it, when I search on google or duck duck go if a person with ADHD can become addicted to their own medication the only thing that comes up is for-profit addiction help centers and every page is full of blatant misinformation about ADHD that would take like two seconds to fix if they actually cared about anything other than making money.

On top of that, a lot of pages talking about this seem to be confusing needing a medication to treat your serious medical condition with being addicted to it. If you claim that someone with ADHD is addicted to their meds because without them they have trouble sleeping, can't focus at work/school, and that stopping cold turkey makes them feel awful then you just. You don't understand how ADHD works or what an addiction is. People with ADHD don't crash when they lose access to their meds because they were addicted, they crash because they have a serious medical condition that requires treatment and the treatment has stopped. Same shit if I was denied my inhaler while having an asthma attack to like prove I'm faking(which also does happen and gets children killed). Not sleeping, doing poorly in school or at work, being late all the time, not eating, feeling confused and tired? Those are symptoms of ADHD, not signs of addiction, and medication helps because you need it, not because it gets you high.

Also, according to a doctor who writes for ADDitude magazine(which tbh isn't perfect, but nothing is) says there have also haven't really been any studies on long-term stimulant use in people with ADHD aside from ones on being at a higher risk of addiction to other substances in folks with untreated ADHD, which doesn't mean there isn't some issue we don't know about for ADHDers specifically, but when looking at people who take stimulants for narcolepsy it seems like there are absolutely no long term negative health effects of taking a stimulant mediation THAT YOU NEED. Obviously if you don't need it you can get addicted and it can hurt you and if you have like...idk an allergy to it or a heart condition or the meds just aren't helping/are making things worse we should look at other options, but if you need a stimulant medication and don't have a medical condition that can be worsened by them, then it's completely safe and the risk of addiction to the medication itself is so small it's not even worth talking about or bringing up. Like everything coming up on this subject is talking about people with ADHD being prone to addiction to other things like opioids or alcohol, not their medication, and when they start the medication it helps them stop abusing other substances because they don't need them anymore, and all of the resources I can find on adderall addiction are aimed at helping people who do NOT have ADHD who are abusing the drug to get high or lose weight or do better in school.

I've also seen TONS of anecdotal stories from people with ADHD saying they wouldn't try to get high on adderall or any other stimulant medication because it doesn't get you high. Instead it makes you feel like complete shit and it's a waste of the already hard to access and very expensive meds we need to function, so there's no point in even trying to abuse them. And that's a history I share, when I started adderall they put me on WAY too high a dose and I just felt...eugh all the time. Too high a dose(or drinking too much coffee) gives me very bad brain fog and exhaustion and I disassociate and altogether just makes me feel like garbage, but when I got on the correct, lower dose all of that went away. I can't imagine trying to get high on them, I've been high on other things before(weed, opioids, benzos, benadryl) and that is NEVER what it feels like and it's not fun or relaxing or enjoyable, it just sucks. (Or well, the benadryl high also sucks, but still feels way more like a "high" than taking too high a dose of adderall and I could see someone doing it on purpose for fun, I cannot possibly fathom someone with ADHD enjoying taking too high a dose, the experience has no redeeming qualities.)

Anyway, I do appreciate you being nicer than the last person, and I'm going to keep doing my own research, but so far there is quite literally ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I can find anywhere I've looked that suggests that getting addicted to stimulant medications when you have ADHD is common or even remotely likely to happen and is certainly not something anyone with ADHD needs to worry about. Still, I would love to see the sources you or anyone else have on the topic, because from where I'm standing this seems to be something that the average person or doctor doesn't need to be worrying about at all and the scaremongering just leads to people with ADHD suffering for no reason at all and being terrified of seeking help that would dramatically improve their lives with very little actual risk.

Edit: Also, yeah we should have better health resources for people who do become addicted to substances, but waiting to loosen the regulations around adderall based on unfounded claims that the people who need it are at risk of becoming addicted to it is getting people with ADHD killed ALL THE TIME because of how our conditions puts us at monumentally higher risk of injury, accidental death, and addictions to substances that actually harm us. I said it before and I will keep saying it, I would rather 1000 people get high on adderall than ever have a single person who truly needs it go without. We are being killed by this logic, our lives are proven less valuable than the lives of people who don't have ADHD and I will never support that. Decriminalize all drugs I am not and have never in my entire life been joking about that. When denied meds we need people turn to unsafe drugs and alcohol and then we die. Giving people who need medical help medical help is what prevents drug OD deaths. Everyone I know who has turned to street drugs did so because doctors refused to help them, I use marijuana to treat my insomnia because my doctors refused to give me sleeping meds due to the belief ambien is worse for me than never sleeping, and tons of people with ADHD suffer of addiction to dangerous and risky drugs from unregulated sources and they all say adderall is what fixed it. Denying us adderall is infinitly worse than just fucking giving it to us and not acting like a fucking Protestant obsessed with suffering to prove our virtue or whatever.

There is no argument for denying people the meds they need that isn't rooted in racism(the war on drugs, misconceptions about non-white bodies), misogyny(self-explanatory), transphobia(self-explanatory), and ableism(again, self-explanatory). Why should we, the people who are having our lives ruined all to protect abled people, have to sit down, shut up, and get treated like criminals to get the treatment we need, if we are granted it at all? Who on earth does punishing us like that help??

People with ADHD should not be collateral damage in the push to protect poor, precious abled people from maybe possibly getting addicted to adderall. That's wrong and it always will be.