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Monday 26 March 2018

Adderall. A dangerous pharmaceutical drug - so why do healthy students take it?

Adderall is a dangerous drug. It has been known for many years that it has life-threatening side effects (or DIE's as they should be known - for the distinction, click here). Yet many fit and healthy young students take them - as a study aid!

Why?

The Preppers and Survivalists Daily News website asked this question in March 2018. The Natural News website asked a similar question  8 years earlier, in July 2010. So nothing has changed!

Why?

Adderall is a drug used for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). It is a combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, two central nervous system stimulants that interfere with the chemicals in our brain, and the nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control. Yet, as the Natural News article said

                "Even though the side effects of .... Adderall are potentially deadly, many college students are now using the drug to increase energy levels and brain power in order to get good grades."

The drug is a potent cocktail of amphetamines, so it should be available only on prescription. Yet as Natural News reported "it is quite easy for students who do not necessarily have a disorder to obtain Adderall". So why do some students want to take it? It is used on ADHD patients to help them concentrate and focus. And of course this is exactly what students are expected to do in their studies.

Yet even back in 2010, the Patient Information Leaflet enclosed with Adderall stated that it could cause high blood pressure, anxiety, cocaine cravings, severe infections, heart attack, stroke, and even sudden death. Moreover, it is known to cause hallucinations and strange visions, hear voices, and even develop extreme psychosis! The drug was even pulled from the Canadian market in 2005 because 14 American children died from taking it, as prescribed, with another 12 children having strokes.

Yet nothing has happened, as the 2018 article feared to above indicates.

               "Adderall is one of the most popular drugs in America.... It has ... cruised under a dense fog of pharmaceutical justifications for almost a decade. ADD and ADHD diagnosis has grown and given way to mass prescribing of Adderall. Worse ... the black market for Adderall has grown enough to fill in any voids. Millenials are taking Adderall as if it were candy.

               "Known as a 'focus drug' that helps college students “cram for exams,” Adderall use is the second most used drug on college campuses (the first is marijuana)...... Between 2011 and 2015, standard corporate drug testing found a 44% increase in amphetamine use.

               "Adderall is an addictive drug, something that many college students don’t realize at the time of use.... They often aren’t aware of the dire state of withdrawal that is caused by stopping Adderall usage".

The Preppers and Survivalists article outlines that in 2009, the Scientific American reported that Adderall use, over a long period of time, could change a person’s brain dynamic so drastically that they often ended up depressed, anxious, and paranoid.

So why has the conventional medical establishment not moved to stop the use of Adderall? And why is it still being taken by students? The answer is simple.


The Preppers and Survivalist article comes up with a solution - but not a workable one.

               "We need to better educate parents who are constantly told that their children have ADHD and ADD. Teachers, school counsellors, and doctors, consistently seem to pressure parents into believing they need to drug their children. Some parents, of course, are just lazy and are looking for any easy solutions to their child’s behavioural issues. Often, behavioural issues are just the result of normal child behaviour. Pharmaceutical influence offers easy solutions. The problem is, parents, don’t realise that they are trading their child’s ultimate health for irreversible brain damage."

This is insufficient. It hasn't happened in the past, in won't happen in the future. Patents are not uneducated, nor are they lazy. Nor are students stupid. The fundamental problem is that we do not have access to, we are not being given the information we need. It is being kept from us. And we live in a society that has come to believe over the last 100 years that conventional medicine has the answers to all our health issues, that if we have a problem all we need to do is to 'pop a pill'.

Conventional medicine is often called 'scientific' medicine. But how can conventional medicine be 'scientific' if it relies on withholding important information, and not telling people the truth about the 'side effects of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

This is why nothing has happened over the last 8 years, and why nothing will happen over the next 8 years. Everyone needs to start asking questions, but not deluding ourselves that we can expect honest and straightforward answers from the sources we might expect to find them.

Adderall is no longer banned in Canada. The ban was quickly lifted, even though the drug got no safer, was no less addictive, and no more effective than it ever was. The pharmaceutical companies paid for their own 'scientific study' which, perhaps unsurprisingly, found that the drug was safe.

It is NOT safe. Doctors and Drug Regulators might say it is safe, and we might expect the mainstream media to tell us the truth - but they won't.

So we have to find the truth by ourselves. We can do so by reading the literature about this (and other pharmaceutical drugs) in sources that are still available to us. For example, the Drugs.Com website is now owned by a consortium of the major drug companies, but still has a webpage that deals with Adderall, and all its known side effects. Read it for yourself using this link.

And then, for goodness sake, stop taking it!