Take Your Pills

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.

First off, I was addicted to speed for about a year and a half. Speed is just non-pharma Adderall. I tried Addy, it was great, but way too expensive for my lifestyle. During my depression I had to make friends, do my job, get passing grades, all things I could no longer do normally. I've lived the life they're describing in the film.

Now there are a few reasons why I gave this film 2 stars.

1) It's EXTREMELY REPTITIVE

I honestly couldn't watch the first 20 minutes without being forced to skip sections of the movie. It just pounds into your head that "omg hey everyone, everyone else is doing it and you just don't know, or maybe you do cause you're in college or in business" But it's not true.

2) It exaggerates immensely

Not EVERYONE and their mother is doing it. I've been to college, and while it was a fairly conservative college, the level of abuse is so exaggerated. They act like every college kid HAS to do it and DOES do it, and that's just flat out not true. At my school in particular I would say less than 20-25% of kids have even tried Adderall.

3) It underlines this massive problem and gives no answers

It briefly skims over nootropics, and vaguely mentions "hey btw Adderall has long term effects! I guess you'll just have to guess what those are because this isn't an informative documentary, this is a shock value documentary!!!!" And that's honestly what pissed me off the most. It's not an informative documentary. It's a shock value documentary.

All they care about is spreading an exaggerated message that Adderall is being abused. Yes it's a problem. No they don't give you a solution.

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.

While the film raises many interesting points, it seems to jump around a lot from those who use it recreationally to excel in their work or studies, to those who have legitimate uses for it. Also, I found it didn't actually do anything to dispel the positive aspects of adderall or discourage those wanting to take it recreationally but it does deter those who want to use it for its actual purpose (ADHD). They just kept seeming to bang on about how great it is to really help you study further and in the wrong hands may encourage more students to try getting hold of the drug.

Overall, interesting aspects within it - such as the history of these drugs - but lacked a coherent structure and bounced all over the place.

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."