5 Attention Deficit Drugs Reviewed (by Taking Them)
When I first applied to be Cracked's resident drug reviewer, I was informed that "That isn't a thing" and that "We'll be testing tomorrow." But after I went ahead and wrote this anyway, then misguidedly launched a series of pro-drug children's literature and even wrote this science fiction serial novel about the manifold virtues of rampant chemical liberation, the higher-ups started to reconsider ... caring about what I do. So now that they've stopped checking my column for libel before it goes live, let's do another installment of the drug review! Quickly, before they come back!
Thesis
My first foray into the field of professional junkieism was full of mistakes, I understand that now. The chief error was buying all of my prescriptions in baggie form from a man whose office was "the wet spot beneath the pier." But perhaps more scientifically unsound was my own faulty motivation: I was testing for the wrong thing from the start. I understand crosswalks, and I once caught a squirrel with my bare hands; I'm as smart and alert as any human being needs to be, practically speaking. What I really need is more focus. And, as with all things, I assume that stealing prescriptions is the best way to get it.
Test
To measure for any potential increase in concentration, I will be repeatedly watching a 10-minute loop of a sheep chewing grass to techno music. I will measure the efficacy of each drug by seeing how long into the clip I can get before I click away and start Googling He-Man mashups. Our baseline is 0 seconds, because I didn't even manage to hit play the first time. Instead, I watched this three times and then played with my dogs for a while.
#5. Natural Solutions
Hippies frequently mistake me for a man who tolerates hippies. This mostly leads to a lot of (frankly unnecessary) bloodshed, but it has also taught me a few things -- mainly, that Mother Nature was the first and maddest scientist. So if we're trying to trick our brains into productivity, why not huff a big bag of organicity first? This article insists that concentration is really a simple matter of adjusting the amount of lubricated fish in your life, and that makes a strange kind of sense to me. Do I have problems focusing? Yes. Am I eating lots of greasy sea life? No.
Well, there's your problem.
Don't Take If:
Really, the only risk of reaction from natural medicine is from allergies. And as everybody knows, it's impossible to be allergic to something you've never had before. So I've gone ahead and stocked up on the most exotic, oily-ass fish I can find (for less than 10 dollars): These discontinued Latvian pseudo-sardines. There's some kind of half-fish, half-man skull on the back with a giant cross through it, which is a funny way of saying "organic," but what are you gonna do? They're Northern Europeans; anybody who shares a geopolitical region with Bjork gets a day pass from logic.
Side Effects:
The complete absence of human companionship. Probably because they make your breath and skin smell like an old Russian's wet underwear.
Video Test Results:
I made it 35 seconds into the clip before I noticed this on the sidebar. Curse you, Internet! I am but a man, with all of that creature's vainglorious weaknesses!
#4. Ritalin
Sometimes it's best to start with the obvious. If you're looking to buy a car, you go to a car dealership; if you want a Big Mac, you go to McDonald's; if you want a mattress, you go to Mad Matt's Mattress Mattorium. So if you find your priorities constantly shifting from work to shiny objects, you go with the big name first: Ritalin.
Don't Take If:
According to their website, one should not ingest Ritalin if one has "a fructose intolerance, glucose-galactose malabsorption or sucrase-isomaltase deficiency." I don't understand what any of those words mean, so I have to assume that they don't apply to me.
Side Effects:
This is weird: Ritalin lists its side effects as "fast, pounding or uneven heartbeats, feeling like you might pass out and aggression." But what if you're always on the verge of passing out (it's called having a good time, squares), you're aggressive because people are stupid and constantly in your way, and your heart only beats that way because you're so fucking fast?
Video Test Results:
I managed to get a full two minutes in this time, but man, that clip of He-Man covering pop songs by homosexual icons really got in my head. I had to tab away on the off chance that the Internet might have Skeletor doing some Queen covers ...
And it fucking totally did.
#3. Concerta
Wikipedia Commons, Johann H. Addicks
Wait, I'm confused. I started taking this one because I thought it was called Concentra, and that brought to mind images of strong, purposeful men focusing so hard on their tasks that to-do lists literally exploded under their steely gaze. But upon closer inspection, it seems to be called Concerta. So it's, like, a music drug? That seems a bit redundant. We already have a music drug; it's called "all of them."
But oh well, I already have a bottle of the stuff, and you know what they say: Once you open a prescription, you have to take all of it or it'll go bad.
Don't Take If:
You have a family history of Tourette's syndrome. That's oddly vague. Why not? Will it react with the medication? Will it give you super-Tourette's? Or will you just become so focused that it'll decrease your ability to tolerate your family's hilarious outbursts?
Side Effects:
Nothing too bad. I've stopped sleeping and started swearing, and I now have to snap my fingers every time I use a comma, like there, or here, or hey, did anybody else notice that this paragraph is punctuated to the beat of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane"? No, just me? (,,)
Video Test Results:
Oh, holy shit! I watched the whole thing twice. This is amazing! I'm not totally sure if it's due to the increased concentration, or if it's just that I have more uninterrupted time to focus on my tasks since I started calling everybody Captain Balls and stinking of the fruits of the Baltic Sea, but I am really getting some shit done now. I mean, so far that "shit" has just been staring at this sheep, but I am doing it. I'm really doing the ASS out of it!
I take Vyvanse, and I know how you feel.
ReplyJesus. My ADHD meds just make me lose my appetite. (Yes, they actually do.)
ReplyYou mean people actually use these legally? Shit.
ReplyThere are some things on the internet that concern me. A ten minute video of a sheep chewing grass to techno music is one of those things. It leaves me with an unshakable question that threatens to usurp my soul.... WHY?!?!
ReplyGold. Pure gold. Well done.
ReplyROTFLMAO!!! Hey, you had a more adventurous time then I did. Methylphenidate puts me right to sleep. Hard to focus when you're asleep. Although, if dreams could count as adventurous, I guess I also had a great time, while testing that one out.
ReplyI hate to be a moaning b***h about this but where you said "Really, the only risk of reaction from natural medicine is from allergies" made me twitch.
ReplyThe fact that a drug is a "natural medicine" rather than man made doesn't suddenly make it any safer. Obviously in this case munching on too much fish guts isn't going to kill you, but there are plenty of other things that could.
I know it seems like a stupid complaint considering the focus of this article, but it's a very common misconception that bugs me.
Ditto. Natural != necessarily safe. There are all sorts of organic compounds that can utterly ruin your body and that also appear in nature. The entire reason we started producing pharmaceuticals was because we noticed that for every one positive active ingredient in a herbal cure, there were thousands of potentially harmful active ingredients, thus we distilled out the one good ingredient and packaged that as a drug.
Not totally true, BGH. In the case of many pharmaceuticals, the original plant was safer. For example, an overdose of foxglove would first cause vomiting, but an overdose of digitalis goes straight to killing you. A lot of those extra compounds were important safety measures in some cases, and enhanced the effects in others (like opium).
f*****g lost it at spratsblud.
ReplyConerta and Ritalin are the same exact thing, concerta is just time release methylphendate. I'm very disappointed adderall isn't on this list since it being the holy grail of these kitty stimulants.
ReplyI started weeping during number 2.
ReplyUsually if a drug says that you should be off of MAOIs for at least two weeks prior to consumption that means that the drug is going to drastically increase serotonin levels in your brain, and if you already have SSRIs building up serotonin levels to prevent depression, you could potentially have a series of seizures and go into a coma or die as a result of being on the two drugs simultaneously.
ReplyI had a therapist prescribe me an ADHD drug called Lamictal. She nonchalantly informed me that if I developed a rash while on the medication I would just flat out die, but insisted I should still take it anyways. Needless to say, I haven't been back to that therapist.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYes, there's a reason why clinical psychology/psychiatry cannot be considered actual sciences.
sean, psychologists and psychiatrists are two different things. psychiatrists are fully trained medical doctors. they hold an M.D. and then get further schooling.
Lamictal is not an ADHD drug, it's for bi-polar and seizures. Your doc is retarded
Concerta DID make me entirely stop sleeping. And eating. But hey, my mom loved it because it made me less annoying.
ReplyI tried taking fish oil once but all it did was give me incessant fish flavored burps.
Concerta messed me right up, and my buddy even more. And yes, both were prescribed.
Concerta did help me focus, but could pretty much only focus on one thing only, and it was like I was on speed sometimes, always wanted to move, talked a lot more. Which was weird, because I was ADD and not ADHD (even though they are both now called just ADD).
I'm on a different "medication" now, which doesn't have those effects, but does help.
These ADHD drugs are a strange thing. They are supposed to make you focus but I took them once as a teen and tweaked all night long.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesThat's because these drugs are made to help people with ADHD... when you suffer from ADD or ADHD, you become more focused when on stimulants, which is why many people with the disorder try to self medicate with caffeine, nicotine or cocaine. If you do not have the disorder, than the drugs affect you the way caffeine, nicotine and cocaine affect NORMAL people. This article was funny, but seriously, ADHD gets the worst reputation because of ignorant, misinformed people like you MrsJennyB.
ADHD and ADD are both questionably real and any claims that the drugs affect ADD 'patients' differently from anyone else are erroneous at best.
i totally agree with everything wweltz said i have adhd and yes stimulant effect me diffrent then they effect people with out it
TheKos, you should check out a copy of the DSM printed after 1973 (HUGE spoiler alert, they delisted homosexuality a few decades back.
Because according to that, as well as ANY mental health practitioner with a license not printed on a cereal box, it's a pretty well established and proven fact.
But I guess that one guy you knew who totally snorted ritalin to get high out by the bleachers is probably a more reliable scientific reference than all those scientific journals and studies anyway.
this is the funniest and stupidest stimulant self-experimentation i've read since the erowid archives.
ReplyI'm going to have nightmares now...
ReplyI laughed, but I was also reminded of when Aderall made me try to kill myself, and that made me sad. f*****g with brain chemicals is scary biz.
Replyf**k big pharma!
It's called population control. That's why most of the drugs that are for assorted mental problems also have the potential side effects of "increased suicidal thoughts or tendencies" and "death".
You're better off with a bottle of painkillers, and bottles of hard liquor. It's best applied at your nearest seedy dive bar. Not only can you get your drugs and liquor, but hookers are abundant and cheap. Once you've drunk yourself almost to oblivion, the hookers will be attractive enough to pay 'em for the $5 quicky.
When I go, I want my COD to say "He went out with all the style and finesse of Charley Sheen. A cigarette in his mouth, a smile on his face, and two hookers in his bed with him..."
Since when are concept albums a bad idea?
Replysince always.
Due to the HeMan mash-ups (Queen indeed) I got distracted. It took me almost an hour to finish this article and I only watched 5 seconds of the sheep. I didn't even know I had ADD, thanks a lot Brockway!
ReplyThat sheep video is so addicting!!
ReplyMedication for anxiety can make you go pretty crazy too. It's too bad some of us have to take meds in order to be able to function properly. I've been switching my pills around for a long time and still don't have the right combo.