My Background:

I have an information-processing disorder where I learn what I would ESTIMATE [no way to know for sure] that I learn about 3x slower than the typical student … and this results in dyscalculia as well as ADD-like symptoms. I take Adderall to help me focus better so maybe I can focus better and take in more information so I don’t have to study 48 hours a week (this is NOT an estimate- I am required to keep track of study hours for my sorority. I turn my phone off, don’t listen to music, and don’t have a Facebook).

My psychiatrist told me this:

There is NO placebo effect for students with ADD. I don’t know for certain if administering a placebo pill to non-ADD students would work. My opinion is, however, after reading a ton of research (about to graduate with a BS in Neuroscience) that there will be a slight placebo effect on non-affected individuals, but it won’t produce a hyper & focused all-nighter in the same way that a stimulant would.

1. adult ADHD
2. brain scans to diagnose ADHD
3. ADHD is a “neurobiological,” or other such made up nonsense word, disorder.
4. Med students have ADHD because med school is hard.
5. paradoxical effect of stimulants in ADHD

In all reality, if ADHD progresses into adulthood, it becomes antisocial personality disorder. This is supported by study after study. The DSM-IV-tr does not support a diagnosis of adult ADHD. Brain scans on people who allegedly have ADHD are NOT diagnostic and are indistinguishable from sleep deprivation. Even this is shaky, since many, many studies admit that the diagnostic criteria for ADHD are barely followed by anyone, in favor of personal opinion or poor diagnosis in the first place. Most, if not all, studies on ADHD use circular reasoning and authoritarian statements, instead of evidence, to support popular assumptions about ADHD. There has never been published evidence that there is any organic damage or abnormality involved in ADHD. Med school is hard (and boring), suck it up; it doesn’t mean you have ADHD. Doctor shopping is illegal and unethical. What kind of doctor are you going to be if you support this? Psychostimulant drugs affect ADHD patients exactly the same way they affect those not diagnosed with ADHD.

Medicine is not like this at all. The primary focus of a medical student isn’t to compete against other students, it’s to absorb as much information as possible and apply that information. They need gain these skills because they will be important to them as physicians.

Addressing the issue of “competition,” there are people with fundamental advantages from the outset; there are people who will not have to pay a dime for their medical school education. There are still others who have had extensive investment into their childhood and high school years to make them develop the skills to make them smarter. There are similarly those who were born into very poor or unsupportive backgrounds. All supposed disadvantages or advantages aside, as long as a physician is outstanding, why scrutinize the method by which he came to reach his or her greatness?

One possible response is that it could have long-term psychological consequences that are detrimental to the physician’s ability to treat patients in the long term. My response is that Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians of our time, took amphetamine salts every day of his professional career to help him focus on math. I don’t think he was ever addicted. Secondly, there are many physicians who are on anti-depressants and other medications that would otherwise not be able to work or study to become a physician in the first place. Finally, those who have ADD and ADHD have demonstrated that amphetamine salts can be used responsibly and taken daily at controlled doses. Knowing my friends who have taken Adderall, I can say that they are educated, understand the possibility of addiction and measure their doses carefully. If this is “drug abuse,” I’m certainly finding it hard to connect the image a hard-working and enterprising pre-professional student in the medical field with that of a junkie.