Interview with MEL Magazine

I was recently featured throughout an article in MEL Magazine titled: “Is Adderall the True ‘Gateway’ Drug?” written by C. Brian Smith.  Brian is a professional writer and has a fascinating catalogue of work.  My favorite article of his is this piece he wrote for Vanity Fair in which he dined at the White House with the Bush’s (while forgetting he was riding dirty, lol.)  

Brian’s subject matter is usually always interesting and I encourage y’all to  take a look at his most recent works here.

Brian and I ended up speaking for several hours spread out over the following weeks.  It was pretty cool to give my opinion on Adderall and share my past experience in the same article as renowned Harvard Psychiatrist Edward Hallowel; the world’s leading expert on ADHD.  Also quoted in the article are psych and mental illness professionals from UC Berkeley,  the University of Pennsylvania, and rehab clinics all over the world. Brian himself is a Yale graduate so this article is about as legit as they come.

When MEL Magazine posted the article to Twitter, it touched a nerve with several stimulant users and they came out to comment on the story.  MEL’s editors eventually ended up having to add a disclosure in the introduction as a result.  I can’t really blame the people that spoke out against the premise of Adderall being such a dangerous prescription drug.  When I was kicking ass and getting promoted and making a lot of money, I had attributed much of my success to Adderall.  If I came across an article that could have made obtaining a prescription harder to get, I would have been pissed too. 

I do believe Adderall has it’s place in our society.  There are people that take it responsibly and even I was doing pretty well on it for over a decade before I crossed over to meth addiction and went completely off the rails.  However, a serious problem that I do take issue with is the marketing and advertisements that promote Adderall as the solution to your kids’ bad grades and messy room.  I don’t know what the minimum age one should be before Adderall is prescribed, but there is something seriously fucked up with 7 and 8 year olds being put on this shit.

The advertisements above should be illegal.  In fact, in most developed countries they are illegal.  People that come to America are often confused as to why they see commercials for prescription drugs being marketed directly to the consumer.  What the fuck would an average consumer know about how medicine and new treatments actually work? The pharmaceutical companies are bypassing medical doctors and appealing directly to end users.  They are packaging and marketing pharmaceuticals as if they were breakfast cereals..

It reminds me of the SNL Xentrex commercial with the Rock.  “Xentrex?! What the hell is Xentrex!?”  LMAO… And while it is a fake commercial on a comedy show, that skit touches on a legitimate dangerous truth in our society.  We are valuing effective marketing and sales of units over what is best for the customer/consumer/patient.  I am not even sure what the proper term would be for an individual that watches a commercial for a drug, then goes out and gets a prescription for it because they were convinced by the marketing strategy that it was a solution to their problem.  At that point, would they even been considered a patient?  In that scenario, a patient becomes an ordinary retail consumer.  Billions of dollars of research, years of FDA trials and approvals, all condensed to a photo of a kid removing the head of a monster costume to reveal the “real” son underneath.  His true potential and self has now been set free by Adderall. JFC.

Either way it was awesome to see the inclusion of the alphatweaker blog into a legitimate article with input from serious professionals and written by a professional writer.  It gives some serious credibility and additional relevance to the blog.  I thought it was pretty cool that the story features the blog several times throughout the article.  It was all a new experience and I enjoyed putting in my two cents providing whatever insight I could. 

Here is an additional link to the article itself.