Stimulants are so in demand they’re hard to get hold of, but Celeste McGovern finds the unadvertised side effects of amphetamines are not so appealing
Jim Best was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder (ADD) nearly 20 years ago at eight years old. A smart, good-looking kid, he was navigated through the diagnosis without medication, and he got through school alright.
In 2018, at age 20, Jim noticed he had trouble sitting down to work at things he wasn’t interested in. Online he found his symptoms of poor organizational skills and lack of motivation were described as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
It was a new acronym for the old disorder that used to be confined primarily to children but now was netting a growing number of adults. He figured this was his problem that had never gone away.
One trip to his doctor, and Jim walked out with a prescription for 20 mg twice a day of instant-release Adderall—a first-line amphetamine drug widely prescribed for ADHD.
“It was the greatest pill I had ever taken in my life,” the 26-year-old recounts on Jimbo, his YouTube channel. It did everything it claimed to do. He had more focus. Work became fun. He had more energy.
Best of all, a few months later, when he and a friend launched Savage Garage, a YouTube channel about driving exotic cars, he could rally all day and edit all night, burning the candle at both ends, so long as he had his Adderall fixes.
As his supercar channel grew through 2019 and 2020, Jim found himself juggling more and more tasks, and with the reality-type filming, he felt he always he had to be “happy-go-lucky” on camera. He soon found himself blasting through his monthly prescription in two weeks or so, and his brand manager made sure he had some “happy pills” on the side so he didn’t run out and get “ornery.”
He knew his drug use was a problem, but “nobody wanted to see unhappy Jimbo,” and at 24, the YouTuber just couldn’t see a way out.
Jim’s racy world started unraveling in 2022. His business partner took his own life, and his other best friend and brand manager, who’d had multiple sclerosis, died suddenly of a heart attack.
One night in July 2022, Jim suddenly felt his throat tightening, and he could barely breathe. Nearly unconscious and sweating, he felt something was wrong with his heart and called an ambulance. He was hospitalized, but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, apart from severe dehydration. Maybe he was under too much stress, they suggested.
Videos of Jim around that time show a skinny, pasty young man (he weighed just 130 pounds) with hollowed cheeks and a fidgety, strung-out look. Incredibly, he just kept carrying on “popping Addys” he says, though “no amount could fix the problems” as he pushed on with new business opportunities.
After the scare, Jim decided to focus on his health. He joined a gym, started eating better and put on some weight, all while still popping pills. Then, in August 2023, he filled his usual prescription but noticed the drugs just didn’t work the same.
Incredibly, he was tired after taking the powerful nervous system stimulants. He started feeling sick all the time, like he was getting a flu. His energy was low, his mood was all over the place, and he was increasingly anxious and depressed.
Googling his symptoms again, Jim found that lots of people were complaining about their ADHD drugs not working. Videos about the problem had 15 million views, according to one news report.
Maybe because of a suddenly huge demand for ADHD drugs and the resulting shortage, people were stretching out their doses or getting generic versions of the drugs that affected them differently, one doctor told the New York Times.
It may have explained his problems, and Jim was furious at his doctor, who hadn’t said anything to him about addiction, or generics. But he realized he was “a slave to this drug” and the time had come to get off the wild ride.
“I didn’t want to play this game again, where the medicine makes you feel great and then you come crashing down,” he said.
He tried “going cold turkey,” but after a few days of misery, depressed and barely unable to leave his bed, he decided to taper the amphetamines. It took him several weeks, but as each week passed, he found himself slightly better. He felt his “brain turning on.”
“You want to talk about a vicious cycle,” Jim warns. “The thing that builds you up also completely tears you down, completely destroys you.”
Hardly anybody is talking about this, and the media is silent on the issue, he adds, “because that would interfere with sales, and the last thing you want when people are making a lot of money is for someone to talk about it.”
Most current headlines about ADHD are about the continuing global shortage of drugs since an explosion of diagnoses during the Covid pandemic, leaving manufacturers and regulators scrambling to meet the new demand. “Maine mom searches for answers to shortage of ADHD drugs,” says one. “Despite a tenfold increase in ADHD prescriptions, too many New Zealanders are still going without,” says another.
Ryan Hendry, 30, told the BBC in May that every morning when he takes his medication, it’s like a “doomsday clock” is counting down the days until he runs out. And Richard Minkley, 33, of Nottingham, UK, who started taking the drugs in 2021, said he found himself searching for the drugs like “some weird junkie” when he ran out recently.
“It has been catastrophic. Not getting support has led to complex PTSD,” he said. “At its worst, it has meant screaming at people who aren’t there; I hit myself over the head, I had a complete personal collapse.”1
Between 2020 and 2021, Adderall prescriptions in the United States alone shot up more than 10 percent—41.4 million were dispensed in 2021.
By 2023, among 23- and 24-year-olds, more than 10 percent were using amphetamines including Adderall.2 Younger groups were well on their way to beating that number. During 2020–2022, 11.3 percent of children aged 5–17 years had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point, which under standard-of-care practice would lead to prescriptions.3
Though ADHD has been around for decades, it broke into the social media limelight during the Covid lockdowns, and its star has not stopped rising. On TikTok alone, views tagged #adhd numbered 11.4 billion by 2021 and are at over 24 billion today.
“There’s a certain amount of social contagion,” British psychiatrist and University College London professor Joanna Moncrieff told WDDTY, speculating that the lockdowns gave people more time to look at social media, which generated the buzz.
Another thing happened during lockdowns to foster the #adhd trend. Governments let practitioners start diagnosing and dispensing drugs online without in-person consultations. This led a new telehealth industry to sprout.
Companies like Cerebral Inc. in the US and Frida in Canada offer online ADHD questionnaires for adults that take less than three minutes to complete. Cerebral’s quiz asks questions including these:
Answer “sometimes” or “often” to these questions, and you’ll be referred to a practitioner who will chat with you for a few minutes more. Then you should have a prescription in under half an hour. Cerebral offers to deliver your prescription to your door for cheaper than going to the pharmacy.
Cerebral doesn’t offer Adderall or any other stimulant, but Frida does, as do some other companies. The low barrier to obtaining a prescription has made it easier to abuse the drugs.
Although the mainstream reports suggest an underlying pandemic of addiction and a crisis on the verge of erupting, they don’t mention it—or any other side effects of the drugs, for that matter.
For those, you must scroll through a huge cadre of social media influencers discussing their own ADHD symptoms, how to recognize ADHD, how to cope with ADHD, or how great they’re doing since getting their diagnosis and starting drugs.
It’s only on the less regulated (and less trafficked) platforms like Reddit where the threads about ADHD drug side effects pop up immediately. There’s an 18-year-old posting that he’s worried that his penis has shrunk dramatically since he started his prescription.
“I feel weird,” says another post from Blueberrypiev, who had been taking 30 mg Adderall and 40 mg of the antidepressant Prozac two and a half weeks and started noticing unpleasant side effects a week in. “My breathing feels super shaky I have a splitting headache and the shakes of course.
“I can’t tell if my heart is beating fast or it’s my entire body vibrating but I think it’s fast. I felt like I was melting for a bit earlier too, it’s 45°F and I have two fans pointed right at me.”
There are dozens of posts from people on ADHD drugs frightened by their racing hearts. “Does anybody else experience heart palpitations when using stimulants? My doctor told me heart palpitations are normal, it’s just uncommon for people to feel them,” says one. Studies are documenting the cardiovascular side effects of stimulant drugs, including weakened heart muscle (see ‘Cardiovascular effects,’ below).
There are also people complaining about sudden chronic anxiety, agitation, irritability, panic attacks, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea, brain fog, weight loss, loss of libido, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, hallucinations, tics and more.
“When I take my medication, I can get things done more efficiently,” one Reddit poster said, “but I can’t feel anything. I don’t feel happy, or angry or sad, just empty. Food doesn’t taste good, it’s to the point where eating makes me physically sick. I can’t smile or express any emotion at all. All I can feel is this vast emptiness and it makes me feel awful, like life isn’t worth living.”5
According to a study published in 2022, 95.2 percent of participants reported experiencing at least one ADHD drug-related adverse side effect in the past month, with an average of 5.8 symptoms each.
Most frequent were sleep disturbances (47.9 percent), anxiety/panic attacks (47.7 percent) and depressed mood (45.6 percent). Ironically, 45 percent said the drugs increased their “emotional impulsivity / mood lability,” and more than half of those with sleep problems or emotional impulsivity reported “feeling jittery/restless.”6
Other research has found that children lose weight in proportion to the doses of ADHD stimulants they’re taking, and they may develop a “serious relative height deficit.”7 The drugs also reduce bone mineral density.8
With so many people taking amphetamines, a big worry is addiction. The catastrophic opioid crisis led to waves of deaths, joblessness, homelessness and broken families. Many sought illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl in subsequent replacement addiction epidemics. What’s in store for amphetamine addicts?
Is it a coincidence that Teva Pharmaceuticals, the main manufacturer of Adderall; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Concerta; and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of Adhansia XR, have all been court-ordered to pay billions in opioid lawsuits in the US?9
Even some who see the drugs’ benefits in their lives wonder what would happen if they couldn’t get them.
“I started Adderall when I was 15. I finally got straight A’s and kept it up through college,” one woman posted on Reddit. “It didn’t amp me up, it calmed my mind and allowed me to focus.
“I’m 42 now, and every time I go off it my life spins into depression and I can’t even keep up with my house. I don’t think it’s a bad drug if you have a mental disorder. But when you get cut off, or there [are] medication shortages, it can lead people to self medicate on street speed or alcohol.”
Methylphenidate (Ritalin and Concerta), mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall) and lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse) are all powerful stimulants that leverage the same underlying mechanisms as methamphetamine—known on the street as meth or speed. Some experts suggest there’s a difference between how people diagnosed with ADHD and “normal” people process the drugs, but stimulants can affect anyone potently.
The addictive nature of these drugs is well documented. “Because of their high potential for abuse that can result in dependence, prescription stimulants are classified by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration as Schedule II medications,” reads a recent study on the problem. “As a result, prescription stimulants are considered a controlled substance by federal and state laws, and individuals who misuse them without a valid prescription are subject to criminal charges.”10
It’s not surprising they’re popular with youth. One 2015 study found 17 percent of college students misuse stimulants to study longer, though ironically other studies have shown that students who do so tend to spend less time studying and have similar or lower GPAs than those who don’t.11
Some say it’s easy to get trapped when that starts. “I did Adderall my freshmen year and thank god it didn’t get into a really bad problem,” one woman commented online, “but I remember that I had a pill that I was going to take during lunch at school and my friend threw it away and I bawled my eyes out. It doesn’t seem like a problem until you don’t have it.”
If nearly one in five students are gambling with the risk of getting hooked, the underground addiction problem could be enormous. “I don’t see it talked about much, and I know that there’s a lot of people struggling with it,” says YouTuber Tori Nishini, who says she gets a lot of personal messages when she talks about her struggle coming off the drugs.
While attending college for a business degree, Tori took a “study pill” and thought it helped her. She went and got an ADHD diagnosis. (“I got my Adderall like candy at a candy shop. In and out of there.”)
She would go a few days without the drug and then binge to meet a deadline. This went on after she moved into the corporate world, but long before she quit, she felt like “a prisoner to this drug.”
It took Tori a whole year of therapy, of struggling and bingeing, before she emerged from her addiction, which she recounts as the hardest time of her life.
For many, the high of starting the ADHD drugs, like any street drug, is what lures them in.
“Those uppers are tough man. Dangerous game!” @rkbvideos575 commented on a YouTube video. “At first, miracle drug, my life is changed forever, this is what it’s like to be normal! Three months later I’m at triple the dose and I can’t force a smile unless I’m freshly dosed.”
YouTuber Matt Spear says starting out, the drug was amazing. “I felt high. I felt like I could fly . . . I could get all this work done.”
He would give some to his friends and they would “laser focus” on video games together. “Time flies when you’re on Adderall,” Matt adds, “but you get focused on the wrong things.” Already addicted to pot, video games, vaping and porn, he found himself craving them “10 times more.” He was scrolling on his phone and “vaping like a spaz.”
Soon the original dose of the drug wasn’t giving the same effect, and Matt noticed, “I had two versions of myself: me off Adderall and me on Adderall.” Off the drug, he had “horrible beliefs” about himself, about life, about what he could do. On another Adderall pill, suddenly he was motivated and could “conquer anything.”
He also noticed he was getting “skinnier and skinnier.” His sleep was “messed up” because he was so stimulated all day, he couldn’t relax, “so then I was smoking weed to go to sleep.”
His penis “shriveled” (like the 18-year-old described on Reddit). It’s known to users as “Addy dick,” he says. Matt was also sweating profusely at odd times and started taking more and more to “get things done.” Like Jim, he would use up his prescription in two weeks and then, when he was out, “All I would do is smoke weed.”
Fortunately he found an app to curb his porn addiction (NoFap) that in turn encouraged him to start controlling other bad habits in his life. He says that without the support of the NoFap forum, he might not have gotten through the most difficult days of his withdrawal from Adderall.
The good thing, he says: “I realized I could start to regain some kind of control over my life.”
Thankfully, for those fighting a stimulant addiction, new resources are springing up to help, and the inspiring stories of those who conquered addictions are coming to light.
Former Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson shared a post on her Instagram page after giving birth by C-section, saying she would be refusing narcotic pain control. Back in 2010, she was prescribed Adderall by a “not good doctor.”
“Fast-forward seven years of being heavily addicted to it and having it control me, when I finally freed myself of it, I swore anything even remotely addictive I’d stay away from,” she added. “It affected every part of my life and changed who I was. I never want to feel out of control like that again.”
YouTubers like Nishini and Lauren Stone of the Amphetamine Recovery channel offer tips and resources. The blog Quitting Adderall (quittingadderall.com) offers forums for people to get support while quitting, and some people recommend Narcotics Anonymous (na.org).
For those who feel stuck in the trap of an ADHD diagnosis or imprisoned by ADHD drugs, there is hope. “I haven’t thought about Adderall in a while, and I feel a lot better,” says Jim Best, who’s now focusing his energy on weightlifting and a fitness channel. “I’m glad this happened at the end . . . I probably saved myself a lot of health problems.”
The impact of ADHD stimulants on the heart has been known for some time, and some doctors are even prescribing beta-blockers like propranolol with ADHD stimulants to counter heart arrhythmias.1
A 2024 study looked at national Swedish registry data of 252,382 individuals with ADHD aged 12–60 years. All the participants had prescriptions of methylphenidate between January 2007 and June 2012.
Those who used methylphenidate drugs like Ritalin and Adderall had a significantly higher rate of cardiovascular events within six months of treatment compared to matched controls. The study found no difference in risk between those with and without a history of cardiovascular disease.2
Most studies like this one have looked only at short-term effects, but recent research looked at long-term data and found that young people taking ADHD medication are also at risk of developing cardiomyopathy, weakened heart muscle that makes sufferers unable to complete daily tasks.
Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine analyzed data from 80 hospitals and compared patients prescribed one of the stimulants with healthy controls. In all, 12,759 pairs of patients aged 20–40—one taking medication, and one healthy person—were analyzed for 10 years.
Those taking medication were “significantly” more likely to develop cardiomyopathy during the 10 years, though the numbers in real terms remained low. For every 2,000 patients, one would develop the heart problem, and this rises to one in 500 after 10 years.
Amphetamines such as Adderall and Ritalin increase the risk by 17 percent in the first year and by 57 percent over eight years.3
Psychiatrists and health agencies will concede that data on the long-term effects of ADHD stimulant drugs is “limited,” but some long-term research has linked the condition—and especially the use of drugs to treat it—with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.
Researchers from the University of Utah looked at state medical records and compared the number of patients with ADHD who went on to develop Parkinson’s with the number in the general non-diagnosed population.
People with ADHD were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with a movement disorder, while those on stimulant drugs had an “especially pronounced” risk—8.6 times higher than the base rate in the population.1
Many of us have nutrient deficiencies thanks to modern farming and food production practices. These are some nutrients that can boost your brain function if you bring them up to more optimal levels.
Magnesium. Though most people get some magnesium in their diet, low levels are common, by some estimates affecting up to 80 percent of people worldwide. This mineral regulates metabolism and maintains homeostasis in all organs. In the brain, it harmonizes nerve signal transmission, maintains the blood-brain barrier and combats oxidative stress. According to a 2023 paper from Italian and French researchers, magnesium deficiency is a factor in chronic inflammation, the “common denominator of most diseases.”1
Dosage: magnesium bisglycinate, 250–320 mg/day for women, 250–420 mg/day for men, or follow label instructions
Iron. Iron imbalances have been linked to cognitive symptoms, including ADHD.2 In one controlled study of 23 children with low blood iron levels, 80 mg/day improved ADHD symptoms.3
Another study linked low iron levels to baseline ADHD symptoms, and to the dose of amphetamines required for clinical improvement.4
Dosage: Have your serum ferritin levels checked, then follow label instructions
Omega-3 fatty acids. These healthy fats have been researched extensively for their role in brain functioning.5
Dosage: 1,000 mg EPA/DPA in fish oil daily
Vitamin and mineral complex. Researchers tested a 36-ingredient vitamin and mineral formula against a placebo in a controlled trial of 80 adults with ADHD. About 65 percent of those taking the 15-pills-per-day micronutrient dose (sold as Truehope EMPowerplus or Hardy Nutritionals Daily Essential Nutrients, see truehope.com and hardynutritionals.com) showed a greater than 30 percent drop in at least one ADHD symptom.6
Dosage: choose a high-quality supplement and follow label instructions
If you have ADHD symptoms, such as lack of focus and attention to detail, impulsivity, and poor memory, but you don’t want to take stimulant drugs, what else can you do? This amino acid and herb may improve your brain function, including your cognition and attention.
L-tyrosine
Tyrosine, or L-tyrosine, an amino acid in protein foods like meat, eggs and fish, is a precursor to brain chemicals like epinephrine and dopamine, and it can enhance their production.
One 2015 review found that tyrosine helped improve working memory, speed up information processing, and boost mood in stressful situations. It also found the amino acid can improve convergent thinking, the ability to pinpoint a correct answer.1
A 2022 study looked at measurements like heart rate variability and blink rate after tyrosine supplementation and found it had a calming effect. It helped participants slow down their thinking without impeding accuracy and improved their ability to delay gratification.2
Side effects may include nausea, headaches and heartburn. Tyrosine may also interact with other drugs, such as thyroid medications, monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) antidepressants and stimulants, which affect neurotransmitters.3
Dosage: 500–2,000 mg/day; start low and increase gradually as tolerated
Rhodiola rosea
Rhodiola rosea, a famous Tibetan medicine, has been studied for its impact on mental health conditions in 11 randomized controlled trials to date.
“Studies have shown that R. rosea can improve cognitive functions such as attention, accuracy and memory, and has been proven effective at improving the focus of both adults and children,” a team from the University of Pennsylvania found. “It works by increasing the sensitivity in the neurological and nervous system that produce serotonin and dopamine, which are both essential for effective ADHD symptom control.”4
Dosage: Rhodiola rosea extract (containing rosavin), 250–800 mg/day (split into two doses); it has a mild anti-clotting affect, and doses over this amount may cause bruising
Exercise has multiple benefits for cognitive performance. In one study in Germany, 150 healthy kids aged 13–16 years were randomly assigned to groups.
One group performed “bilateral coordinated exercises,” like bouncing a basketball with one hand and a volleyball with the other at the same time. The other performed general exercise without the coordination component.
Then both groups were tested. After just 10 minutes of exercise, the coordinated exercise group showed far greater concentration and attention.1
If you or a loved one has symptoms you think could be ADHD, or has been diagnosed, consider a functional medicine approach, which looks into potential root causes.
Diet, nutritional deficiencies, sleep problems, and environmental pollutants like plastics chemicals and heavy metals have all been linked to ADHD (see WDDTY May 2020), so a qualified functional medicine practitioner could help with the detective work, organize appropriate tests and come up with a holistic, individualized treatment plan. This may involve diet and lifestyle changes, supplements and detox methods.
Here are some useful resources for finding a practitioner near you.
American College for Advancement in Medicine
acam.org
The Institute for Functional Medicine
ifm.org
Natural Health Worldwide
naturalhealthworldwide.com
You could also consider neurofeedback, which measures the electrical activity of the brain and feeds back that information to the individual so they can learn to control it. Several studies show the therapy is effective for ADHD.1
Here are some resources to help you find a neurofeedback provider near you.
International Society for Neurofeedback and Research
isnr.org
National Neurofeedback Network
nationalneurofeedbacknetwork.com
Psychology Today
psychologytoday.com
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