Take Your Pills

This is a terrible documentary. As a person who has adult adhd, it was so frustrating and painful to watch. If you have ADHD, please don't watch this because it is very upsetting. This film is about two subjects and it absolutely fails to link them. It's about people selling and using drugs and it is about people taking their medication to function. They missed so much important information, which I will now briefly mention, at least you will have learned something. Some people might just see students who want to do their best, I see lucky people who don't have a neurodevelopmental disorder taking drugs because they can't handle a little bit of struggling in school. The effects they are describing are not what a person with adhd experiences (which seriously makes me wonder what it is like not to have adhd). They describe the day going faster, their thoughts going faster, a drive to get stuff done. For me it does the opposite. Everything slows down a little, I can observe thoughts more clearly, I can get stuff done without jumping from one thing to another. I cannot believe this wasn't pointed out in the documentary. When you link the illegal selling and using of drugs and people taking their medication to function during the day, at least point out the different effects it has on neurotypical people. I also find it ridiculous that they don't mention any negative effects in detail. Bad circulation (freezing hands and feet), dry mouth (can lead to tooth decay), loss of appetite (to the point of anorexia), insomnia, anxiety. Why would anyone want this if they don't have to? Someone said in the beginning: side effects: being awesome at everything. Again the film fails to link the two subjects. Eating disorders and other mental disorders and illnesses caused by every day use of adderall are apparently awesome. For people with adhd who are medicated, the choice is to experience these negative effects (and perhaps get prescribed more medicine to deal with those) or not to function, whether that's dropping out of uni or being unable to leave the house because of overstimulation, and or something else. For people who don't have adhd the choice is an A or a B on their test. This film fails to make another connection which I was hoping for at the end, which is how "everyone" using adderall affects people with adhd and the stigma around it. In my opinion films like this are part of the problem, not pointing out the 'not so wonderful' sides of the drug, not pointing out the difference in effect, not pointing out that medication helps for people with adhd, but it is still no where near a neurotypical brain (adderall does not give adhd brains an advantage over neurotypical brains!). When they made this documentary they had over one and a half hours to get information out there and make a difference, and they did nothing with it. The only thing this documentary has taught me is that most people do not realise how lucky they are not to need any medication to live a 'normal' life.