From its use in World War II to stimulate and keep soldiers focused to its widely accepted use as a "healer-all," Adderall has played a deceitfully beneficial role in American educational and social history. Today, it is mostly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adults. While Adderall can be helpful in the classroom or work field because it forces ones brain to conform and focus, it also brings about social, ethical, and health-related complications that lead to disturbing long-term effects. Adderall is becoming more common and available due to over-prescription by doctors and recognition of it among students as a socially acceptable means for completing tasks. Society does not embrace that cognitive diversity, a term used to acknowledge that people think and learn in different ways, is not only normal but also important. The pressures to succeed and fast-paced life style of the demanding modern world are key factors that push people and parents to seek stimulation for themselves and for their children. Over-prescription is the source of Adderall misuse, which  causes the aforementioned social, ethical, and health issues. The use of Adderall needs to be more strictly regulated because with such a high level of accessibility, the result is a world in which an increasing percentage of adults cannot handle life or take on problem solving without the help of cognitive stimulants.

Pressures to succeed and complete all of life's daily tasks in today's competitive world are a leading factor in pushing students and adults to use Adderall, and because of its accessibility, it is easier than ever to obtain both legally and illegally. Rising college students are expected to do a wide range of extra-curricular activities and maintain excellent grades so that they can get into college and be successful. These hectic schedules are common today and cause stress among adults and students and can result in inability to pay attention or complete tasks. In Matthew Varga's "Adderall Abuse on College Campuses: A Comprehensive Literature Review," a recount from a teacher states that students were: 

joining clubs without enthusiasm because they thought the membership would look impressive. They were ignoring -- or perhaps, by now, even forgetting -- what they enjoyed doing...grimly trying to squeeze out another few points on the GPA or the SAT, in the process of losing sleep, losing friends, losing perspective (Varga).

The lack of interest is a problem because it makes completing tasks less enjoyable, which is a culpable factor in driving people towards Adderall. A New York Times article called "Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions" by Alan Schwarz tells a story about a college student who became overwhelmed while studying for medical school entry exams and turned to Adderall, became addicted, and killed himself two weeks after his prescription expired. According to his parents, he had never exhibited symptoms of ADHD as a child but obtained a prescription from a doctor after completing a quick survey when he decided he was having trouble studying. In this case the stress of daily life is the culprit behind the student's inability to pay attention to his studies. It is an extreme example of how lenient regulation and over-prescription of Adderall can lead to serious mental and physical health issues. It also illustrates a frightening trend among young adults of the generation that is now in high school, college, and graduate school: they think Adderall is there to help when things become overwhelming. 

With the increasing acceptance of Adderall as a drug to treat ADHD comes oversimplification and misunderstanding of the disorder itself, which presents social  repercussions. An important fact to note is that ADHD is not a medical condition; it is a psychiatric diagnosis. There is no blood test or screening that determines whether someone is attention deficit because as long as the only concern is ADHD, there is nothing wrong with the individual's health. It is determined through observing behavior and comparing observations with what is considered "normal and acceptable." Stephen Tonti's TedTalk called "ADHD As A Difference In Cognition, Not A Disorder" proposed that ADHD is not a cognitive disorder so much as a cognitive difference. He points out that society pins cognitive diversity down as an issue that needs to be fixed, when really it is something that can be advantageous when the individual is removed from the things that do not pair with his or her cognitive abilities. It is not that the individual needs to alter himself or herself to fit the institution, but that he or she needs to alter the institution to fit him or her. Tonti states that he was lucky enough to have parents and teachers who endorsed his hyperactivity. He plays seven instruments and claims to be able to hyper-focus on movie clip edits for twelve straight hours, all without medication. His ability to do this is a result of his ADHD. According to Tonti, counter to society's pressure to excel in institutions and fixed curriculums, one should find and excel in the things that captivate one's interest and align with one's cognitive abilities.

It is important for the public to be educated about ADHD and the problems that the over-prescription of Adderall can lead to because people need to be aware of the long term damage this trend points towards. In "ADHD Is Best Understood As A Cultural Construct," Eric Taylor describes ADHD in terms of the brain and it's legitimacy as a disorder. He states that efforts to standardize criteria for the disorder across the world have not been successful because of cultural differences that affect the way ADHD symptoms are measured. He further explains that someone with ADHD does not have a clinically abnormal brain and that "immaturity in children is a biological fact, but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture"(Taylor). Distractedness and hyperactivity are normal in children and it is problematic when society labels them as a disorder. Taylor says that giving young children Adderall is a major social mistake because it leads parents, teachers, and doctors to disengage from an important and natural social responsibility: raising well-behaved children who are capable of coping in the world. This in turn creates the ethical misconception that it is appropriate to endorse the "pill for life's problems." By providing a pill that makes people function the "right" way, doctors discourage people from realizing their own abilities to problem solve, and condemn millions of children to a life of dependency on a drug that has not been proven to have long-term benefits.

The over-prescription of Adderall is an ethical danger to society because due to the fact that anyone can get a prescription, the line between fairness and advantageous behavior in any situation where people have to perform becomes blurred. Obtaining a prescription for Adderall so one can complete all of his tasks is not illegal. It is, however, unethical because the Adderall users "take the drug with the knowledge that it is not needed to simply 'level the playing field,' but with the intent to gain an advantage through 'cognitive enhancement'"(Fenton, Wunderlich 2010). Adderall effects non-ADHD people the same way it affects people with ADHD, so when people take Adderall to focus for an exam or study for ten hours, fairness must be questioned. For example, if a student takes a dose of Adderall before the SAT because like most high school students he has trouble focusing for four hours, and his scores improve by 100 points on each section, does this take away the validity of the SAT as a means for measuring future academic success? The scores no longer have meaning because they do not represent the student's abilities. Instead, they represent what he can accomplish when he takes cognitive enhancers. Based on this, and if we define the SAT as a college entry exam, the student is potentially going to get accepted to a college that would not want him otherwise, thereby taking away an acceptance from another student who took the exam without help from Adderall. This raises questions of ethics because the top colleges accepting students that they think are capable of handling rigorous curriculums are actually receiving people who rely on pills to accomplish things, whether the pills are prescribed or not. Since Adderall gives students "a chemical advantage by granting them superior concentration"(Fenton, Wunderlich 2010), work completed under its illicit influence reflects a dishonest image of an individual's ability. The ease with which doctors prescribe Adderall leads to easy access, abuse and misuse, and is the source of this question of ethics.

Besides being unethical and socially harmful, over-prescription of Adderall causes serious and potentially irreversible side effects. Tonti states that doctors should be reluctant to give out ADHD medication for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that it can take a toll on peoples' bodies. He believes that only people whose bodies can truly handle the effects of Adderall should be given a prescription. In Tonti's case, withdrawal due to chemical dependency presented itself in the form of headaches and discomfort. He states that when he was a child, he tried multiple medications, and when he stopped taking them in the summers, his mother would have to "coax the migraines" out of him. To some people, this is a minor side effect, and luckily, it is reversible. Other more serious side effects caused by Adderall appear while the patient is using the drug. For example, patients may experience fast, uneven heart beats, dangerously high blood pressure, chest pain, insomnia, weakness, anxiety, loss of appetite, negative changes in behavior and social interactions, and sometimes death. Canada suspended the circulation of Adderall in 2005 because 20 people who were prescribed to the drug across the country dropped dead from heart failure. This is an example of an irreversible side effect. The drug is considered one of the safest on the market, however, it is still a drug. The occurrence in Canada shows one of the many effects of doctors' lenient attitudes towards prescribing Adderall. It is important for doctors to make sure that their patients' bodies can handle drugs before handing out prescriptions. Remembering that people with ADHD are healthy, it is appropriate to conclude that Adderall puts healthy people at risk of developing health problems by causing complications within the body.

People who believe that they benefit from legal or illegal Adderall use argue that drugs like Adderall do not make you smarter, and therefore taking them cannot be considered unethical. That is true: they do not make you smarter and will not allow you to know information that you have never seen before. If you take a dose of Adderall, you are not going to be able to answer a specific question unless you already have the response in your memory somewhere. This is where the Adderall advantage becomes unethical. It alters people's cognition, or ways in which they think and learn, which allows them to study, retrieve information, and concentrate more efficiently than they would otherwise be able to. It is unethical because it teaches people that avoiding consequences is okay. For example, in cases where non-ADHD people procrastinate instead of studying for an upcoming exam, they can buy Adderall illicitly to crash-study. As mentioned before, after studying they will only be able to present information that they reviewed because Adderall does not make people smarter, but the outcome is still going to be a higher grade than they would have received without the help from Adderall. The consequence for failing to study, assuming the student did not have any major distractions (i.e. tragedy, health concerns, etc.), was avoided. It is important for people to learn that a "pill for life's problems," although it may result in short term benefits, is unethical and causes damage to society in the long term because people lose perspective of what is important and create a dishonest image of their abilities.

People with ADHD are hyperactive and can have difficulty in certain social situations due to their disorder. Although hyperactivity is a characteristic symptom of ADHD, anyone can experience it since it is often the result of excess energy. When people take medication to suppress this excess energy (which is just one of the many things the medications treat) they are ruling out the possibility of dealing with it in a natural and safe way. There is no "cure" for ADHD, but because doctors are so quick to prescribe medications, people are either misinformed about the disorder itself or forget that there are natural remedies that do not involve highly addictive drugs for suppressing symptoms. A 2013 study on how physical activity affects different ADHD symptoms showed that exercise is a legitimate means for improving the attention and social-related difficulties people with ADHD experience. According to the study, exercise ameliorated the symptoms of ADHD, and the subjects were "less impulsive and demonstrated fewer attention-related and cognitive problems"(Kamp, Sperlick, Holmberg 2013). In terms of social behavior, the subjects overall exhibited less indications of depression and anxiety and had fewer social problems. This shows that people can reduce their ADHD symptoms through exerting the excess energy they have. Unlike the use of medications, exercise is not the easy way out. It involves commitment and self-discipline, but the alternative path of medication leads to dependency and chemical alteration of a brain that is not considered clinically abnormal. Although physical activity is an example of a healthy and natural way to reduce ADHD symptoms, it does not work for everyone. There are, however, many other ways to exert energy and direct ones focus (involvement in respectively interesting activities). It depends on what works for the individual. Another benefit of finding a natural remedy for ADHD symptoms is that it will not cause any unwanted or dangerous side effects as medications almost always do. Doctors should recommend natural options for reducing ADHD symptoms, which have been proven to be legitimate, to patients instead of being so lenient about prescribing medications because people with ADHD are healthy and ADHD medications do not improve health.

Most of society's existence has been Adderall-free, and in the past, people with ADHD (although even the diagnosis did not yet exist) were fine. People who suffered from ADHD were not failures; their parents were not searching for a drug to calm their distracted, hyperactive children. The people who had ADHD before it existed were healthy, and the people who have it now are healthy, so this raises a question of ethics behind the idea that doctors are selling sickness. In their book Selling Sickness: How The World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels discuss how drug companies are "targeting the healthy and the well," and how "the ups and downs of daily life have become mental disorders." They propose that the issue is not that more and more people are sick, but instead that lifestyles and fears of not achieving society's expectations drive people to believe they need to correct their inconsistencies. In reality, most said inconsistencies are normal because cognitive diversity is normal. Due to the fact that doctors and drug companies are so willing to prescribe and manufacture Adderall, healthy, ordinary people are led to believe that they have a problem and that they need help tackling everyday life. They forget that being stressed out and overwhelmed is a fact of life that nobody escapes. Before ADHD was described as a disorder, symptoms did not keep people from functioning, nor did they keep people from being successful. The knowledge that cognitive diversity exists and the knowledge that there are legal drugs to alter cognition presents an ethical dilemma. To deem cognitive diversity a disorder is a problem because, theoretically, everyone can have ADHD. Everyone's cognition can be raised, not just those who are diagnosed with ADHD. If the excessive prescribing of Adderall continues, the social, ethical and health-related implications will progress, and the result will be a future illustrated by a generation in which a significant percentage of people are substance-dependent. 

