How Did Ritalin Become a Lifestyle Drug?

Our world is characterized by competition and pressure to perform. Knowledge has become the most crucial resource in modern societies. Increasing pressure to perform and the ever more rapid change in what one can and must know lead many people to a feeling of permanent overload.

Wouldn't it be tempting to enhance your brain by just taking a pill every day?

From medication to drug - How did Ritalin actually become a lifestyle drug?

Ritalin, which is based on the active ingredient methylphenidate, is a drug that is mainly used in the treatment of children with ADHD.

The need to sedate children with such drugs and the discussion as to whether ADHD is actually a disease to be treated with medication is not to be discussed here.

The article deals with the abuse of Ritalin by healthy adult humans.

The effect of Ritalin on children with ADHD does not initially suggest that it might be an attractive drug. The hyperactive children, who absorb far too many stimuli unfiltered and cannot process them, become calmer and less jittery with Ritalin.

One might think that in a healthy adult, this drug is more like a strong sedative, which would make it unlikely to be used as a lifestyle drug.

In fact, the most significant difference between Ritalin and cocaine, which also affects the dopamine balance, is the purpose for which they are taken.

Although Ritalin also has a stimulating effect, this has more of an impact on physical functions such as the heartbeat or the feeling of tiredness.

Cocaine is suitable as a party drug because it makes you jump and hyperactive, whereas Ritalin, on the other hand, focuses and filters the flood of external stimuli.

Some doctors even believe that Ritalin may help cocaine addicts to wean.

Back to the question of how Ritalin made the leap from medication to drug.

In the USA, Ritalin has been the remedy of choice for many years when parents are overwhelmed with their children.

The diagnosis of ADHD is inflationary, and therefore, Ritalin soon became widespread in American households.

Of course, Ritalin's resounding effect on the behavior of their children did not remain hidden from their parents for long. Above all, the steep increase in the school performance of their youngsters must have made many a parent think.

If your own child could learn so much better with the help of this remedy and showed noticeably higher resistance to stress, why not try one of these pills for yourself? That's precisely what many Americans did and the news that Ritalin is an absolute learning booster quickly spread.

Today, Ritalin is widely used in the USA by students, brokers, employees, and many other performance-oriented groups. This makes it the first drug that does not target the unadjusted and party-happy teenagers, but career-conscious and ambitious representatives of the establishment or those who want to be part of it.

What Ritalin does - In the beginning, it makes you a high flyer

Consumers report that Ritalin essentially has two positive effects when you start taking it. First of all, the worries that usually haunt your head during the day lose a lot of their strength. Ritalin dampens the perception of the outside world and one's own inner world equally so that one is less distractible.

Secondly, the increased focus on a task of any kind that is possible as a result of this leads to the fact that this task is performed more persistently and qualitatively better. Learning is much, and the completion of uniform work is also much more comfortable.

Individual users report a veritable learning frenzy. The first phase of consumption is, therefore, consistently linked to positive experiences.

Those who take Ritalin pass their exams beat competitors and achieve many times what they would achieve without Ritalin.

The only problem is that although learning with Ritalin seems more natural, mental and physical resources are used just as much as when learning without chemical help.

Effortlessness is, therefore, an illusion since one is only no longer aware of the effort. An unnoticed burning out of the own power reserves is the result.

To make matters worse, Ritalin leads to sleep disorders after some time. The required regeneration cannot take place in this way. Furthermore, medical studies have shown that the breakdown of Ritalin in the body destroys vitamins.

Deficiencies are the result, and the cardiovascular system suffers considerably. Long-term intake of Ritalin significantly increases the propensity to heart attacks and strokes.

But if it does help?

Admittedly, you may perform better on the job, get promoted, and significantly increase your salary if you stay one step ahead of your competitors by brain doping. But I'm afraid that's not the end of the story.

What lies behind this corner cannot be seen from the starting point and therefore, usually does not frighten us much. As long as we don't really see or feel what the abuse of Ritalin is doing to us, enlightenment won't stop us any more than smoking will.

You could also argue that, just like a smoker, you could decide for yourself what you want to put yourself and your health through to achieve a particular goal.

But all these arguments do not hit the nail on the head: Ritalin is a highly psychoactive substance that directly interferes with a person's personality.

You become more aggressive, more intolerant, possibly even schizophrenic or manic. With these prospects at the latest, it should be clear that Ritalin cannot be an option to get more out of life.

The good new job, the admirers and the extra money may accompany you for a while, but the Ritalin will take it away from you again.

At the latest, when you have distanced yourself so far from the people in your life and reality through your new personality that people turn away from you, the descent begins, and hardly anything will stop it.

So be your best friend yourself and don't succumb to temptation. There is no powder and no tablet that makes you permanently happy.

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