Colleges and graduate schools. Creative industries. Wall Street. Silicon Valley. Adderall is everywhere*, prescribed and taken by millions of people—some of them the thinkers who have advanced modern society, the visionaries who have created the art and entertainment we consume, the minds who have built the internet to which many of us are addicted. The nine dispatches in this Pioneer Works series (by Daniel Kolitz, Geoffrey Mak, Danielle Carr, Leon Dische Becker, Amber A’Lee Frost, P.E. Moskowitz, Joshua Tempelhof, Elena Comay del Junco, and Kendall Waldman) offer a glimpse into amphetamine culture. What is it like? Why is it so hard to quit? How did we get here? Taken together, they’re a fascinating collection of perspectives on the topic and show the lasting effects of the drug on multiple generations.
*Yes, there’s been an Adderall shortage, which is addressed in a number of these pieces.
On Adderall, I can’t tolerate music unless it’s excellent. I hear it all. Hi-hats pattering like fingernails tapping on glass. The terrifying serenity of a kick drum tuned to a minor key.
Geoffrey Mak
The trouble with taking Adderall for your Instagram addiction is that, neurochemically, amphetamines hook you deeper into the endless scroll. You can’t fix the Internet attention economy crisis with Adderall, because the Internet was made by people on Adderall, for people on Adderall. The more Adderall you take, the better the whole thing gets (by “better” I mean “worse”).
Danielle Carr
Given too much room to roam, an Adderall article or essay can become overly ambitious, wandering and sprawling out into a totally unreadable (and unpublishable) manifesto that usually ends up foundering under the weight of overload. Adderall might help you annex Poland, but you’re not gonna take Russia in winter.
Amber A’Lee Frost
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