If you tuned into President Trump’s recent address to the nation, you’d be forgiven for thinking CBS had juiced the audio speed to 1.5 so viewers would not have to wait too long for the start of Survivor. He was yelling. He was defensive. (“I inherited a mess.”) His performance did not exactly quash rumors that 47 runs on concealer and stimulants. Immediately, the jokes poured in: “BREAKING: Pharmacies across the country announced they will be unable to fill Adderall prescriptions for a week because Trump used the entire national supply before tonight’s speech,” posted political scientist Tom Schaller on Bluesky.
Whether it’s the antics of the President, Olivia Nuzzi bonding with R.F.K. Jr. over her habit, the suspiciously sweaty Peter Thiel wannabes in Silicon Valley wed to their “performance enhancers,” or talents like Lily Allen making the drug sound particularly cool, Adderall is having a moment. All those kids with Attention Deficit Disorder and the pressure of college finals have grown up. They’re adults needing to make a living. More and more often, the work emergency that used to involve coffee and self-abasement now calls for a tiny blue (or gray, or orange, depending on the dosage) pill.
In the first two years of the pandemic, there were nearly 6 million new stimulant prescriptions written—about 700,000 more than the previous two years. For adults specifically, prescriptions rose about 24 percent. We were home, anxious, distracted, worried about completing work, and therefore, in consultation with Dr. Google, diagnosing ourselves with A.D.D.
“Adderall was sought after during this time frame to help people cope with depression caused by the isolation of the pandemic, and to help adjust to the more difficult world that has existed during and after the pandemic,” says addiction specialist Frederick Woolverton, Ph.D, who is the author, with Susan Shapiro, of Unhooked: How to Quit Anything.
Stimulants are wonderful drugs that can hugely improve the lives of people who suffer from A.D.D., as my own son told me when he was first prescribed the medication in high school. (He asked, “Is this what it feels like to be normal?”) And there’s nothing new about hitting speed to enhance performance. The endlessly prolific William F. Buckley Jr., a fan of all sorts of recreational pharmaceuticals, called Ritalin his “work drug”—a motor, according to his son Christopher, “of his efficiency, impatience, and control.”
But now … well, I’ve had to ask myself: Does everyone have A.D.D.? When I started poking around, I found that almost every professional I knew had a few stashed away for emergencies—particularly if you were a working mother, often pinching a cap or two from her kid’s prescription. That’s quite the reversal from back in the day when young Boomers raided their parents’ liquor cabinets.
“I remember the first time I was asked if I wanted a mommy vitamin, and I was like, ‘Wait, what’s that?’” says Jill R., a public relations executive in Washington, D.C. “Now it’s no big deal. Friends pass them around.” Jill thinks we are going through our own Valley of the Dolls era—only this time the dolls are stimulants, not barbiturates. “A lot of us, we work, we’ve got young kids, we’re so tired—but on weekends we need to be there for our kids. This creates a bit more of an Energizer Bunny situation.”
“I became dependent on it to write while dealing with clinical depression,” notes Ned Zeman, the author of The Rules of the Tunnel: A Brief History of Madness. “It works great in the short term. But you develop a tolerance and keep needing more and more, while the window in which it works shrinks. It makes you desperate.” Zeman says that while, for him, it’s not quite a physical addiction (he claims no cravings or withdrawal symptoms), there is a dependency of sorts on productivity. But then, he says, “you do get extremely exhausted and can’t function for several days after you stop taking it. My wife made me quit after I got so wired, and dehydrated, and weak that I fainted.” Zeman believes Adderall may be partly responsible for Nuzzi’s recent erratic behavior. “It’s textbook. I’m pretty mild-mannered. But Adderall made me do some crazy shit.”
The desire to shed a few pounds also plays a role in Adderall use. As Allen recently told People magazine, “I started taking this drug called Adderall, which is like speed, to lose weight. And then I got addicted to this drug because it made me invincible and I could work really long hours and be all the different people that I was required to be at the time.” Sometimes fans say it can goose the effects of semaglutides like Ozempic. “It helps with that last 10 or 15,” says Penelope, a special education teacher in Westchester County.
Others mentioned the role of Adderall in eating disorders. “The thing is, I don’t feel weak or tired, and I lose more weight,” says Gabi R., an actress living in Las Vegas with an admittedly “Elvis-like” approach to drug use. When she finally got herself into rehab, though, it was mainly to get off Adderall. “I would stay up for three and a half days. I have dyslexia, but with Adderall, I could stay on the Internet, read, research, write. But then, the crash.” Still, Gabi admits, on Adderall, she loved her mind and her body. “Since so much stemmed from my eating disorder, the control Adderall gave me over eating was the drug I feel I needed the most.”
So great is the demand lately that Adderall has the honor of being the first drug to lead to a federal drug-distribution conviction in the telehealth industry. In November 2025, Ruthia He, the founder and C.E.O. of the telehealth company Done Global, and David Brody, its clinical president, were convicted and are awaiting sentencing for their roles in an unlawful scheme to distribute Adderall and other stimulants online with almost no medical oversight. They made so much money (about $100 million in revenue) and sold so many prescriptions that they reportedly exacerbated what was already a nationwide shortage. (I won’t be too surprised when these dealers are pardoned.)
Ultimately, I can’t help asking: If you’re moderate about Adderall use, if you aren’t constantly upping the dosage and only use it as, say, I did to finish this article … is there real harm?
Right before I turned this story in, I was agnostic. Then I talked to a woman whose brilliant daughter, in her 20s, was using a little … and then a little more … and a little more. Unbeknownst to her mother, the young woman ended up taking three times the maximum dosage every day. She is currently institutionalized with intractable Adderall psychosis, a rare side effect of heavy long-term use.
As Gabi recalls, “I did every drug you can imagine, and I kicked everything.” She goes on, “but if someone offered me Adderall right now.... Well, I hope they don’t, because I don’t think I could say no.”
Judith Newman is a New York–based writer and the author of To Siri with Love
