Review of Take Your Pills (2018) by John M — 30 May 2018

Medicate less. So this is a documentary about drug use in America. Not marijuana, meth, cocaine or other high profile drugs that may immediately come to mind, but everyday prescription stimulant pills.

This is mainly about Adderall and how this drug took off to reach alarming heights of popularity. This seemed interesting enough, and with it being readily available on Neflix and featuring a runtime that is less than 90 minutes, I knew I'd be inclined to watch it sooner than later.

As far as documentaries go, this is fairly middle of the road, even if this is a subject matter that appeals to you. Now even though I recognize it by name, I have no experience with Adderall. Like many children of my generation, I did take Ritalin for a stretch in my schooling, but that was short lived.

I don't believe I have Attention Deficit Disorder, and that is probably the most intriguing element to this documentary: how A.D.D. may just be the most over-diagnosed disease out there. It is concerning how we can just throw pills at children with the expectation that they will fix all of the problems.

It can be possible that your child does not like school and does not have A.D.D. Believe or not, that is a Venn diagram that is not a single circle, and those two items are not mutually exclusive. But that is not the American way.

Society deems it necessary that you have to be competitive to the point that you can stand a chance of being the top 1% of the top 1%, so you're going to need something that will give yourself an edge.

Enter Adderall, which this documentary paints as being like Mentats from Fallout or Dune. The thing about this documentary is that it does make its point, but it is a point that most people are already aware of.

Much like a number of documentaries that I stumble across on Netflix, it paints the problem effectively enough, but it doesn't offer any solutions. It just shakes its proverbial head at society and shows you the door.

Because of that, this is kind of a difficult documentary to recommend, but it does win back some points being well-made and only being 87 minutes long.