When James Hilton was a high school sophomore in Darien, Connecticut, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist because of the many problems he was having at school: He struggled to do his assignments, and then forgot to turn them in. He played the guitar in the school band, but it was agony to sit still for practice.
“I rarely did my homework. I failed French freshman year,” he told me recently. “It was like a class clown kind of thing.”
The psychiatrist diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—ADHD—and prescribed a popular drug that, for almost three decades, has helped people who can’t sit still and focus: Adderall, a stimulant composed of two amphetamines.
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