The pressure to achieve more, do more, and be more is part of being human – and in the age of Adderall and Ritalin, achieving that can be as close as the local pharmacy. No longer just “a cure for excitable kids,” prescription stimulants are in college classrooms, on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley…any place “the need to succeed” slams into “not enough hours in the day.” But there are costs. In the insightful Netflix documentary Take Your Pills, award-winning documentarian Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry) focuses on the history, the facts, and the pervasiveness of cognitive-enhancement drugs in our amped-up era of late-stage-capitalism. Executive produced by Maria Shriver and Christina Schwarzenegger, Take Your Pills examines what some view as a brave new world of limitless possibilities, and others see as a sped-up ride down a synaptic slippery slope, as these pills have become the defining drug of a generation.
-This is the official description on RottenTomatoes.com
Interviews include:
- Ebben Britton (former NFL player)
- Anjan Chatterjee (neuroscientist)
Movie Reviews of Take Your Pills documentary
“Refreshingly free of heavy-handed scare tactics, this documentary calmly and rationally explores rising amphetamine use by asking thought-provoking questions and promoting thorough understanding.” – Common Sense Media, Andrea Beach
“Urgent and eye opening…The kinds of connections that “Take Your Pills” makes, between the culture of information overload and a radically tightened job market and heightened personal performance and the chemical itch that fuels this whole late-stage capitalist dynamic, may strike some as too speculative for comfort. Yet it’s precisely by making connections like these that a documentary can fire up your perceptions enough to burn through the cumulative effects of advertising.” – Variety, Owen Gleiberman
Watch the movie trailer here.
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