I found a recent article in FanHouse.com about Nick Green of the Boston Red Sox very interesting. For the last three years Green has been using Adderall under a doctors prescription to help with his ADD. Green story of success with ADD is very inspiring but the most interesting part of the article, is that Adderall is a stimulant, and under Major League Baseball rules stimulants are banned unless you can prove you use ir for therapeutic purposes.
In order to get an exemption a player has to be diagnosed be an approved Major League Baseball. Ten percent of all Major League Baseball players have qualified for a therapeutic exemption for stimulants to deal with their adult ADD. Many critics think that this number is very high compared to the general adult population and feel that many of the players are faking their ADD in order to get the stimulants to help them deal with a long season. While I have no doubt that a certain percentage of the players who qualified for an exemption did so in part to gain the competitive advantage, baseball is an ideal sport for adults with ADD to succeed because:
* It requires impulsive decisions that often have to made in less than a second
* You need to be able to hyper-focus for short bursts.
* Baseball relies more on individual production, than most other team sports. (Adults with ADD are not known for always being team players)
* There are many times during a game when a player can tune out without it hurting the team.
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