This jives with my experience being on Wellbutrin. It was fine when I was on hiatus from training but the more I train, the more it makes me feel weird and doesn't work.
Wellbutrin is actually known for making anxiety worse, so that probably wouldn't help performance anxiety. For me it gave me a lot of energy but it also made me jittery and shaky when I was at the highest dose. I went back to ballet class while on it and I couldn't hold a balance to save my life, even on flat, forget about releve. SSRI's, OTOH, supposedly do help with anxiety, but weight gain is a known side effect that I know all too well, and that's why I stopped taking them. In a sport like figure skating where people put so much emphasis on weight, I can't imagine anyone willingly going on those drugs for more than a few months.
A quick Google search for "sports performance anxiety treatment with antidepressants" returns the names of pills, in case you're curious. There are also stories about how these pills help athletes. I'm talking about anxiety, not depression. There are specific antidepressants for treating anxiety. Anxiety and depression can come together, but not necessarily. As for side effects, ritalin, which Simone Biles was taking for ADHD, also had plenty of them, but the gains were obviously stronger.
When BarbKD was a HS exchange student, AFS was very clear that no ADHD meds were legal in Japan. Apparently, Ritalin was pretty much the equivalent of saying, "I take Meth." That was back in 2007/8, but perhaps it hasn't changed.
Ritalin is banned in some countries, but I don't know about Japan. ADHD is itself a highly controversial diagnosis.
I dont even want to click on your link in order to preserve my blood pressure. As someone who has/had adhd (it often gets better with adulthood) and had to suffer from „oh but it is controversial“ till the point where I was in a clinic for depression because adhd ran amoc with my daily life, I would ask you to be cautious with any claims like that.
I can see how something like Xanax could help performance in cases of bad performance anxiety. The thing about stuff like Benzos is that once you take them long enough, you develop tolerance and that includes tolerance for the side effects. Now if a normal person* takes a therapeutic dope of Klonopin, I can see them not performing well even in sports. But if someone overwhelmed with anxiety takes the same dose then the anxiety takes away most of the CNS suppressant effects. At least that's what it does for me and most people I know who have GAD or other disorders. It's why some people take a pill and almost immediately fall asleep while for others they are flat out useless as a sleep aid unless we double or triple the dose.
I guess they forgot the 2018 and 2019 seasons where Simone was the anchor for the American team, who won Worlds both of those years, and she herself won the AA-title at Worlds during those years as well. Not to mention a bunch of other titles and medals she collected during those two seasons.
I know firsthand [edited out], and my partner has ADHD. That's the reason I've been reading a lot about these conditions. These are not my personal claims.
But then you can perhaps be more careful sharing claims that aren't yours, and that perpetuate certain stigma whether you mean it to or not.
Some ADHD medication can feel life-changing initially when you struggle with brain fog/executive function. I can't imagine not having something so vital as an athlete if they need it.
ADHD is not something that one size fits all. Sometimes a person with ADHD could have other corresponding problems as well. I had heard of Ridlan and side effects. My niece has it along with other things she was born with. She is a bit slow, but also excellent in computers, internet etc. She was put on Ridlan but at the request of her parents dosage was never increased after 8 as they would rather have the real her....not the robot she became on reg. dosage of Ridlan. She is in her twenties now, holds a job and participates in special Olympics and has loads of friends.
Word. And funnily sth that is only ever said while talking about mental illnesses and medication and not, say, the flu.
USADA publishes the list of athletes they test during the year.
| Brandon Frazier | 4 |
| Isabeau Levito | 4 |
| Ilia Malinin | 4 |
| Gage Brown | 3 |
| Oona Brown | 3 |
| Nathan Chen | 3 |
| Vincent Zhou | 3 |
| Evan Bates | 2 |
| Jason L Brown | 2 |
| Madison Chock | 2 |
| Caroline Green | 2 |
| Alexa Knierim | 2 |
| Michael Parsons | 2 |
| Bradie Tennell | 2 |
| Starr Andrews | 1 |
| Jean-Luc Baker | 1 |
| Nathan Bartholomay | 1 |
| Emily Bratti | 1 |
| Christina Carreira | 1 |
| Emily Chan | 1 |
| Jeffrey Chen | 1 |
| Karen Chen | 1 |
| Maximiliano Fernandez | 1 |
| Amber Glenn | 1 |
| Kaitlin Hawayek | 1 |
| Tomoki Hiwatashi | 1 |
| Spencer Howe | 1 |
| Gabriella Izzo | 1 |
| Jimmy Ma | 1 |
| Katie McBeath | 1 |
| Valentina Plazas | 1 |
| Anthony Ponomarenko | 1 |
| Camden Pulkinen | 1 |
| Ian Somerville | 1 |
| Lindsay Thorngren | 1 |
| Katarina Wolfkostin | 1 |
www.usada.org
the really funny thing is he skirts the truth so closely like yeah, you are responsible and yeah, you probably were astounded because you had a team of people around her to make sure this didn't happen. It's just the part where he pretends she never took anything that's a lie.
Oh, the best part was him being called into RUSADA after the Olympics and being asked what he'd learned from the Beijing 2008 rowers incident - in my head I'm all "I learned how to hide the doping better, until now..."
They can ask, but the statute of limitations has expired on the 2014 Winter Olympics. That was the point of all the Russian obfuscation in the first place.
