Eightfold increase in English footballers taking ADHD drugs - Town Square #18
Amphetamine use in football dates back to the 1954 World Cup and an Olympic gold medallist once explained how Attention Deficit Disorder medications enhance sports performance.
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The number of professional footballers in England granted therapeutic medical exemptions (TUEs) to take prohibited ADHD medications has dramatically increased over the last five years raising new concerns that stimulants are being abused to increase performance in the sport, The Telegraph has reported.
“Taking ADHD medication would either give your team a boost or individually raise you to a higher level that you might not have been able to reach without it”, one doctor told the newspaper. “If you’ve got a player who is struggling performance-wise and you get 10 per cent of their cut [wages], it doesn’t take a genius to go, ‘Well, it could be that he has ADHD’.”
Between 2018 and 2019, I reported in The Mail on Sunday that four Premier League players tested positive for stimulants contained in ADHD medications, but none were sanctioned because they were in possession of a TUE.