ADHD Medication and Commercial Pilots
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In a recent post, Angie posted a comment, asking about ADHD Medication and being a commercial pilot. She says that she has a friend who believes that he has ADHD, but is scared to seek help because he is worried about keeping his job.
I wanted to add this comment as a full post – mainly because I need your help.
I have searched online and found three articles which may help to guide anyone concerned about being a pilot with ADD/ADHD. I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in this field – just go to the bottom of this post, and enter a comment to share your thoughts and experiences.
I will tell you that since there are great data showing that drivers who have ADD/ADHD are much safer when they are taking their medication, I would like to think that a pilot would be encouraged to take his/her ADHD medication as needed, for everyone’s safety.
The magazine ADDitude, answers a pilot’s question about Ritalin here. In summary, the FAA would not approve Ritalin, and it could show up in screening urine tests. This article suggests that the FAA may allow other ADHD medications in pilots.
This site reviews the medicines that the FAA allows in pilots. This site suggests that the FAA generally does not approve any of the ADD/ADHD medications – Ritalin, Adderall, Strattera (and I presume this would include the other preparations like Metadate CD, Ritalin LA, Daytrana (the Ritalin Patch), Biphentin, Focalin, Dexedrine, Dexedrine Spansules, Adderall XR). The article does say that the FAA may approve these in special circumstances.
Finally, at risk of being political here – I recall an incident of ‘friendly fire’ in Afghanistan. American pilots mistook Canadian soldiers on the ground for the enemy, and fired on them. Several Canadian soldiers died and were injured. When the investigation took place – one issue which came up was the use of ‘go pills’ by the American pilots.
“Go pills” are dexedrine – the amphetamine used to treat ADD/ADHD. Click here for a full review of go pills. This article explains that Dexedrine is given to help to prevent ‘pilot fatigue’ in the militar. The go pills are used because more pilots and planes have been lost in wars due to fatigue, rather than due to combat.
However, the article explains that civilian pilots are not allowed to have anything stronger than caffeine to battle fatigue. It doesn’t mention the use of Dexedrine to treat ADD/ADHD.
So, in the end, I am still not sure what would be allowed for a commercial pilot with ADD/ADHD to take for hes/her condition.
My hope is that this industry would be willing to be open to the recognition of and treatment of ADD/ADHD, because of the possible improvements in safety if ADD/ADHD is well treated.
However, the concern from a pilot may be that if this condition is brought forward, that he/she may lose the ability to keep flying.
This topic brings up several important questions for me, and I am going to pose them here to see if you (my readers) can help to shed some light on them:
- Do you think that pilots may have higher rates of ADD/ADHD than the general public? I guess I wonder if the allure to flying may attract people who think quickly, and are willing to ‘push the envelope’ more – i.e. ADD/ADHD’ers.
- If you were a passenger on a commercial airplane, would you want your pilot’s ADD/ADHD treated with medication, or not?
- Do you have any experience with or know of someone’s experience with the FAA to get ADD/ADHD treated with medication?
- Do you know of anyone who ‘lost his wings’ because of coming forward with a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Hopefully we can help to share ideas here, and support the pilots who are in the ranks of ADD/ADHD.
If you think of someone who may benefit from reading this article, please click the little envelope below, and send them an invitation to come to this site.
Wishing you safe flights,
Dr. Kenny Handelman
Technorati Tags: ADHD Medication, commercial pilot, FAA, go pills
I’m a private pilot. In high school I was put on ritalin because my parents felt that it would improve my academic performance and the idiot counselors and psychologists thought I was retarded or something because I was a pretty lazy/unmotivated student. Maybe it did maybe it didn’t. To be honest I think once I began taking courses that I was actually interested in such as astronomy, marine biology, all my high school science classes rather than boring mundane courses taught by boring instructors, I improved. I stopped taking the drug before going to college. I was not as good as a student in college as I was in high school but I don’t blame the medication rather I think it was having to take what I deemed useless courses in order to fulfill a very interdisciplinary degree requirements along with perhaps a bit of partying, women, and flying.
I’m also horrible at math, always have been and that was the sole reason I was put on the meds in the first place. Big deal, in college I strayed away from mental math intensive courses. I studies languages, earth sciences, economics, photography, music, geographical information systems. In my junior year I found that there was a small airport close by and decided it was time to finish an early childhood dream of becoming a pilot.
My degree was very ‘colorful’ as is my resume which reflects my ADD. I don’t think I could be an engineer or a doctor, I’m not focused like a telephoto lens but rather more like a wide-angle.
At my 2nd class medical examination (yeah I though I would get to commercial pretty quickly…..) I did what the AME told me to do and he deemed me fit for flight. I don’t remember anything where I was asked about ADD/ADHD but I wasn’t taking any kind of medications other than the occasional ibuprofin for headaches or a claritin for nasal allergies.
Almost a year later I passed my checkride in the dark (examiner was late but it was a nice clear winter night.) So not to get too long winded here, flying was and is still the most interesting thing I’ve ever tried to do and it taught me how to overcome weaknesses in learning as well as helping with motivation. Learning how to use an E6B improved my basic math skills which I had not touched since high school until taking the GRE for graduate school.
We tend to be good at what we love no matter if it’s flying, programming computers (i hate programming,) music, or whatever….you shouldn’t have to take drugs to be able to accomplish skill that you are very interested in performing. This is just my 2 cents, you may be different. Besides I think I spent the majority of my time daydreaming during my primary education about flying, it pays to have your head in the clouds (no IFR pun intended.)
It’s never a good idea to lie about your medical history. I was never asked so I never mentioned it. You’ll learn to work around your weaknesses. Now if you have a serious condition where you can’t hold altitudes, airspeeds, attitude because you can’t open up your situational awareness and you need drugs to maintain that situational awareness, you have no business piloting an aircraft. I feel that the FAA hasn’t done enough testing and is worried about people who have the potential to lock-up and not stay on the ball so to speak.