Like Father, Like Daughter: Sara Duterte’s “Adik” Slur Deepens the Suffering of Neurodivergent Filipinos

When Vice President Sara Duterte follows her father’s playbook by exploiting the word adik to score political low blows against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., she isn’t just engaging in political theater. She is weaponizing a slur that inflicts profound psychological harm on millions of Filipinos living with undiagnosed and untreated neurodivergent conditions. The intense shame this language perpetuates creates a terrifying barrier, driving vulnerable individuals away from licensed medical professionals, proper psychiatric evaluations, and regulated treatments.

It is a cruel mechanism: inflicting shame to achieve political ends while obscuring the truth. The reality is that individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism, and other neurodivergent conditions—often compounded by severe life stress—are frequently driven to seek relief through substances not out of malice, but because of a total lack of accessible healthcare and prescription medication.

Language does not merely reflect reality; it shapes who is granted humanity and who is marked for destruction. In everyday Filipino discourse, few words carry the destructive weight of adik. It is rarely used as a neutral medical descriptor for substance dependence. Instead, it operates as a totalizing slur—a linguistic weapon that strip-mines an individual’s identity, collapsing complex neurobiology, trauma, and systemic hardship into a simple narrative of moral rot.

When issued by a sitting president, as Rodrigo Duterte demonstrated, using the word adik alongside calls for violence effectively legitimized extrajudicial killings carried out by law enforcement and fanatical supporters. Now, wielded by Vice President Sara Duterte against her political adversaries, the same rhetoric is used to subvert, destabilize, and delegitimize the current administration. In both instances, real human suffering is reduced to a political weapon.

Yet, this weaponization was not invented overnight. The stage was set decades ago, stretching as far back as the late 1960s and culminating in the early years of Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos Sr. A major turning point occurred in January 1973 with the public execution of Chinese drug manufacturer Lim Seng by firing squad. Broadcast across national media, this spectacle demonstrated state authority and established a long-standing political blueprint in the Philippines: using public violence against drug figures to project strength, order, and decisive leadership.

Over subsequent decades, pop culture, news media, and neighborhood gossip solidified adik into a cultural bogeyman. A national consensus took hold that anyone associated with illicit substances was inherently subhuman, irredeemable, and disposable. When the Duterte family rose to national power, they did not create this prejudice from scratch; they simply mobilized a deeply rooted historical stigma, turning an existing societal bias into an aggressive state campaign.

When society labels someone an adik, it draws an immediate line between the worthy and the subhuman. The term erases all underlying causes: the chronic executive dysfunction of ADHD, the sensory overload of Autism Spectrum Disorder, or the severe lack of diagnostic infrastructure in the country. By framing chemical coping mechanisms as inherent evil rather than self-medication for an unaddressed dopamine deficit, the slur shifts public perception from empathy to hostility. Once tagged as an adik, a person’s struggles with focus, impulse control, or emotional regulation are no longer viewed as medical symptoms requiring support, but as character flaws deserving of punishment.

To be precise, substance dependence is not caused by neurodiversity alone; it is a complex, multi-faceted health condition driven by an intersection of biological, psychological, and social factors. While addiction can just as easily stem from severe trauma, adverse childhood experiences, genetic predispositions, or conditions like major depression, neurodivergence makes an individual significantly more likely to seek out illegal substances—especially in the Philippine setting.

In a country where proper diagnostic evaluations remain prohibitively expensive (ranging from ₱15,000 to over ₱28,000 across private psychiatric sessions), mental health carries intense social stigma, and legal prescription stimulants face strict regulatory barriers under Republic Act No. 9165 (Dangerous Drugs Act) alongside severe supply shortages, undiagnosed Filipinos are routinely forced to find their own relief. For many, illegal street stimulants become the only accessible option to quiet chaotic thoughts, manage sensory overload, and survive grueling work shifts. Recognizing that addiction arises from this broader web of human suffering does not lessen the tragedy of the drug war; rather, it underscores the profound cruelty of treating what is fundamentally a medical and socio-economic issue with state violence.

For millions of undiagnosed neurodivergent Filipinos, this multi-generational trap creates a terrifying barrier to survival. When seeking medical help or admitting to chemical self-medication carries the immediate risk of being branded an adik, people retreat into silence. Families hide struggling relatives out of fear and intense social shame (hiya), while individuals force themselves through extreme masking and emotional burnout to avoid public suspicion. The fear of the slur keeps people away from the very clinics, therapists, and diagnostic resources that could save their lives.

Dismantling this crisis requires an intentional shift in how we speak. We must retire the slur adik and replace it with a compassionate understanding of neurodevelopmental realities, public health needs, and chemical self-medication. As long as Philippine political figures and society at large use language to reduce human beings to disposable criminals, our words will continue to fuel marginalization, violence, and silent suffering.

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References & Further Reading

1. Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) & Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA). Regulations on Scheduled Substances under Republic Act No. 9165 (Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002). Governs strict prescribing limits (S2 licensing requirements) and import regulations for prescription stimulants (Methylphenidate) in the Philippines.
2. Volkow, N. D., et al. (2009). “Imaging dopamine dysfunction in ADHD and addiction.” Archives of General Psychiatry / JAMA Network. Demonstrates the neurobiological dopamine transporter deficits in ADHD brains that drive individuals toward substance self-medication.
3. Biederman, J., et al. (2008). “Pharmacotherapy of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Reduces Risk for Substance Use Disorder: A Meta-Analysis.” Pediatrics. Confirms that unmedicated neurodivergent individuals have significantly higher rates of substance use disorders compared to medicated populations.
4. World Health Organization (WHO) & Department of Health (DOH) Philippines. Special Initiative for Mental Health: Philippines Country Assessment. Highlights systemic barriers, psychiatric diagnostic costs, high out-of-pocket medical expenses, and widespread mental health stigma across the country.
5. Simbulan, N. P., et al. (2019). “The Philippine Drug War: Implications for Public Health and Human Rights.” Journal of Public Health Policy. Analyzes the impact of framing drug users through punitive slurs rather than public health frameworks in the Philippines.