Adderall: College Students' Best Friend-- Or Worst Enemy??

Hi David, I ran across your posting and knew I had to respond. I have been trying to watch the episode of MTV's True Life for about a year, ever since my adderall addiction began. Is there any way you could send me the link or direct me to this? I've heard so much about it, especially when I went to rehab last summer, 3,000 miles away. Unfortunately, the dangers of abusing this drug are not broadcasted enough, so I thank you for counseling those who are struggling with this disease. My desire is to counsel as well, I have great empathy for those with depression and addiction.

I'm a 21 year old college student and my life has completely been torn to pieces because of my powerlessness. It started with a desire to look better in a bikini and to get good grades (even though my grades were better before adderall). I was able to get a prescription with no trouble at all, simply pretended to have ADHD. I'm surprised my Psychiatrist lacks the ability to notice that I'm full of bullshit, have noticeable paranoia, and am skinnier with each appointment. Obviously I'm the epitome of an addict; I have mastered manipulation.
Adderall addictions are gradually becoming an epidemic to me. When I joined a sorority at my university 2 years ago, I observed girls snorting and taking it like candy. Most of them were prescribed. Abusing the substance to party harder or cram for finals is normal and frequent, not to mention looking thin. I don't enjoy life anymore, I am basically friendless and empty due to this drug. This breaks my heart, not to mention my familys and all the people who have tried to intervene. I want my life back so badly. I hope MTV does another True Life or something similar regarding substance abuse with adderall again. Thanks for your time.

PS. To readers who actually have ADHD and benefit from Adderall, I hope you don't find my comments to be offensive. It must be frustrating to have strict regulations getting the medication, etc. I apologize that abusers, like me, make your lives difficult. If I could, I would rewind back to before I picked up my first prescription, the day I became hooked.

Any engineer who says it would be impossible to succeed without Adderall because teachers expect more than is possible from students is probably just not one of the brightest students. I am a physics and math double major and a senior at a major institution. I find the work load pretty stressful at times, but manage to play in a band, hold a job where I host a TV show, and do improv acting once a week.

Too much work...need drugs...BULLSH*T. I don't need adderall to do my work. But you know what? I take it because it is freaking awesome and does nothing but help. Stop lying and saying it is necessary. The truth is that it freaking rules and makes everything better, that's why we take it.

You all have some wide-ranging opinions on Adderall, hopefully my first-hand perspective helps you guys get some clarity on it:

I am currently a business (information systems/accounting) student who has taken Adderall for 2 years.

In high school, I was able to study fine without Adderall though I did require tutors for certain subjects. I received a merit scholarship to university based off of my Adderall-free grades. I did hang around with the wrong crowd and indeed did abuse Adderall one time when taking the SAT and my score rose 120 points.

Once at university, I ended up again falling in with the wrong crowd, and once I stopped playing sports, and lost my support network: school got very difficult.

It was at this point that I obtained a prescription to Adderall, and watched as my grades rose initially. The problem is that I kept having to up the dosage to get the sharp feelling back.

I recall one instance where I took a test and was so tweaked out that the clock became blurry. Though I posted the best grades in the class, I became increasingly paranoid and suspicious. I literally lost my mind to this addiction, and began tracking the stock market daily. I made investments that made over 300%, yet I could not have a basic conversation with a stranger. It was like I had Asperger's or something. Though most of my friends were bad people to begin with, even I had become to crazy for them. I couldn't even fit in with the degenerates of the gene pool.

I completely lost touch with reality due to this drug, and went from being a social, well-liked, typical guy to a machine, incapable of feeling anything. I guess you could say it was almost schizophrenic-like trance.

I realized that I had a deeper pain than just Adderall addiction, and I am properly treating the depression I have suffered from my whole life.

Now I am getting back to normal. I can talk with people again, I have self-worth, and I'm making friends like I used to. I am now on antidepressants/anxiety medicine, which perhaps I should've been prescribed initially instead of Adderall. I believe the effects of Adderall have left me with lasting damage and I may eventually have to raise my dosage. I still take Adderall, though consistently, everyday. I find I need to raise the dosage to study at a high level, but in the end it isn't worth it to go over the top.

No one is meant to play God. You have to take the cards you've been dealt and make the best of it. As far as depression goes, I think that needs to be treated as a chemical-imbalance. Adderall is nothing but speed. I feel good for the first time in my life thanks to the anti-depressants, and I don't care that my grades are going to shit because although Adderall can help you with grades, it's not worth it in the end. At least in my case.

I'm content with who I am. I was blessed by the Lord both athletically and physically, and was given many mental talents. Although my mental talents may not be up to par with other peoples, I don't mind because after going down that hell of a road I went down, where I essentially thought nothing was real, I can be happy with who I am today.

My final thoughts after this rambling post is you have to be careful with Adderall:
-You have to know your limitations
-You have to be aware of your talents
-You have to accept the way God made you, and figure out how to use that to make money, good grades aren't the end-all or ticket to a high-paying job if you are too whacked out to even understand a conversation

I am 26 years old and just got my first prescription to Adderall. I have always had ADHD but was able to get by. I had a lot of disciplinary problems in middle and high school. I did my undergrad in engineering and did a masters part time after I started working full time. However, I was always frustrated in school because it was so difficult for me to pay attention to what the teachers were saying. I rarely learned anything from class and had to teach myself almost everything. About 90% of all mistakes I made on my tests and assignments were from what would be called "careless mistakes." For instance, I would often miss words like "not" or read "28" as "8" (my vision is perfect). As I got older I structured myself and tried to minimize the effects of my ADHD with some success. Long story short is that I finally pushed myself to see a psychiatrist and got the prescription. I am in grad school again part time and I redid some of my old homework that I originally did when I wasn't taking Adderall. I found a lot of those careless mistakes (used wrong numbers that were given in the problems). Now everything is much clearer and I am not making those mistakes.

I love this stuff so much and only wish I had it before. There are a lot of details I am leaving out of this story for the sake of being brief but Adderall is changing my life for the better, a change I wish I did earlier.

Now again, long time ago to be diagnosed as ADHD person means, that you(for example) forget to go to toilet to do things. Or you can't read even three words, cos you started to think about bananas. Or you forget to go into bus, cos when bus arrived you was thinking about woman boobs and so on. In this case doctor gave amphetamine(now it's called Adderall, they are really similar). Are you really do the same things I just described? :))

“For people with ADD, it just makes them normal, and for people without ADD, it makes them above average. If both me and someone without ADD were both on Adderall, I could never outdo them (8).”

This is ridiculous... So if someone really wants to be successful in sports but genetically they are unable to put on size or strength (common, there is no denying that genetics play a major role) they should be allowed to take steroids because it makes them normal, compared to the genetically blessed athletes.

Its partially the schools fault too, that it has gotten to this. Here engineers are notorious for copying.. but it's because the workload is insane and some of us have to work part time, ect... Now when profs find out people are copying they make the assignments even longer and harder. When you have that much to do, and are copying half of it you're actually learning very little. It would be way more beneficial to have less of a workload and more measures to prevent copying.

Being a freshman in high school I could care less if the Adderall I occasionally pop are moral. I'm a straight "A" student not thanks to the help of Adderall, but due to the amount of effort I put forth.
Now, where the Adderall use comes in. I'm on the varsity diving team at my high school. There are times when I don't get home from a meet until midnight on a school night. I then have to be up at 4:30am for weights in the morning. I don't feel like I'm being "immoral" just because I need a pill to keep me awake long enough to finish my homework.
Both of my brothers suffer from severe ADD/ADHD so I am fully aware of the disadvantages of people diagnosed with the disorder. I would NEVER take them before school or just to study for a quiz but, they are my once-a-month way to maintain my 4.0 and varsity spot.

I am currently finishing up my first year of college at a fairly large university. Finals are currently being taken and many of my friends and peers have been taking pill after pill of Adderall to help focus while studying. This concerns me because, along with any other type of drug, I know that their are side effects that can be potentially deadly. Earlier this evening I was informed that a sophomore girl down the hall from me overdosed on Adderall and died. I am now trying to learn as much as I can about symptoms and long term affects because I care about my friends and even my peers that I don't know very well. Is a GPA really worth your life? I understand that people want to make the most of their time in college and succeed, but can you say that taking a drug, that enables you to preform better than you would normally, is ethical?

I am a college sophomore who takes Adderall to study for exams and to write long papers.

For everyone out there who thinks that they can just 'get by' in college without taking Adderall, obviously hasn't been in a competitive college's class lately. Teachers nowadays expect more than is naturally capable from their students. Just because I take Adderall, does not mean that I am addicted to it; I CHOOSE when to take it. Also, I have not had I had any adverse reactions to the drug.

When your taking six 4-credit courses at an Ivy League institution and working part-time to pay the $55,000 a year tuition like I am, Adderall becomes almost a necessity. All nighters would be impossible without it. However, once again I want to stress that I am not addicted to this drug. (It's called willpower, people!)

In college, it is a matter of who wants to success more than the next person. If I chose to stay up all night, read a 300 page book, and write a 10 page essay that receives an A, knowing that it will put me ahead in life, why wouldn't I? Everybody wants to reach their full potential and with Adderall, the possibility of doing so is actually tangible.

How can anyone think that taking mind altering drugs can enhance their education. They are going to be the folks who will be taking anti depressant drugs later in life. The whole generation will be suffering from prescription addiction!

I have had ADD all of my life, but I have not taken any drugs for it. Does it really help as much as everyone is saying? I am scared of the side effects... I am a real nervous person and I heard that it can cause anxiety attacks.

I'm really against those without ADD receiving stimulants to enhance their performance. I was diagnosed with ADD in first grade, then again in 5th grade, in high school and now I'm a freshman in college. I never had to study at all in school, like literally never did homework or read, but I did not lack intelligence in the least bit. I was president of math club, got 4's and 5's on AP tests and did very well on the ACT's (even though i fell asleep during the reading portion of it). What really irritates me is my friend who does not have ADD took Adderall and got a perfect ACT score and was a national merit finalist. Now he is a very intelligent kid himself but he was much more focused on test day than anyone I have ever seen. Finally I went to college and I was once again diagnosed with a series of tests that required me to visit my doctor 5 times. He gave me the prescription and I didn't fill it, I don't like the idea of taking drugs. I did great the first semester and got straight A's. Then the next semester rolled by in which I worked, pledged for a Fraternity and went to classes that I never took in high school. I finally went back to my doctor and got my prescription filled and I became well normal. I don't look up my book every five seconds, i'm not as fidgety, i'm not the last one to finish my test, and i can concentrate on things other than those that I obsess over. Adderall has helped me be like many of my peers in high school but it irritates me when people take it without a prescription or who don't have ADD. All they do is overstimulate themselves with dopamine and study like a computer. Being a pre-med student that greatly puts others at a disadvantage. Sure some are naturally smarter than others but that is just how they are. ADD is a disorder and just like someone who can't walk needs a cane to walk we use medicine. Most of the non prescribed users have been girls from my observations. Walking down the library at Kansas University I often hear sorority girls saying, "Did you take your adderall yet?" "No I'm gonna wait till I have to study for my chem test." You know they were not prescribed it otherwise they would not have to worry about when they will take the limited quantity of pills that they have. I know i wrote kind of an essay, but it really irritates me to people have so much more of an academic advantage than those without the disease. And yes it does not seem like I have ADD from my last semester grades, but you would do well too if you retook all the classes you took in high school in college.

Let remember there is a difference between dependence and addiction. If your addicted you will have side effects if you stop a medication. You can even get addicted to caffeine. Have you ever had a headache and feel like crap and then you drink your caffeine drink or pill of choice and all is great with world again? Addiction. Both depending and addiction in my book are equally not good. Think about it, who is suppose to be in control of you? You are. They have laws against giving prescibed drugs to a nonprescribed person. One-because you are not a physician and have no authority/certificate/mal-pratice insurance/schooling/knowledge of drug interactions, and two-you would feel aweful stupid if someone did go and abuse the Adderall and over estimating his drinking ability and get alcohol poisoning and die. Not to mention, is the student of dring age? Well how many laws are there here that would be broken anyway? I have ADD and diagnosis as an adult is hard. Adderall has changed my life. Not in a fog anymore.

T above^^^^ I don't know the long term effects, but I wonder if there's an increased risk of alcohol poisoning. If I take Adderall and drink, I stay up way longer than I could have without medication, and I end up drinking more. Because my mind still seems relatively sharp and I don't slur my words, often the people around me don't realize how much alcohol I've imbibed. Plus all the extra drinking leads to a full day of horrible gut wrenching "please god let me die" shivering hangover. There is no way that is safe, so I feel confident in recommending no one do it, unless you're self destructive like me, in which case get help! I am.

I am a 29 year old graduate student. I have had ADD my entire life, I can remember having a terrible time paying attention and getting my work done as a kid. My teachers always said "Yes, she is very intelligent but doesn't pay attention". Back in the 80's and 90's ADD was a taboo thing so no teacher dared tell a parent that they thought a child was affected by it.
Now in graduate school, I finally got fed up with those "cobwebs" in my brain that none of my classmates seem to have. It has always taken me longer to read, do homework, and to complete tests than any of my other classmates, even though I love what I do.... I was prescribed Strattera several years back--It made me a zombie, all I wanted to do was sleep! So I just gave up for awhile and dealt with it.
My doctor asked me if I wanted to try to fix it again...I started taking Adderall last week, I am working on my masters thesis and was tired of it taking me so so long to be productive or to come up with anything that is worth saying. I take half a pill twice a day. I feel NORMAL. I don't take enough to get a buzz or a high...I made the mistake of taking a whole pill once and felt like I was going a million miles an hour...I didn't like that.
On my small dose, I can be productive and not feel distracted by ridiculous things that I once was distracted by. I work faster and more efficiently. I do NOT feel that my creativity is blocked, but feel just the opposite. I come up with ways to say things that I knew were always there in my head, I just could not get them out before. When reading, I do not have to re-read everything....it sticks, and I no longer fade out. For me, studying and working has always been pleasurable, but it was also very stressful. I have stopped at times and cried because I just could NOT think clearly, even though I desperately wanted to. I had a love/hate relationship with it. Now it is just love.
I used to also fade in and out during conversations with people, not being able to totally focus on what they were telling me because my brain kept changing channels. It was like "Oooh, look, a bird!"
I am very glad I found this solution. I can now work diligently and not be distracted by the TV of my roommates or the sound of a helicopter.
LOL I still check my facebook, but not as much!

our finals are coming up and me &all my friends are doing it so i'm test driving one for my first time.
so far im just hyper, and more focused.

I urge all people reading pages like this to take it all with a HUGE grain of salt. Scratch that, a SACK full of salt. It is absolutely critical that individuals apply their own personal critical thinking to the issue. Why? Because people are incredibly stupid. Sounds funny, but I absolutely mean it based on the elementary article and some rampantly ignorant comments I had to wade through to get down here.

I'm not going to get into all the reasons that nullify people's dumb points about how it's a controlling, physically addictive hard drug, or how people have some idiotic idea in their heads that it's intelligence in pill form, but I will point out what our entirely retarded pill-popping society is TEMPORARILY overlooking:

TEN TIMES OUT OF TEN, when an individual's heart rate is regularly manipulated by an artificial chemical stimulant, there WILL BE long term negative consequences.

That's why I personally guarantee that within the next five to ten years there will be a radical revolution in regards to doctors dispensing it like candy. If you doubt that at all whatsoever you're not alone, lots of people around the turn of the century held similar sentiments regarding cocaine prescriptions among other equally addictive and dangerous drugs.

You don't get dependent on Adderall. I have used it on and off for years. And if I run out there is never withdrawl. You just don't have the benefits. It is no big deal.

"There is even more to this issue than menacing side effects, however. What is it about academics today that have students popping pills to succeed? And is it fair? Athletes that use steroids are kicked off their sports teams because they are assumed to have an unfair advantage—so isn’t this the same general principle? Many students, especially those that actually suffer from ADHD reply “Yes.” “It’s the kind of medication that can help anyone,” says ADHD afflicted student Josie, “For people with ADD, it just makes them normal, and for people without ADD, it makes them above average. If both me and someone without ADD were both on Adderall, I could never outdo them (8).”"

This is an interesting question, but aren't we being misled by the analogy? Sports are an artificial constricted arena, which is specifically devoted to having no purpose but comparing abilities (and entertaining people thereby). If someone sets a record by running a 4-minute mile (with or without steroid help), it doesn't matter. No one is better off, no matter whether it was a 5 minute mile, a 4 minute mile, or a 3 minute mile.

But with science, with math, with all the other college subjects and jobs: we usually are doing them for some practical purpose. A few ground-breaking mathematical theorems is good, but many such theorems is even better (regardless of how we accomplished them). We just want the results: the results really do make people better off. Pills are no more an 'unfair' advantage than anything else than raises math ability above the baseline - do we complain that computers are tools more easily leveraged by statisticians than number theorists and that this is unfair? No, we're just happy at how much better and faster our statistics are, how much sooner we get them, how they enable things like datamining (essential to Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc.). Fairness isn't really a concept that applies here.

As for the ADHD objection: well, so what? Why should the rest of us feel obliged to refrain from something just to let them catch up relatively? This is bad from a utilitarian point of view, and it isn't even fair - nobody insists able-bodied basketball players plop themselves down in a wheelchair, or that people who happened to win the genetic lottery in attractiveness or athleticism or intelligence or whatever take measures to equalize themselves with everyone else.