Addicted to Adderall
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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Via Matt. Molly Young has the best essay I've ever read on prescription drug addition online at n+1. She came from a well-balanced family in San Francisco to an East Coast Ivy League university where she discovered Adderall, a drug typically prescribed to kids (and adults) with ADHD. In the essay she does a good job of carrying the reader through the addiction, talking about the various ways she justified it to herself:
I've never taken prescription drugs to help myself concentrate, but I've know people with family members who struggled with such addictions. To me sometimes this is about confidence and the high-pressure situations we put ourselves in. In highly competitive environments, like an Ivy League school, everyone is brilliant, so you must be more focused and dedicated than everyone else. For some, it is success that is the drug and Adderall is merely the means to that end.
Of course, I could have studied in college without Adderall, just like I did in high school—I just couldn't have studied with such ecstasy. Theoretical texts, in particular, were transformed into exercises as conquerable as a Tuesday crossword. I could work out in the gym with a Xeroxed packet of Gayatri Spivak perched on the elliptical machine in front of me, reading and burning calories at the same time. The efficacy of the multitasking was exhilarating. On Adderall, the densest writing became penetrable. I had an illusion of mastery, at least, that lasted long enough to write the necessary papers and presentations. I could never remember what I had written the next day, but I justified this forgetfulness as an accelerated version of what would happen anyway after I graduated.She also talks about how easy it is to obtain the drug, saying faking ADHD is a "cakewalk," talking about how easy it is to buy extras from friends, and ordering the drugs over the internet with all those encrypted catalogs. It's a private struggle, she says, "the drug is less talked about than exhibited."
I've never taken prescription drugs to help myself concentrate, but I've know people with family members who struggled with such addictions. To me sometimes this is about confidence and the high-pressure situations we put ourselves in. In highly competitive environments, like an Ivy League school, everyone is brilliant, so you must be more focused and dedicated than everyone else. For some, it is success that is the drug and Adderall is merely the means to that end.
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I've taken pretty much every ADHD medication there is to take, including Adderall. All I remember of that particular drug is that it put me to sleep - yes, this drug that apparently makes the author of the above essay go crazy with work made me in constant need of sleep with very little that could stop it.
I stopped taking the medication not because I was done with ADHD - it had more to do with the constant depression and neverending social awkwardness. Ultimately what made me stop was how slow I was - not mentally, but physically. When I was in driver's education, there was a long 1-2 second delay before the action I wanted to take was done. Removing the medication from my daily routine fixed that problem, but the lingering effects are still there and I'm afraid they always will be.
Just don't assume ADHD's a phantom disease some random doctor made up. It's an issue, and while a part of me does hate that I took that medication, another part indicates that it had to be done.