Adderall Revisited

I don’t suggest taking Adderall. But if you don’t have a prescription and it happens to fall in your hands and you happen to take it, you have to have work right in front of you. If you don’t, it will do you no good.

I would clean my room from top to bottom, vacuum and dust, wash floors, and still have a 25 page paper due. I would think, where did the time go and why didn’t I do that? Once I took it to write a paper and chat popped up. I spent the evening chatting to everyone I knew and completely forgot to do my work; I had these in depth conversations about all sorts of deep issues, many with people I hardly knew. But my paper did not get done.

Adderall is very common around here. During finals week, you will get thirty texts, all saying ‘hey do you know where I can get Adderall for a friend of mine?’. And the price per pill doubles or triples during that week. I had a roommate last year who had ADD so she had a prescription for Adderall. But she wouldn’t take the pills; instead she would hoard them for finals week because she knew she could sell them and make hundreds of dollars. Then she would text everyone she knew, ‘I have Adderall, come find me’. She was already rich when she started but now …

Unfortunately, because this kind of thing happens so much, it makes it hard for kids who actually have ADD and need Adderall to focus; they often have to jump through hoops to get their scripts filled because of the abuse.

There are other kinds of drugs around here too: a fair amount of cocaine, weed, ecstasy, shrooms and acid. People have different attitudes about it. I don’t smoke but sometimes I forget that weed is illegal because people often do it out in the open here. They smoke it at parties or in the bathroom or on the way to school. Walking into this building today, there was a group of kids sitting on the hill smoking a bowl. I bet they will still be there smoking another one when I am on my way out.

In the dorms, you are told that if they catch you smoking you are out. But people towel the door and spray air freshener or fabric softener. Or they smoke into a cardboard tube or water bottle with the end cut off and dryer sheets stuffed into it so that it blows out a clean and nice smell.

Eventually the kids who don’t do anything but smoke or drink during first year will either drop out or get kicked out. When you are a freshman, it is too easy to not go to class. Many get here and think “I love college, I sit in my dorm room and smoke and drink when I want, and party weekends and weeknights, and I don’t go to class and I cram during finals week and I love my life, and I live in a dorm and I don’t pay bills, I don’t pay utilities, I don’t buy food, this is the life’. But with no structure and drugs and alcohol readily available, you will slide if you don’t learn to say no. If you do not go to your classes, you cannot make that up, no matter how much studying you do or how much Adderall you take.