Every student feels some anxiety before taking a big chemistry final.
Jon eased the pressure by turning to some chemistry of his own: He popped two blue pills at lunch, one hour before the test.
Then a senior at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Jon (who did not want his full name used) took Adderall, a prescription drug for treating attention deficit disorder.
Like Ritalin and other stimulants, Adderall helps students with ADD concentrate on their schoolwork. But teenagers without ADD are discovering that the little blue or orange pill does something for them, too -- it gives them a thunderbolt of focused, productive energy.
Jon got the pills from a friend who has an Adderall prescription from his psychologist. Using the drug without a prescription is illegal, but that doesn't stop students from selling their pills to other students for $2 to $10 a dose (the price jumps during exams and FCAT testing periods).
Jon says he "didn't really feel anything until I had something to focus on." But when he sat down to take the exam, he shifted into overdrive.
"It kind of freaked me out. I was just flying through it," he said. "Usually, I abbreviate stuff. But I wrote everything out. And when I finished, I checked my answers -- like they tell you to do. I never do that."
Jon said he was so fixated on the exam that he didn't even hear the bell ring. "I was in my own little world," he said.
Other students who take Adderall before
a tough exam or a long night of studying report similar experiences, often saying the drug allows them to focus more acutely than they thought possible.
Jon got an A on his test. When he is a freshman in college this fall, he said, he might take Adderall again if he finds himself in a jam.
"Hell, yeah, I would take it again," he said.
If he uses Adderall in college, Jon will be joining the scores of students at the nation's colleges and universities who use prescription drugs to help them study.
Of course, using chemicals as study aids is nothing new. Coffee and No-Doz have long been considered requisite supplies for an all-nighter.
Even marijuana, regarded as the most popular drug among youths, may increase a person's ability to focus. With pot, of course, this focus is generally directed on something like a tree stump. And then on nachos.
Students say taking Adderall, however, can yield productive results -- such as good test grades and enough pep to survive even the most soporific school day. Caffeine, they say, can't even compete.
Jonathan, a rising senior at Jupiter High School, explains his rationale for using Adderall: "Let's say you've got a test tomorrow, and you haven't studied at all. You take about 30 milligrams, and you'll study all night. And it lasts all night. When the test comes, you kind of remember everything. Sometimes, you can just take it before the test, and it kind of clears your mind. I took it before my math final. It just brings up your common sense."
Jonathan can count at least 11 of his friends at Jupiter who use Adderall this way.
"Big surprise," said James O'Callaghan, a toxicologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who studies amphetamines such as Adderall. "Kids are not stupid. They figure out what's in this stuff."
O'Callaghan said the risks for students taking Adderall are mild, compared with other drugs in the amphetamine family such as speed or Ecstasy. The drug can cause heart palpitations, loss of appetite, inability to sleep and, in extreme doses, psychotic behavior.
According to O'Callaghan, Adderall's addictive qualities represent the most substantial risk. After his first experience, Jon admitted, "I wanted that feeling again."
Dreyfoos Assistant Principal Leo Barret, who said he hadn't heard of the drug before a recent interview, said that if students are taking Adderall illegally, the administration and faculty are largely unaware of it.
Tracking Adderall's abuse on the county level is tricky business. The school board's police force doesn't record the types of prescription drugs students are caught with, so compiling data about how many arrests may have been made specifically for possession or the sale of Adderall -- or whether these arrests are growing in number -- is practically impossible.
School district police chief Jim Kelly did not return repeated phone calls.
In the 2002-03 school year, 22,907 doses of Adderall were administered to students in Palm Beach County, making it the second most popular drug to be given to local students in school, behind Ritalin. According to the health department, which tracks the medications dispensed by school nurses in an annual report, figures for this year are not yet available.
In any case, it is unlikely that any of the thousands of Adderall pills given out by the school nurse to students with ADD fall into the wrong hands. According to Barret, the state mandates that all medications -- even over-the-counter drugs such as Tylenol -- must be kept under lock and key in the nurse's office.
How, then, are students getting Adderall?
"Like everything else, there is a huge black market for this stuff," said Myles Cooley, a clinical psychologist in Palm Beach Gardens who treats adolescents with ADD.
Cooley said students are able to abuse Adderall because more and more parents bypass the school nurse, trusting their kids to take the medication themselves.
"Who is monitoring the pill bottle?" Cooley asks.
With Ritalin, which was for many years the only medication available to treat ADD, the effect lasted only about three hours, so more doses were required, most of which had to be given in school.
With Adderall, and other, newer ADD medications such as Concerta, the effect lasts longer, up to 12 hours. The result, according to Cooley, is less oversight.
Jonathan said he buys Adderall in school from friends with ADD.
"They see it like helping your friends out," he said. "They give (Adderall) to me or sell it. It goes for about $2 to $4, but they're not really making a big profit. If kids are going to be making money selling drugs, it's not going to be with Adderall."
Students also report the drug is used for recreation. Jonathan said he once took 90 milligrams of Adderall to get high.
"If you take enough, it will make your body tingle. There was one point where I just couldn't move my hand -- it was just tingling so much," he said. "You're more social and talkative (on Adderall), and you're not scared of interacting with other people."
Still, he said, its most popular use is as a study aid.
Cooley said many high-achieving students come to his office, seeking to be diagnosed with ADD after reaping benefits from a friend's dose of Adderall.
"I've had kids come in -- usually college-age but sometimes a high school student -- and say, 'I had a friend who told me to try one of his pills and see if it did anything (to help me study). Gosh, maybe I do have a problem, because that medicine made a huge difference.' "
Barry M. Gregory, the director of substance abuse prevention at Florida Atlantic University, said drug counselors nationwide are just now getting wise to heavy prescription drug abuse among high school and college students.
"It's not that we're in denial," said Gregory, who calls prescription drug abuse among students "an epidemic." "I guess we should just be asking different questions."
He's not surprised that Adderall has become an "academic steroid."
"For students, there's a huge amount of pressure to succeed academically. Why does a person like Barry Bonds allegedly use steroids? Because they give him what he's looking for -- an edge."
-----------------------------------------------
Is Adderall the new speed for the smart set?
By Stephen Heyman, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004
Link
Jon eased the pressure by turning to some chemistry of his own: He popped two blue pills at lunch, one hour before the test.
Then a senior at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Jon (who did not want his full name used) took Adderall, a prescription drug for treating attention deficit disorder.
Like Ritalin and other stimulants, Adderall helps students with ADD concentrate on their schoolwork. But teenagers without ADD are discovering that the little blue or orange pill does something for them, too -- it gives them a thunderbolt of focused, productive energy.
Jon got the pills from a friend who has an Adderall prescription from his psychologist. Using the drug without a prescription is illegal, but that doesn't stop students from selling their pills to other students for $2 to $10 a dose (the price jumps during exams and FCAT testing periods).
Jon says he "didn't really feel anything until I had something to focus on." But when he sat down to take the exam, he shifted into overdrive.
"It kind of freaked me out. I was just flying through it," he said. "Usually, I abbreviate stuff. But I wrote everything out. And when I finished, I checked my answers -- like they tell you to do. I never do that."
Jon said he was so fixated on the exam that he didn't even hear the bell ring. "I was in my own little world," he said.
Other students who take Adderall before
a tough exam or a long night of studying report similar experiences, often saying the drug allows them to focus more acutely than they thought possible.
Jon got an A on his test. When he is a freshman in college this fall, he said, he might take Adderall again if he finds himself in a jam.
"Hell, yeah, I would take it again," he said.
If he uses Adderall in college, Jon will be joining the scores of students at the nation's colleges and universities who use prescription drugs to help them study.
Of course, using chemicals as study aids is nothing new. Coffee and No-Doz have long been considered requisite supplies for an all-nighter.
Even marijuana, regarded as the most popular drug among youths, may increase a person's ability to focus. With pot, of course, this focus is generally directed on something like a tree stump. And then on nachos.
Students say taking Adderall, however, can yield productive results -- such as good test grades and enough pep to survive even the most soporific school day. Caffeine, they say, can't even compete.
Jonathan, a rising senior at Jupiter High School, explains his rationale for using Adderall: "Let's say you've got a test tomorrow, and you haven't studied at all. You take about 30 milligrams, and you'll study all night. And it lasts all night. When the test comes, you kind of remember everything. Sometimes, you can just take it before the test, and it kind of clears your mind. I took it before my math final. It just brings up your common sense."
Jonathan can count at least 11 of his friends at Jupiter who use Adderall this way.
"Big surprise," said James O'Callaghan, a toxicologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who studies amphetamines such as Adderall. "Kids are not stupid. They figure out what's in this stuff."
O'Callaghan said the risks for students taking Adderall are mild, compared with other drugs in the amphetamine family such as speed or Ecstasy. The drug can cause heart palpitations, loss of appetite, inability to sleep and, in extreme doses, psychotic behavior.
According to O'Callaghan, Adderall's addictive qualities represent the most substantial risk. After his first experience, Jon admitted, "I wanted that feeling again."
Dreyfoos Assistant Principal Leo Barret, who said he hadn't heard of the drug before a recent interview, said that if students are taking Adderall illegally, the administration and faculty are largely unaware of it.
Tracking Adderall's abuse on the county level is tricky business. The school board's police force doesn't record the types of prescription drugs students are caught with, so compiling data about how many arrests may have been made specifically for possession or the sale of Adderall -- or whether these arrests are growing in number -- is practically impossible.
School district police chief Jim Kelly did not return repeated phone calls.
In the 2002-03 school year, 22,907 doses of Adderall were administered to students in Palm Beach County, making it the second most popular drug to be given to local students in school, behind Ritalin. According to the health department, which tracks the medications dispensed by school nurses in an annual report, figures for this year are not yet available.
In any case, it is unlikely that any of the thousands of Adderall pills given out by the school nurse to students with ADD fall into the wrong hands. According to Barret, the state mandates that all medications -- even over-the-counter drugs such as Tylenol -- must be kept under lock and key in the nurse's office.
How, then, are students getting Adderall?
"Like everything else, there is a huge black market for this stuff," said Myles Cooley, a clinical psychologist in Palm Beach Gardens who treats adolescents with ADD.
Cooley said students are able to abuse Adderall because more and more parents bypass the school nurse, trusting their kids to take the medication themselves.
"Who is monitoring the pill bottle?" Cooley asks.
With Ritalin, which was for many years the only medication available to treat ADD, the effect lasted only about three hours, so more doses were required, most of which had to be given in school.
With Adderall, and other, newer ADD medications such as Concerta, the effect lasts longer, up to 12 hours. The result, according to Cooley, is less oversight.
Jonathan said he buys Adderall in school from friends with ADD.
"They see it like helping your friends out," he said. "They give (Adderall) to me or sell it. It goes for about $2 to $4, but they're not really making a big profit. If kids are going to be making money selling drugs, it's not going to be with Adderall."
Students also report the drug is used for recreation. Jonathan said he once took 90 milligrams of Adderall to get high.
"If you take enough, it will make your body tingle. There was one point where I just couldn't move my hand -- it was just tingling so much," he said. "You're more social and talkative (on Adderall), and you're not scared of interacting with other people."
Still, he said, its most popular use is as a study aid.
Cooley said many high-achieving students come to his office, seeking to be diagnosed with ADD after reaping benefits from a friend's dose of Adderall.
"I've had kids come in -- usually college-age but sometimes a high school student -- and say, 'I had a friend who told me to try one of his pills and see if it did anything (to help me study). Gosh, maybe I do have a problem, because that medicine made a huge difference.' "
Barry M. Gregory, the director of substance abuse prevention at Florida Atlantic University, said drug counselors nationwide are just now getting wise to heavy prescription drug abuse among high school and college students.
"It's not that we're in denial," said Gregory, who calls prescription drug abuse among students "an epidemic." "I guess we should just be asking different questions."
He's not surprised that Adderall has become an "academic steroid."
"For students, there's a huge amount of pressure to succeed academically. Why does a person like Barry Bonds allegedly use steroids? Because they give him what he's looking for -- an edge."
-----------------------------------------------
Is Adderall the new speed for the smart set?
By Stephen Heyman, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004
Link