Fearing and loathing a pill

I was somewhere around the edge of the Hannon parking lot when the drug began to take hold. I remember thinking something like "Man, I gotta get to the library… fast." A sudden rush of hypersensitivity and I couldn't stop staring at the individual blades of grass on Hannon field or counting the fronds on the palm trees along Alumni Mall. My head was buzzing and my heart was pounding out of my chest. Finals time was approaching and I knew I'd get into this rotten drug Adderall sooner or later. It was the week before finals and I had become a raving lunatic, an addict who calls in favors from friends just to get his hands on this miracle study drug.

Adderall is a prescription drug for ADHD, something I do not have, yet nothing else mattered to me besides getting this fix. I will scratch and claw like a wild animal, I will eat my young, anything just to get the unprescribed 20 milligrams needed for an eight-hour study bender.

Obtaining the drug was easy. A quick search through my cell phone directory for the more "jittery" of my acquaintances, a brief haggling over the $5 price and see you later! I will be a normal human being again only after I turn myself into a World Politics machine and reorganize my iTunes. There is nobody more self-serving and one-track-minded than a student in the depths of an Adderall binge. I tried to find a safe spot in the library where I hoped nobody would ruin my buzz and cause me to spiral downward into a meaningless, eight-hour study session on Facebook. I knew that possibility was very real. The slightest provocation or interruption would have been fatal to my drug induced focus.

I found a nook on the top floor of the library with little traffic and a good view of a white wall. I cracked my books open to begin studying and…ahh bliss! Vindication! There was nothing in the world I would rather be doing than reading about the causes of World War II. This was where I wanted to be, right there amongst my good friends Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

From outside my history bubble someone tapped my shoulder and asked, "What are you studying for?" Outrage! Blasphemy! Who would dare interrupt my concentration? I snapped around in my seat and gave my rude intruder a curt answer, then turned back to my books. But my momentum was lost. I started thinking about the moral implications of abusing this drug to get good grades. Have I really made such a beast of myself just so I can get ahead in life? I won't be sleeping or eating for the next few days-powerful side effects from the addiction.

Our parents' generation had speed as a study drug.

Now I am taking a drug which has Amphetamines and all the same components of drug addiction. Am I really dying to use this drug? 20 children in Canada have died since 1994, causing the country to ban Adderall. The National Institute of Drug Abuse reported in 2006 that there is a 5.6 percent rate of usage amongst students on the more competitive college campuses in America. I would say that LMU definitely falls under this category and I would venture to guess that our Adderall usage is much higher than 5.6 percent judging by the abundance of students with Adderall prescriptions and the ease with which I can obtain the drug.

Some would say that using Adderall is "cheating," like professional athletes who take steroids or Bob Marley smoking pot before recording a song. But nowadays you have to use every advantage you can. Adderall is the American Dream in action; anyone who is smart enough to get their hands on it will quickly rise to the top. If you don't utilize it as a scholastic weapon you'll get thrown to the wolves. Who can study straight for eight hours on their own anyways? Sooner or later, your hand will mechanically click on the scroll bar and before you know it, you will be off of ERes and on to YouTube. You will have completely lost control.

I had never taken Adderall before this year. I wanted to write an article on the drug but first I needed to experience the effects before pretending to have any knowledge about Adderall. I worry about the ramifications of a college culture that uses Adderall to enhance studying methods. I hope that the next time I sit down to study I won't have some powerful Adderall craving that causes me to relapse.