Anonymous asked: What do you think of students who take unprescribed Adderall/Ritalin to get through college work/studying?

So, I’ll preface this by saying that I’m old enough to remember when doctors were saying that amphetamines had the opposite effect on people with ADHD than they did on everyone else (i.e. focused vs. manic) and that amphetamines could essentially be used to diagnose ADHD (i.e. if the drugs worked, you had ADHD).  I don’t know, maybe doctors are still saying this – they certainly seem to use the same logic with anxiety and depression – but it seems like there is finally starting to be an understanding that ADHD drugs are not pharmacologically different than street amphetamines (see Carl Hart’s work), and that different people having different reactions has to do with the concept of drug, set and setting, as well as preexisting social inequality and the stigma a street drugs.

From a harm reduction perspective, I think that diverted pharmaceuticals are safer than street drugs in terms of consistent dosage and lack of dangerous cuts.  Also, swallowing a pill is generally going to be safer than snorting, smoking or injecting a drug.  (I should point out, though, that when drug companies start adding anti-tampering compounds to pills to keep people from snorting or injecting them, they may no longer be the safer option.)  Since on average, a minority of people who use a drug end up having serious problems with it, more people using a drug may mean more people with problems with that drug, even under the best of circumstances, so honest, non-propaganda-based, drug education and resources for recovery are really important.

But I think that students using ADHD drugs as performance enhancing drugs has a whole other problematic aspect.  To the degree that the drugs actually do enhance performance, they create a situation where some students (usually the ones who are already the most privileged) have access to ADHD prescriptions (because they know how to work the system, and are not immediately seen as suspicious and drug seeking) and other students don’t.  Apparently some ridiculously high percentage of kids at elite high schools have ADHD diagnoses, presumably because their parents were willing to do anything for them to succeed academically.