Using Adderall to overcome hopeless amounts of work before exams is possibly one of the most inventive methods of cheating ever conceived; it allows studying harder, and for more hours, than any student without the aid of amphetamines, enabling the user to outperform those who study without the use of stimulants. The result is an abundance of inflated test scores, though the exact amount of the resulting increase is virtually impossible to estimate.
In recent years, the number of Adderall prescriptions issued has skyrocketed. The number of school-age children currently taking Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder drugs has increased 20 fold in the past 10 years alone, leading many critics of the amphetamine to conclude that doctors have been grossly mis-diagnosing ADHD to students.
This overdiagnosis of ADHD created an excess supply of the drug in recent years, and many cash-strapped students realized they could sell the pill, creating an underground Adderall market among college students in dorms and houses across the nation.
We can attribute the drug’s widespread use to its clean image: Students do not consider it illegal because it is “‘just a prescription drug” out of a bottle, distributed by pharmacists. Adderall is funneled throughout college campuses, out of the eye of authorities, conveying the notion that abusing it has no consequences. What many students prescribed with Adderall fail to realize is that distributing a prescription drug to a non-prescribed user is a federal felony. Worse, though, are the potential health effects.
Adderall is a prescription medication designed to help restrain the hyperactive drifting mental patterns of someone suffering from ADHD, allowing them to work, focus and test at a level similar to a student without the disorder. But if someone without ADHD takes Adderall, they can 8212; and often will 8212; experience symptoms of intense insomnia, an extreme loss of appetite, mood changes, anxiety, a temporary increase in blood pressure, increased heart rate, headaches, dizziness, restlessness, uncontrollable body movements, excessive perspiration, erectile dysfunction, abdominal pains and ultimately, a new drug dependence. Adderall has been known to greatly increase the risk of heart attacks for those with heart or blood pressure problems as well.
The most dangerous aspect of Adderall is that the users’ grades come to rely on it. Considering that no formal statistics have been gathered on its abuse in the college population, there is no way to measure the damage the drug has caused to the legitimacy of pooled test scores around the nation. But surveys reveal that ADHD prescriptions have created a drug dependency for as many as 20 percent of college students.
San Diego State’s Calpulli Health Center stopped diagnosing students with ADHD and began refusing Adderall prescriptions to students altogether last December. In the face of a rampant prescription abuse epidemic, this is only the first step of many on the long road toward recovery.
