DOSE:

20 mg

oral

Amphetamines

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

All my life I had been one of those kids who scored fairly well on standardized tests but never succeeded in the classroom. I had always had friends who had been diagnosed with ADD, but they were all hyperactive and took Ritalin. I was always fairly unimpressed with most everything and never felt up for anything. I usually surfed on the computer, watched TV or played video games to kill time. For the most part, I came from very motivated parents who never understood the state of mind I was usually in and always were angry with me for my laziness. My mom came from a poor rancher's family in Montana and managed to get into a very respected law school when I was 5 years old and my brother was 3, she also maintained 3 jobs while going to school and finished a year early graduating Magna Cum Laude with her J.D., my dad had his masters in engineering which he also received while working and raising two children.

My brother and I were both introverts and never made friends easily. I always had the hardest time sitting down and reading for more than 20 minutes at a time, but I usually brushed that off as laziness and never though twice about it. When I was in high school I had questioned whether or not I had ADD, but I had the misconception that people who had ADD are always hyperactive-- which is not true (especially of me).

My first time experience was in my first year of community college (which I was forced to enroll in because my high school transcript was so pitiful) taking 20 mg of my boyfriend's Adderall. He had taken it in the past and just got a prescription for it the day before. I was very nervous and worried that if I took it and I did not have ADD then there would be adverse effects, but he assured me that it would be fine and there was nothing to worry about. So at 10:00 a.m. I took the pill and left for school. I was in my second quarter of school and I barely passed my first quarter. I wanted so much to succeed, but found studying to be the hardest thing in the world for me to accomplish.

Around 11 a.m. I found myself in a different state. I went to my first class and found it amazingly easy to focus and gather my thoughts. When I spoke in front of the class I used words that I forgot I even knew and was surprisingly articulate! I left my class and studied in the library for about 2 hours and found everything I was reading very interesting.

The drug made me highly motivated and had given me specific attention to detail. For the first time in my life it felt rewarding to accomplish things I wanted to do, and I found pleasure in the work. I never knew what that could be like, but it felt great to want to do the things I needed to do. Looking back before that day I had always felt depressed, like I was not as strong as other people. Like I just did not care as much as other people. I never felt good enough.

Adderall is not a miracle drug, I do know people who abuse it. For me it did open many doors academically and since then I have had a prescription for about a year. I have a 3.7 GPA over the past year. I am transferring to a great university in the spring and my mom could not be happier.

Adderall does have some side effects, these are the effects I experience: Dry mouth-- I usually feel the urge to drink water all day, fidgety hands-- my hands usually wander and have to be doing something at all times (like untangling my hair or popping a pimple, many people have told me that they pick at their face and don't even think about it), immediate urge to go to the bathroom-- as soon as I begin to feel the drug, a bowel movement almost always correlates, an urge to smoke cigarettes-- sometimes I feel so giddy, a cigarette is the only thing I can think of because it will give me a calm for a moment-- many of my friends say that their minds become fixated on acquiring cigarettes after taking Adderall.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 66719
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 7, 2017	Views: 6,483
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Amphetamines (6) : School (35), Performance Enhancement (50), Medical Use (47), Glowing Experiences (4)