Todays topic: the wacky wonder drug known as Adderall. (*pops an Adderall, gets explosive diarrhea*)
Have you ever tried this shit? If you are American, it’s very likely. If you are part of my international crowd (aka the Congolese terrorist group I accidentally befriended at the Magic: The Gathering tournament last week), then you might need some explaining.
Adderall is a pill. It’s very legal, yet very dangerous (as I will illustrate). It’s often prescribed to troubled/hyper teenagers, with the intent of “chilling them niggas out” (says so on the label). It also helps you focus, so it can be taken in academic settings to make studying a much more ease-filled process. Some might even goes as far as to say that Adderall is a motherfucking SMART PILL. Conventional usage dictates that you take one pill (maybe two) a day. With a glass of water of course.
That’s the so-called “conventional” usage. Let me tell you about another way to take it.
My first run-in with Adderal began when my high school buddy, a purveyor of pure chaos, took his prescription out of the medicine cabinet and we decided to sample it. I had never heard of the shit, and had no fucking idea what taking one of these little blue diamond shaped pills would do. (Would it give me a boner? Because that would be sweet.)
I decided that I wouldn’t take just one of these 10mL pills; I would take three. Oh, and I’m supposed to take it with a glass of water? Well, how bout I take it with a glass of STRAWS THROUGH MY FUCKING NOSE. And thus, 30mL, 3x the normal daily dosage, all entered my nose in powder form through one powerful sniff.
What would happen? I had never snorted anything before. Would it hit me instantaneously? Would I die? Could I die? Oh my god! I should probably stop this madness…
…was a thought that NEVER crossed my mind. What DID go into my mind, was another one of those mega-lines I had just snorted. So now I had snorted 60ml of a prescription drug taken by people like my friend—who was, quite clearly, a psycho and a bad influence.
But we still had so many of these pills! And I was a freshman in High School—so ambitious! And dumb as fuck! So… I did another mega-line. And then another. And then just to prove I wasn’t a pussy, I did one last line.
After all the smoke was cleared, I had snorted 150mL of Adderall in a ten minute span.
You wanna know how I felt? As Tony the Tiger says, I felt GGGGRRRRRRRR—(*passes out*)
I opened my eyes. I had been out, for some time. Based on my computations, I had only been out a mere fifteen minutes. And I wasn’t in a bed. I was sprawled out atop of a pool table.
I checked my senses. Blinked a few times. Rubbed my face. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel too bad. But something was missing…
My ability to speak. That’s right. All that Addy, and I had been deprived of just one thing: my voice. And this lasted for the next FOUR WHOLE HOURS.
During that time, I remember being coherent, seeing people talking to me and shit, but I just didn’t have the will to speak. It was like I was on autopilot the whole time, and I was some mute indigenous guy who could do nothing but observe the new frontier all around me. Oh yeah, and somehow while I was in this state, I wandered around the block and bought some drugs. It was really the dealer who had really perpetuated the whole thing, from the taking 40 dollars out of my wallet, to leaving me with two bags of hydroponic weed. (Can you imagine that? Doing a drug transaction with someone who doesn’t speak?)
Eventually I snapped out of it and remembered that I had a voice, and a free will, and that I could do shit. I decided right there and then that I would NEVER be doing that shit again.
I obviously broke that promise.
It wasn’t totally my fault. I swear! A psychiatrist told me I had ADHD, and he made me start taking Addy on a daily basis. This happened during my senior year of high school, and not coincidentally, it was one of the worst years of my life. The thing is this: I am naturally super hyper, and running around like a dipshit is how I get my energy out… but! Adderall robbed me of that physicality and turned me into a zombie, so I no longer had a way to get all that excess energy out aside from 1. YELLING and 2. BEING VIOLENT. Sometimes even 3. KILLING PEOPLE (ssshhh!).
When I went off to college, I did a trial run NOT taking Adderall, and wallah—I made Honor Roll! For the first time of my life! I was so happy to be off that stuff that I felt reinvigorated, and that I could study on my own, and I didn’t need a stupid little concentration pill to control me.
Ironically, my second year of college, I started taking Adderall again—for academic purposes!
I would buy a pill from a friend, take ONE (because I was responsible now), and stay up ALL NIGHT effortlessly and write a 7 page paper. Another feature of Adderall, is that it lets you completely disregard sleep and you can pull all-nighters easily. So I got into that trend. I wouldn’t take them much, since at 5$ a pill it isn’t really viable to do EVERY time you have a paper due…
But I did have ONE binge where I would put even the crackiest-crackheads to shame:
I took a pill on a Weds to write a paper. I didn’t sleep that night. Then I took another pill on Thurs night. Didn’t sleep at all that night, either. Friday comes around, and no paper to write… but I didn’t feel too tired. So, I just didn’t sleep. Not one wink. Saturday comes around and my roommate Nate comes home and is like “Darby, you look cracked out.” I tell him that I’m on three days of no sleep. He informs our floor-mates and they come in and challenge me to go one more day without sleep. If I can make it til Sunday, they’ll buy me a 40 oz. of beer. I’m only 19 at the time, and you gotta understand, when you aren’t 21 in college, buying liquor is always a challenge. I wanted that beer. I accepted the challenge.
And I passed. EASILY. Didn’t even take any Addy’s that night. Just… didn’t feel interested in sleeping. And when I finally DID go to bed, Sunday at noon, I had to FORCE myself to sleep. I knew if it was any longer, I’d start hallucinating little naked fairies fucking on my TV set.
So, what’s the message? Adderall is a extremely powerful motherfucker. It can be the tool of Gods, if you know what you are doing. It can also be the most destructive force known to man. Like meth. Which it has VERY similar effects to, btw. Fuck that. It IS meth. Legalized kind. And just because something is legal, don’t think that it isn’t dangerous.
