I briefly saw on the news earlier today about some wonder drug that is supposed to help students concentrate, and many students have been illicitly using it to help in things like SAT’s and Law school exams. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the drug, but I was quite surprised about the story-
I’ve been in college for five years and I never heard of this drug. Supposedly, it is a prescription drug to help people with ADD, and someone figured out it helps you concentrate so they used it as a study aid, but doctors are warning people not to take it without a prescription because of side effects.
I am kind of skeptical. To me, kids+new drug=hysteria reporters are whipping up to sell newspapers/get ratings. They called this stuff the ‘steriods of the intellectual world’. So am I missing out here? Or is this just a bunch of hogwash?
During finals week at my college, you’d find people selling and buying ritalin. A kid told me that he’d read about 300 pages in a couple of hours after taking it. I gradutated in May, so this all took place fairly recently.
What? You never heard of Ritalin? Actually, you’ve just heard of Adderall, which is also used to treat ADD. And both are being illegal used by college students for concentration, altertness, and stay-awakeness.
Both drugs are in the amphetamine family. So, bah humbug to these whippersnappers, my generation was using speed back in my college days long before these Gen Y copycats.
Like amphetamines, it is illegal to take without a prescription, and they have side effects, and they’re addicting.
Stick to clean, moral, and legal living. Get plenty of rest, exercise, and good nutrition.
Stick to caffiene as a legal alertness aid, if you must. Or, get a legal prescription from your doctor for modafinil (go ahead, Google) for what appears to be (so far) a non-addictive, safer alertness med to replace caffeine.
Apparently this stuff may be helpful sometimes for some people who have a genuine, diagnosed medical need, but it is wildly dangerous to be using recreationally.
Frankly, I have no interest in taking it. I’m really leery about the side effects of drugs; years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Imprimine, but all it really did was give me dizzy spells, night terrors and make me insomniac/ill from withdrawl sympoms if I forgot to take them one night. I know its not necessarily the same stuff, but that example gave me so much hassle without ANY benefit I figured I was better off just trying harder to better myself and study habits rather than relying on a pill to do the work for me. Anyway, like some people mentioned, Caffeine gives suitable short-term benefits with managable side effects.
I think its kind of sad that some people get reduced to taking this stuff. All I see happening in the long term is people who get over their heads getting into colleges/careers they aren’t normally able to handle, or being hopelessly addicted to the drug in order to maintain the level of focus needed to stay afloat in their college/career. Frankly I would rather excel in something I am capable of naturally, even if it means setting the bar a bit lower.
Adderall is a mixture of equal parts Dextroamphetamine Saccharate, Amphetamine Aspartate, Dextroamphetamine Sulfate and Amphetamine Sulfate. The different salts affect the rate at which the drug components are absorbed.
None of these drugs are new, and college students have been using amphetamines and Ritalin to study for years, much the same way they have been drinking coffee and taking caffeine pills to stay awake.
I think Adderall is a patent-loophole drug, but I’m not sure. It’s a collection of off-patent amphetamine salts, but in a specific ratio that can probably be patented. Only dextroamphetamine is psychoactive; levoamphetamine has somatic effects but only the dextrorotatory isomer is active in the brain. They will probably introduce a new-and-improved drug with only dextroamphetamine salts sometime in the future.
Strattera, a new, non-amphetamine drug for ADD/ADHD is marketed particularly for adults and may also be used by college students both illicitly and quasi-licitly (obtaining the drug by prescription when it’s not really necessary). Of course, many college students legitimately have attention deficit problems and can benefit immensely from Strattera and even the amphetamine-like ADD drugs; many would probably not be able to succeed in college without them.
There are some entirely legitimate ‘smart drugs’ and supplements that may help with cognition, but – if they work at all – their effect would be much more subtle than an amphetamine. The essential fatty acids, for example, may be deficient in some college students’ diet, and these people may find supplements helpful.
A final caution: on the web, Ritalin enjoys a status similar to aspartame, the SSRIs, and thimerosal-containing vaccines. Many people believe Ritalin has permanently damaged their brain or their child’s, often without strong evidence to support their beliefs. Think critically about what you read and be sure to consider both sides of the issue. (Quackwatch probably has some information about this.)
You could try something called Piracitam sold under the trade name Nootropil. It doesn’t seem to have any vicious side-effects and will certainly keep you awake. I’ve tried it a couple of times and it works. Much better than caffeine, it doesn’t have you trotting to the urinal every five minutes and it doesn’t make you nervous/shaky either.
YMMV, of course, but it worked for me.
Imipramine is a tricyclic and very rarely used these days for ADHD.
And it’s deeply offensive to describe people as ‘reduced to taking this stuff’. It’s pretty obvious that you don’t know the first thing about attentional disorders and why meds might be an effective option.
Let’s grant the benefit of the doubt and assume that he phrased awkwardly but meant the people who don’t need it for real disorders but instead become dependent on it as “speed” to perform well at work or school.
BTW, in other old-news news about “performance enhancers” there is also the use of Inderal (propranolol) a beta-blocker intended to control blood pressure and arrhythmia, in order to calm down jitters before examinations or presentations. Known of it for 20 years.
Oddly enough my best pre-examination “doping” ever was a shot of liquor when going to bed after studying, and another one before heading for the test. I totally “owned” that sucker.
Adderall is a mix of levoamphetamine and dextroamphetamine salts. It’s pretty close to being a speed racemate, basically, and gives the benefits of longer half-life (levo enantiomer) and higher potency at dopamine receptors (dextro enantiomer) all in one pill.
I think the only advantage to doing Adderall over street drugs is you get insurance of purity and more controlled dosing. Small amounts of Adderall might have nootropic effects in the short term, but tolerance will build pretty quickly. Taking large amounts leads to agitation, nervousness, even paranoia, and I doubt very much these effects could be described as “performance enhancing”. Speed also puts your heart through the wringer, in a manner of speaking, so lay off the atheletics or high-intensity clubbing.
I take Adderall XR (the time release kind). One dose is good for about 15 hours. It may last longer on other people, I don’t know.
It’s a miracle drug for me. When I was in college the first time around, I almost flunked out. (I was your typical “you’re so smart but you don’t apply yourself!” student.) I wasn’t diagnosed until right before I dropped out of college, at 19. Now that I’m being treated for ADHD, my 2nd attempt at college has been completely different.
I don’t get where people go off about how it’s soooo addictive, though.
I’ve been on it over 2 years, same dosage. The dose I take now works just as well on me as it did when I first started taking it. I have never once even considered taking more than what’s prescribed in a day – why would I want to? If my prescription runs out, sure, I can’t concentrate, but it’s not like I start shaking and going “I gotta have a fix, man.”
My heart’s fine, too, and the only side effect I’ve ever had taking it was right at the beginning it gave me cotton mouth.
shrug Just my experience. Maybe it’s only addictive for people who don’t have ADHD?
Well, not all people get addicted to addictive substances, though with chronic use it’s unusual not to. You don’t use Adderall to get high, and hence you aren’t increasing the dose as you get tolerant to fulfill that goal. You likely are taking a low (by drug-abusers’ standards) dose, and it’s released slowly (which tends to mitigate the psychologically addictive aspect of the experience, since you probably don’t get a big “rush” out of a “hit” of Adderall).
If you were to quit Adderall right now, cold turkey, you might find the experience unpleasant. I’m certainly not suggesting you do that to test your status as an addict, but you may be more addicted than you think. Not all “addictions” are bad, anyway, so it’s not like that’s a problem.
If he’s taking Alderall for a medical reason (and ADHD would certainly qualify) then I wouldn’t use the term “addiction”. There might be a physical tolerance built up, but that is not the same as addiction, although often confused with it.
Alderall, ritalin, etc. are used in folks with ADHD because they provide a real benefit in many cases with minimal side effects. All of which is a legitimate use. If the dosage is properly controlled from the start the person shouldn’t be getting a “high” or “rush” or a "hit’ at all.
Those same medications in normal people have a different effect - probably because they don’t have the same brain quirk as those with ADHD. Rather like the effect of a shot of insulin in a diabetic is different from the effects of the same shot given to someone with normal blood sugar.
If someone without medical need is taking drugs to cope with a course of study in college then something is very wrong.
If a diabetic went off of their insulin, they would have an unpleasant experience. Are they addicted, then?
I don’t think it’s possible to be addicted to a medication that you physically need.
People with chronic pain issues get accused of this all the time: if they’re in agonizing pain *unless * they take their Oxycontin, which takes away the pain, all of a sudden they need to be in rehab, never mind that they’re taking it for the right reason and the medication is performing as its supposed to.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say “very wrong.” If I’m at the hospital and a medical student is about to give me an injection, I’d much rather they be alert when they do it, even if that means self-medicating themselves. In some courses of study, getting the amount of sleep you need simply isn’t an option.
It’s just not a good analogy. Psychostimulants of the amphetamine class cause adaptive changes in the central nervous system, as well as the parasympathetic nervous system that lead to withdrawal when the drug is suddenly removed. If you want to call it “tolerance” rather than addiction, that’s fine. My dictionary says to “addict” is to “to devote or give habitually to something”, so the need to take something in this manner would seem to fit. It needn’t have a pejorative connotation, it’s just a description of a status, in my mind, that can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. I suppose a diabetic could be called an insulin addict, technically, but it’s an addiction without the tolerance phenomena one sees with some of the psyhcoactive/neuroactive drugs.
The amphetamine withdrawal syndrome can include depression, increased REM sleep and more vivid dreams, hyperphagia, psychomoter retardation, etc. For those tolerized to amphetamine, this withdrawal syndrome can be extremely unpleasant (especially the depression), and stronly motivates them to seek out more of the drug.
As for nobody getting an addiction if they’re getting a drug they need, or one that is prescribed, there are plenty of people who are addicted to amphetamines, benzodiazapines, opiod painkillers, mu receptor agonists or partial agonists (e.g. methadone and buprenorphine, resp.); even psychotropics like venlafaxine or paroxetine have been shown to have some severe withdrawal effects; yet it’s arguable, depending on the patient, that all these drugs are “needed”.
There are certain drugs that affect the neuroreceptors in the brain such that concentration and memory improve. Thses were done using double blind tests. The only trouble is: The effect was transitory; it ended soon after the drug wore off. Were the memories retained: sort of; the speed of recall was abyssmal.
Pulled out of my emfeebled brain or my ass [You get to pick which]
As others have said the drug is Adderall. I have known people who use it for the reason you listed, they can spend 4 hours studying and not get mentally exhausted.
As for Piracetam, I have tried it and it doesn’t seem to do anything much except increase my attention span by a little bit. If I take more than 2000mg at once I get ADD and can’t concentrate on anything.
I know some people who are really into herbal/supplemental nootropics. People who combine piracetam, hydergine, bacopa, DMAE and a few other things.
