I Have ADHD: My 'Study Drug' Problem Isn't the Same As Yours

One morning, during my senior year at college, I grabbed my bottle of Vyvanse from my drawer and noticed it looked shallow. Suspicious, I decided to count the number of pills I had left.

I was four pills short.

Asking my housemates whether they 'knew anything' about my missing meds was embarrassing. I felt shameful leveling what I perceived to be serious allegations at the people I trusted. Later that day, however, one of my close friends confessed that he took two pills.

He told me he did it because he was freaking out and didn't think he could complete his assignments on time. My friend was practically in tears; he told me that he was a coward and had acted impulsively, that he "didn't even know who he was."

Of course I believed him. But I was furious. I couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't seriously comprehend what he had done, that it was impossible for him to understand the significance of snatching my medication because he didn't get what it meant to need those meds in the first place. I told him I didn't want to speak to him until I had time to process the situation. Watching him slump away, sitting in the front of my house, my anger grew. I felt a sense of alienation that was both remarkable and oddly familiar.

There's been a lot of discussion about the rise of "study drugs" in American colleges. The discourse has largely centered on fears that these drugs are dangerous, whether it's because they're harmful to the students' health or because the "epidemic" threatens the integrity of higher learning in a similar fashion to steroids in professional sports.

For people who don't have ADHD, prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse are probably a lot of fun and very helpful for completing work that isn't mind-bogglingly interesting. This is especially true for American college students, who navigate an environment that triggers an enormous amount of academic and interpersonal stress. Moreover, the ascendancy of social media and the culture of cataloguing and advertising your fun for all to see have increasingly blurred the distinction between work and play. These substances have thus become immensely popular as maladaptive tools for success and means for recreation and escape.

My connection to this issue, as someone with ADHD, is starkly different. I need my medication. I need to take it every day; otherwise my ability to function as a person with responsibilities is impaired.

I don't pretend to speak for everyone with the diagnosis. There are people who can skip days, others who forego medication altogether. I am not one of these people.

My relationship with stimulant medication began in middle school. At the time, my challenges in school were suffocating: I constantly misplaced my things, I zoned out in class, and it took me hours to complete basic assignments. Every problem I experienced academically had a social analogue: not following cues, interrupting people, and talking incessantly made it difficult to relate to my peers.

My medication helps me with these issues. It does not make me 'normal,' but it allows me to navigate social and work-related situations without some of the more deleterious challenges I've described. It boasts the best ratio of efficacy to not-wanting-to-jump-out-of-a-window-with-panic that I've been able to find in 10 years. I can't imagine having gotten through college without it.

But there are real costs to taking my medication. It can increase anxiety, it can be physically addictive and it's expensive. On top of everything else, I'm beholden in a serious way to two of the stoniest industries in 21st century capitalism: pharmaceuticals and health insurance.

Because my medication is a controlled substance (schedule II), neither my psychiatrist nor I am allowed to phone in my prescriptions. I have to drop them off in person each time I need a refill. Depending on the pharmacy, this can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours, assuming my medication is in stock and my insurance doesn't fail to pay due to a bureaucratic screw-up. In college, factoring in travel time, getting meds often took a significant chunk out of my day.

Also, if I'm prescribed thirty pills, I can't refill the prescription until thirty days have passed. This means that if I'm missing a pill for any reason, I have to go a day without meds.

I've been on stimulants for so long that the most immediate consequence of skipping a day is not ADHD, but withdrawal. Withdrawal from my medication is not fun.

There's nothing glamorous about having to take stimulants to function. So when you live in an environment where the sight of students popping capsules and railing blue lines of Adderall is ubiquitous at house parties, dorm gatherings and the library, there's a dissonance between your experiences and the blasé attitude surrounding you. It feels strange.

Strange becomes uncomfortable when acquaintances ask you to sell them your meds, or give them a freebie. Uncomfortable turns into something uglier when you're forced to acknowledge that somebody's snatching pills out of your room.

The next day, I called my friend and asked to discuss what happened in person. I explained that while I was angry he'd violated my trust, what really upset me was how impersonal the theft felt. The frustration and anguish I experienced were the same feelings I had when my insurance denied me coverage because of a fictitious "unpaid premium," or when I had to wait over an hour to find out the pharmacy didn't have my medication in stock. It felt like there was a wall between my friend and me, the same division that separates me from the pharmacist behind the counter and the insurance representative on the phone. It was cold, unempathic. I felt isolated.

I was lucky to have a friend who was willing to understand my perspective. Not only did he reimburse me for the pills, but he thanked me for sharing a part of my experience he'll fortunately never grapple with himself. The walls felt thinner that day.

We're still close, and I never found out who took the other pills.