Arlo* anxiously picks at his nails as his teacher walks around the classroom passing back their midterms. After studying for seemingly endless hours, the result of this exam would be the difference between a B or a C in the class. When Arlo flipped over the paper and saw an “A” written with an enthusiastic “Good Job!” scribbled in the corner, he anticipated the familiar rush of pride or relief that usually followed after endless hours of hard work. Instead, he felt nothing, no satisfaction, no excitement and no sense of accomplishment. Arlo realized he was experiencing emotional bluntness, a side effect associated with a prolonged or high-dose use of Adderall, a stimulant commonly prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Arlo, who takes Adderall without a prescription, said Adderall can have effects like reduced sociability.
“[Adderall] makes you more anti-social,” Arlo said. “If you use it for too long, over time it can cause emotional bluntness, which is not that bad of a thing. I’ve had it once. Nothing really feels real. You just go about your day without any emotions.”
The use of Adderall usually leads to increased physical energy and greater focus, according to the American Addiction Center. Arlo said he and some of his friends use the drug without a prescription to enhance performance.
“I would guess probably around 20% of the student body uses Adderall,” Arlo said. “It puts the students that take Adderall at a much stronger advantage because it makes you perform intellectually at a very high level for a very long time.”
Head of Peer Support and Upper School Counselor Tina McGraw ’01 said she has not observed unprescribed Adderall use in the student body.
“The vast majority of high school students do not misuse stimulant substances,” McGraw said. “It’s more of an issue in colleges from what I know. I’m not aware of it being a widespread problem at the school.”
In 2020, survey data showed that 7.3% of high school seniors had misused an amphetamine or stimulant drug at least once. 4.4% of high school students reported using Adderall without a prescription, according to data from the National Library of Medicine. According to a Chronicle poll, 62.1% of the student body knows someone who uses Adderall without a prescription and 6.7% of students have used Adderall themselves. Harwin*, who has used unprescribed Adderall several times to complete assignments or study for difficult exams, said he began using the drug to meet the academic expectations of his teachers.
“My junior year was an extremely stressful time period,” Harwin said. “I was taking several honors courses and felt that I could not complete the work that was required of me in the allotted time, so I turned to Adderall, and it helped my grades improve exponentially.”
In addition to using Adderall, Arlo uses Vyvanse, another stimulant drug that has a similar profile to Adderall. However, its effects often last much longer and are considered to be less harsh. Arlo said the use of Adderall and Vyvanse has made him significantly more academically and financially successful.
“I would genuinely accredit 90% of my school success and my work success to Adderall,” Arlo said. “It’s a literal cheat code. Without Adderall, I honestly don’t think my company would have made as much money. I was taking Adderall every day for about four months, and I made really good progress. I bought my dream cars and was able to maintain some solid B’s and A’s.”
Hudson Barber ’27 said she went through the process of getting accommodations and was eventually prescribed extended-release Adderall. “I’m on extended-release Adderall, which has balls inside of the Adderall,” Barber said. “Some get released immediately and then after about five or six hours, the rest of the balls get released, so it has a 12-hour type effect.”
Barber said she had trouble with concentration, prompting her to go through the accommodations process.
“I’ve always struggled with time management and focus issues,” Barber said. “During the summer before ninth grade, I realized I needed some sort of testing done to get these accommodations, and I was diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve gotten 50% extended time, small group testing and quiet space testing, so sometimes I need to go into a different room to test.”
Barber said her accommodations improve her academic performance, although they do not entirely fix the issues she faces.
“[My accommodations] are effective,” Barber said. “I honestly don’t know how I used to do tests without the extra time. It’s definitely helpful to have that as a fallback, but I still find myself running out of time on tests.”
Since 2004, the average attention span on any screen has decreased from two and a half minutes to 47 seconds in the last five years, according to the American Psychological Association. Harwin said constant exposure to social media makes it increasingly challenging to concentrate on school.
“A lot of students have short attention spans because of apps like TikTok or Instagram,” Harwin said. “It makes it a lot more difficult to focus for long periods of time. You get so used to scrolling and moving on after a few seconds, so doing homework without checking your phone feels way harder.”
Snorting Adderall can increase chances of addiction to stimulant drugs and can cause inflammation of the nostrils, nasal passages and sinuses, according to American Addiction Centers. Arlo said he consumes Adderall through intranasal administration.
“Sometimes, if I have to study for a very long period of time, I’ll even snort the Adderall, because it hits a lot harder and it dies a lot quicker,” Arlo said. “I know a lot of other guys at school that snort Adderall as well.”
Research suggests that youth stimulant misuse often shows up alongside other substance use and is linked with higher overdose risk, according to the National Library of Medicine. Moreover, teenage and child non-medical prescription stimulant use is associated with later illicit stimulant use, though researchers emphasized that they still do not fully understand this link. McGraw said the use of unprescribed Adderall can lead to an escalation of drug use in the future if that person cannot find more healthy ways to cope with stressful situations.
“There’s a lot of evidence that people who are willing to use drugs illegally in high school often end up escalating into other forms of drug abuse,” McGraw said. “What’s scarier is that it’s used as a poor coping strategy. It tells me that a person has poor coping strategies, which means they are probably more susceptible to other poor coping strategies too.”
Arlo said he is a supporter of unprescribed Adderall use because it helps him to focus on his goals.
“I personally love it,” Arlo said. “Adderall’s great. It’s a good thing because it keeps you away from other drugs as well. There are some kids in my grade that are starting to do stuff like cocaine, and I would never do that. Adderall is such a weird thing. It makes you not want to do anything except lock in.”
McGraw said unprescribed drug usage including adderall can have negative short-term and long-term effects that students may not be aware of.
“Using any kind of medication that changes your brain chemistry leads to changes in your ability to function over the long term,” McGraw said. “For stimulants, your brain starts to shut down some of its dopamine receptors, and over time, your baseline gets lower and lower, so you feel worse and worse in the morning. If you’re using them a lot, you might even have withdrawal symptoms. In the short term, you might feel agitated, irritable or have trouble sleeping.”
*Names have been changed.
