Students who study for final exams find themselves in one of two groups: students who start early and study a bit at a time and students who start late while attempting to absorb months of class notes in a matter of hours. Faculty members should understand that many students don’t care about class concepts. Earning a degree does not take understanding nor does it require intelligence, a reality that compels students to maximize grades and minimize effort.
Students display ironic focus on their noble quests for a shortcut. Cheating probably won’t work while paying someone to take the test for you is risky. What if there was some kind of pill like cheap and widely prescribed cocaine that would make studying fun and easy? I like fun and easy.
Adderall is widely used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy, challenging the distractions and sleep that complicate last minute cramming. With schoolwork, I don’t procrastinate as horribly as I used to — I’d like to attribute this to better study habits or a surge of motivation and I could.
However, my Adderall prescription is likely a factor. I scored this “ticket” after repeated visits to many psychiatrists over the last five years. My main complaint was and is anxiety that distracts me from clear thought and scares me into stagnation.
Many people will say that you need an ADD or ADHD diagnosis to receive a prescription. However, I was never diagnosed with a formal disorder unless my psychiatrist kept this from me (I don’t think that’s the case).
By increasing my focus, Adderall has helped me tremendously with eliminating (or marginally disrupting) the seemingly endless chain of silly and troubling thoughts that I subconsciously think. When I don’t take my 20 milligrams, I’m detached and distracted from anything around me—people included.
This introduces a bit of a slippery slope between use and dependence because the effects of the drug have become common to me, even expected. I don’t have any withdrawal symptoms, but when you use a substance to feel a certain way (or not feel a certain way), you can easily become dependent on it, like a crutch.
Recreational use could be described as using a drug when you don’t need it. However, need is a subjective idea because some people have a higher threshold for dealing with their problems than others. The more resilient among us hesitate to label themselves in need even with intense chronic anxiety or other symptoms. The less resilient will throw around the word need flippantly. This hints at a larger problem: the inability to distinguish needs from wants.
David Wallace, a personal writing hero of mine, traces the term addiction to its Latin root addicere, which refers to religious devotion or sacrifice. He equates this devotion with modern addictions to culture or television in the sense that we all worship something.
When I compare drug addicts suffering terrible withdrawal symptoms to religious followers prostrating in devotion, I notice the obvious physiological differences i.e., prostration does not inhibit neurons from reabsorbing dopamine. However, they both seem to give themselves to something else. It may seem like a stretch to equate them, but is the religious person truly more independent than the cocaine user? Can the genuine religious worshiper run from God more successfully than the drug addict can run from cocaine?
Anxiety and its close relative, procrastination, are mechanisms of self-defense. Studying is a stressful experience. This tricks us into associating the stress of studying with the act of studying—mistaking the solution for the problem. Stress festers into dread that catalyzes another ride around the vicious cycle. I’m no exception as procrastination seduces me occasionally. However, I don’t substitute medication for discipline. Those that do will self-destruct when they get what’s coming to them.
