American universities are fuelled by amphetamines – so I tried them

 New York

A biography of Freud to my left, a black leather lounger to my right. We were 30 minutes in. ‘Well,’ said the psychiatrist, sitting up in his chair, ‘what you’re describing sounds like ADHD.’ Oh? ‘And what we normally prescribe for that is Adderall.’ There they were. Ten blue, oblong capsules, in an orange cylinder with a white top. 20mg, extended release. To be taken once a day. They’d help me focus, sit still and finish my work. It’s odd that I didn’t come across them last year, while a student at New York University. They say Adderall, the brand name for a mix of amphetamine salts, is the most popular among the ‘study drugs’ now ubiquitous on American campuses. Around 30 per cent of American students have taken stimulants at least once, and the higher-ranking the university, the more common it is. Undergraduates find multiple uses for ‘Addy’ — hunkering down with it, cramming with it, crushing it into powder then snorting it at parties.